So snapchat has had an update and the world has lost its mind!!!! To be honest I’ve never really understood snapchat the filters are good but if you’re chatting on there you just forget what’s been said because it disappears!!! I’ve always just thought that snapchat is for those people who are speaking but probably shouldn’t be because it just disappears like it never existed!!! But maybe that says more about me for thinking that….!!!
When I were a kid Facebook/Instagram/Iphone’s/Sky+/google etc were not a thing!!!!! (Not sure why but when I start reminiscing I say “when I were a kid” I’m my head in some thick Yorkshire accent which is odd because I really don’t sound like that at all, for some reason stories of the past remind me of the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch from monty python if you don’t know what I mean …..)
School was hard enough without bloody social media!! I got bullied in person not on the internet and that was awful enough! Also when I were a kid we didn’t have t’interweb in the house. I had to go to my friends house to use it to log on to MSN messenger repeatedly so that certain people can see you’re there!!
I remember when Facebook first appeared. I was in uni at the time and we couldn’t access it because my uni was actually still classed as a college that got their degrees from somewhere else!! You use to have to have a university email address to register. So I stuck to MySpace and questioned about the ability for something like Facebook to actually take off…… the worse think Facebook did was as privacy settings….I mean how were you meant to Facebook stalk someone if you couldn’t see anything of theirs!!!!
I got my first mobile phone when I was 16 for a Christmas present. I actually was a little gutted. At the time my mates had pagers and As pointless as I thought they were I wanted one. (Ironically now I have one for my job and I want to throw it against a wall most of the time. So it’s true when they say be careful what you wish for!!!) I was mainly gutted because I wanted a VHS player that year for Christmas. I wanted the magic of video plus in my room!!! I still say now I’m taping something on tv when in reality I don’t think I’ve “taped” anything for about 15 years!!! Sky plussing something just doesn’t have the same ring to it…..
Mobile phones back then lasted days. I had a Nokia 3310 great for playing snake on, not so good for the internet. I dropped that thing down the loo so many times when I was drunk in my teenage years (back pockets on jeans is not a good place to store your phone when drunk) you’d unclip it put it on the radiator and it would be working the next day. Not like iPhones now, show it some water and it dies!!!
the more I think of stuff from when I was younger he more I feel like I sound like my parents….It’s upsetting to me that there a whole generation of people who don’t understand the relationship between a pencil and a cassette tape!! I use to have mix tapes of all the songs I liked!! I also had a Walkman, a portable CD player and a mini disk player!!! I remember in uni one of the lads brought an iPod in and we were all amazed!!! How could something so small hold soooo many songs!! It’ll never catch on…. Also there wasn’t an iTunes back then, we went to places like HMV or Virgin to listen to music. Or used things like Napster or limewire at the expense of the computer!!! If there was s new song out and you didn’t know the lyrics you had to wait for smash hits magazine to come out and hope they were in there! There wasn’t a google to check you were singing along correctly!!!! We use to have to go physically go to blockbuster to rent a film or a game. And you had to rewind it back to the start after you’d watched it!! No posting or downloading it!!!
Then there were all the things we use to do when we were kids like play out!! I don’t ever really see kids playing out any more. We use to knock on for each other and see who was coming out. I don’t see many kids playing Kirby any more or footie in the road using the grids as goals! Bulldog was brutal but a lot of fun. I was such a tomboy when I was younger. I climbed trees, played football and just generally spent most of my time with boys. They were always more fun and less bitchy than girls. I remember getting roller blades and all my friends getting them too!! It was either BMX or roller blades. That’s how we use to get around, that and seaters or if the bmx bikes had pegs we’d use them. We all had Helly Hansen coats too (not one sailer or rower between us mind, they were just the thing to have) also I remember the first time that the popper trackie bottoms came out!!! (Really sound like my parents then) they were a nightmare really….You’d be out with your mates and next thing you know your trying to protect your legs because someone has decided to pull the trousers open and there were dodgy Adidas flares everywhere!!! Kappa jackets were a big thing too!!!
I also remember when a Can was 45p and you’d get a bottle of pop from the pop man and if you returned the bottles you’d get money back. You’d wait for the milk man to do his money collect and get the orange juice of him too. The ice cream lady knew which ones we like and what flavours were our favourite. I remember when freddos were 5p, and a 10p mix got you 10 things. I had a tamagotchi the first time round, my sister had a furby gameboys had green screens and you went to your mates to play on the sega mega drive or Nintendo to play duck hunt!!! Cereal boxes has toys in them and so did crisps!!! I had so many pogs and tazos it was unreal!!
You wrote letters instead of emails, you spoke on the phone instead of texting and if you made plans you stuck to them because you couldn’t just text last min and cancel. Places were closed on a sunday, and there was nothing open 24/7 (only the hospital).
The other thing that was good was Saturday and Sunday morning TV!!! SMTV live with Chums and wonkey donkey, going live and then live and kicking! Sunday mornings were for T4, watching shipwrecked (I really wanted to be on that), the OC, Dawson’s creak, hollyoaks omnibus, One Tree Hill etc etc… It was perfect hang over tv.
I have a lot of very good memories from when I were growing up (see there it is again, just sounds better saying it like that!) it’s something I love laughing about and comparing what other people had or remember when they were younger.
Ahh the good old days. Things were much simpler then. I wonder if I still have my roller blades somewhere, I’m sure the dogs would’ve to pull me along…..
Tales of Grace 
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