The Good Old Days?

[WolfMan]

One of my favourite things is to look for old pictures of the place I live, I find it fascinating to see how things have changed over the years. I love to imagine how life was different back then, and reflect on how the present will be seen in years to come.

I also like listening to and reading accounts of how life has changed. It's interesting that alot of people say things were better in the past, is this really the case, or is it nostalgia? I get the sense there was more of a sense of community back then, but life was alot harder in objectively measurable ways in terms of healthcare, working conditions etc.

I am in my 30's, I get the sense I'm probably one of the younger posters on here. An example of how things have changed since I was young, is we used to have a coal burning stove in our house, we had a coal man that used to come and deliver the coal to our back garden, I had to go out and fill the bucket up with coal, regardless of the weather. I can remember sitting in our living room and my dad having the vents open all the way, and the stove getting so hot it would glow red. I think central heating was quite common at this time, so we were probably outliers in still using coal. But I don't think coal burners are even allowed now, and no doubt the job of the coal man is extinct.

So what are peoples thoughts on whether life was better in the past, and has anyone got any good stories about jobs or things that are no longer around?

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

I can just remember free school milk in my reception class. That’s how old I am.

 

[darlowolf64]

I remember free school milk, the moon landing and rolling power cuts/living with candlelight!

 

[WolfMan]

I'm just about old enough to remember being able to smoke at work, first job I had as a trainee in an office with two blokes in it, one was a chain smoker and the other one didn't smoke - it must have done the non smokers head in looking back.

 

[Alan]

I remember insufferable collect call commercials. 10-10-220 and the like. Not sure if such a thing existed in the UK.

Was too young to understand what they were advertising. International paid calls, I think.

 

[Kenny]

I remember living with candlelight!

Will come in handy for this winter then. You know what to expect

 

[MARKakaJIM]

I can just remember free school milk in my reception class. That’s how old I am.

We still had free milk when I started school!

 

[Tony Towner]

I remember when Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris were wholesome stars who kids were desperate to meet

 

[Quirkafleeg]

I miss the good old days of bottom end tickling BT pay phones so you could listen to porn lines for hours and hours...

 

[sycophantia]

Yep I remember school milk, power cuts, bread shortages, queuing for petrol.
On the flip side, none of it seemed that bad at the time, playing monopoly by candlelight and making tea on a camping stove seemed quit exciting for a while.
Also summers were long and hot and 20 a side football matches that lasted hours and hours with kids joining and leaving at will.

 

[Law's Bus]

Life definitely wasn't better in the past. People tend to have massive nostalgia and rose-tints about the time when they were young, free and had less responsibilities, so the "best times" are usually whenever the person spouting forth was late teens or early twenties. I remember my grandparents' generation going on about how the 1920s and 1930s were the best, and my parents' generation still go on about how things were best in the 1950s and 1960s.

I've seen so many times where old photos sites on the Internet are full of things like "wasn't it clean back then" when buildings are filthy with soot, or "there wasn't any litter back then" when you can clearly see plenty in the photo!

The quickest and easiest way to prove that people are just rose-tinted is ask them to give up their heating, their double glazing, their holidays abroad, their phones (and I mean landlines as well as mobiles), to give up going out for meals or having take-outs, to have to take the bus or walk everywhere, deal with the massive racism, sexism and homophobia (and women having to put up with their arses being felt up and pinched by random strangers) and hand back their Internet connections. Oddly enough, they're not so keen to live in the past then.

It wasn't better or worse, it was different, with different ideas and different priorities. Times change.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

One improvement was you could leave the house unlocked and kids played outside for hours on end without parents being worried.

 

[Law's Bus]

One improvement was you could leave the house unlocked and kids played outside for hours on end without parents being worried.

To be fair, you can do that today with about the same results as back then.

Kids are just as safe today as we were back then, but the press have an awful lot to answer for regarding scaremongering. There's also the fact that there's so many "no ball games on this area" put up because of moaning old gits who would have thought nothing of kicking a ball around when they were young meaning that there's less places for kids to play with a bunch of folk keeping eyes out.

 

[Sniffer]

Sundays were different due to trading laws. Imagine how Easter Sunday's are now and that was how every Sunday was.

As for kids are as safe today I tend to agree however the amount of traffic means that I'm personally less likely to allow kids to go roaming on bikes as I would have done as a youngster.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Old style Sunday opening hours where you could only serve alcohol between 3 and 7 if someone was having a sit down meal. In fact didn’t all day opening on any day bar Saturday come in around 1990?

 

[Boozad]

I can just remember free school milk in my reception class. That’s how old I am.

Hang on, I had free school milk and I'm about twenty years younger than you. I remember the winters used to be bad enough to make the milk freeze and it would expand and push the foil top off so it looked like a weird dick.

I do miss the winters, proper amounts of snow back when I was a kid.

 

[Sniffer]

Hang on, I had free school milk and I'm about twenty years younger than you. I remember the winters used to be bad enough to make the milk freeze and it would expand and push the foil top off so it looked like a weird dick.

I do miss the winters, proper amounts of snow back when I was a kid.

I think that the free milk was stopped in the 70's for Junior schools.

 

[Tredman]

Would have to be pre-79 as it was Thatcher as Education secretary

 

[BillyDee]

I had milk at primary school in the early 80s?

 

[Law's Bus]

Would have to be pre-79 as it was Thatcher as Education secretary

Some local authorities paid for it themselves after Thatcher removed it - Wolverhampton being one of them.