Things your parents/grandparents wouldn’t understand, and what would they use in their place.

At the start of the last century, at the age 21, my grandmother had her leg amputated by her doctor on her kitchen table as they couldn't afford to pay the hospital and surgeon fees

Though I remeber a really moving documentary where, before washing machines/hoovers, the interviewee used to wake up and cry in the mornings because housework was all that she could look forward to until bedtime, I'm so happy that she saw the introduction of these labour-saving sdevices.

I can only remember one grandparent and she would have been horrified at plastic money particularly credit cards! I am sure she would have thought that all the kitchen appliances and own cars promoted laziness - hard work never killed anyone!

I was born in 1955, lived in a small village out in the country. My GPs lived at Station House as my GF was a Signalman. Water was delivered in kits by the early morning Milk Train. Outside loo or "guzunder" for night-time. No central heating.

My DP's house didn't have a bathroom until 1966, same year they had central heating put in. Didn't have a tv until 1963 & telephone 1967. We didn't have electric until 1960.

DF had a motorbike, sidecar if we were going out as a family. DF later had a Bond three wheeler (like a Robin Reliant) which he drove on his motorbike licence. He didn't learn to drive a car until 1971 took 3 attempts to pass his test

DM learnt to drive the same year. DM was born in 1929, I can remember both DGM & DM having twin-tub washers but DM didn't have an automatic washer until into the 1980s when they stopped making twin-tubs they did start manufacturing again much to her disgust.

DM loves her microwave but won't have a mobile phone & doesn't have broadband/internet

I think my family would have embraced the changes although they would be mistifyed by some of them

PS: They wouldn't have understood, or approved of, credit cards either. Spend what you earn weekly and no more. If you can't afford it, save until you can.

Google! There was always a set of encyclopaedias and a dictionary in the house.

My Irish Granny came to live with us in the 60s. She could never understand why the dog lived in the house and not outside in a kennel.

My Mum was sent back to the bakers as he had given her 12 rolls instead of 13! As she approached the building she heard loud voices then music blaring. She turned tail and ran all the way home in a panic. Her first experience with a radio!

I was born in 1923 so I have seen tremendous changes in my lifetime. My family were fairly well off so I can remember that we had one of the first washing machines, vacuum cleaner etc. My father took me to the pictures where the films were silent. You had to speak to the operator to make a phone call. Everything , furniture and floors had to be polished with Mansion polish. Bedroom suites.
Washing up was done with soda. Sore hands, no rubber gloves. Washing was washed with Sunlight soap and boiled in the copper and put through the mangle.
No shampoo. Hair washed with soap and dried in front of the coal fire.
The milkman came round with a churn and you took out your jug.
Going out one always wore hat and gloves.
If you posted a letter in the morning it reached its destination in the afternoon.
You never addressed anyone by their forename.
I could go on because there have been so many changes.

My dad was confused about plastic cards, he couldn't find his own, borrowed!! my mums and nearly got arrested trying to pay his garage bill.

And Maybelle.... totally unnecessary now as well! Nonsense!

My parents would be amazed at phones you can carry about and send pictures ,the size of televisions the fact that children would rather stay in playing games on a machine instead of playing out .

Great Grandparents I imagine would be a bathroom. No more pot under the bed. Grandparents neither nanny ever wore a pair of trousers. My maternal nanny was persuaded to try tights! For a journey home from Reading. My mum was on the same train. She thought her mum had hurt herself as she was walking towards her, it was the tights they were round her knees ? I am never wearing these things Margaret, she never did !!

My Grandmother died during WW2; I can imagine her blinking in amazement at my washing machine, dryer, freezer, the cars on the drive, the internet, and on a far more basic level, the hot water and central heating . This lady who I never knew but was referred to with so much love, affection and respect by her twelve children, brought them all up as decent people. On reflection, she might well be most amazed by attitudes, sense of entitlement and skewed priorities, which seem to affect life so badly now. Perhaps I should say 'horrified' rather than amazed...?

My grandmother was Victorian and I've often thought of all the changes she base in her lifetime. When she was born there were no phones apart from the very rich, no radio, no TV,only the very rare car, no fridges for the ordinary person, no electric indeed for the vast majority of the population, no planes. But there. Were telegrams so people could get news quickly if it was urgent, in towns at.least many deliveries of post, railways so you could go see relatives in the country, movies were just starting to be made. No NHS, no antibiotics, no one went anywhere near the moon . In her lifetime she flew in planes often to visit family overseas, phones were a lifeline, and she was grateful for modern medicine. I suspect had a lot of things people mention been around while she was still alive she'd have been surprised as indeed I was to be able to use a phone when out and about. I remember ringing someone from an onboard phone in a train once just because wow it was amazing. She managed to cope with movies turning into TV, radio, the phone, think she'd have managed with winder with modern stuff. The things I think she'd have found.mist surprising might have been things like most women choosing not to marry before having a baby, being openly gay, that sort of thing. But it was her generation who fought for the vote and suchlike, she worked on munitions during ww1, so knew women could work at lots of jobs that we don't normally think of Victorian women doing, but if course they did didn't they in mills and factories and even in mines.

I remember my grandmother (DGM?) moaning about a carer at her sheltered housing, who, when asked to buy a little thank you gift for DGM to give, had bought a lovely dried flower arrangement. 'Do I look like the kind of person to give someone dead flowers'!!!

I would much rather have natural lavender in my house. I really dislike scented candles - they all smell of cat’s wee the next day.

My mother would just open the windows to let the fresh air in (not a great deal of that now, unless you live at the seaside).

Plastic bottles and all the packaging. Milk, lemonade,medicine all in glass bottles. Food wrapped in white paper eg meat and fish; cereals in brown paper bags. As for mobile phones, they would be a dark art device! As for me I still need a landline as DH is hearing impaired. Even with a cochlear implant mobiles are useless for folk with this disability.

My mum wouldn’t know how to use a microwave and probably wouldn’t want one in the house. Lavender polish was always used in every room except loo and kitchen also bathroom.

Mobile phones , computers and internet and even contact less paying . I think last of all self service tills . I think all of these would of frazzled my mum's brain .

I know my mother would have benefited from the internet, especially face time. She missed her sister in Jersey terribly and they wrote to each other weekly. Imagine being able to see and talk with someone at no cost any time you liked!

She also would have benefitted from back up cameras in cars - enough said!

Just seen mention of a mangle. One of my cousins came to stay and put all my school pencils through it! I was really upset to lose my lovely coloured pencils but my mum was livid that the mangle rollers were wrecked.

My mother and both grandmothers would never have left the house without a headscarf on. Or a hat for church & weddings. A black mantilla veil for funerals.
I remember when our chimney caught fire and the roof caught and we had to flee the house in the middle of the night my mother had to be stopped from grabbing a scarf even though she was iin nightie and dressing gown!

Oh dear, forgot to edit - 'grave'

My mother would be absolutely appalled at the idea of sharing personal information, which we do so readily here.

She only died in 1992 but her unbendable rule was 'it stays in the house' - not even doctors were willingly given anything other than the strictly necessary information. Poor Mum, she must be whirling in her grace - or would be if she had one.

She would not have liked such flippancy either!

My grandparents would be amazed at the ease of air travel, they went by boat to Africa and back. Grandma drove a dog cart on her rounds as a nurse and midwife. I think my grandfather would be astounded by modern policing, he was a policeman in the 1920s. Instead of computers he'd have used a notebook and paper filing system.