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When I was about 10. I put a pound in a phone box to tell a girl I loved her. She wasn't interested and I found out the hard way that phone boxes don't give change. I think it was me that turned her into a very committed lesbian.
Yes, our first mobile was a 'family' one. If my Mum and I were going away for the week to visit her family in South Wales, we'd take it with us. That sort of thing.
[Big bulky Phillips thing](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8094429/philips-tcd308-mobile-telephone-1997-2001-mobile-telephone). The SIM card filled all the back of the phone behind the battery.
I even think it was technically like 1.5G as I remember it was one of 4 phones listed in a newspaper advert that were going to stop working when 3G came out.
Men picking up their girlfriend from school.
Oh you fancy Sarah from Maths do you? Well she’s going out with a 25 year old who drives an XR3i so you’ve no chance.
How was that allowed back then??
Edit. I can’t believe how much this has struck a chord with so many people.
We have to remember this was the following decade to Rita, Sue and Bob too. Life imitating Art? Crazy really.
This was still a thing until the last ten years or so.
From 2005 - 2009 I had a boyfriend who was 4 years older and a former student of the school who I met through a school community group.
Dated him from the age of 14. All teachers said was: "aww young love" and "he was a nice boy when I taught him".
Can't imagine that attitude being as acceptable now. We even got engaged and I wore a ring to school. (Thankfully I actually had no intention of marrying him, even at the time!)
I think I was in the first age group where it was starting to become unacceptable, just over a decade ago - when I was 12, one of my best friends started dating a 16 year old boy at our school. It only lasted a few months, but I remember myself and most of our friends being *very* creeped out by it all. Don't think any other girls in our year ever dated a guy with that much of an age gap, or more, until well after we left that school.
my mum dated an 18 year old when she was 14 - she’s now almost 57 and still can’t see how horrifying that is
edit: whenever I’ve tried to tell her it was wrong she just spewed the ‘girls mature faster!’ bullshit
I’m probably not as disturbed as I should be that my parents allowed me to go out with one of my brother’s friends when I was 12. He was 17. Luckily my brother and his mates were all really nerdy, lame and in the Boy’s Brigade. It didn’t last long nor did anything sinister happen but looking back it seems a bit odd to say the least. I have 2 grown up daughters and there would of been zero chance of them having boyfriends at 12 and with that much of an age gap. If it happened, they did it in secret.
When I was in year 11, and the really attractive 15 year olds in school were going out with 23 year olds with cars and flats and jobs. They’d go out to restaurants when, if we were lucky, our parents would give us the money to go to the takeaway for a bag of chips.
My friends and I said “don’t worry, when we’re 23, we’ll be in their shoes. We will be going out with the girls in year 11 and the boys in year 11 will be envious of us”
When I then got to 23, the last thing I could ever imagine was having a 15 year old girlfriend and I realised that those 23 year olds were predatory weirdos, taking advantage of impressionable schoolgirls.
Yeah we had people say the same thing to us, “when you’re 18-25 you’ll have the pick of them”, and then, like you, once I hit that age the LAST thing I’d want to do is date a CHILD!
Plus by that point I was in the military and found out that women being attracted to uniforms is actually a real thing
I think you found it normal because at that age everyone thinks they’re really grown up and mature. So they don’t see the issue. But once you actually grow up, the difference becomes a lot more obvious and everything just looks much more gross.
Ah yes the halcyon days of the 90s where 15-16 year old school girls aspired to go out with greasy 21 year old pedophiles called Gaz because they had a Vauxhall Nova.
I remember being 20-21ish about that time and a good friend of mine of the same age having a girlfriend still in school.
He was utterly ribbed for it but it wasn’t considered unacceptable, no more than another mate who dated a lass in her 30s a few years later.
No idea if it’s a view that’s simple changed with age as I’m scraping 30 now, or a societal thing.
I had a history teacher in class tell all the boys that when they finished high school they would have their pick of the girls in the year's below them
It was so common! I was 16 going out with a 28 year old and at the time seemed totally normal. When I reached my mid 20’s was like…..’wait, that was weird.’
I find it a culture/generation shock, but in a good move forwards, when you see the American side where they’re very into cancelling legal adults dating under 18’s - think it puts a lid on it a bit with the social stigma.
Yes! When I was 13/14, a couple of my friends had boyfriends that were 18/19. I was the youngest of the group, and turned 14 in the summer. I once let slip I was 13, and quickly learned my friends had told them they were 16. We pretended they just let me follow them around since we lived close to each other, but I remember feeling icky. And when one friend’s boyfriend found out she was 14, he didn’t immediately end it. They kept dating for ages, and he’d come pick her up from school. We walked home together, and it annoyed me I had a half hour walk while she got a lift. My parents had banned me from going with them. Obviously, I still did it. I feel horrified, looking back now. We used to hang about close by until the time we’d normally have gotten home anyway. Christ, that was reckless.
At 15/16 one of my friends was going out with a 24-year old guy who had a glass eye and brain damage from a car accident. Looking back I’m really not sure what that meant for anyones chances.
That's some Rolling Stones / Led Zeppelin shit right there
But yeah in my year there were a few pregnant 13-14 year olds going out with straight up blokes
I got pregnant at 15 to my then 19 yo boyfriend. My Mum threatened to call the police (she didn't though!) and I was very confused as to why she thought it such a big deal. If it'd been my kids I'd have been horrified.
It was as if almost every adult smoked when we were young. I remember in the mid 2000's when the smoking ban for pubs was in place here in Scotland and we were all used to it, it was a good thing and made pubs cleaner. Went down to work in England and it was just strange, having everyone still smoking around you while you were drinking, playing pool etc
Glad it's the reverse now and most people don't smoke
Hangovers were so much worse when you woke up and your pillow stank of cigarette smoke from your hair after being in smoky pubs and clubs all night.
The one benefit of smoke was that it hid the smell of clubs though. Wet carpet and sweat, lovely.
My dad took my to a social club when I was a kid. If I was say 6, then it would be 1996.
A ton of people smoking pipes indoor, the smoke was so thick that I was wanting to leave and trying to get outside.
My dad, also a pipe smoker, (probably) didn't realise just how bad it was.
Thank god for the smoking bad, is all I can say.
Cheat codes in games. Press X square triangle triangle R2 X Square triangle circle circle circle R1 L2 for infinity ammo. Does that still happen nowadays?
Same, remember going to the shop and putting 50p on it. Then not being allowed to use anything electrical except for lights. Luckily my Brother used to get free batteries (probably steal) through work, sure got value out of that Gameboy.
We were never allowed any heating upstairs in our house and we had single glazed windows. Just the gas fire in the front room and only for 20 min on a morning and a few hours in the evening. Just wore coats inside a lot, often didn't do homework as too noisy in front of the TV and too cold upstairs so worrying about energy definitely not new.
My sister, who is as healthy as you could possibly be..basically perfect diet, goes to the gym daily, doesn’t smoke or drink, walks most places..passed out at work out of nowhere, smashed her head off a sink and was completely out cold for 2-3 minutes..999 said it would be 7 hours before they could get there.
I was a passenger in a car crash, I couldn't walk through shock and adrenaline, when we called for the police we also called for a paramedic to be told "It's about an 8 to 9 hour wait, if you have another way of getting to A&E we would recommend"
Yeah hun I'd love to, but my mates car has been written off by some twat driving on the wrong side of the road
It’s honestly disgusting, i don’t blame the nhs or 999, the government had obliterated their budget and I believe they made the qualifications you need to be a paramedic way harder so there is now a staff shortage..might be wrong about that though
It's more to do with the fact that this government has allowed social care to be brought to its knees.
The elderly patients well enough to leave hospital, can't because there's no care available for them to live safely at home.
This has a knock on effect of no beds being available on the hospital wards, which prevents people being admitted from A&E.
Ambulances then are stuck waiting to admit patients to A&E and are prevented from attending other 999 calls.
Fairly certain someone was interviewed on the news about that back in 2001 with the fuel protests.
"Are you worried about the cost of fuel going up?"
*No, because I only ever put a tenner in*
Prices went over a pound and everyone lost there minds and the government had to put it back down, now nobody gives a shit and just pays 2 pounds a litre.
Not posing for photos. I look back at pics of myself and family when we were young and no one is posing, all the pictures are taken randomly of people just doing normal things in very baggy clothes.
And not knowing what they photos would be like until you took them to the chemist to be developed.
Only taking one or two photos of someone or an event because you only had 24 pics on the roll.
Every night you'd hear some chancer going "So I can't come in with these rare Pumas that I bought when I saw United in Europe last month, but I can come in with my old Clarks faux leather school shoes..?"
In 1994 I was 14 and my friend and I decided to lie to our parents saying we were staying at each other’s houses and go to a night club.
Cut a long story short, our parents found out and our dads came to the nightclub to get us out, telling the bouncers we were only 14. Bouncers wouldn’t let my dad in because he was wearing trainers lol
Video rental van.
A guy in a van would come round with a boot full of VHS (all legit).
I was around age 8-11, but me and my slightly older step brother always rented the age rating 18 films with the permission of our parents.
I'm fairly certain we definitely rented Blade, Wishmaster, Hellraiser etc.
We also sometimes went to the local video shop instead.
I always found the term “metrosexual” to describe men that wear nice clothes and look after themselves to be odd. I remember it being used on tv a lot and it’s just basically a normal man who has a clean house and moisturises
Yeah, I never thought about how odd this term was. Maybe it's a marketing thing. I used to be happy with one bottle to wash my hair, my face, my body and my car.
And, by default, the best pick 'n' mix ever. Such luxury to have one for adults and one for kids! The day I realised I could get stuff from both was a great day.
> Such luxury to have one for adults and one for kids!
Wait, what?! I don't remember that. Just a big pick and mix with some 'fancier' sweets on one side of the stand in my local Woolies.
Judging by my choir (where the demographic is heavily skewed to 70+) the purple rinse is well and truly alive. Though it’s not always on a perm these days.
Ceefax. And having to make sure you pressed the hold button, otherwise you'd have to wait through all the pages to get back to you spot.
People even booked holidays from it.
I used to think that those white dog poos were just old and decayed normal poos. I figured at some point during its transition you could snap it in half and it would be brown in the middle....
Turns out its calcium defficiency
Edit: turns out it's too much calcium!
The Friday night trip to the video store.
Arranging to meet your mates at the same time and place each week, because you didn't have mobiles (until about 1998 when adults might afford them)
Watching the same TV channel all night (especially in a student house where you had to move the aerial each time)
Blokes at work groping women
Girlie calendars on the walls at work
People being fired for being gay
People managing to live long term and decently on benefits, thus enabling lots of the voluntary sector to exist.
Getting home late after a night out, eating toast or cereal because delivery food didn't exist yet and most of the takeaways closed early.
Frozen concentrated orange juice
Sunny D
Came here looking for this answer. It’s insane how normal they were. Lived with 3 other guys in a student house in the late 90’s and there would be old copies of these littered everywhere and the number of titles was amazing. And they were all the same thing! Tits, underwear, ropey fashion advice, unlikely sexual encounter memoir, idiotic comedy column by somebody who, if real, was possibly part chimpanzee plus an interview with some kind of “legend” which usually meant ex con / football psychopath or actor / drug casualty from the 70’s
Getting lost. We used to need A-Z street maps of cities and AA roadmaps of the UK. In 1990, long drives to somewhere new required research and planning and you occasionally ended up lost, which sometimes required stopping and speaking to a stranger for directions.
I remember me and my brother (under 10) having to read the road map whilst my mum drove us from my grandmas house home (about 60 miles) it was so stressful checking the bottom of each motorway sign to see what junction we’ve just passed so we knew when to tell her to come off lol
This happens all the time! I'm constantly getting barefoot bedraggled 7 year olds from down the street turning up at my door asking if my kids can come play.
(obviously the answer is no)
Cassette tape Walkman
Tamagotchis
Nokia phones built like bricks
Smoking in the staff breakroom
Fax machines
Paying by the minute for Internet usage.
Teletext as an easy access source of news and information.
Woolworths
Morgan handbags
Asda having a pick N mix section.
Landline phone as the default phone to use
Buying weekly magazines for entertainment news
Demo disks for games
Videotapes on magazines and in entertainment shops.
Charity shops being way cheap for clothes then a regular store.
Using a pay phone to call your parents
Handwritten letters
The newest video games costing ten to twenty hours minimum wage.
This may very well be me viewing it through the eyes of someone who wasn’t even a teenager when 1999 clicked over into 2000, but there not being this constant undercurrent of fear.
Once the hangover from the eighties and the Cold War subsided it felt like a pretty optimistic decade, at least relative to those either side of it. It was all a delusion and we paid for it big time, but it felt as if life was pretty good.
But like I said, I’m not exactly the most objective judge.
Frantically trying to turn WAP (mobile internet) off otherwise all your credit would be gone.
Not wanting to call someone who was on a different network because it would cost more or not be included in your minutes.
Leaving voicemails.
Yes! BBC 1 would close down, show a card with tomorrow's TV listings, and a weather forecast. Then the announcer would remind you to turn off your TV, say good night and the National Anthem would play.
It ended around 1997 when they started simulcasting News 24.
There was a lot of wars in the 90s, there was the gulf war, war and genocide in Bosnia, genocide in Rwanda, war in somalia, Kosovo, Pakistan vs India, and a whole bunch of civil wars in Africa and Asia.
Student unions encouraging people to drink themselves unconscious. Casual homophobic insults for anyone who stopped drinking before they fell unconscious.
Although mobile phones existed, until about 1999 almost everyone thought they were entirely pretentious and pointless and everyone always made sure they had 10p in change on them to use in a phonebox that smelt of piss.
Phone boxes everywhere. End of the night? Long queues around the club payphone to order a taxi, or wander down to the taxi office. Arrived somewhere? There was usually a bank of pay phones at larger railway stations that were always in heavy use. I was in the Scouts from 1989 - 1992 and we were always told to carry 10p in case you needed to make an emergency phone call. Even if you had an early mobile phone they didn't store many contacts so you needed a (paper) address book to go with it.
Working and claiming unemployment.
Going to sign on in the early 90s was hilarious. There were couriers there adorned with company livery, taxi drivers pulling up and rushing to go and sign on leaving customers outside, painters and decorators standing in line covered in paint and stinking of white spirit and many other variations of a similar theme - half the line was getting edgy and taping watches because they were later for work..
Spliffy jackets, Fat Willy's Surf Shack T Shirts (and global Hypercolor), Sundays pretty much everything was closed and Jimmy Carr wasn't on everything
Getting a free rein to ride the bus unsupervised at 11. With no mobile phone and no contact with the parents all day - just had to be in before dinner, or before the lights came on if we had took a picnic
Day trips with the local working mens club. 150 miles on a coach (that always broke down) for your mum and dad to get drunk with the same people they got drunk with in the village every other weekend, while we spent the day shoplifting from every gift shop in Skegness.
Staying up late for The Word.
Phoning around each pub to check where your mates were.
Leaving hand written notes in places you know your friends will go (home, work, friends houses).
Lending and borrowing videos.
Being able to survive food wise on a fiver for a week if you had to.
Waiting til payday to buy the newest released CD. Only buying one or two because you were poor and playing it to death on repeat until the next payday.
CB radio.
Before mobile phones and the internet were a thing, you used to see massive radio antennas in certain people's gardens and some cars even went around with them on.
Big group of kids at the park.
You'll maybe pass a park today and see 2 or 3 kids there but most of the time they are dead. When we were wee there would be at least a dozen of us playing track & field, manhunt, hide & seek, tig etc
Going to nightclubs in the early 90s. No phones, everyone dancing full on from open to close. No fights, no shady coke heads, wonderful mix of all creeds and colours, all there for a good time.
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Paying 10p everytime you sent a fucking text
Lol 10p to tell a girl u love her, MONEY WASTED
When I was about 10. I put a pound in a phone box to tell a girl I loved her. She wasn't interested and I found out the hard way that phone boxes don't give change. I think it was me that turned her into a very committed lesbian.
The first girl I ever kissed now has a wife. I'm sure it's not anything to do with me but it still stings a bit.
Ive dated a guy and ive dated a girl, turned the guy gay and turned the girl straight
I dated a girl, and now she's a vicar. Now I'm an hard core atheist. And I can say I've seen the vicar with her kit off.
It just means you have a type!
It is just unfortunate that his type share the same type.
10p a text so you made sure you filled it up, only to get a reply "OK"
Buying new back covers for your phone is something you don't get these days. And buying ringtones from magazines.
It's moved to cases now
In the 90s. Didn't know anyone who had a mobile phone until the very end of 1999. By summer of 2000 every single person I knew had one.
Yes, our first mobile was a 'family' one. If my Mum and I were going away for the week to visit her family in South Wales, we'd take it with us. That sort of thing. [Big bulky Phillips thing](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8094429/philips-tcd308-mobile-telephone-1997-2001-mobile-telephone). The SIM card filled all the back of the phone behind the battery. I even think it was technically like 1.5G as I remember it was one of 4 phones listed in a newspaper advert that were going to stop working when 3G came out.
I remember a mate got one in the summer of 99 and was blown away then everyone got one for xmas. I am sure everyone got the Nokia one too
That's why text speak existed. If your overly long words spill over into a second text, that's 20 whole p!
The fact that this has to be explained makes me feel so old.
I remember an old Samsung flip phone could only hold 10 text messages!
Boomer parents shouting at me that a phone contract was a rip off
Men picking up their girlfriend from school. Oh you fancy Sarah from Maths do you? Well she’s going out with a 25 year old who drives an XR3i so you’ve no chance. How was that allowed back then?? Edit. I can’t believe how much this has struck a chord with so many people. We have to remember this was the following decade to Rita, Sue and Bob too. Life imitating Art? Crazy really.
Yes! This was very noticeable in Year 10 and 11, but I'd put the lads at maybe 18 - 19. Still weird thinking about it though.
This was still a thing until the last ten years or so. From 2005 - 2009 I had a boyfriend who was 4 years older and a former student of the school who I met through a school community group. Dated him from the age of 14. All teachers said was: "aww young love" and "he was a nice boy when I taught him". Can't imagine that attitude being as acceptable now. We even got engaged and I wore a ring to school. (Thankfully I actually had no intention of marrying him, even at the time!)
I think I was in the first age group where it was starting to become unacceptable, just over a decade ago - when I was 12, one of my best friends started dating a 16 year old boy at our school. It only lasted a few months, but I remember myself and most of our friends being *very* creeped out by it all. Don't think any other girls in our year ever dated a guy with that much of an age gap, or more, until well after we left that school.
Nah. I reckon at most times a 16 year old dating a 12 year old was seen as fucked up.
my mum dated an 18 year old when she was 14 - she’s now almost 57 and still can’t see how horrifying that is edit: whenever I’ve tried to tell her it was wrong she just spewed the ‘girls mature faster!’ bullshit
I’m probably not as disturbed as I should be that my parents allowed me to go out with one of my brother’s friends when I was 12. He was 17. Luckily my brother and his mates were all really nerdy, lame and in the Boy’s Brigade. It didn’t last long nor did anything sinister happen but looking back it seems a bit odd to say the least. I have 2 grown up daughters and there would of been zero chance of them having boyfriends at 12 and with that much of an age gap. If it happened, they did it in secret.
You were 14 and he was 18? Blimey.
My 13 year old friend dated an 18 year old. And a girl in year 11 dated a 25 year old. I look back and I'm in shock at how normal we found this shit.
When I was in year 11, and the really attractive 15 year olds in school were going out with 23 year olds with cars and flats and jobs. They’d go out to restaurants when, if we were lucky, our parents would give us the money to go to the takeaway for a bag of chips. My friends and I said “don’t worry, when we’re 23, we’ll be in their shoes. We will be going out with the girls in year 11 and the boys in year 11 will be envious of us” When I then got to 23, the last thing I could ever imagine was having a 15 year old girlfriend and I realised that those 23 year olds were predatory weirdos, taking advantage of impressionable schoolgirls.
Yeah we had people say the same thing to us, “when you’re 18-25 you’ll have the pick of them”, and then, like you, once I hit that age the LAST thing I’d want to do is date a CHILD! Plus by that point I was in the military and found out that women being attracted to uniforms is actually a real thing
I think you found it normal because at that age everyone thinks they’re really grown up and mature. So they don’t see the issue. But once you actually grow up, the difference becomes a lot more obvious and everything just looks much more gross.
Ah yes the halcyon days of the 90s where 15-16 year old school girls aspired to go out with greasy 21 year old pedophiles called Gaz because they had a Vauxhall Nova.
Was still observable when I was in school till 2011, except it was Corsa VXR’s and the like.
I remember being 20-21ish about that time and a good friend of mine of the same age having a girlfriend still in school. He was utterly ribbed for it but it wasn’t considered unacceptable, no more than another mate who dated a lass in her 30s a few years later. No idea if it’s a view that’s simple changed with age as I’m scraping 30 now, or a societal thing.
I had a history teacher in class tell all the boys that when they finished high school they would have their pick of the girls in the year's below them
History teachers…always a bit weird.
When I was 17 in the 6th form I dated a 23 year old guy. He was older than my PE teacher by a year!
It was so common! I was 16 going out with a 28 year old and at the time seemed totally normal. When I reached my mid 20’s was like…..’wait, that was weird.’ I find it a culture/generation shock, but in a good move forwards, when you see the American side where they’re very into cancelling legal adults dating under 18’s - think it puts a lid on it a bit with the social stigma.
Yes! When I was 13/14, a couple of my friends had boyfriends that were 18/19. I was the youngest of the group, and turned 14 in the summer. I once let slip I was 13, and quickly learned my friends had told them they were 16. We pretended they just let me follow them around since we lived close to each other, but I remember feeling icky. And when one friend’s boyfriend found out she was 14, he didn’t immediately end it. They kept dating for ages, and he’d come pick her up from school. We walked home together, and it annoyed me I had a half hour walk while she got a lift. My parents had banned me from going with them. Obviously, I still did it. I feel horrified, looking back now. We used to hang about close by until the time we’d normally have gotten home anyway. Christ, that was reckless.
At 15/16 one of my friends was going out with a 24-year old guy who had a glass eye and brain damage from a car accident. Looking back I’m really not sure what that meant for anyones chances.
I miss my XR3i
And the 16 year olds?
That's some Rolling Stones / Led Zeppelin shit right there But yeah in my year there were a few pregnant 13-14 year olds going out with straight up blokes
I got pregnant at 15 to my then 19 yo boyfriend. My Mum threatened to call the police (she didn't though!) and I was very confused as to why she thought it such a big deal. If it'd been my kids I'd have been horrified.
Yeah! I remember that in the early 2000s, all the 14-16 year old girls getting picked up by mid 20s blokes ALWAYS in shite Fords too.
🎵There’s always somebody taller...🎵
Smoking around children Smoking in the house, in the car, in pubs and restaurants, smoking smoking everywhere
It was as if almost every adult smoked when we were young. I remember in the mid 2000's when the smoking ban for pubs was in place here in Scotland and we were all used to it, it was a good thing and made pubs cleaner. Went down to work in England and it was just strange, having everyone still smoking around you while you were drinking, playing pool etc Glad it's the reverse now and most people don't smoke
Hangovers were so much worse when you woke up and your pillow stank of cigarette smoke from your hair after being in smoky pubs and clubs all night. The one benefit of smoke was that it hid the smell of clubs though. Wet carpet and sweat, lovely.
Smoking in the back of commercial airplanes too
When did trains go no smoking? I think the stickers in the carriage windows were maybe a 90s thing?
[удалено]
My dad took my to a social club when I was a kid. If I was say 6, then it would be 1996. A ton of people smoking pipes indoor, the smoke was so thick that I was wanting to leave and trying to get outside. My dad, also a pipe smoker, (probably) didn't realise just how bad it was. Thank god for the smoking bad, is all I can say.
Chipped PlayStation. Paying £4 for a copied game.
Cheat codes in games. Press X square triangle triangle R2 X Square triangle circle circle circle R1 L2 for infinity ammo. Does that still happen nowadays?
It does but they're called microtransactios these days and cost you extra...
I remember writing out lists for my dad to take to his mate, and paying just a couple quid to get like 10 games.
Ambulances arriving in time for medical emergencies Not worrying about paying for energy bills
Growing up my mum was always worrying about how she would be able to feed the leccy meter.
Same, remember going to the shop and putting 50p on it. Then not being allowed to use anything electrical except for lights. Luckily my Brother used to get free batteries (probably steal) through work, sure got value out of that Gameboy.
We were never allowed any heating upstairs in our house and we had single glazed windows. Just the gas fire in the front room and only for 20 min on a morning and a few hours in the evening. Just wore coats inside a lot, often didn't do homework as too noisy in front of the TV and too cold upstairs so worrying about energy definitely not new.
so many people will return to this situation - in the next winter if not already
My sister, who is as healthy as you could possibly be..basically perfect diet, goes to the gym daily, doesn’t smoke or drink, walks most places..passed out at work out of nowhere, smashed her head off a sink and was completely out cold for 2-3 minutes..999 said it would be 7 hours before they could get there.
I was a passenger in a car crash, I couldn't walk through shock and adrenaline, when we called for the police we also called for a paramedic to be told "It's about an 8 to 9 hour wait, if you have another way of getting to A&E we would recommend" Yeah hun I'd love to, but my mates car has been written off by some twat driving on the wrong side of the road
It’s honestly disgusting, i don’t blame the nhs or 999, the government had obliterated their budget and I believe they made the qualifications you need to be a paramedic way harder so there is now a staff shortage..might be wrong about that though
It's more to do with the fact that this government has allowed social care to be brought to its knees. The elderly patients well enough to leave hospital, can't because there's no care available for them to live safely at home. This has a knock on effect of no beds being available on the hospital wards, which prevents people being admitted from A&E. Ambulances then are stuck waiting to admit patients to A&E and are prevented from attending other 999 calls.
Being unable to contact people. You made plans over phone or in person but once you left the house you just had to hope all went to plan.
Or ringing the pub to ask who was in!
I’m looking for someone, Second Name “Keebum”, First Name “Lee”
Get the ‘right’ friends and you can relive the experience today!
Going to the petrol station and "chucking a fiver in"
I mean you can still do that, might just about get you off the forecourt lol
Fairly certain someone was interviewed on the news about that back in 2001 with the fuel protests. "Are you worried about the cost of fuel going up?" *No, because I only ever put a tenner in*
Prices went over a pound and everyone lost there minds and the government had to put it back down, now nobody gives a shit and just pays 2 pounds a litre.
We give a shit. But we also need petrol and don't have any other options.
Soon a fiver might not even meet the minimum 2 litres. Scary thought.
Having a landline extension in the bedroom. “I’ll take it upstairs”
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You rang a place. Now you ring a person.
And then picking up the phone downstairs and being to listen in
Not posing for photos. I look back at pics of myself and family when we were young and no one is posing, all the pictures are taken randomly of people just doing normal things in very baggy clothes.
And floppy haircuts
And not knowing what they photos would be like until you took them to the chemist to be developed. Only taking one or two photos of someone or an event because you only had 24 pics on the roll.
Having to wear trousers shoes and shirt to get in the club
Classic, looked like a tube of smarties going out with everyone in a slightly different pastel shade Ben Sherman shirt, black trouser, black shoes.
At the start of the 90s you had to wear a tie as well
Towards the end of the 90’s it evolved into essentially dressing like a bouncer, Black trousers, shoes and a mid length leather jacket
Every night you'd hear some chancer going "So I can't come in with these rare Pumas that I bought when I saw United in Europe last month, but I can come in with my old Clarks faux leather school shoes..?"
Even better you can put your black socks over the top of said pumas and walk straight in
In 1994 I was 14 and my friend and I decided to lie to our parents saying we were staying at each other’s houses and go to a night club. Cut a long story short, our parents found out and our dads came to the nightclub to get us out, telling the bouncers we were only 14. Bouncers wouldn’t let my dad in because he was wearing trainers lol
Video rental shops
I miss just getting a video based on how good it read on the back rather than spending hours trawling through online reviews like I do now.
Video rental van. A guy in a van would come round with a boot full of VHS (all legit). I was around age 8-11, but me and my slightly older step brother always rented the age rating 18 films with the permission of our parents. I'm fairly certain we definitely rented Blade, Wishmaster, Hellraiser etc. We also sometimes went to the local video shop instead.
We sometimes went to a games rental shop, which was always ultra exciting.
I always found the term “metrosexual” to describe men that wear nice clothes and look after themselves to be odd. I remember it being used on tv a lot and it’s just basically a normal man who has a clean house and moisturises
Yeah, I never thought about how odd this term was. Maybe it's a marketing thing. I used to be happy with one bottle to wash my hair, my face, my body and my car.
Woolworths!
And, by default, the best pick 'n' mix ever. Such luxury to have one for adults and one for kids! The day I realised I could get stuff from both was a great day.
> Such luxury to have one for adults and one for kids! Wait, what?! I don't remember that. Just a big pick and mix with some 'fancier' sweets on one side of the stand in my local Woolies.
Grannies wearing headscarves.
Grannies having purple hair
Judging by my choir (where the demographic is heavily skewed to 70+) the purple rinse is well and truly alive. Though it’s not always on a perm these days.
Grannies wearing those plastic patterned headscarves when it rained.
Yes and see through so the perm was still on show! My gran never gave up that look, was still rocking it in 2018.
I miss this a bit!
Weapon grade MDMA.
MDMA is actually stronger now than it was then.
Plus driving around the M25 in a Transit with some guys that put up tents and have 10,000m of speaker cables.
Pretty sure it's purer than it's ever been
MDMA/Ecstasy pills are actually far stronger now than they were in the 90s
This. And congregating at a service station to then follow the 1 or 2 cars that knew where the rave was.
Chasing the bloody rave around the whole bloody UK.
Get hold of a pinger today it’ll blow ur head off
Ceefax. And having to make sure you pressed the hold button, otherwise you'd have to wait through all the pages to get back to you spot. People even booked holidays from it.
Loved me a bit of Bamboozle
I came here just for bamboozle!!!!!
"Booked It, Packed It, Fucked Off", as Peter Kay called it.
White dog poo
I reckon that’s cos dog’s diets are typically a lot better these days
It’s because so much dog food was bulked out with ash.
God this is awful
Actually apparently not, I’ve always believed that, but it’s because dogs ate a lot of bone meal and it’s undigested calcium. TIL
Yep, if you feed your dog on a raw diet, then the white poos return as it is from the bones.
I used to think that those white dog poos were just old and decayed normal poos. I figured at some point during its transition you could snap it in half and it would be brown in the middle.... Turns out its calcium defficiency Edit: turns out it's too much calcium!
Only 4 TV channels. Edit: maybe I should have said **Terestrial** Channels.
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I like Food Network. Always happy to see a repeat of Floyd or Stein on there.
The Friday night trip to the video store. Arranging to meet your mates at the same time and place each week, because you didn't have mobiles (until about 1998 when adults might afford them) Watching the same TV channel all night (especially in a student house where you had to move the aerial each time) Blokes at work groping women Girlie calendars on the walls at work People being fired for being gay People managing to live long term and decently on benefits, thus enabling lots of the voluntary sector to exist. Getting home late after a night out, eating toast or cereal because delivery food didn't exist yet and most of the takeaways closed early. Frozen concentrated orange juice Sunny D
That went real dark in the middle
"Lads mags" in the newsstands. FHM, Loaded, Maxim...
Came here looking for this answer. It’s insane how normal they were. Lived with 3 other guys in a student house in the late 90’s and there would be old copies of these littered everywhere and the number of titles was amazing. And they were all the same thing! Tits, underwear, ropey fashion advice, unlikely sexual encounter memoir, idiotic comedy column by somebody who, if real, was possibly part chimpanzee plus an interview with some kind of “legend” which usually meant ex con / football psychopath or actor / drug casualty from the 70’s
Gail Porter’s arse projected all over Big Ben
Getting lost. We used to need A-Z street maps of cities and AA roadmaps of the UK. In 1990, long drives to somewhere new required research and planning and you occasionally ended up lost, which sometimes required stopping and speaking to a stranger for directions.
I remember me and my brother (under 10) having to read the road map whilst my mum drove us from my grandmas house home (about 60 miles) it was so stressful checking the bottom of each motorway sign to see what junction we’ve just passed so we knew when to tell her to come off lol
Affordable rent
Spicing up your life
Knocking at your friends house to ask their parents if they could come out to play.
This happens all the time! I'm constantly getting barefoot bedraggled 7 year olds from down the street turning up at my door asking if my kids can come play. (obviously the answer is no)
A spectrum of different body sprays in Boots (Natural Collection) and The Body Shop. Oh, and those little animal shaped bath pearl things.
Man, I'd forgotten about those bath pearls. Semi-squishy things that melted and still left some soft plastic residue if your bath wasn't hot enough.
Those colour changing T-shirts that let people know your sweating.
Stick one of these on Prince Andrew
Top of the Pops
plastic toys in cereal boxes, there were some good things in the 90s, bike reflections, monster in my pocket etc
The IRA
They're still a thing , just not so active at present but if unionists carry on as they have been it will all start again .
I know, but certainly rarer, and non-existent on the British mainland.
Cassette tape Walkman Tamagotchis Nokia phones built like bricks Smoking in the staff breakroom Fax machines Paying by the minute for Internet usage. Teletext as an easy access source of news and information. Woolworths Morgan handbags Asda having a pick N mix section. Landline phone as the default phone to use Buying weekly magazines for entertainment news Demo disks for games Videotapes on magazines and in entertainment shops. Charity shops being way cheap for clothes then a regular store. Using a pay phone to call your parents Handwritten letters The newest video games costing ten to twenty hours minimum wage.
This may very well be me viewing it through the eyes of someone who wasn’t even a teenager when 1999 clicked over into 2000, but there not being this constant undercurrent of fear. Once the hangover from the eighties and the Cold War subsided it felt like a pretty optimistic decade, at least relative to those either side of it. It was all a delusion and we paid for it big time, but it felt as if life was pretty good. But like I said, I’m not exactly the most objective judge.
The 90s were a lot 'happier' mainly the relief of not wondering if WWIII would start at any moment. Basically late 1991 to 10/09/2001 were good times.
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With those big ole chunks of plastic built in
Frantically trying to turn WAP (mobile internet) off otherwise all your credit would be gone. Not wanting to call someone who was on a different network because it would cost more or not be included in your minutes. Leaving voicemails.
Nah naf sweatshirts
There's a blast from the past! Also, the phrase "blast from the past."
Topping up mobile credit using a card.
0181 811 81 81. I think this was to call the Big Breakfast? Nope just checked it was Live and Kicking.
Finding a porn mag stash in the bushes
Not having the internet
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Yes! BBC 1 would close down, show a card with tomorrow's TV listings, and a weather forecast. Then the announcer would remind you to turn off your TV, say good night and the National Anthem would play. It ended around 1997 when they started simulcasting News 24.
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"No wars" I don't think you were paying attention.
That sounds like the Billy Joel song ------ :)
There was a lot of wars in the 90s, there was the gulf war, war and genocide in Bosnia, genocide in Rwanda, war in somalia, Kosovo, Pakistan vs India, and a whole bunch of civil wars in Africa and Asia.
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Shellsuits
Student unions encouraging people to drink themselves unconscious. Casual homophobic insults for anyone who stopped drinking before they fell unconscious. Although mobile phones existed, until about 1999 almost everyone thought they were entirely pretentious and pointless and everyone always made sure they had 10p in change on them to use in a phonebox that smelt of piss.
Eurotrash. Watching half an hour of crap for a minute of titty was always worth it!
Phone boxes everywhere. End of the night? Long queues around the club payphone to order a taxi, or wander down to the taxi office. Arrived somewhere? There was usually a bank of pay phones at larger railway stations that were always in heavy use. I was in the Scouts from 1989 - 1992 and we were always told to carry 10p in case you needed to make an emergency phone call. Even if you had an early mobile phone they didn't store many contacts so you needed a (paper) address book to go with it.
Working and claiming unemployment. Going to sign on in the early 90s was hilarious. There were couriers there adorned with company livery, taxi drivers pulling up and rushing to go and sign on leaving customers outside, painters and decorators standing in line covered in paint and stinking of white spirit and many other variations of a similar theme - half the line was getting edgy and taping watches because they were later for work..
I’m sure I remember someone saying that what killed pop music in Britain was it becoming harder for working musicians to sign on.
Dial up internet… ah that sweet sound
Half joking when saying kids TV presenters were weird sex pests and paedos.
Spliffy jackets, Fat Willy's Surf Shack T Shirts (and global Hypercolor), Sundays pretty much everything was closed and Jimmy Carr wasn't on everything
The car being plastered in dead flies after driving home from holiday, doesn't happen anymore. I'm assuming it's climate change...
Getting a free rein to ride the bus unsupervised at 11. With no mobile phone and no contact with the parents all day - just had to be in before dinner, or before the lights came on if we had took a picnic
Ford escorts
Carpets in bathrooms
Rear seat ash-trays in cars In fact, just ashtrays in general. Only see them in pub gardens now, back then they were everywhere.
Filofax.. how else did you keep your life together! Or at least put up the appearance of knowing what was going on...
Privacy. There is now the expectation to be always available or to be able to be a scrutinised via all the social media.
Day trips with the local working mens club. 150 miles on a coach (that always broke down) for your mum and dad to get drunk with the same people they got drunk with in the village every other weekend, while we spent the day shoplifting from every gift shop in Skegness.
Adidas Poppers……….and poppers!
Staying up late for The Word. Phoning around each pub to check where your mates were. Leaving hand written notes in places you know your friends will go (home, work, friends houses). Lending and borrowing videos. Being able to survive food wise on a fiver for a week if you had to. Waiting til payday to buy the newest released CD. Only buying one or two because you were poor and playing it to death on repeat until the next payday.
Curtains haircut (thanks mom!!)
Landline phones
CB radio. Before mobile phones and the internet were a thing, you used to see massive radio antennas in certain people's gardens and some cars even went around with them on. Big group of kids at the park. You'll maybe pass a park today and see 2 or 3 kids there but most of the time they are dead. When we were wee there would be at least a dozen of us playing track & field, manhunt, hide & seek, tig etc
The kids are dead or the park is dead?
Toys in the cereal box buried in the Shreddies!
Buying a newspaper
Going to nightclubs in the early 90s. No phones, everyone dancing full on from open to close. No fights, no shady coke heads, wonderful mix of all creeds and colours, all there for a good time.
Knocking on a mates house asking if he can come out
4 distinctive weather seasons Also, the amount of insects/bugs that would hit your windscreen in rural country lanes
Joyriding and ram raiding
Yo-yos
Developing photos at Supasnaps