Things we don't see anymore

I remember when very young going to the local butchers with my gran.
I loved it.
First the floor was covered in sawdust.
I would make little 'heaps' with my feet while we were waiting in the queue.
Then the mince was wrapped in big cream paper and the butcher would roll me a couple of clean sheets to draw on.
Then best of all my gran would pay and the change would shoot down from a little office above.
The CO (co-op) was next door. Gran would get her cheese wrapped in wax paper. I was given a bit extra. My tracing paper!
Simple happy days

Ponds Vanishing Cream
Bucket toilets
Cycles with seats for kids on the cross bar
Camera's with film
Bakers who deliver to the door
Half a crown etc
Cars without seat belts
Woolworths

Liquid hair lacquer that came in a tube. You snipped the end off and poured it into a plastic spray bottle. My backcombed hair was always as stiff as a board.

I thought the dog poo was white because it had been bleached by the sun! People very rarely cleaned up after their dogs back in the 60's and 70's,so in the summer,it could be left sitting for a week or so in the sun before the council cleared it up. I remember the first signs appearing on lampposts,warning about dog fouling,in the mid 70's.

Oh yes the breadman he used to come in a big van and have a long pole with a hook on the end to get the bread right at the back. I can remember the smell of the bread van too.

When I was in my teens me and my friends used to save money buy spraying our hair with sugar water. We used to buy a cheap plastic spray bottle from the chemist. I can still see the horror on my mother's face when I backed combed my hair like mad and sprayed it with the sugar water.

Those bottles were sticky and got clogged

Malt and cod liver oil
Germolene and Calamine
Children being in hospital for months and parents only allowed to visit weekly
The slow grinding dentist's drill (horrors!)
Children being beaten at school
Mothballs

What about Lyons tea shops and the Lyons Corner Houses at Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road. Not forgetting the Nippies.

I also remember coffee being sold in tins - I think 2ozs was the smallest.

Railway stations pre Beeching.

Malt and cod liver oil still available in Holland and Barrett.
I remember Mum ordering the Sunday joint on Thursday and the butcher kept it in his cold room until Saturday evening. Bacon rashers cut to the thickness you wanted. Biscuits sold loose out of large square tins. Had to take a basin to get eggs from the dairy because no boxes and butter patted up with wooden paddles. Milkman came round with churns and one had to take out a jug to be filled.

The Grocer's Shop. I remember the rows of containers with lids, you could lift up, and select the biscuits of your choice and put them in a paper bag. My mother complained vociferously one day when the grocer weighed out some bacon on the scales closely followed by some cheese. She pointed out that a sheet of paper should be placed beneath the cheese after weighing raw meat. It all seems so primitive now. The grocer seemed to like me (I was a quiet child and not at all like my mother) and often let me have a bag of broken biscuits for free!!!!

My dad whistling on his way home from work ...indeed men in the street whistling you never hear a man whistle now
A yummy yummy biscuit called Dads cookies
Tiger nuts
Elastic belt with little hooks for your sanny towel to loop on
The coal man coming up the path with the heavy bag of coal over his shoulder
A cabinet of flavoured milk drinks in little cartons ( had one at the corner of my street) you put your money in and got your carton out
Listening to records in little booths with headphones on in our local record shop
The local bookies looking like a smoke room as you went past
Poppets round your neck

Just missed back combing by a year or so. I remember older girls hogging the mirrors at school to raise the hair. Awful for split ends.

We had to have long, dead straight hair...used talc when it got greasy. My Dad hated my long curtains of hair and called it my " keep death off the roads" look after an safety advert I never saw.

DH whistles al the time. At the moment it's Les Miserables. I always know where he is .But I do have to remind him, for example in Sainsburys, to turn the volume down or desist

Asa teenager, I used to think Vesta beef curry was the height of exotic sophistication

I saw them in a supermarket this week Vesta dried meals .
Never see candlewick bedspreads now.

Me too, moobox! And their chicken chow mein!

Striped McLaren baby buggies. I think I paid £7.50 for mine. I got a double one later on and the wheels kept getting knocked off and you could get them repaired locally.

Scented writing paper

piggy. I bought one for £5 in a charity shop 3 years ago. It's only needed occasionally now for the 2 year old and then I'll pass it back to the shop. All my buggies back in the day were McClarens. So much simpler than the ones DDs have.

Symbol Savoury Biscuits
Lyons individual fruit pies

Coffee percolators
Cars ,black with running boards but no heaters or seat belts.
Bus conductors

I'd forgotten about Tiger nuts :-)
Bags of 'scraps' from the chip shop - only a couple of pennies or, sometimes, free.
Mobile shop, 'the van', which seemed to stock everything.

Nestles Triple Bar, 3 layers of chocolate, dark, milk and white in the middle, YUM!

Oh I loved Tripple Bars. I always tried to separate each layer, with my teeth! Not always achieved!