Things once routine that are now becoming Period.

[Flyfisher]

We always try to get bottles with real corks though.

Another example, perhaps, of the modern solution being functionally far superior to the traditional one? I wonder how many millions of bottles of wine are ruined each year through being 'corked' - something that simply doesn't happen with plastic stoppers.

 

[numberwang]

Going to someone else's house for some internet..

 

[numberwang]

Spin dryer duty - lifting the lid (and NOT putting your fingers inside) when the bowl under the waste spout was getting full. (We couldn't afford the extra 10/- for the Superior De-Luxe with a drain hose
[/quote]

We were posh and had the drain hose lol!

 

[wobs]

We always try to get bottles with real corks though.

Another example, perhaps, of the modern solution being functionally far superior to the traditional one? I wonder how many millions of bottles of wine are ruined each year through being 'corked' - something that simply doesn't happen with plastic stoppers.

I've never had a "corked" bottle. I think they must do something to them.

One of the reasons we prefer proper corks is to support the cork industry, as it supports the habitat there. Also, I can chuck them on the fire after use.

 

[Flyfisher]

To be fair, I can only remember two occurences, though this source suggests it can be up to 7%. Perhaps I'm not drinking enough :wink:

The cork-industry group APCOR cites a study showing a 0.7-1.2% taint rate. In a 2005 study of 2800 bottles tasted at the Wine Spectator blind-tasting facilities in Napa, California, 7% of the bottles were found to be tainted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_taint

 

[Owain]

Going to someone else's house for some internet..

I think that's more common now, in the sense of borrowing a neighbour's wifi, if you've got a tablet and aren't paying for your own broadband connection.

I remember hiding magneto-optical drives behind the desk and leaving the PC running overnight to download operating systems on work's internet.

Carbon paper.

Foolscap size paper.

Centring headings by counting the letters and subtracting half, then typing the whole page again because you'd calculated for elite and were typing in pica.

Looking up the Dialling Code in the little green booklet and concentrating really hard when dialling a number of more than 4 or 5 digits.

 

[Feltwell]

Sticking to red hot vinyl car seats in summer.

Being in.a car with parents who both smoked (gave me a life long hatred of cigarettes though, so not all negative I suppose).

As a kid, riding in the boot of Dad's estate car when all the seats were occupied by adults. Riding in the back of a van sat on a bale of hay. Riding on the trailer behind a tractor or sat in the open back of a farmer's Land Rover. Seat belts, child seats, what were they?

Cars where the bodywork had disintegrated and the engine was shot by 100,000 miles (if it made it that far).

"3 rings" to Mum when you got to your destination, to save putting 2p in the call box.

Polystyrene ceiling tiles. Artex. Avocado bath suites. Decorating schemes and soft furnishings that were all brown, gold or orange. Storage heaters. Serving hatches. Fondue sets.

Knitted dolls with enormous skirts covering the spare loo rolls at your Nan's house.

The camping gas light on a pole that lived in the corner of the kitchen, along with a camping stove. If it wasn't power cuts due to a strike it was (more often) that the cows in the field next door had been scratching themselves too hard against the wooden power poles and had pushed one over. Who says Norfolk in the 1970's was a bit backward eh? :wink:

Vinyl roofs on cars.

Adding up machines. Taking Corona pop bottles back to the shop to get the deposit back. Milk bottles. Telex machines.

Fax machines. Tippex.

 

[Flyfisher]

Typing pools

 

[Feltwell]

Mechanical calculators

My Dad used to bring them home from work and give them to me because "he wanted to save all the nuts and bolts before they were thrown away".

5 year old me completely failing to spot the blatant ploy to keep me occupied for an hour or so after my Dad came in from work so he could watch the news and read his paper in peace :roll: :lol:

 

[Owain]

Decorating schemes and soft furnishings that were all brown, gold or orange. Storage heaters.

Decorating schemes that were brown, gold AND orange. Storage heaters with woodgrain effect fronts. Hostess trolleys with woodgrain effect fronts. Tellies with woodgrain effect sides. Estate cars with woodgrain effect sides. Brightening up old furniture with "Fablon".

 

[wobs]

We still use a fax machine at work (although its in the photocopier, and works really well).

Tippex - It gets used occasionally at work.

 

[wobs]

Tellies with woodgrain effect sides.

It wouldn't surprise me if this came back into fashion in some ironic/hypster way.

Estate cars with woodgrain effect sides.

Wasn't that an American thing? I don't recall that in the UK too much. Austin Travellers obviously had real wood, but the wood effect on the side of estate cars was not something I recall.

 

[Owain]

Tippex - It gets used occasionally at work.

But it doesn't smell as nice as it used to.

 

[Me!]

Hostess trolleys with woodgrain effect fronts.

We still have one of those
Yes, I know it's naff, but in a cold and draughty house it does keep the food nice and warm until everything and everyone is ready.

 

[wobs]

. Hostess trolleys with woodgrain effect fronts.

My parents still use theirs.

You can still buy them.

 

[Lime]

Hostess trolleys with woodgrain effect fronts.

We still have one of those
Yes, I know it's naff, but in a cold and draughty house it does keep the food nice and warm until everything and everyone is ready.

Unfortunately my mother-in-law has had one for decades.
As time passes it is being used for longer and longer at her dinner parties.
Years ago a meal would have been served within a few minutes but time has slowed her down so now it takes several hours as each and ever vegetable etc. is cooked separately and placed in a tureen in the trolley.
After about a 2 hour wait dinner is served and it takes another 10 minutes to empty the Hostess trolley.
It is quite common for a tureen to be forgotten in the trolley until the meal is almost over and almost invariably they are all lukewarm at best.

The meat dish is nearly always cooked days previously, frozen then re-heated "to save time"!
My wife is fed up with me moaning about food poisoning etc.

To make matters worse last Christmas the mother-in-law, who knows I like cooking, suggested/threatened to leave me the hostess trolley in her will.

 

[Flyfisher]

Austin Travellers obviously had real wood,

Ash I believe and part of the structure rather than purely decorative. I knew someone in the late 70s who scrapped their Traveller after it failed its MOT test due to wood rot.

 

[wobs]

Another thing that I remember that is no more:
Mum's shopping bag.

Most mums had a shopping bag that went out with them most days. And I recall when it disappeared: When Sainsbury's opened, and they used the orange single use bags in the early 80s (possibly 1982).

When we did a big supermarket shop before that, we would search for cardboard boxes in store, but also used The Shopping Bag..

We now have multiple cloth bags in a cupboard.

 

[Hobden]

Fish glue.

I didn't know you could glue fish. What did you glue them to?

Any plaice?

 

[Feltwell]

Tippex - It gets used occasionally at work.

But do you know what it's still great for (and why I have a bottle of the solvent based stuff in my garage)?

If you need to fix an item to a surface - and the screw holes are too deep to simply mark through with a pencil - a bit of tippex on the end of a bolt or similar is perfect to poke through and mark the surface.

There endeth my "1 more use for Tippex" sermon for the day. I still wouldn't recommend buying shares in the Tippex company any more though!

Cars with wood effect sides - yes, more American than UK, though I think we had a couple (trying to look American no doubt). Cars with proper ash frames though - one of my earliest memories is "Grandad's wooden car". The Grandad in question died when I was only 4. It was relatively recently that I discovered he drove a Mini Traveller, which just like it's bigger and more popular Morris Traveller stablemate, had an exposed ash frame which was a structural part of the car.

Back to period things that have gone:

Anderson shelters - I remember helping dig out a well rusted one that had served as a garden shed for my grandparents for many years after the war.
Elm trees I also remember helping take down diseased elm trees in their garden.
Bathroom sets of a furry bath mat, a shaped mat to go in front of the loo, and a loo seat cover.
Carpet in bathrooms
Cars overheating whilst sat in massive queues somewhere on a bank holiday
Kids covering school books in wallpaper scraps
Vesta curries
Being away from the office and the bliss of therefore being completely uncontactable for most of that time
Cigarette sponsorship plastered all over anything sport related