Good riddance! Things you don't see anymore, thank heavens!

Oh I loved the stone hot water bottles Stansgran! But good riddance to having to use the water from the bottle to wash in the morning when the pipes froze in winter.
Pleated school skirts before the invention of 'staypress' pleating, so I regularly had to sew the pleats in place and press the skirt. As soon as I sat down, the pleats started to flatten out again .
And oh god, yes, sanitary towels and belts! And the sheer embarrassment of it all - 'don't talk about it, it's very private' I was told by my mother. Consequently I told not a soul, not even my best friend. When she reached her 'big day' and delightedly told me, she wouldn't believe me when I said I'd started 6 months previously. I think that's when I learnt that I really shouldn't always do as mum said

That scary water heater over the bath in the shared bathroom in my bedsit house that went woomph as it lit when you turned the hot tap on. Or didn't go woomph if it was windy and the pilot light had blown out without being noticed and I had to get the chap in the next door room to relight it as it terrified me.

And the afore mentioned outside loo, only having a fire in the living room when I was little. And sanitary towels. Especially sanitary towels.

Tin bath in front of the fire, and having to wash in the kitchen as a teenager because we didn't have a bathroom!

Putting on pyjamas, cardie, knitted bonnet, mittens and woolly socks on to go to bed in winter. Liberty bodices. Frozen toilets. Totally agree about sanitary towels. Wellie boots and freezing toes. Pink National Health glasses ( I used to lose them on a regular basis down the back of the sofa ), tin bath in the kitchen filled with water from Ascot water heater (the water was freezing at the bottom as the heat went straight into the stone floor and boiling at the top as it came from the Ascot).

Paraffin room heaters - oh I've just seen Stansgran said that - and having to fetch a gallon of paraffin from the shop.

Stockings and suspender belts.

Gas poker to light a coal fire (used to scare me)

Freezing cold bathrooms with no heating

Sing Something Simple on the radio - b o r i n g

Oh yes, Sing Something Simple - and Semprini Serenade....dire!

But then again it all depends on what our memories are anchored to. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of snuggling up with my dad listening to Semprini' s serenade on his new "portable" radio which was actually quite big!

Sorry Pittcity, but I keep wishing for the video recorder/players to come back, the flippin` dvd thing really flummoxes me!
Good riddance to gas mantles, because it was woe betide us if we accidentally broke one, and it was very easily done!

Frost on the inside of the crittle (sp) window in my bedroom. Stockings and suspenders. We were lucky enough to have a bathroom, but the only heating was the coal fire in "the back room"

Buckets of towelling nappies soaking in Napisan. ( I had two children under two) and having to heave the nappies into the temperamental washing machine that broke down at regular intervals.

Seeing my dad's hankies boiling in the Pigs Bin on the smelly old gas oven.

Definitely skipping from cold rooms to the one warm room in the winter and keeping the door shut. The smell of the paraffin heater. Ice on the Windows. The embarrassment of sanitary towels during PE we only wore our knickers and t shirt and that was no e xcuse!

Suspenders and stockings - my mum presented me with a suspender belt but didn't explain how to wear it so I spent forever wearing it back to front and sitting down was very uncomfortable!

Izal toilet paper - what good was that apart from doing tracings for homework?

I agree with Ana about Sing Something Simple the introductory music would put me into a mild depression.

Only having a bath once a week and wearing the same undies for a few days at a time. I wonder if we smelt - yuk.

The 'front room' at my nan's! Freezing cold, with a set of encyclopedia, a China cabinet, prickly 3piece suite and net curtains.

Monday being laundry day when I would come home from school to a house full of the smell of wet , boiled washing and only cold meat for tea ( left over from the Sunday joint. Then one day a month when Mother would wash the net curtains and clean the brasses she always seemed to be cleaning. A set day for every chore. I also remember her going to ' turn out the bedrooms' during the Winter months and putting on a headscarf as it was so very cold upstairs. Happy to live with central heating,no brasses to clean and a washing machine that can just be switched on at will . Although will admit to never cooking a Sunday joint to have any leftovers.

Having to help my mother cut the edges off endless rolls of wallpaper before it could be hung!

On the subject of Izal - About 10 years or so ago I went to Coventry Cathedral, and used their toilets in the crypt (I crept into the crypt for a c**p) - a loud OMG and wailing in an American accent drifted from the neighbouring cubicle and I hauled up my drawers and ran out to try and help, thinking someone was in trouble. An enormous lady was standing there holding a sheet of Izal and staring at it in amazement and saying "OMG! - I don't believe this stuff - you wipe your ass with it!? I've just got to take some home to show my friends!"

Greyduster Yes, my parents seemed to be always decorating and that was my job too!

Total shock when period arrived and poor father had to try and do the whole talk thing as mother was in hospital! How big were those sanitary towels? They seemed vast or were we just smaller?? And Brentord Nylons! Whole shop devoted to slidey/sticky sheets and nylon covered quilts that slid off your nylon bedspread.

Nylon knickers.

Don't lets "diss" it all, it does reflect happier times when we could sit on a train without the fear of being shot, when we walked into a room and talked to each other instead of everyone locked into their particular technology. Yes they were sometimes the bad old days, hard work, few mod cons and nylon sheets which were horrible if you had rough skin on your feet!!!

my mum tried to get me to wear a sanitary belt and pinned in towels when I first started periods. I think she had some left over. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The ordinary towels were like bricks as it was, nothing like the discreet (or the discrete aldi ones) ones they have today.

nylon sheets...I think there are some lurking at my mothers.

I had a nylon bedspread, purple... think it was at some lodgings when I was a student. It was not remarkably unusual. just about the time duvets were taking over as the norm.

nylon shirts. for men. we still have two. my dads. mum made them into painting aprons for the dc's when they were in reception.

we had the shiney loo roll in the infants at school. (small uncoordinated children and poo spreadingloo rolll... great idea)

I would also say "snow" indoors. Pulling the net curtains off the frozen window to make snow. howver, that one may come back given the current financial crisis.

polio. kid in calipers at the school my mother taught in.

And children with scald scars on their necks and chests - thankfully very rare these days but a still common sight in schools in the 60s.

I don't understand that, Anya - scald scars? How did they get them?