Room 101 - what single aspect of modern life should be consigned to oblivion?

[Alison]

I was at a farm shop in Hertfordshire last weekend and was delighted to find brown paper bags
in which to put fruit and veg. I can't stand those flimsy and unopenable polythene creations.

[cloughie]

My 92 year old father will tell you that during his childhood in the 1920's (no electricity, no hot running water, no bathroom, no bath) that he and his 9 siblings would have a bathtub in the kitchen.

Galvanised steel, filled from the copper!

[Roehre]

My 92 year old father will tell you that during his childhood in the 1920's (no electricity, no hot running water, no bathroom, no bath) that he and his 9 siblings would have a bathtub in the kitchen.

My grand parens got electricity and a cold tap, but until in the mid 1970s there stil was no real bathroom and a bath was taken in a bathtub in the kitchen too. But they at least got a Ty bach with a real WC. The original house dating from 1869 (as is my present home btw, with all of the present day troubles as there are frozen pipes, blocked and leaking ones, power cuts, bathrooms blocked by spouses, etc. etc. etc)

[Petrushka]

I was at a farm shop in Hertfordshire last weekend and was delighted to find brown paper bags
in which to put fruit and veg. I can't stand those flimsy and unopenable polythene creations.

Yes, but those brown paper carrier bags were useless in wet weather! I can recall the embarrassment when the shopping would fall out of a disintegrating bag!

[marthe]

The brown paper bags had other uses. We often made book covers for our school books from the large brown paper carrier bags. I try to use my collection of canvas bags when I go to the supermarket so that I can avoid bringing home too many poly bags. Some of our supermarkets have a recycle bin for the poly bags and will give you a small discount if you provide your own bags.

My pet peeve is blister or clamshell packaging (as it is known in the US) for small items. Not only is it it excessive, but it is very difficult to open without a Stanley knife or a strong pair of scissors.

[Flosshilde]

Absolutely - & 'clamshell' is much the best name for it, given how difficult it is to open. Blisters are what you end up with.

[Segilla]

More seriously, those endless scam phone calls that plague one at weekends should be outlawed

Only at weekends. Lucky you!
I realise that the callers from the Indian sub-continent are human beings simply trying to earn a living but there are so many at times that I get exasperated and say things I'd not dare repeat here.
Bad manners? Yes, but it relieves the annoyance.

[Segilla]

The use of the word 'egregious'.
I first noticed it a couple of months ago and now it is everywhere.

However, there is an interesting sidelight. From the OED:-

adjective

1. outstandingly bad; shocking: egregious abuses of copyright


2. archaic: remarkably good.

Origin: mid 16th century (in egregious (sense 2)): from Latin egregius 'illustrious', literally 'standing out from the flock', from ex-'out' + grex, greg-'flock'. Sense 1 (late 16th century) probably arose as an ironical use

[Beef Oven]

My 92 year old father will tell you that during his childhood in the 1920's (no electricity, no hot running water, no bathroom, no bath) that he and his 9 siblings would have a bathtub in the kitchen.

We took our bath in the kitchen too, and your father's got 40 years on me! Ah, the joys of 1960s Hackney!

.

[cloughie]

We took our bath in the kitchen too, and your father's got 40 years on me! Ah, the joys of 1960s Hackney!

.

Where did you keep the coal?

[french frank]

Well, it is a tub. In which one has a bath. Perfectly logical...

I wasn't commenting on the (il)logicality of the Americans calling it a bathtub but the ease (as mentioned previously) with which American usage creeps into our language. I mean to say, little UK children will be talking about bathtubs next (they talk about cookbooks now instead of cookery books ).

I agree, though, 'bathtub' or 'tub' for the old fashioned movable kind that you filled up, if lucky, with some pans of boiled water is/was okay. Is that what they have in the US?

[MrGongGong]

I wasn't commenting on the (il)logicality of the Americans calling it a bathtub but the ease (as mentioned previously) with which American usage creeps into our language. I mean to say, little UK children will be talking about bathtubs next (they talk about cookbooks now instead of cookery books ).

I agree, though, 'bathtub' or 'tub' for the old fashioned movable kind that you filled up, if lucky, with some pans of boiled water is/was okay. Is that what they have in the US?

With reference to Bill Bryson
one needs to be sure that things that one thinks are "Americanisms" are really that ..............
bathtub has a certain Dickensian quality to it !

when did the Registry offices become Register offices ?

[salymap]

We took our bath in the kitchen too, and your father's got 40 years on me! Ah, the joys of 1960s Hackney!

.

The thing that worries me is not the tub in the kitchen. My late mother, born in 1889, told me that the three girls would fight to go first as the bathwater was just topped up for the ones who followed. Ugh.
They were children, of course

[Lateralthinking1]

With reference to Bill Bryson
one needs to be sure that things that one thinks are "Americanisms" are really that ..............
bathtub has a certain Dickensian quality to it !

Bathtub is chiefly North American. Chiefly and not wholly because in Britain a bathtub moves (as in Dickens). In North America it doesn't. It is a bath.

I used to have baths in a Kent kitchen in the 1970s. My grandparents didn't have a bathroom and their only toilet was outdoors. They had a bath fitted in the kitchen. It wasn't a bathtub.

[amateur51]

Where did you keep the coal?

Where did you keep the gin?!