Category
Furniture, appliances and the ornaments that were absolutely not to be touched.
17 things
The GPO 332 sat in the hall on a special table, weighed about the same as a brick, and had a drawer for the numbers you actually rang.
A marble shelf, a mesh-fronted meat safe and a fly-proof gauze window. Refrigeration for people who did not have refrigeration.
More than two million television sets were bought or rented for the 1953 Coronation, and most of them had twenty people sitting in front of them.
Four counters, one die, and a rule about sixes that every family interpreted differently.
Scrap metal and old clothes collected door to door, in exchange for a few coppers or a goldfish in a bag.
Portable, two-tone, with an autochanger that stacked eight singles and dropped them one at a time onto the turntable.
Two drums, one on wheels, and a Monday morning that took the whole morning.
Wartime shelters that outlived the war by decades and quietly became garden sheds all over Britain.
Daily doorstep delivery in glass pints, with a note in the empty for tomorrow's order.
Goblin's bedside contraption: clock, kettle, teapot and lamp, all in one slightly alarming unit.
Grattan, Kays, Littlewoods: a doorstop catalogue delivered in autumn, with the toy section thumbed to destruction by November.
Hot water you had to plan an hour ahead, and a switch in the airing cupboard that started family arguments.
Electricity restricted to three days a week for commercial users, and rolling blackouts at home through the winter.
A wedding present that came out for one dinner party in 1976 and then lived at the back of a cupboard.
Blank E-180s with three films on them and a label that had been crossed out four times.
ADSL arrived with a microfilter on every phone socket and changed the household relationship with the internet permanently.
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