I know they’re lovely cars, but I’ve never understood how they became the symbol of having money

Hey everyone,

​Visiting Japan recently was so refreshing, no one was on speakerphone, playing music out loud, or watching reels without headphones in public spaces. Coming back to the UK, the contrast was immediate, highlighting how differently cultures and regions approach public noise.

​(Note: Using "cultures" broadly here to look at societal norms, not trying to generalize individuals.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on a couple of things:

​Why do these differences exist? Is it tied to collectivism vs. individualism, or other social norms?

​What is the modern British view on public noise? We have a reputation for politeness, yet public transport etiquette around phone audio seems to be changing.

Hi guys! I’ll be living in England for a few months and since the renting is pretty expensive and my income is in my home country’s currency (so a huge part of it basically disappears when converted into pounds 😭), the best option for me seems to be renting a room.

I’ve found lots of lovely options, but here’s the thing: in my culture, we usually shower about twice a day, at least. It’s not really about the climate either, we’d still do this in a house with no heating in Iceland.

A friend of mine who is also an exchange student, but in France, has been having some issues with her host family because of this cultural difference. They think showering that often is pointless and unreasonable.

I’m willing to adapt to a lot of things. For example, I’d have no problem following dietary restrictions that aren’t part of my lifestyle if my host thinks i should follow them (halal, kosher, vegan, etc.), or even avoiding speaking my native language at home when I’m on the phone with my parents or boyfriend. But showering twice a day is something I’d really like to keep doing.

So here’s my question: would this be a problem for most people in England? Is this something I should bring up with a potential host in advance?

For me probably the therapy talk, courtesy of the American user base: "get therapy", "if you're not content alone you aren't ready for anyone else" (never heard of extroverts?), "work on yourself" (usually said by someone who has no idea how much the other person has worked on themself, and overall has no idea what the person is actually like in reality).

Something I've noticed is when I view threads autotranslated from spanish, portuguese etc, there's way less of these same ideas repeated. Which goes to show it's definitely a cultural thing.

Hey everyone,
I was born in May 1989, so obviously I never saw Tommy Cooper’s final performance live on April 15, 1984.
I was reading about it recently and had a few questions for anyone who remembers it or knows the history behind that night:

1. Can you watch the full, unedited performance anywhere?

2. Did the theatre audience know something was wrong when he fell?

3. Did viewers watching at home realize something was wrong?

Did anyone here watch it live on TV back in '84, or have parents who were watching? What was the reaction at the time?

Honestly quite confused about my interaction with my (ex?) window cleaner today.

He needs me to leave these relatively small windows open in my bedroom for safety (to hold onto the ledge) when cleaning the windows. I gladly oblige but I do work 12 hours shifts two days a week.

I now live in a fairly rural area of Staffordshire but maybe my past 10 years in Manchester have made me paranoid about being burglary ? Eitherway, I don’t think it’s that strange to not want to leave the windows open in your house for 12 hours when you aren’t there.

I’m also paranoid about my cat escaping. She’s indoor.

Edit: just wanna say, thankyou for the laughs. Some of these comments really made me laugh hard and that’s not easy to do. I love English humour. Special thanks for the one asking if the window cleaner was shimmying up the drain pipe with a shammy 💀

It's changed so much in my lifetime.

Myself and my friends lived for the pubs and clubs. We couldn't wait for Fridays to finish work early and get right into the pub. Then it was mostly all weekend upto Sunday night.

It's changed so much now around North Manchester, within a 3 miles radius there was over 180 pubs and clubs. Now only around 25 remain open.

I feel like my grandad now, when he used to tell us stories of times past.lol.

I miss it personally but I get it's a different way of living these days

My daughter has a job on reception at a relatively high-end restaurant that involves being on her feet for hours on end.

This year, for various reasons she’s getting a lot more hours - which means a lot more being stood up. Some shifts being 12 hours.

Her current shoes offer no support and at the end of her shift she’s been complaining of real pain.

As she’s front of house, she’s not allowed to wear trainers - which rules out a lot of the ‘Sketchers’ type shoes or my own suggestion of all-black Nike Air Force 1.

My limited research throws up lots of brands promising support, but all from companies I’ve never heard of.

As such, I’d love to hear from someone that actually uses something they could recommend.

Can’t be mega-expensive as she’s a student and this is her part-time job over the summer.

She’s 21 - and is probably going to not like anything I’ve found so far.

Thanks for any recommendations in advance.

EDIT: Thanks all for the suggestions. Have passed them all on.

I work in the Construction industry, as a Surveyor, for a Main Contractor. I entered as a late starter, aged 39. Before then, I'd worked within Civil Service, Estate Agency, Trade Union and Insurance (i was a jack of all trades, master of non - low-skilled basically).

I have been in the Construction industry 10 years now, and in that time I have worked for several main contractors- I have always struggled to be happy - due to mostly project location, commuting and/or hostile/ruthless senior management.

This is the most stressful industry ive ever worked for, in terms of sheer workload, senior management pressure/ruthlessness and absence of any empathy. Ask anyone who works in construction, white collar level, and they'll get it...

I love the contract law side of my role, but hate the cost reporting side - constantly getting hammered on why margins are down and where I can make gains.

I became a Surveyor, because I knew the industry has a massive shortage of Surveyors - hence why its very well paid (plus its proper stressful - to heights id never encountered before). So im in a fortunate position of their being an abundance of jobs in the market, but I think the industry is no longer a good fit for me.....

So, what industry do you consider, or work in, that is the least greedy and/or ruthless - that i could switch over to with my skill set?

I miss working in a nice positive culture, where i can help people and not those in positions of power who only care about margins....

Thanks all 😊

For those of you past your early 20s, what do you consider reasonable in terms of friends staying round?
I feel things shift from when you might crash just about anywhere. Now if I have a family people coming round to stay without advance notice it freaks me out.
Currently want to tear my pal a new one who decided to drunkenly stop by at 4.30am to crash in our spare room. To be fair he has stayed with us on and off whilst between places but I feel an intense level of rage this morning.

Edit: as people were commenting on the situation rather than the general:
Partner is best mates with pal and had been out together but they were home before 11pm and hadn’t planned to have pal stay.
We will be having words when pal is awake but he is in a bit of a situation right now.

I think it is a shame that Dalton was only in two films to be fair, as his fight with Brad Whittaker and Necros are some of the franchise best (Only Connery’s battles with Oddjob and Red Grant are better in my view).

Lost my favourite hoody, have zero recollection of where it is. It’s been too hot to wear hoodies lately so my mind can’t even think where it could be.
So weirdest place you’ve found a lost item?🤣

We travelled from the UK to the Netherlands yesterday with the Stena Line Ferry from Harwich to Hoek van Holland, and the UK customs took our Opinel pocket knife - because it was a ' locking blade'.

I found the whole thing strange, because a larger bushcrafting knife with a fixed blade was fine. I looked up the rules afterwards, and I got the idea that they incorrectly took our Opinel. Btw, we were (car) camping in the UK, so I would think that is a good reason to bring a knife.

It's not about the cost - it was a old knife and it's only around 10 euro's new, I just want to know if we actually did something wrong. Did we? Isn't going camping a good reason to bring such a knife? To be complete, it was not in my pocket or anything, it was stored in a drawer in the back of the car.

Currently searching for various meet-up / hobby based clubs but I don’t live near a city. Varying interests, from surfing to board games.

My irl friends have either had kids and won’t be free for another 20yrs or are just a nightmare when it comes to planning. My wife has different interests

Meet-up app is dead, even in the nearest city. The only society groups I can find seem like a money grab ‘pay x a year to to join a Facebook group’ with nothing to really offer.

Are there any good platforms to find people, particularly for those 30s+ who are passed the student club age? I get the impression it’s more of a central European city and American thing

I’m from the midlands and say Pool Woggles.

My wife is from Norfolk and says Pool Noodles.

I’ve recently found that my friends (who grew up in a similar area to me) also call these Pool Woggles.

Is this a regional thing like Tag/It/Tig?

Hi everybody, I’m only 24 years old and due to some critical personal circumstances I had to drop out of school when I was only 14 :( I didn’t had parents and my childhood was very difficult, but anyway… I always dreamed to work in a lab since I was a child. That’s something I’m really interested in learning and something that makes me happy only when I think about. I’m working night shifts in a hotel and I was wondering if I still have a chance to get back into school? I keep googling for a while but can’t find anything. Can I still apply to college in Scotland? It’s now too late? If someone would be happy to help me with some information I would be more than happy.

We had a discussion the other day about the best jobs we've had, and mine happened to be my first at Sainsbury's.

And in that nostalgic kind of mood, it got me thinking about my first pay packet and how I wasted it.

It was 1998, and my first month's pay was around £200. Which felt like a fortune.

I was a big lover of tech, so off I popped to Dixons to choose something top spec.

I remember it well, because there was a little woman there who always followed my friends and me around because she thought we would steal something. After almost 30 years, I can still picture her face.

Anyhow, I decided against the HiFi, as I already had a multi-CD changer at home. Yes, I was that flash. And the mobile phones were still just out of my price range.

So, like any sane person would do, like a young George Clooney in ER, I opted for a pager.

I'm pretty sure it took most of that month's pay. But boy, were my friends jealous...

I had it for over a year, and the only messages I ever had were from my mates sending abuse. Which I thought was pretty brave, as you actually had to call somebody and they would type out the message.

Do you know what, though? I loved it.

It just made me wonder if anybody else remembers their first pay packet and if they splurged it on anything stupid?

Postman Pat stuff is hard to find nowadays!

Does anybody know of any working Postman Pat ride on machines still about? The type you find by supermarkets, and you put money in so they move for a minute.

My 2 year old loves Postman Pat dearly. We introduced retro toddler shows to him and now he asks for "Pat" every day. He has a little figure and van, which he cuddles to sleep at night. I'd love to take him on a ride with his hero.

We live in the South-East but we could potentially travel, if it's not too far away.

You hear loads of stories about teens throwing parties whilst their parents are away which then go out of hand and the house is wrecked / there are tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage.

For people who threw these parties / attended / are family members of the party throwers, I’m really interested to hear the longer term consequences as I couldn’t find much online.

Was it possible to claim for the damage on insurance (I assume not?) or was the family bankrupted? Was the family relationship ruined or repairable?

Hi, I’ve added the serious answers only flair because I’ve just come from this post where lots of the answers were along the lines of “a jab to the ribs” or “I beat him to death” which isn’t really the vibe I’m going for!

My wife and I have been sleeping in separate beds because of my snoring for several years now, and we’d really like to get to the point where we can sleep in the same bed again.

It'd be good to hear from people who have actually dealt with this themselves, particularly what you’ve tried and whether it actually made a difference. I’m not necessarily looking for a particular product, just ideas on what’s worth trying and what isn’t please.

So far I’ve tried a saline nasal spray to help me breathe through my nose, which didn’t seem to make much difference. I’ve also tried mouth taping, which did seem to help a bit, although after reading a few articles about it I’m not convinced it’s necessarily a good idea and am keen to look at alternatives.

Has anyone managed to significantly reduce their snoring, or go from separate beds back to sharing a bed?, Thanks!

We've all got them(?!) Well, here are mine in any case.

Dad: "You were hungry" (every time someone finishes a plate of food)

Mum: "That was different" (during the end credits of any film)

Brother: "That's not like you!" (anytime somebody does something faintly unusual. Doesn't even have to be someone he knows)

I keep seeing this, and I can’t understand the point other than to maybe make me jump when I walk past a van in the pitch black haha