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Holiday cottage owners had left us a pint of milk in the fridge - proper retro glass milk bottle with the foil lid. I had to show LittleMissMC how to open it.
To be fair, she's never had to deal with one before.
Gold top?
But how did you open it, pressure from the thumb on it or the heathen way of picking the edge of the cap like the wife does?
I used to just thump the top with the palm of my hand and lift off the lid, I'd forgotten about that.
Sometimes they used to have been pierced by birds.
We got one the other day from a farm shop vending machine. Quite a nice thing really.
Yup, the blue tits around here have long since forgotten how to do that. My silvertop bottles don't get attacked any more
I used to just thump the top with the palm
Ooh, i like that. Must try it in the morning
Tomorrow's thread; got half a broken milk bottle in my palm; NHS111 or A&E?
Ours hadn’t either but then we started using the local milkman in lockdown. I don’t know, but assume, that apart from the sustainability benefits (offset by the rattly ancient Mercedes Vito milk float) it pays the farmers better than supermarket milk?
We got one the other day from a farm shop vending machine. Quite a nice thing really.
That sounds excellent - where was it?
No need to take the top off in the early 60s Winters, it was standing on spout of frozen milk. I haven't bought milk in years.
They don't even know how to sew leather onto wood nowadays!
But neither does anyone else alive today
Applying a stamp to a handwritten envelope and dropping it in a post box was an astonishing revelation. They LIDWRALLY had no idea any element of that was possible
Carefully fishing an audio tape out of a car stereo and using a pen to wind it back in. While lurching around in a car driven by a teenage idiot who has fantasies of being Nigel Mansell.
Putting a thick blade of grass between your thumbs and blowing to make it whistle.
My Gran used her elbow to press down on the foil top. I've always done it like that once she showed me as I had a habit of putting my thumb through it .
They've completely lost the art of taking a bowie knife into the woods, finding a nice stick, sharpening it into a spear - then chucking it at a mate! Great days! 😀
Applying a stamp to a handwritten envelope and dropping it in a post box was an astonishing revelation. They LIDWRALLY had no idea any element of that was possible
We had a 20 something in our shop with her dad. She was buying a card for her grandad. After writing the card ,dad gave her the address and a stamp. She asked where the stamp went.
We've never not had a milk delivery. The local dairy started a milk vending machine, churning out all sorts of products, most popular are the milk shakes. It sold out in hours.
Sewing, knitting, crotchet, weaving, darning (mend and re-purpose) are all things that granny taught us and no longer seem to be hobbies that youngsters want to do or know how to do.
My dad once mildly mocked my offspring for not knowing how a rotary phone worked, and that they had to wait for a dial tone.
We've not had a landline for about a decade, so they've literally never ever needed to use one.
I did point out that dad struggled to work an iPad, or use voice recognition, but I think the ironing was lost on him 😁
We too have milk delivered in bottles from the local dairy, by ancient milk float. So my lot can now deal with the heinous task of deflowering them.
using a pen to wind it back in.
I hope you mean 'holding the pen and spinning the cassette'?
Yup, the blue tits around here have long since forgotten how to do that.
And, as most milk is homogenised now, there'd be no point in them trying. No nice layer of cream on the top anymore 😣
I used to do a milk round from the age of 14 to 16. Nice pocket money but the 4:30 am starts did have me falling asleep at the desk in school more than once. It did keep me fit too, we had to run everywhere to keep up with the float and hurdle garden fences with 5 pint bottles of milk in each hand! 4 between the fingers and one in the palm of each hand. God knows how I used to manage that!
And, as most milk is homogenised now, there'd be no point in them trying.
Silver top pasteurised from the Milk and More operation is definitely not homogenised, I regularly get a proper plug of cream on my Rice Krispies. So they're missing out on that little treat.
Young people not knowing how to do stuff that is now irrelevant versus old people who don't know how to do stuff that is very important in 2025. I would say the problems are going to be felt by the old people who haven't kept up..
My daughters have no idea how to knap an arrowhead out of flint. Kids these days eh?
I had a filling yesterday, without painkillers or anaesthetic!
Escape Rooms are my jam. There is a concept here where Outside Knowledge shouldn't be required because if you're faced with a puzzle and - say - don't know what the capital of Egypt is then you're knackered, there's no way of deducing that.
This has led to industry conversations around what exactly is "outside knowledge." There has to be a degree where common sense offsets the absurd, right? Do we assume that we can't use words in case there's an illiterate / foreign player? Some people are bad at maths. Others present accessibility issues, scent-based puzzles are a non-starter for those with anosmia.
What's been interesting in the discussions here is how much "obvious" knowledge is actually dead. Like, why would a Gen Z innately understand how to operate a landline? A game I played last week had a VCR in it. Wildly, the ability to read an analogue clock is now considered a lost skill, because when would a teenager ever need to do that? Right between calculating using a slide rule and wiring a plug?
What we grew up with no longer exists. Dry Stone Walling went out with my grandparents. Today a SNES is the realm of TikTok reaction videos. The old "3D printed save icon" floppy disk gag is... hey wait, some people still save things manually rather than it just happening automatically? You'll be telling me next that you once had to hurry home to catch a TV programme.
It is by turns exciting, fascinating and terrifying. Or maybe that's just what A.I. wanted me to say.
My daughters have no idea how to knap an arrowhead out of flint. Kids these days eh?
I blame the parents.
Not bad.. .but the example I thought of was sewing a leather handle/strap onto a wooden walking stick. I did once see a list of things noone knew how to do anymore
Dry Stone Walling went out with my grandparents.
Really? They still exist and are repaired. I'll bet there is plenty of work out there for people with these skills.
Dry Stone Walling went out with my grandparents.
Very much alive in Derbyshire and Lancashire and Yorkshire any other county with lots of dry stone wall! 🙂
I would say the problems are going to be felt by the old people who haven't kept up..
This is true, but there are genuine cognitive and physiological reasons why many people struggle to cope with technological change as they reach old age. It's not an affectation or done to wind young people up.
This is true, but there are genuine cognitive and physiological reasons why many people struggle to cope with technological change as they reach old age.
There's also the 'can't be arsed' factor. I'm 57 and there are certain things I swerve now - not through lack of skill but because I don't have the same drive to learn something new.
Like now - I know I should learn more about AI for my job (print trade), but it's so fast moving I'm hoping it goes away(!) or I manage to get out of the trade before it destroys it! 🙂
Yup, the blue tits around here have long since forgotten how to do that.
That's because birds are lactose intolerant and homogenised milk made them stop. They only wanted the cream!
This is true, but there are genuine cognitive and physiological reasons why many people struggle to cope with technological change as they reach old age. It's not an affectation or done to wind young people up.
Maybe if you are 90 but not many people are 9 are they. A 75 year old who doesn't have the internet, email address etc,. or know how to use it was only 55 when it was very widely used so what were they doing at 55, getting their excuses ready?
This is true, but there are genuine cognitive and physiological reasons why many people struggle to cope with technological change as they reach old age.
There's also the 'can't be arsed' factor. I'm 57 and there are certain things I swerve now - not through lack of skill but because I don't have the same drive to learn something new.
Like now - I know I should learn more about AI for my job (print trade), but it's so fast moving I'm hoping it goes away(!) or I manage to get out of the trade and retire before it destroys it! 🙂
^^^ Why has my edit created a duplicate post!! 🤷♂️
^^^ Why has my edit created a duplicate post!!
Irony?
Applying a stamp to a handwritten envelope and dropping it in a post box was an astonishing revelation. They LIDWRALLY had no idea any element of that was possible
When was the last time anyone actually put a stamp on an envelope and posted it though? It must be a good decade since I’ve done that.
Mrs Binners had to do so recently and told me how much a first class stamp cost. £1.70!!! Bloody hell! It’s no wonder nobody is posting anything any more! 😳
The idea of a bloke walking around every day, on his round, delivering letters to every house, must surely be going the same way as walking round lighting the gas lamps in the evening?
going the same way as walking round lighting the gas lamps in the evening?
I bumped into the guy servicing the sewer gas lamp in Carting Lane, London last year, so it's still a thing... just.
We quite often cycle under the "Great Train Robbery Bridge" was quite gob smacked when one of my 30yr + old kids asked me what the great train robbery was?
Automatic cars getting harder to find becos new drivers cant change gear
What happens when computers do everything so we cant use our brains anymore? Do we all get entertained for ever?
Our neighbours were round recently for a cup of tea. As is decent, we put the milk bottle on the table for self-service. This was a new bottle, lid untouched. Neighbour is a 40-something lady from a farming background - saw her poking the lid, trying to peel it off. "You alright there?" I asked. "How does this come off?" she said.
Flabbergasted.
Double post