Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now

[Sad Sprinter]

90s baby here but a number of things have already died out:

Dvd Box Sets
Blu-Ray
"And tonight a double-bill"
Telextext
Being excited in general as a child to find a hotel room has a TV
Areas in London being "rough"
Apple being a weird and niche brand of computers
Celebrity Culture in general
Telling your friend to wait by the phone at X time so they're parents don't answer when you call
Greasy spoons/sandwich bares being more common
Graffiti on trains (now unfortunately coming back)

 

[GordonT]

Silver or gold coloured metallic armbands occasionally worn by men to ensure that the correct amount of shirt was visible below the jacket sleeve.
Pipe cleaners.
Cigarette cards and their associated albums.
Pulleys often in the kitchen to hang clothes to dry out.
Immerser switch to be switched on well in advance if someone needed enough hot water for a bath.
Paraffin heaters for normal domestic use.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Immerser switch to be switched on if someone needed enough hot water for a bath.

Unfortaunely I still have one...

 

[LYradial]

Yet another from me, as a newcomer I hope this I’m not boring you all
those money boxes that rich aunts and uncles would put in a shilling or maybe more, paid into childs bank account

I soon cottoned on to the fact that the bank paid you interest , a lesson in life that has served me well.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Also pink stamps. Sometimes garages had promotions offering double or treble the usual quantity of stamps for the quantity of petrol purchased (in gallons).

My dad worked in a garage, and had some kind of fiddle going on with the Green Shield and Pink stamps. Us kids had the task of "licking and sticking" them into the books before going in to the shop to redeem them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2024 ==

Immerser switch to be switched on well in advance if someone needed enough hot water for a bath

We always called it the immersion (heater). "Is the immersion on? I want to have a bath"

 

[Tester]

I well remember those. There were at least two old established shops in Reading which had these, one was a shoe shop (which also had an X-ray machine to see how well a pair of shoes fitted one's feet!) and the other was Jacksons department store. Although Jacksons used a vacuum tube system the concept was exactly the same.

Bit in bold.....

I saw one of these at the Science Museum reserve collection, near Kensington Olympia (many years ago - an absolutely fascinating visit).

They were apparently a thing - particularly aimed at children.

 

[Jon_jpwh]

Again on the phone theme:
Asking the operator to put you through to Helensburgh 1404 (family home in 1960s before the number altered to embrace an area dialling code and you dialled it yourself);
The small range of colours which became available for house phones as an alternative to black;
"Trimphones" with their chirrupy "ring";
The early cordless phones sometimes referred to as bricks.
Offices where the receptionist had a mini telephone exchange within reach and calls to/from the various extensions were enabled by cords being plugged in to wherever required for every call.

When I was a boy my grandmother worked for the Yorkshire Post at their offices in Fleet Street in London and operated one of those telephone switchboards.

 

[GusB]

Speaking of the Co-op, I can remember certain of the larger city- and town- centre Co-op department stores which had what was to me a fascinating overhead 'railway' system.

When you took your purchases to the till, your cash - accompanied by an invoice completed by the assistant - was placed inside a plastic ball. The assistant then placed it in a tube and pulled a lever which caused the ball to shoot up a vertical tube and onto a horizontal three rail track on which it rolled across the ceiling at high speed through a hole in the wall and into a hidden upstairs cash office.

A short time later the ball would return the way it had gone and the till assistant would unscrew it and present you with your change and receipt, having packed your goods in the meantime.

The old Aberdeen-based Norco (Northern Cooperative) used a similar system for skimming checkout tills when they were deemed to have too much cash in them.

Cash was placed in a little plastic pod which was then inserted into a vacuum tube which wheeched it off to the cash office.

The Elgin store was Safeway by the time I worked there, but they kept the system in place as it was more efficient than having the cash office assistant going round with a metal box and having to be accompanied by two other staff.

 

[Busaholic]

What about the least likely thing ever to rear its head again? That being 'Bob-A-Job' week conducted by wolf cubs i.e. junior scouts of primary school age, in their cub uniform, knocking on strangers' doors and offering to perform a minor household task in return for a 'bob', the slang name for a shilling which became 5p. What could possibly go wrong?!

 

[ChiefPlanner]

One thing that still happens at my TOC is the guard carrying internal paperwork, parcels, catering stock etc though not on the same scale

Delighted to hear that ! - but privatisation killed off the whole - "National" internal mail. Slightly "misused" gently - I recall Hereford fruit being sent from station to station for staff use - and even better , some obliging Liverpudlians (to order) despatched Liverpool FC shirts bought from the fan shop to South Wales customers for their childrens Christmas presents through the internal mail. Not many , but a few. Arrived safely too. Depots would sometimes send urgent spares from one end to another by this means - even windscreens if urgently needed. Today I suppose they would be driven , or expensively couriered........

 

[Non Multi]

Having to dig out the copy of Yellow Pages to get the contact details of a local organisation or tradesperson. Same applies to the Phone Book for local numbers.

 

[Jon_jpwh]

Identity cards which were issued during the war and continued until 1952, I still have mine. Also ration books, rationing ended in 1954.

 

[GordonT]

Having to dig out the copy of Yellow Pages to get the contact details of a local organisation or tradesperson. Same applies to the Phone Book for local numbers.

Or you could phone Directory Enquiries or plunder the huge collection of phone directories at your local public library.

 

[jfollows]

Foyles bookshop in London in the 1980s had an owner who didn’t trust counter staff to handle money, so she inflicted three queues on each customer purchase:

1. Queue with the books you want to buy, to hand them over to counter staff and be given a paper invoice in return
2. Queue with the invoice at a special cash desk (of which there were not many) to pay, and to be given back a suitable marked invoice denoting that payment has been made
3. Queue at the counter again before exchanging the marked invoice for the books you previously saw a while ago

I think it was only on the owner’s death that a more normal method of payment was introduced. Why Foyles didn’t go bust because of the system, I don’t know - perhaps because it held better stock of books than its obvious competitor (Dillons), indeed Dillons eventually went bust and was taken over, in the end by Waterstone’s I believe.

 

[Ediswan]

one was a shoe shop (which also had an X-ray machine to see how well a pair of shoes fitted one's feet!)

As featured in the film Bilion Dollar Brain (1967).

 

[LowLevel]

Delighted to hear that ! - but privatisation killed off the whole - "National" internal mail. Slightly "misused" gently - I recall Hereford fruit being sent from station to station for staff use - and even better , some obliging Liverpudlians (to order) despatched Liverpool FC shirts bought from the fan shop to South Wales customers for their childrens Christmas presents through the internal mail. Not many , but a few. Arrived safely too. Depots would sometimes send urgent spares from one end to another by this means - even windscreens if urgently needed. Today I suppose they would be driven , or expensively couriered........

I've certainly carried chunks of point machines and signals for NR in an emergency

Amazing what you can fit in the middle cab of a 158 with some persuasion!

 

[GordonT]

Delighted to hear that ! - but privatisation killed off the whole - "National" internal mail. Slightly "misused" gently - I recall Hereford fruit being sent from station to station for staff use - and even better , some obliging Liverpudlians (to order) despatched Liverpool FC shirts bought from the fan shop to South Wales customers for their childrens Christmas presents through the internal mail. Not many , but a few. Arrived safely too. Depots would sometimes send urgent spares from one end to another by this means - even windscreens if urgently needed. Today I suppose they would be driven , or expensively couriered........

In his autobiography 'On and off the Rails', ex BR ops manager, Peter Rayner, recalls an annual Burns Night in the Railway Inn in Stafford. "At the time of my presidency, Jim Summers in Scotland used to purchase the haggis and send it on the afternoon express from Glasgow, care of the senior conductor. If I was not at Crewe to receive the haggis, the train would sometimes stop specially at Stafford. I remember seeing the log item - '1M35 called at Stafford additionally. Four nuns wrongly directed at Glasgow Central.' So poor old Jim not only provided the haggis but he also got the blame for the extra stop on the train."

 

[Busaholic]

Foyles bookshop in London in the 1980s had an owner who didn’t trust counter staff to handle money, so she inflicted three queues on each customer purchase:

1. Queue with the books you want to buy, to hand them over to counter staff and be given a paper invoice in return
2. Queue with the invoice at a special cash desk (of which there were not many) to pay, and to be given back a suitable marked invoice denoting that payment has been made
3. Queue at the counter again before exchanging the marked invoice for the books you previously saw a while ago

I think it was only on the owner’s death that a more normal method of payment was introduced. Why Foyles didn’t go bust because of the system, I don’t know - perhaps because it held better stock of books than its obvious competitor (Dillons), indeed Dillons eventually went bust and was taken over, in the end by Waterstone’s I believe.

It didn't go bust because Christina Foyle paid peanut wages to her temporary staff, which in practice were 95% plus of them, because she fired them after six months as a matter of principle, or, rather, ideology! There were also many reports of publishers not receiving full, or indeed any, payments for books supplied. Foyle and her husband were wily old foxes, though, in continuing to host the weekly literary lunches, worth far more in prestige for the bookshop than the cost of hosting them.

Waterstone's in turn acquired Foyles in 2018.

 

[Non Multi]

Rotary dial telephones - having to wait for the mechanical dial to return to the original position for every digit of the phone number. A really tedious process if you needed to dial a number with the area code, even more so if you made a mistake and had to start again.

 

[telstarbox]

When your iron came with a plug suitable for plugging into the light socket.

So daytime use only?

 

[McRhu]

Asbestos mats in the school science labs. And on the subject of schools, the tawse (or belt) of which I was a not infrequent partaker.

 

[D6130]

Pulleys often in the kitchen to hang clothes to dry out.

We still have one of those.

 

[Donny Dave]

Rotary dial telephones - having to wait for the mechanical dial to return to the original position for every digit of the phone number. A really tedious process if you needed to dial a number with the area code, even more so if you made a mistake and had to start again.

 

[OhNoAPacer]

Foyles bookshop in London in the 1980s had an owner who didn’t trust counter staff to handle money, so she inflicted three queues on each customer purchase:

1. Queue with the books you want to buy, to hand them over to counter staff and be given a paper invoice in return
2. Queue with the invoice at a special cash desk (of which there were not many) to pay, and to be given back a suitable marked invoice denoting that payment has been made
3. Queue at the counter again before exchanging the marked invoice for the books you previously saw a while ago

I think it was only on the owner’s death that a more normal method of payment was introduced. Why Foyles didn’t go bust because of the system, I don’t know - perhaps because it held better stock of books than its obvious competitor (Dillons), indeed Dillons eventually went bust and was taken over, in the end by Waterstone’s I believe.

Sounds like my experience trying to buy a sandwich in Pisa Airport.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

We still have one of those.

So do we... and they're still available quite easily.

 

[MotCO]

Fax machines. I seem to recall these being quite common 20 years ago but are pretty much extinct now in the UK. Though I did read they are still quite common in Japan.

The NHS does still use them, or did until fairly recently, because it was seen as secure.

With regards to phones, how about phonecards, especially Mercury phone cards.

I also remember the first bank 'holes in the wall' which used small punch cards, which issued only £10, and which were retained by the machine, to be posted back to you.

On the same subject, computer punch cards for holding data.

 

[Ashley Hill]

Is this a set up or are the youth of today really this stupid?

 

[londonbridge]

Saturday evening papers with the football results.

On the previous subject of the test card, there was a method to get a hidden testcard to appear on some Freeview TVs and set top boxes by pressing a certain sequence of buttons on the remote control, can’t remember the sequence offhand nor if this method still works.

 

[AM9]

The school nit nurse and the resulting purple heads.

Eeee! that sounds like 'Capstick Come Home'.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2024 ==

I clearly remember my mother's six digit Co-op number, but I'm not quoting it on here as I use as the basis for PINs. I also use old family car registration numbers as passwords.

Snap! I also mix in a few memorable postcodes, - useful for login passwords that insist on numbers/letters/caps and 'special chracters.

 

[Donny Dave]

Is this a set up or are the youth of today really this stupid?

I can't find it now, but I have seen a video where several teenagers have to use a rotary phone to ring a number in order to be let out of the test room. It was about an hour long....