When I was growing up I was never allowed to watch television on a Sunday.

Mrs F's father refused to get a telephone until the mid-80s.

We never did anything odd. But other families were allowed to watch ITV. Very strange.

Things my family never did:

- eat together
- talk to each other
- tell me what/what not to do, ever

And to think this was quite an idyll at the time..

My father refused to get rid of his party line (shared line) until the phone company made him. He refused to pay extra for touch-tone phone service, making us use rotary-dial until it was a joke. But, oddly, he was seriously early on microwave ovens.

Both my parents have always been all up in my sister's business, and are to this day. But they've never meddled in my affairs.

My parents had an extensive (well, double figures) collection of videos, but they never got round to buying a video player.

Neither of my grandfathers (one of whom was with us until 1994) ever owned a passport, driving licence or telephone.

My maternal grandfather used to arrange for prostitutes to visit him. As he didn't have a phone, he always badgered my father into ringing them for him. I can't imagine doing that for my father-in-law.

You were lucky - my old man either thought microwaves were 'faddy', or some kind of consumerist plot - I was never sure which. He finally conceded to accepting a second-hand one from my girlfriend in 1994 - though elected not to eat anything prepared in it.

But both my parents were serious technophobes. They were the same with the answering machine I bought them in 1992 - they generally left it switched off, believing it was recording all their 'phone conversations.

My mother was also hopeless with digital timepieces. To tell the correct time by her watch, one had to take away two hours and add six minutes, or something like that. Then after I corrected it for her, by the next time I saw her it had mysteriously reverted back to the original mis-setting. Her argument was that she'd become used to making the mental adjustment in order to tell the time and had - thanks to me - been late for a lunch appointment the previous week.

The number of logical conundrums this threw up still baffles me today...

My Tory grandmother (she was from the other side of the family) used to make me and my little sister watch The Money Programme every Sunday. I was eight. My granddad on the other side- let’s call it the correct side- of the family was a miner, so this was probably her subtle attempt at turning me into a scab, or something. The Money Programme - ffs.

We always ate fish on Fridays, but weren't in any other way religious, I mean I have literally never been to a church service that didn't involve someone getting married/christened/buried.

My Mother would cut up my clothes if she didn't like them.

We never ate yoghurt because it was "foreign." Same with spaghetti, but my best mate's Mum was Italian so I got my fill at his place.

Amor de Cosmos wrote:


Man, really? That’s brutal. What would she have done if you were a punk? My mum wouldn’t cut my clothes up – she bought the fuqers for the first 12 years, so it would have been a real cry-for-help/call-the-social-worker-time had she – but she did tut-tut eye-roll at them at lot, like they could be shamed into being suitable. She wasn’t prudish or anything, she just had awesome taste and I was naturally rebelling against that. My tank-top phase really messed with her fashion/knitting sensibilities.

Man, really? That’s brutal.

She had "issues," we now realise. It wasn't frequent, maybe three times in my mid-teens I think. At the time, I didn't know — things would just disappear and she'd deny all knowledge of them. After I'd moved out my sister told me she'd seen her do it.

We put and still put vinegar on sprouts but that seems small beer compared to this thread so far.

My mum lived in Italy and learned to cook over there. She served up lasagne in the 70s and people were going "What's this - cooked conveyor belt?" Bizarre to think that lasagne was exotic. Well, either that or my mum's lasagne did actually taste of baked conveyor belt

Amor de Cosmos wrote:


“we now realise.” Jeeze, that’s the tough part. Not to Dr Phil-it, but the stuff I have pieced together about family armed with the knowledge of how alcohol works/what illness means/what sideburns actually look like, is startling. How you re-paint events. It’s reassuring in an odd way. It’s also sad. I always think about the flipside of Ray Bradbury’s path with this stuff.

Yes, the reason I went on medication is because I realised that it may start affecting my son if, indeed, it hadn't already

Another thing that seems odd to other people is that all the males in family - me, my son, my nephews, my brothers and my Dad - kiss each other saying hello and saying goodbye. I think that the fact that the men are all over 6ft freaks other people out as well.

Good thread. Where do I start?

In no particular order:

- We were not allowed to call anyone on the phone after 10pm. We were to wait and call them first thing in the morning. I don't know about any of you, but I'm always awake after 10pm and I would be SUPER PISSED OFF if someone rang my phone before I was up in the morning. My dad didn't see it that way--it was better to wake someone up from a dead sleep than to possibly (not likely) wake them up when they had just gone to sleep.

--We ate dinner at our church every Wednesday night. Southern Baptist churches have a mid-week prayer meeting--ours just happened to serve dinner (I loved the dinners there--southern fried chicken was the usual, and it was cooked by a couple of African American women who could put Colonel Sanders out of business--no lie). The reason we had to be there every week was simply that my mother was responsible for collecting the money for the dinner(I never said it was a FREE dinner--but it was fairly inexpensive, if I recall correctly).

--Dad refused to get a second phone line in our house, even though his office had to get the operator to interrupt our phone calls MANY TIMES because of an emergency at work. Seriously, wouldn't it have been so much easier for everyone involved to just get another line for us girls? It's not like we were going to say, "OK, Dad, you win, we will NEVER talk on the phone again."

--When my sisters and I were older kids (above the age of 11 or so), we were not allowed to throw temper tantrums or use even mild swear words (like 'darn'). Actually, all expressions of extreme emotion were frowned upon, as when yelling and jumping up and down in excitement when your team scored a goal. That was okay for outside, but not in the house.

I'm sure I'll think of others later.

We weren't allowed to call anyone after 10pm either. Or before 10am. In fact I wasn't allowed to play out until 10am at the weekend so as not to disturb people having a lie in.
My dad refused to wear jeans. We had a 17" television until my Mum bought a new one after my Dad died when I was 17.

Jah Womble wrote:


Correct decision. They're good for defrosting, and that's all they're good for.

Anyway. We weren't allowed to watch telly at Christmas, for fuck's sake, because of some ridiculous posh bollocks notion of my stepdad's. My Mum finally ruled we could when The Sting was on one year.

My mum banned Benny Hill, Kenny Everett, Grange Hill and Spitting Image.

Phone calls after 10pm were also a no no.

Football on a Sunday was banned before midday, to give people lie ins.

Slightly Brown wrote:


Would that have not helped?

For families/parents, I’ve often wondered where the demarcation lines are. When is the baton passed? When does tolerance shift from one side to the other? It can’t be at the gates of the old folks’ home or printed on the bus pass. There’s the Larkin “they fuq you up” all-time influence take on it. But when does it actually become a practical/physical thing? At what point is the gravity of one body in your life replaced by another? I guess becoming a parent shifts the landscape. I’ve witnessed some of my friends speaking to their fathers in a manner that they themselves admit is awful. This isn’t an eruption of pent-up rage, nor is it a teenage yowl, so what is it?