Things we never had and didn't miss part 1

This is not going to be one of those annoying 'OMG THIS STUFF WILL MAKE YOU FEEL SOOOO OLD!!!!1111' posts. No. This was just a discussion between me and the mister, over things we couldn't live without, but somehow managed perfectly well without when we were growing up. Which makes us feel, like, sooo old!!1

I am basing this on a British childhood really, because my American readers will have had some of these things around since they can remember. Then America decided that they wanted to inflict their crap on other countries, and slowly the rest of the world caught up.

Because I have a list longer than my arm, I'm going to split this post into several parts, because I do need some me-time you know, to sit there drinking red bull and watching Antiques Roadshow.

1. The internet 

This is maybe not such a given, because a lot of you young scallywags assume the internet has been around since 1798. No. I didn't have my first glimpse of online until 1995, with the help of Netscape Navigator -

Ok, hands up if you remember any of the following things – getting 3000 free AOL CDs in the post/whenever you buy anything ever, the dial up music, Geocities, waiting ten minutes for half a picture to load (and not just because of all the advertising), your sister buggering up your conversation with 'manicsfan83' because she selfishly decided to make a phone call. No? Then you lose!

Our equivalent – Teletext

Shut up, this had all the features of your so called internet; we were quite happy with it back in the day. It had endless loading times, celebrity gossip, and fake psychics. Ok, it didn't have porn, but sometimes you could squint and pretend that Bamber Boozler, host of the Channel 4 Sunday Teletext quiz Bamboozle, was a nudey lady. Not that I ever did that, but I'm sure you could if you wanted.

2. Mobile phones

 

My god, the day I got my first mobile phone I felt like such a badass, and an important badass at that. It was a big Motorola brick, but still quite modern because it had texting on it. Much like a word processor of old, you couldn't see the entire text in one go; you had to scroll through each word from left to right. So if you realised you'd made a mistake at the beginning, you generally couldn't be arsed to go back.

No one ever phoned me as I had no friends, but it didn't matter. I would still have a fine old time choosing my ringtones just in case I got a wrong number or something. And then I upgraded to this bad boy -

Allow me to play you the song of my people -

Unless, of course, you could work the 'composer' feature, and then the world was your lobster. I got really good at using the composer, and ended up being able to make any tune on request. But my favourite thing to do was to bash the buttons on the composer for ten seconds, then have whatever godawful noise came out as my ringtone.

Our equivalent – The phone -

You know, the phone? The actual phone that households have? That has an area code? Where, if you ring and there's no answer, you just assume they're not in, not that they hate you? That.

Also, BT phone boxes. Great for making prank calls (like when you phone someone's house and just blow a raspberry down the phone), useless for making actual calls as they were all crackly and cost about a pound a go.

3. The Lottery -

It could be you! Tip – it won't be. But when The National Lottery started in 1994, every single person in Britain was convinced it would be them. So we went mad buying tickets, in a frenzy akin to something out of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. And all workplace/pub/playground discussions were immediately wiped out and replaced by 'what we'd spend our winnings on'.

We still have the Lottery, but recently the ticket price has doubled to £2, and hardly anyone plays it any more. Sometimes we have a flutter though, because quite often you do get three numbers up, which these days will net you a cool £25 – not to be sniffed at.

Our equivalent – The football pools

Typically run by Vernons or Littlewoods, the idea was to correctly predict the scores of all the upcoming football matches of the week. My childhood was filled with my parents talking mysteriously about something called a 'score draw', or a 'no score draw', and putting ticks in little boxes, which a man in a hat would then come round and collect. I can't remember how much you could win on the pools, but it definitely wasn't millions. It might have been enough to retire on, if you just ate tins of beans and never got your hair cut, I don't know.

4. Netflix, Love Film etc -

Bored of everything on TV? Can't find anything to watch? Then I suggest you stop taking those drugs you're on, since they've clearly turned you into a mental. There is always something good to watch since TV on demand was invented. For a mere fiver a month, a household can watch almost any film or TV show ever made with the touch of a button. Very Jetsons. Especially now that Youtube on your TV has been thrown into the mix. Now it seems inconceivable that you might have to flick through the channels to 'see if there's anything good on', and hope you haven't missed the start of it.

Our equivalent – going to the video shop

This was a big thing, generally undertaken when the family was all together on a Friday or Saturday evening. As our family consisted of my parents, my two teenage sisters, and a fat, whining me, numerous rows over what to rent were guaranteed.

The proceedings would start with my parents casually saying, “Oh, there's nothing on TV tonight, let's get a video.” Magic words to me. Immediately my young mind would be filled with thoughts of the entire Hanna Barbera collection, or perhaps The Little Mermaid. Naturally, the video would be my choice; those peasants I lived with wouldn't be given a say.

It hardly ever turned out like this. I wanted something with no more than two dimensions, my sisters invariably wanted either a horror movie or Road House, my mum wanted anything to do with Coronation Street or Brookside, and my dad wanted something about a war. Any war. Or about Hank Marvin. Because of this inability to agree, the family generally ended up renting something nobody wanted to watch, probably not even the people who starred in it.

Then there were those times where, when I'd been really good, I won a trip to the video shop just for me, where I could pick out a video of my choice. This was where I got silly, and all thoughts of Hanna Barbera went out of the window. I would choose something like The Fly, and my parents would get all pissy and make me choose something like The Happy Unicorn.

Well, that's it for part one. I'll probably write part two over the weekend, just so you know and aren't endlessly pacing up and down crying “But when will she write it? When?” Now you can relax.