Are we the last generation to….
Read a physical newspaper
Post a letter
Watch linear TV rather than streaming on demand
Fill a car with petrol or diesel
Buy a cd
Any thoughts or any other candidates for the scrap heap…
Going going
by 112 Comments
Use cash.
I’ve kept a £10 note in my wallet for the last few months, just for emergencies, but I haven’t carried coins in my pockets for at least a year.
Always have an Emergency tenner (rarely used but some solace if you come across a cash only vendor)
The middle aged French lady who cuts my hair, with an accent so heavy she could have been in Allo Allo, only accepts cash. I’d pay just to hear her talk.
A number of Turkish barbers only take cash. The place I go to brands itself as Turkish, but the last couple of barbers I have spoken to in there are Kurdistani and the does take cards.
Yes, I’ve heard that about Turkish barbers…allegedly.
all very well having no cash until the taxi drivers little square box won’t work – as happened to me at midnight a few weeks ago. Had to be driven to a cash point on the high st to get some funds
Or drop into the local branch of a bank.
Or be summoned by the bank manager to be severely admonished for profligacy and receive hints that the account could be closed if there’s no immediate improvement.
I’ve had a bank account for 50 years and have never (knowingly) spoken to my bank manager. I thought that sort of thing went out with my parents generation!
I can assure you that 41 years ago I was summoned to the presence and had an almighty strip torn off me for exceeding my overdraft.
I could only sit there apologise and say I’d try harder – it was about nine months after I had bought a flat.
“How dare you let your account get in such a state that we can’t pocket the interest!!!”
When I was about 18 I worked at the Lloyd’s Bank in Woking. Some of us agreed to work late (to about 6pm) to be open for the evening pre-Christmas shoppers. The sub-manager let us out of the big doors at the front when it was time to go. Suddenly, he grabbed us both by the scruff of the neck and physically threw us out on to the pavement, where passers by watched on with astonishment. He shouted “AND DON’T GET OVERDRAWN AGAIN!” – and slammed the door.
When I was in the upper sixth form, I dated a nice young lady in the lower sixth. I went to her house, and discovered that my bank manager… was her dad. I moved my account to a different branch*
(*) No, Moosey, that’s not a euphemism.
Rely on a landmine as our main phone, know people who are ‘not on the phone’.
People found using a landmine for a phone led to unwanted results 😉
And on that bombshell…
Smoke indoors in public places
Read the Afterword.
*ducks*
I’m somewhat hijacking Skirky’s FB thread, but use a slide rule and a Vernier caliper.
I recently had to help a 30-something carpenter measure up my patio doors, as the battery in his Vernier had gone flat so the LCD screen was blank. He didn’t know how to use the linear scales on the slide.
Vernier Calliper – great measuring tool. Not liked by machine monkeys in the workshop who called it a Verynear Calliper.
Then again, they would overtightened a micrometer just to prove Inspection and Quality Control were wrong
Vernier Calliper – TMFTL.
Wasn’t Vernier Calliper the short-lived timbales player in Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts?
I come from a family of carpenters. I’ve seen Vernier calipers used as ‘third hand’ clamps, hammers used as screwdrivers, screwdrivers used as chisels, you name it…
The micrometers I had either used a ratchet or a friction thimble. Older ones relied on knowing the correct pressure to apply. One of the old boys in the Inspection Department told me that there had been a guy who was so heavy handed he had to set his micrometer 5 or 10 thou wrong.
A Breitling Navitimer (it’s a watch) famously* has a round slide rule bezel that rotates. Designed for pilots in the 1950’s to enable reasonably accurate calculations for fuel and distance as a manual backup lest the aircraft control panel go on the fritz.
It’s a thing of small and complex beauty. Seiko, naturally, made a cheaper quartz version. Their ‘Flightmaster’ model Which I have. I never wear it now. It and the Navitimer are possibly the busiest dials ever devised. They look like the moment the Millennium Falcon whooshes into hyperdrive and the CGI star scape bursts.
*famous if you like watches.
I actually thought “I could do with a Vernier Calliper” yesterday cos I’m not sure of the diameter of a car exhaust (long story). I’m in my late 40s, but we had lessons in physics devoted to teaching us how to use Vernier Callipers and micrometers. Great fun – but not slide rules I’m afraid.
I spent years not really needing a Vernier caliper but I’m happy with the one I have now with a digital display. Is invaluable for measuring parts of broken plastic so I can model a new bit to print.
The only bit of my “how to use a micrometer” lesson at school was about hooking your little finger round it. I have no idea how to read it!
Ring somebody by dialling a number via an actual dial.
Wind down a car window with a lever, not a button.
Send or receive a fax.
Recognise the sound of a dial-up modem, and understand that it meant that nobody could use the phone while you were using the computer.
Use the Yellow Pages or a BT phone book.
Send camera film to Boots for developing then wait days to pick up the resulting envelope.
Read Ceefax or Teletext (usually for the pop music pages).
Use a Betamax video recorder (always better than VHS – our Sony Betamax was built like a tank and lasted for decades).
Done all of those and their times have all gone, but then why would you want to do them if you didn’t have to?
Retain knowledge
Know about things that happened before we were born
Know how to spel
Hearing somebody say, “Oh, that was before I was born” as an excuse for knowing nothing about, for example, World War II or similarly major events that should be general knowledge makes me want to reply, “Read a book, dammit!”
I don’t, of course. I heard that young people all carry shivs and are hopped up on energy drinks, fizzbangs, and whizzers. I’m no fool…
Legally beat our children
Be sent to the headmaster’s office for a caning/slippering.
Buy a nudey mag. Or, if you were an adolescent boy in the 70s/80s find an old tattered one in a hedge somewhere. What a thrill that was.
Is that what the earlier poster meant about yellow pages?
The Freeman’s catalogue has a lot to answer for in terms of what I was expecting the young miss in my life to be wearing under her dungarees.
Before I was aware of those pages, catalogues were only of use in the weeks leading up to Christmas, when we would carefully go through the toys section and circle those that we hoped our parents might inform Santa about, in case he wanted ideas of what he could deliver on the big day.
As one wag put it, ‘there was porn in the bush…and bush in the porn.’
No bush in the porn when I were a lad. All that lady-foliage was airbrushed away.
Health and efficiency gone mad.
Using my daughters and friends as a gague… drink and smoke
Tobacconist shops.
Ronson lighters.
Ordering something with a postal order and having to allow 28 days (!!!) for delivery.
Having the Corona man drive down the street to deliver bottles of pop from his lorry.
Doing a paper round after school or on weekend mornings.
Answer the door and shout “Dad, it’s the pools man.”
I was only talking about this today. We had the pools man and insurance man on a Thursday evening, then the milkman on a Friday. My mum used to have all these little piles of coins ready in the kitchen for when they came. It seemed like there was always someone at our door every evening collecting money.
Live in a British democracy under a Labour government.
Queue for concert tickets.
Tape an album.
Listen to an album, rather than cherry pick selected tracks
Extract mangled tape from crappy tape player, smooth out and wind back in using a pencil.
Curse when your car, hurtling down the motorway, ingests 40 yards of C120 that is dancing across the carriageway in the breeze.
A C120!
That wouldn’t have been dropped by anyone here…a C120, eeeeew!
Send a well wishes card.
Use a map/directory
Do your own vacuuming
Keep an A-Z in the car.
I’d say it’s difficult to be charming these days. Very few people are charming now – it’s hard in the digital world.
I’m quite charming, actually. Why, only the other day I let go with a massive fart in Sainsbury’s, and a woman said so.
I’m sure she felt overwhelmed and enveloped by your warmth.
Droll. Very
Read or even buy the Radio Times.
I still buy the Christmas double issue, mostly out of tradition than for any practical benefit. When we were young, Dad coming home from work with that issue of the RT meant Christmas had begun.
Needed TV Times too for ITV
Visit a library
(Although being honest, I don’t think I’ve been to the local library for about 12 years)
I’ve recently started going again, as I was spending too much on books, and was running out of places to keep them. It’s changed my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever buy a book again. You can even pre order the latest releases. I’ve borrowed and read about twenty this year already. Win win. No outlay, and no clutter.
Yes me too. You can order books using the library app and they send an email when it arrives. Brilliant. Also, as discussed here previously, they have access to an enormous number of digital publications which I use every day.
Libraries have been a fairly big part of my life in Canada offering all sorts of services other than book borrowing. They should be preserved at all costs
Another vote for libraries. I quite often donate the books I’ve read, too. Use ’em or lose’ em folks!
My kids are still young 7, 9 and 11 and are regular visitors to our local library. While they are avid or even voracious readers, there are so many other activities that make it worthwhile to visit including magic shows, story telling, Lego workshops, art and music activities etc. It’s a real community hub in our town.
To read things and then compose an answer from one’s recall (with a bit of copying, possibly), rather than ask AI to write it for you, then say you know about it.
This thread puts me in mind of a famous fictional Yorkshireman: “Tell kids today and they won’t believe you!”
Nostalgia never goes out of fashion.
Load up a Dansette with records.
Squint at 35mm slides
Have to look at overhead projector transparencies.
Double de-clutch
Double de-clutch! Not many of us actually change gear ourselves these days…. and my world is much better for it.
On the rare occasions I drive a manual these days I still like to double de-clutch now and again, just for the hell of it.
I must be a luddite. I’ve never driven an automatic.
I used to think that Real Men didn’t drive automatics. Now I know that’s bollocks. I’ve been looking at used cars in the UK and Oz because reasons, and it’s striking how relatively uncommon automatics are in Blighty. I’d say over 80% in Oz are automatics, whereas it’s probably more like 30% in the UK, and most of those would be upmarket.
Manuals are very rare in NZ. And thank God for that.
Same in North America. Every rental car here will be automatic unless stated differently. When I rent cars in the UK I try to get an automatic, always harder to find and naturally more expensive
More than 60% of new cars sold in the UK are automatic now.
Something to do with increasing numbers of EVs maybe? IH came to that conclusion while look at cars 10 years old or more, so things will certainly have changed.
Wow really?
And half of them (30% of total new cars sold) are electric, according to what I heard on the wireless the other lunchtime. More Chinese brands, and fewer Teslas.
There’s even adverts for one Chinese brand on ITV, which plays during every advert break in the cop show Mrs F is watching (and so, therefore, am I). I can’t remember what the car is called, but I did see one pass me by the other day.
The campervan we’ve ordered has only an 8-speed auto gear box, no option for manual, with a choice of two engine sizes.
Neither have I. I may have to hire a car soon, for a family trip, and am concerned I may have to drive an auto.
It took me ages to pass my test and to finally develop clutch control. As far I’m concerned that’s a Skill with a capital S. None of our nieces and nephews have ever driven manual and look appalled by the idea of holding a car on the clutch, never mind the constant changing up and down.
Press your foot on the brake otherwise it won’t start. Teach yourself not to twitch your left leg all the time. Discover that the car will creep forwards or backwards on its own when you take your foot off the brake, which is a boon for parking, pulling out of slopes, and traffic jams.
You’ll be just fine. You’ll still have your skill with a capital S, it doesn’t go away.
Much obliged!
Should have said the car will creep forwards or backwards when in gear, obvs. Also, you only need Park, Drive or Reverse, you can ignore the other bits.
Automatics are, of course, logical and sensible improvements to the whole driving shebang. Our next one will be an auto. My legendary clutch control will join my cache of ‘back in my day’ anecdotes.
And aren’t reversing cameras completely splendid! What a boon!
Yeah, science Mr White!
Yes indeed to reverse cameras! When reversing in my wife’s car, I habitually look at the space where it isn’t.
Options 1 and 2 for lower gear driving are useful in snowy conditions
Unlikely in the UK in May…
Indicate correctly on roundabouts, indeed indicate at all.
No messing about in New South Wales…when/if you hit 85 you have to take a test every year, and you’ll fail if you don’t indicate according to the rules. So I’ve started obsessively indicating.
People are much better here at indicating or signalling. Roundabouts are becoming more prevalent, but nobody knows how to signal on them
Highway code says it all…
watch out for all other road users already on the roundabout; be aware they may not be signalling correctly or at all.
As my driving instructor said all those years ago, ‘imagine absolutely everybody else on the road is either asleep or hasn’t passed their test. You not only need to drive your car, you need to drive everyone else’s as well’. Meaning don’t trust anything and second guess every move anyone can make. He was bloody well right.
Very good advice. You can never underestimate how stupid, careless, and/or dangerous some drivers are.
I find UK drivers to be pretty good for lane discipline and letting you in etc. Not as good in Canada, and I think drink driving is probably more prevalent here. There are also hardly any speed cameras so speeding is a big issue.
If this thread had been written 15 years ago, it probably would have included “buy an LP” so I guess never say never!
Have a TV aerial. Have a Sky dish.
Use rail ticket machines.
Go to the takeaway to order, wait and then take hot food home.
Use a manual choke on a car.
Cycle on the road, as opposed to the pavement. If you’re a kid on stabilisers/riding a tricycle, fine: use the pavement. If you’re a 35-year-old git on a mountain bike, maybe not.
Phone a business and expect a human to answer it and then respond to your request for information.
There was a post box in Trafalgar Square which had a last collection time of 9pm. I often had to post stuff in there when I worked in London. As long as you got the letter in there by 9pm, the recipient in Glasgow (say) would normally have it the next morning. Amazing, really.
A regular haunt of mine too.
Be overweight? These semaglutide drugs to treat it are now being advertised on TV and seem to be easily accessible. If they are as successful as they appear to be, this whole problem might not be seen any more.
And on a related note – still think of weight and height in imperial measures? I was recently weighed as part of a medical trial I am taking part in, and the nurse told me I was 79 Kg. I had to use the calculator on my phone to work out what that was in stones and pounds to see if I had gone up or down since I was last weighed some years ago.
Yes.
Height, weight and distances in miles seem to be my last major stands with Imperial measures.
I’m perfectly at home now with groceries etc. in Litres and Grams. Litres for petrol now as well, but I still think of fuel consumption in mpg.
Draught beer in UK pubs is still measured in pints, but it’s in ml cans/bottles when at home.
Remember a phone number. I only know my own mobile number from memory. Nearly 40 years ago, there was a BT charge card for company calls when on site which had 15 digits, punched into the keypad in a telephone box/kiosk and I knew it by heart along with plenty of other numbers. These days, I don’t even know my wife’s number from memory.
I still use the phone numbers I remember from childhood in passwords, those 11 digit sequences are usefully etched into my brain.
With original regional codes?
My very first ATM PIN turns up in various combinations in all sorts of ways.
Can’t remember my current car registration, but I remember my dad’s Hillman Minx, which he bought in 1959: RJN912.
Write a cheque. We still have a cheque book and it gets used roughly twice a year ….when either myself or Mrs. T get our cars serviced and MoT’d. Our mechanic doesn’t have a card machine.
I still have my chequebook. Last time I used it was in December 2015.
These days I can actually remember my bank card details for online transactions without looking at the card.