Habits You Don’t See Anymore

Growing up in London, there used to be a lot of Italian cafes. “Dirty Spoons” they used to be called, on account of the fact that every table had a teaspoon on a chain welded to it, and it was always dirty. The Italian owner (who was always called Tony or Franco) could not trust his shyster clientele not to steal the cutlery. Health and Safety banned that practice years ago, probably after a number of kids and old folk died of food poisoning.

My Nan used to take me to one such cafe every Saturday morning. It was called Franco’s, and used to be located on the Old Kent Road. Tony, the owner, was a nice bloke and he always gave me a wafer of Italian ice cream. Mind you, the fcuker still wouldn’t trust my Nan with a spoon, so he couldn’t have been that great.

Anyway, I digress...

On Saturday mornings, this cafe was mainly populated by old people with no teeth. All the old boys wore cloth caps and trench coats, even at the height of Summer. No one drank coffee, even though that was Tony’s speciality - only tea.

The old folk, my Nan included, had the disgusting habit of pouring some of their hot tea into the saucer and then slurping at it with their gummy mouths. This was Hell for me, as an impressionable 6 year old, and would put me off my iced wafer.

These days, there don’t seem to be any gummy old folk; and one never sees anyone at the local Costa slurping at a saucer.

The thing is, I’m thinking of reviving this habit, in memory of my dear old gummy Nan.

Are there any old habits that you’ve seen die out that deserve to be revived?

There are some right old fcukers on this board, so there ought to be a bumper load of stories.

 

Condolences Fatty

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White dog poo

 

A full trophy cabinet.

 

Finding porn mags in bushes.


I find it quite depressing that no child will ever have that weird burst of excitement ever again.

 

Dogs being let out by their reckless owners to wander the streets and **** at will in the streets was very much a 70s thing in London.

I wouldn’t want that to be revived.

 

Findiñg bushes in porn mags ...

 

How'd I know that you'd jump on that ffs

 

"In London, there used to be a lot of Italian cafes. “Dirty Spoons” they used to be called"

Greasy spoon cafes ya oversized berk.

 

As a former postman, I can confirm that Saturday morning in particular, was a ****ing nightmare because of this.

Some estates had packs of semi feral dogs roaming about, and I was always having to jump over walls to avoid the mutts - that’s when I wasn’t forced to look down at my feet all morning to avoid stepping in dogshit.

 

Funny thing is, in Thailand, they probably have more feral dogs than the whole of Europe put together and in all my time here I've never seen dogs **** on a pavement or road.

 

That’s something you’d love to see revived, yeah?

 

That’s because if the dog is spotted it’s shot and served up at restaurants like yours, Skiddy.

 

The dogs are all trained to **** in the bushes?

 

The dogs all get chucked on the fire the first time they **** out of place.

 

And their roads are covered in porn mags

 

Go on I'll play along as it's climate change protest day...

Not so much a habit but the days of having your fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, recycling the daily news and ignoring all the print coming off it. Either that or use it for shhite paper, depending how poor you were.

Collecting up the pop bottles discarded to get the money back on them.

Scrumping my favourite habit, going nicking all the farmers cherries and getting chased off by his two bore.

Milk delivered by the milkman in glass bottles that were put back out as the empties the next morning.

No plastics in the shops, take your own bags or use cardboard boxes.

Sweets bought by the ounce and weighed out of big jars instead of being individually wrapped.

Climate change, it existed when I was young, blame globalisation.

 

Ain't got a clue mate, it's something they just don't do.

 

Summary?

#toomuchreading

 

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