With a draft howling under the door and no heat because the other doors were kept shut to 'keep in the warm'.

And it was really embarrassing trying to talk to a girl on the phone because you knew your mum and dad were the other side of the door listening to every word.

And 'You've been on that phone 5 minutes, are you going to pay the bill?'

Happy days!

You were posh!
We had one of these

You were all posh! No phone at all in our house, I would call M at his local phone box from my local phone box at a designated time. That didn't always work out well. He often called me at work from the pub at lunchtime that didn't work well either. No personal calls unless it was an emergency. Oh the old days...

When you say "had", of course you meant "rented from the government", because the government had a monopoly on such esoteric equipment.

Pedant! We had one of those in our house. I can still remember that phone number - all of 3 digits :-)

I'm feeling very old

You're around my age, I think, we're not that old . Growing up, we only ever had a phone in the hallway (or in the kitchen, just inside from the hallway when we moved) by the door. It wasn't until I was 11 or 12 when we installed an extension to allow my parents to put a second phone in their room.

It never broke, we didn't have to get "upgrades", we weren't constantly bombarded with ads to get the latest "apps", nobody laughed at you for having "the wrong phone" and there was no bloody "bundling".

WIM 4311

North Hykeham 484, not even letters when my mother had her first phone, and she only got that because the front room in out bungalow was used as a single bed maternity home.

The best part was, it hardly ever rang and when it did, it was someone on the other end you wanted to talk to

(We had the trimphone though, not the upright one, and my number was 5 digits. 63983)

67337 ...... we moved out of that house (remember when phone numbers used to be tied to the house, not the subscriber ) more than 30 years.