Well I’m 53 and my great grandmother was born in the 1890’s
Seriously though, my parents said the same to me and their parents undoubtedly said the same thing to them, you don’t know how hard we had it back then. Well I guess every generation has it’s hard times and I guess society today thinks it’s got it’s problems. Social media unfortunately is a massive curse for many kids these days, something I never had to deal with as a kid because it just didn’t exist. As for Covid, it is what it is and like most stuff in life, I’m just getting on with it.
I’m glad I’m not from the Stone Age though, I suspect when times got tough for them, they just caved each others heads in with rocks and of course no one did anything about it.
Finance wise, it was the savings stamps I would buy at the Post Office with my pocket money and stick in books trying to complete as many books as possible.
I love these kinds of threads, but, on FB, they inevitably degenerate into whingefests about how “everything was wonderful until we joined the EU/all the immigrants turned up/everything became PC”, at which point I normally switch off. There were wonderful things about the 70s and 80s (possibly coloured by the endless possibilities of youth) and the simplicity of it all. I distinctly remember the long hot summer of 76, and how horrible it was, and you were waiting for a breath of wind and everyone’s garden was yellow straw. We were a week away from getting a stand pipe in the road. Adverts beseeching you to save water. I certainly remember Green Shield Stamps and the Co-Op’s similar scheme.
But EVERYONE above 16 (and quite a few under) smoked then, public toilets were horrendous, the choice of cuisine was minimal, it took forever to get anywhere, and foreign travel was rare to non-existent. Though I guess if you’re a Mail-reading smoker who never travels abroad, and who hates forrin [sic] food, I suppose there may be something to it all.
And let’s not forget all those crap cars we had to put up with. The Austin Allegro, Maxi, the imported crap such as the appallingly made Moskvitch, Lada and the Fiat rust buckets. Ah yes, them were the days! Oh, and everyone seemed to be driving around on remoulds
Nope, I actually meant, a load of crap, we had one, some sort of mustard colour, it was bloody dangerous and I’m not sure the fuel tank would have stayed intact in a rear end shunt. You actually had to open the boot and the square rear number plate would drop down revealing the fuel filler cap. How the hell those cars ever made it into the U.K, I’ll never know
Oh yeah, we also had a Triumph Herald. Went out one morning and discovered the engine sat on the road because the front subframe had collapsed through rust. Bearing in mind at the time, the car was only about 12 years old, but still a total piece of crap. And then there was our old Vauxhall Victor FE estate, equally as dire and destroyed itself in a ball of flames after a trip to Liptons. And the finest piece of motoring crap we had in our family, a Hillman Avenger.
I bought a 1971 Hillman Avenger about 30 years ago as a cheap motor to get me to work.
I did spend a bit on keeping it going for about 4 years and then gave it to my brother.
Believe it or not, through some “tender loving care” he’s still got it
Alley Cat skateboards, with the lovely silent, rubbery yellow wheels. The plastic decks were crap though. Jeans cut-off at the knee with 2" slits cut all around each knee hole.
Foil strips taped to the spokes of your Raleigh bike.
Steve Austin dolls with the see-through eye and pull-off skin to reveal a [cough] robotic arm and legs.
The ‘aircraft carrier’ which, when a fishing line was fastened from it to the big light, allowed you to launch a plane from it and then guide it back in to land using a ‘joystick’
And later… the MERLIN (the Electronic Wizard) ‘hand-held console’. And I kid you not, I still have it and it works. No box though. Stuck up in the loft somewhere without batteries at this point.
The Star Wars cardboard Death-Star, well, half of it, within which you could play with the Star Wars figures in a realistic environment like the trash compactor and the chasm swing.
Run out of the house at 8am, come home before dinner. Parents had no idea where you were - neither did you in most cases - but somehow it was just incredible fun.
I’m a young whippersnapper of 47, and my great grandfather (dad’s dad’s dad) was born in 1871.
that bought brand new, in cash, for £550 and paid £34 for TPFT insurance with Norwich Union 