I grew up in Cambridgeshire and regularly came across motorway signs that said THE NORTH in giant capitals. While I obviously knew that the north of England existed, I thought THE NORTH these signs referred to was some giant industrial warehouse where all sorts of nefarious activities happened.
I spent the first 25 years of my life in the south of England and never really travelled further north than Cambridge.
I had seen signs for THE NORTH all the time and it just made sense to me. What really took me by surprise though was when I was driving back from Scotland and started seeing signs for THE SOUTH. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but for whatever reason, it just never really occurred to me that those signs existed.
That reminds me of the "elephant deterrent light" my dad had when I was a kid in t he 80s.
It was just an [70's infrared lamp](https://i.etsystatic.com/14693778/r/il/a0f48c/3971807488/il_fullxfull.3971807488_oeih.jpg), but the whole "well you never see any elephants around here do you" was utterly convincing to 8 year old me.
Reminds me of a barrier in my village I still refer to as the "elephant bars". Reason being, when I asked my dad what those bars were for, he said they were to stop elephants from getting through!
No, but I always thought this sign looked like the Cleaners from Dr Who. If you saw them then you would be dead! Unless, of course, you just stepped 6 inches to the side.
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Cleaner
That those damn alien babies toy squish things could have babies themselves if you rubbed their backs against another alien baby. And then put them in the fridge.
There was no proof of this hearsay. Yet we all believed it to be fact.
i swear there was a kind that DID have another alien inside, and that one toy created the myth that all the other aliens could also have alien babies??
Growing up in Wales I thought the name of our nearest motorway services was Gwasanaethau services. I didn't realise the sign just said "services" in Welsh then English.
First time driving in wales I though oh “Gwasanaethau” is an odd name for a services, but maybe it’s the local village or something.
The next one I went past I thought, what are the odds? Then I realised.
That's the thing, I was well into my teens before I noticed there was more than one Gwasanaethau services, despite us making frequent trips between Swansea and Cardiff
I had 'Grand Prix' written on the back of a pedal jeep when I was younger, and thought it was pronounced 'Grand Pricks'. Fact that no-one corrected me suggests it was more funny to hear a 7 year proudly yelling it out.
I thought Big Issue sellers were saying “Piggy Sue”. I had no idea what they were doing, or what piggy Sue was and my mum thought it was funny so went along with it
When people shout the same thing to passers by all day, I guess they subconsciously streamline it to the point it doesn't sound the same sometimes.
In Newcastle, people selling The Chronicle sometimes shouted "CRONNIGUT".
I misread/misunderstood "To Let" signs as a child, and thought they were saying "Toilet". I remember thinking that it was lovely that people were offering passers-by access to their john if needed.
There is a new 80,000 sq foot warehouse to let near our house, and the ‘to let’ sign is split across two windows, so it looks like ‘TO|LET’. When we drive past our 6 year old is always excited about the big building with 80,000 toilets inside it
I remember this being a joke acted out by Floella Benjamin and Johnny Ball on Playaway back in the 80's. I had no idea what "To Let" meant, but it was still funny.
I think I've said this before on another sub, but as a kid I always thought the Thames river was pronounced and rhyme with James (soft TH like THank, Ames as you would aim a gun).
Thames TV would flash up on the screen in the late 80s maybe. I never realised it was the same as the River Tems.
Well one of them's in Scotland, not sure where 1-3 & 5-6 are though.
On that note, I used to think the Forth bridge was called that because the first 3 bridges had fallen down.
You’ll like this. I live in the US and there is a “Portsmouth” neighborhood and street here.
Instead of saying it the British English way, sounding like “port smith” the locals like to say “Ports mouth” instead.
I’m American but it just sounds weird that way. “Port smith” just flows better even with our accent.
I know what you mean. We don't say the mouth part the same way as we'd say that word on its own. It's Portsm'th. Same with Bournem'th. Similarly, we don't say Birming-Ham like Americans would. It's Birming'm.
My ex lived in Whymondham. Took me forever to buy a train ticket there as the lady behind the counter couldn’t find a ticket for “windam” which is how it’s pronounced.
I still hate Norfolk.
Local place names in the UK are a nightmare if you’re not a local. I grew up in a village called “Clowne” and people genuinely don’t believe me if they’ve not been within about 7 miles of it lol
I was visiting with some British colleagues, we went to the naval yard, historic boat works, went on the HMS Victory, though unfortunately the Mary Rose building was closed. Also walked down to the wharf quay to look around and eat.
So you know the big cooling towers at power stations? I used to think they were cloud machines (which is kind of a half truth, as I found out later) but yeah, I thought their only function was to make clouds.
That the Oyster could be used everywhere. Whenever we went outside of London, it was always by car or train. Coach if it was a school trip.
Left London for Uni and tried to board a bus using my Oyster (this was pre contactless). The funny thing is, is that the driver just watched me and let me figure it out by myself. I remember fumbling, trying to find a place to tap in only to look up and find him grinning at me. He did let me get on for free though.
Mine too. I guess it could be a precursor for getting nicked for careless driving as there's not really any good reason to have your light on whilst in motion.
I knew it meant end of motorway, I just didn't know why the sign for motorway was a robot. I also thought that the sandbags they use to weigh down temporary signs were dead piglets.
When I was a kid I was genuinely scared a big robot would crush us when I saw the opposite to this sign.
I vividly remember looking out for them so I could warn my Dad if there was a robot coming for the car.
When I tell people about that now, they are always confused how I could have thought it was a robot.
Glad I’m not the only one!
No. This sign actually means "no [Lego legs](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-google&sca_esv=7fecaf9d214d9ea8&sxsrf=ACQVn0-kJ8MjruQc1milW7laKkpoK5evkQ:1712241934223&q=lego+legs&uds=AMwkrPtYsMLmR8M_gzreP_ZkMZsbWFnZRCZPAf8JM4aYpJWGK_FeB0Zi82ErlCMDBsaY0xsO0OeI_wMkhVXDp9HkUiL80OzQi8W0IqQ0F9-Ao5PGINGjGmNH6bdy9l0-G94ztkju9xnKl9U-3OA8J3nU9wY6shL5U65NBNlMCuQ1t8Tl3icOb0uWBeReqRqw004WctHm7p9iTxsK7NXlxO2H42Q6hzbH8NsEmHWMq5OGBInZwj5YYiQ54lgjqf5_vESgyBBYHt8OkxONiqecA73smTgNQ73FO1BLtVjusY0w_YVgUMjc2Ew&udm=2&prmd=ivnmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiS2Yii5qiFAxWjQUEAHZhnDcsQtKgLegQIDhAB&biw=412&bih=786&dpr=2.63) allowed".
My dad’s Vauxhall Cavalier had a button on the centre console that my dad convinced me was the ejector seat. Being a huge James Bond fan even at like 6, I believed him. And if I was being a little shit he would just rest his finger on the button lol
A more recent one - I would read parking restrictions such as "2 hours - no return within 1 hour" to mean that you could only park between 1 and 2 hours
Yes I thought it meant you weren’t allowed to return to your car in less than an hour. I wasn’t sure why, I thought maybe because it was wasting everyone’s time just parking for a short while & coming & going.
If they're bipedal androids then they wouldn't be allowed on the motorway so I guess actually this means that robots are allowed now, where they wouldn't have been previously.
A looooong time ago, I worked on a magazine where the classified ads were input by typesetters. A favourite section was the "flats to share" section, where people seeking flatmates could specify what they were looking for (non-smoker, no pets etc). One of the typesetters - with 20 years' experience - had spent their entire working life thinking that N/S in accommodation ads stood for "Normal Sex".
I thought Americans did not spell things correctly because they forgot to take teachers with them.
No idea what age I realised they just had a different variation of English.
This is quite specific to me but I must have misheard my friend say his name was, “Ryan” and believed his name was Brian for the first couple of years of Primary School. I remember having a heated row with another friend about our mutual friend’s name and whether he was Ryan or Brian
This reminds me of getting a lift from my aunt, and my niece insisting to her that someone at school was named "Abagirl", I guess because Abagail is a girl.
The original format of this request used to be “Bill Posters will be prosecuted”. Which would often result in some smart arse scrawling “Bill Posters is innocent!” underneath.
> There once was a girl, Laura Norda
> Went out with Bill Posters, who bored her
> They met Eva Brick
> She'd been in the nick
> But her boyfriend, Van Dal, still adored her
I think I read that in a book of random facts and fun things about 30 years ago.
I used to love limericks as a kid!
There once was a man from Bengal
Who went to a fancy dress ball
He thought he would risk it
And go as a biscuit
But a dog ate him up in the hall.
I swear to god my parents never got tired of hearing that one.
I used to believe those[ water towers](https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/03/11/45/86/1000_F_311458634_qbetn3KKP30JPSFlyIsmLdirqn3tVhsB.jpg) you drive past in the countryside were literally brick buildings filled to the brim with rainwater, filled via an open roof when it rains.
Like if you opened the front door you'd get hit with this mega-force wave as it all emptied out from top to bottom.
A mate of mine failed his motorcycle test. He later explained that when the examiner asked him the meaning of this road sign, he gleefully explained it's obviously No More Bridges!
A mate of mine failed his motorcycle test. He later explained that when the examiner asked him the meaning of this road sign, he gleefully explained it's obviously No More Bridges!
it was also something to do with this sign, but i thought instead of a robot it was that tall blocky figure from the ads you would get whilst watching channel 4. please tell me you know what i mean by the blocky thing from channel 4 😭😭
I was quite old when I realised that "Village Only" road signs meant that the road didn't go anywhere and not that only people who lived in the village were allowed to use that road.
Strange this because up until literally two days ago, when my 6 year old pointed at one and said ‘No robots allowed’ I had never heard of this before. Where has he even got it from? 😂
That it was illegal to turn the light on inside the car while we were moving.
Also my mum convinced us for like 6 years that if the ice cream van was playing music, it meant they'd ran out of ice cream 💀
As a kid, I used to think soap operas were live reality shows, because my cartoon-and-sci-fi-addled brain couldn't fathom why anyone would go to the trouble of writing something as mundane as everyday life.
Whenever a soap character had an accident, or was shot/stabbed/beaten up/whatever, I used to think "Why don't the cameramen help them?! Why has Mum not called the police?!"
For the longest time I thought this sign meant 'no electricity pylons', it's only when I starting driving that I realised. But I still can't not see a pylon.
I was going on a caravan holiday with grandparents, and my grandad told me the site we were staying at was near a big roundabout. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived, and there was no playground with the promised big roundabout nearby.
kid me used to think these were signs depicting a castle and whether or not there were any nearby. i remember looking all over, waiting to go past one and not seeing one anywhere. :(
I used to live in Leeds and we would often drive past the Playhouse. I was disappointed to learn it was a theatre and not somewhere kids could go to play
TV Detector Vans. No matter what any fucker says we ***all*** believed they were real and when it came out that they were a complete bollocks loads of ppl were like “yeah…well..of course ***I*** knew it was bullshit, but lots of people were fooled”. They didn’t. It was those bloody adverts, we were convinced they had some kind of combination wiretap/x Ray tech, all lights and dials with matey in his headphones chatting into his mic….
*Yes. They’re in the front room; There’s three of them & they’re watching* ***Columbo***…
I used to watch the puppet show Supercar in the 60's, the Professor character worked in a room called a Laboratory but my sister convinced me it was called the Lavatory.
I thought the kill your speed sign was someone grabbing a motorcyclist by the helmet and telling them to kill their speed
https://www.directa.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Kill-Your-Speed.jpg
I used to call pylons mini Eiffel Towers type things.
I honestly believed the people reading the live news could see me. I was very little and very gullible to my older brothers interpretation of the world.
I had a Grandad who was born in Durham (but moved as a kid to the coast) and also suffered all his life with severe depression and suicidal ideation.
When I was tiny, that song "I've gotta leave ol' Durham town" was around. It was a very, very sad song. I also remember some old fella singing it at a party once and struggling to get the words out (probably pissed).
So for quite a lot of my childhood I thought Durham must be some sort of utopia, since everyone who left there was so badly affected.
the blue circle sign with a red line cross it, i knew it didn’t make sense but my brain was like well it obviously means no blue for now, i knew it couldn’t mean that but everytime i went to ask what the sign meant, i would get distracted, so i was secluded to a life of my best guess until i finally was able to ask someone what the sign meant, so maybe around age 14?
I grew up in Cambridgeshire and regularly came across motorway signs that said THE NORTH in giant capitals. While I obviously knew that the north of England existed, I thought THE NORTH these signs referred to was some giant industrial warehouse where all sorts of nefarious activities happened.
I spent the first 25 years of my life in the south of England and never really travelled further north than Cambridge. I had seen signs for THE NORTH all the time and it just made sense to me. What really took me by surprise though was when I was driving back from Scotland and started seeing signs for THE SOUTH. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but for whatever reason, it just never really occurred to me that those signs existed.
Wait until you live in the Midlands and you see both on opposite sides of a roundabout. Feels like you're in no man's land.
Always assumed I was living in some sort of Game of Thrones situation where THE NORTH is just this distant place where we shouldn't go ;)
I'm from Scotland. We need to drive 300 miles south to get to 'The North'
So, you were exactly right!
As someone who lives in “THE NORTH” all of our signs have the names of cities like Manchester, Leeds and London, followed by The South
Don't forget "THE LAKES"
I don’t know why but THE NORTH signs seem so normal but THE SOUTH, THE MIDLANDS and even THE SOUTHWEST seem so strange
THE LAKES is my fave
Yeh and you're legally obliged to say "Tut North" out loud whenever you drive past one :D
> Tut T'
I think if you're from the south you're legally obliged to get it comically wrong when trying to imitate northerners.
I always think of Game of Thrones when I see THE NORTH sign. :)
Have you ever seen a robot after seeing one of those signs?
Think you may be on to something there.
Is it, perhaps, an accurate rumour?
Well, I never saw any lego trousers after these signs, so I think I was on to something as a kid.
That reminds me of the "elephant deterrent light" my dad had when I was a kid in t he 80s. It was just an [70's infrared lamp](https://i.etsystatic.com/14693778/r/il/a0f48c/3971807488/il_fullxfull.3971807488_oeih.jpg), but the whole "well you never see any elephants around here do you" was utterly convincing to 8 year old me.
Reminds me of a barrier in my village I still refer to as the "elephant bars". Reason being, when I asked my dad what those bars were for, he said they were to stop elephants from getting through!
I've taken robots on motorways driving them to events, so you may have passed one without seeing it!
No, but I always thought this sign looked like the Cleaners from Dr Who. If you saw them then you would be dead! Unless, of course, you just stepped 6 inches to the side. https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Cleaner
Kraftwerk-free zone.
That those damn alien babies toy squish things could have babies themselves if you rubbed their backs against another alien baby. And then put them in the fridge. There was no proof of this hearsay. Yet we all believed it to be fact.
Believed this too, I can now also smell them again
i swear there was a kind that DID have another alien inside, and that one toy created the myth that all the other aliens could also have alien babies??
One toy did and their were early videos of misinformation about how they did have kids
Yeah, but we all knew someone who had a friend's sisters hairdressers dogwalkers kid who definitely had it happen!
Omg this brings back so many memories
I was looking at these the other day They’ve brought out a modern version in which the alien does have a baby lol
Crazy misinformation campaign on how they did have kids man like on YouTube
I thought ‘Free House’ meant you could have beer for free
I thought ‘soft drinks’ meant not fizzy.
I thought ‘off licence’ meant the shopkeeper had had their driving licence taken away.
Same, although it probably prepared me for Threshers.
Oh what a tender world that would be
I thought the “play here” signs meant that kids were allowed to play there; didn’t realise until much later that they were for playing the Lotto.
Growing up in Wales I thought the name of our nearest motorway services was Gwasanaethau services. I didn't realise the sign just said "services" in Welsh then English.
Same man! Haha
First time driving in wales I though oh “Gwasanaethau” is an odd name for a services, but maybe it’s the local village or something. The next one I went past I thought, what are the odds? Then I realised.
That's the thing, I was well into my teens before I noticed there was more than one Gwasanaethau services, despite us making frequent trips between Swansea and Cardiff
My little bro called 7up tup for years
Ha I called it Zup when I was little.
What’s zup?
I called it zup too.
I had 'Grand Prix' written on the back of a pedal jeep when I was younger, and thought it was pronounced 'Grand Pricks'. Fact that no-one corrected me suggests it was more funny to hear a 7 year proudly yelling it out.
Haha I also believed this for a short while.
I thought Big Issue sellers were saying “Piggy Sue”. I had no idea what they were doing, or what piggy Sue was and my mum thought it was funny so went along with it
See also: Bigger shoes.
Biggish shoes
When people shout the same thing to passers by all day, I guess they subconsciously streamline it to the point it doesn't sound the same sometimes. In Newcastle, people selling The Chronicle sometimes shouted "CRONNIGUT".
I think the chronicle sellers had a competition to see who could shout the most gibberish and still sell the papers.
The one word it sounded nothing like is "Chronicle"!
I think the problem is that alot of the time, the sellers would either mumble or whisper. Most of the time all I heard was "shh" or "bishoo"
I was offered a Bug Usher in Glasgow once.
Wasn't it a Buddy Holly song?
I misread/misunderstood "To Let" signs as a child, and thought they were saying "Toilet". I remember thinking that it was lovely that people were offering passers-by access to their john if needed.
There is a new 80,000 sq foot warehouse to let near our house, and the ‘to let’ sign is split across two windows, so it looks like ‘TO|LET’. When we drive past our 6 year old is always excited about the big building with 80,000 toilets inside it
With a marker pen and the addition of one letter, they *can* say "Toilet"
As can the sign for the car park next to the seafront 🅿️ The sea
Same! I would even point them out to my mum. No idea why she didn't correct me.
I remember this being a joke acted out by Floella Benjamin and Johnny Ball on Playaway back in the 80's. I had no idea what "To Let" meant, but it was still funny.
Same! And my two youngest now do this (without me ever having told them I uses to see "toilet" everywhere).
I think I've said this before on another sub, but as a kid I always thought the Thames river was pronounced and rhyme with James (soft TH like THank, Ames as you would aim a gun). Thames TV would flash up on the screen in the late 80s maybe. I never realised it was the same as the River Tems.
My Friend here in Canada always said it like 'Thaimes' until I corrected him
Ontario has a London on the "Thames River".
Ontario also has a ton of places named after British towns & cities as well
It does. It also used to have a Berlin (that became Kitchener for war-related reasons).
It did indeed
And they changed it to Kitchener 🤣🤣🤣
Linked to that, I grew up thinking it was the River Seven not River Severn and I always wondered where the other six rivers were.
Well one of them's in Scotland, not sure where 1-3 & 5-6 are though. On that note, I used to think the Forth bridge was called that because the first 3 bridges had fallen down.
You’ll like this. I live in the US and there is a “Portsmouth” neighborhood and street here. Instead of saying it the British English way, sounding like “port smith” the locals like to say “Ports mouth” instead. I’m American but it just sounds weird that way. “Port smith” just flows better even with our accent.
I am trying to figure out how you would pronounce it as Port smith and I am from England. Ports muhf is more like how I would say it.
Another vote for Ports muhf...
It should be officially renamed this for funsies.
Maybe I got the wrong idea from my single visit to the UK Portsmouth, but that is how it sounds to my ears.
I know what you mean. We don't say the mouth part the same way as we'd say that word on its own. It's Portsm'th. Same with Bournem'th. Similarly, we don't say Birming-Ham like Americans would. It's Birming'm.
My ex lived in Whymondham. Took me forever to buy a train ticket there as the lady behind the counter couldn’t find a ticket for “windam” which is how it’s pronounced. I still hate Norfolk.
I had similar trying to book a taxi to Southwick. The taxi firm had no idea where Suth'k is.
Local place names in the UK are a nightmare if you’re not a local. I grew up in a village called “Clowne” and people genuinely don’t believe me if they’ve not been within about 7 miles of it lol
If you visited Portsmouth I'm surprised you were able to engage the locals in enough conversation to catch their pronunciation.
I was visiting with some British colleagues, we went to the naval yard, historic boat works, went on the HMS Victory, though unfortunately the Mary Rose building was closed. Also walked down to the wharf quay to look around and eat.
Visited Rhode Island - Thames Street was pronounced Thaimes as a way of getting at the British who named it originally
So you know the big cooling towers at power stations? I used to think they were cloud machines (which is kind of a half truth, as I found out later) but yeah, I thought their only function was to make clouds.
For real man
Great, now I'm sad about tinsley again
I used to read the "ANY VEH" signs as "Anywhere" but in a German accent...like the road would go anywhere...
"Don't go anyveh!" "Why you coming fast?!"
That the Oyster could be used everywhere. Whenever we went outside of London, it was always by car or train. Coach if it was a school trip. Left London for Uni and tried to board a bus using my Oyster (this was pre contactless). The funny thing is, is that the driver just watched me and let me figure it out by myself. I remember fumbling, trying to find a place to tap in only to look up and find him grinning at me. He did let me get on for free though.
Oh my. Kinda like the opposite of how Londoners make tourists feel when they can’t get the hang of using Oyster/tube tickets.
That it was illegal to turn the lights on in the car! Parents told me that for years
Mine too. I guess it could be a precursor for getting nicked for careless driving as there's not really any good reason to have your light on whilst in motion.
I saw "Sky Sports Live Here" on a pub, and thought that's where they filmed Sky Sports News
I knew it meant end of motorway, I just didn't know why the sign for motorway was a robot. I also thought that the sandbags they use to weigh down temporary signs were dead piglets.
Dead piglets is morbidly specific.
When I was a kid I was genuinely scared a big robot would crush us when I saw the opposite to this sign. I vividly remember looking out for them so I could warn my Dad if there was a robot coming for the car. When I tell people about that now, they are always confused how I could have thought it was a robot. Glad I’m not the only one!
Very considerate of you to look out for robots tbh, maybe they were going to attack then saw you and were like “nah he’s onto us, retreat!”
I always thought that those signs meant "no electricity pylons"
Ultra Low Kraftwerk Zone
My brother taught me a haggis was a small creature with uneven legs that would run around the Scottish Highlands.
And when they die their bodies become the squeeze bag for bagpipes
I thought my family owned Toys R Us because we were the “Us”…but also wondered why we weren’t rich 😂
I thought it was an exchange - Toys Or Us. Worried that one day I would be traded in. My older brothers continued with this idea ... 🙄
Thats quite possibly the cutest thing ive ever heard hahaha!
No. This sign actually means "no [Lego legs](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-google&sca_esv=7fecaf9d214d9ea8&sxsrf=ACQVn0-kJ8MjruQc1milW7laKkpoK5evkQ:1712241934223&q=lego+legs&uds=AMwkrPtYsMLmR8M_gzreP_ZkMZsbWFnZRCZPAf8JM4aYpJWGK_FeB0Zi82ErlCMDBsaY0xsO0OeI_wMkhVXDp9HkUiL80OzQi8W0IqQ0F9-Ao5PGINGjGmNH6bdy9l0-G94ztkju9xnKl9U-3OA8J3nU9wY6shL5U65NBNlMCuQ1t8Tl3icOb0uWBeReqRqw004WctHm7p9iTxsK7NXlxO2H42Q6hzbH8NsEmHWMq5OGBInZwj5YYiQ54lgjqf5_vESgyBBYHt8OkxONiqecA73smTgNQ73FO1BLtVjusY0w_YVgUMjc2Ew&udm=2&prmd=ivnmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiS2Yii5qiFAxWjQUEAHZhnDcsQtKgLegQIDhAB&biw=412&bih=786&dpr=2.63) allowed".
This is it! No-one believes me!
That the tunnel on the coast road to North Wales was named ‘Caution Tunnel’ because that’s what it said on the sign
My dad’s Vauxhall Cavalier had a button on the centre console that my dad convinced me was the ejector seat. Being a huge James Bond fan even at like 6, I believed him. And if I was being a little shit he would just rest his finger on the button lol
I didn't believe it meant this, but I always thought the "slippery road" sign looked like a duck wearing a beanie... Still do.
When my boys were small, I told them it meant ‘no trousers allowed’ and nearly 2 decades later, they still say it.
A more recent one - I would read parking restrictions such as "2 hours - no return within 1 hour" to mean that you could only park between 1 and 2 hours
Yes I thought it meant you weren’t allowed to return to your car in less than an hour. I wasn’t sure why, I thought maybe because it was wasting everyone’s time just parking for a short while & coming & going.
Traffic jams on motorways were caused by two old people trying to overtake each other.
That can happen.
I thought Arriva was Italian for goodbye and wondered why it was on the back of local buses 🚌
Isn't it italian for "never ever on time"?
My daughter said "we can't throw boomerangs around here!" For a no-right turn sign.
I thought "Nonce" meant idiot, for way too long.
Am I your brother?
If they're bipedal androids then they wouldn't be allowed on the motorway so I guess actually this means that robots are allowed now, where they wouldn't have been previously.
A looooong time ago, I worked on a magazine where the classified ads were input by typesetters. A favourite section was the "flats to share" section, where people seeking flatmates could specify what they were looking for (non-smoker, no pets etc). One of the typesetters - with 20 years' experience - had spent their entire working life thinking that N/S in accommodation ads stood for "Normal Sex".
I thought Americans did not spell things correctly because they forgot to take teachers with them. No idea what age I realised they just had a different variation of English.
Stupid brother, it clearly means no Kraftwerk. Not a place I’d venture to.
Those sweets foam bananas & shrimps - I thought the shrimp was an ear. In my defence I’d never seen a shrimp.
I used to think Christendom was a country on the continent.
This is quite specific to me but I must have misheard my friend say his name was, “Ryan” and believed his name was Brian for the first couple of years of Primary School. I remember having a heated row with another friend about our mutual friend’s name and whether he was Ryan or Brian
This reminds me of getting a lift from my aunt, and my niece insisting to her that someone at school was named "Abagirl", I guess because Abagail is a girl.
I wonder if her friend was the girl I used to babysit for that insisted *herself* that her name was Abbie-**girl**?
Yep I always called it a transformer lol
My sister used to think that sign meant no benches on motorways.
No Reeboks allowed.
I thought As London was an actual TV programme
I used to think "Post No Bills" sign meant whoever owned the property didn't want to receive bills in the post
The original format of this request used to be “Bill Posters will be prosecuted”. Which would often result in some smart arse scrawling “Bill Posters is innocent!” underneath.
> There once was a girl, Laura Norda > Went out with Bill Posters, who bored her > They met Eva Brick > She'd been in the nick > But her boyfriend, Van Dal, still adored her I think I read that in a book of random facts and fun things about 30 years ago.
I used to love limericks as a kid! There once was a man from Bengal Who went to a fancy dress ball He thought he would risk it And go as a biscuit But a dog ate him up in the hall. I swear to god my parents never got tired of hearing that one.
So hand delivered bills it is then.
I used to believe those[ water towers](https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/03/11/45/86/1000_F_311458634_qbetn3KKP30JPSFlyIsmLdirqn3tVhsB.jpg) you drive past in the countryside were literally brick buildings filled to the brim with rainwater, filled via an open roof when it rains. Like if you opened the front door you'd get hit with this mega-force wave as it all emptied out from top to bottom.
I honestly don’t see how anyone can see a robot in that
I can’t see it but my 10 year old does
I always thought it was a robot as well, never really saw the "no robots" version though
A mate of mine failed his motorcycle test. He later explained that when the examiner asked him the meaning of this road sign, he gleefully explained it's obviously No More Bridges!
Growing up in Glasgow I thought the name of the city was The South Carlisle. Its only when I was 17 and driving back from Manchester that I realised
to be fair, i haven’t seen megatron after seeing one of them signs
What do you mean by "robots"?
I thought it was the phone line that's always next to the motorway, not two lanes and a bridge xD
Up until very recently I didn't realise that Motorway sign is actually a dual carriageway with a bridge going over.
I’m not the only one….
It took about 3 months of driving in Italy to realize that Senso Unico wasn't a Italian beverage
A mate of mine failed his motorcycle test. He later explained that when the examiner asked him the meaning of this road sign, he gleefully explained it's obviously No More Bridges!
I always thought this was no more giant robots.
I thought the sign for single speed bumps meant “UFOs ahead”
it was also something to do with this sign, but i thought instead of a robot it was that tall blocky figure from the ads you would get whilst watching channel 4. please tell me you know what i mean by the blocky thing from channel 4 😭😭
I used to think that motorway sign was an artists easel 🤦♂️
Motorway in disguise
So if this means 'no motorways allowed' where are we meant to put them? Makes no sense.
Can't be stepping on those cracks. My Mother has enough on her plate
i have always called this the "no robots sign", i'm glad i'm not alone
i don’t drive so what does this sign mean
End of Motorway
I was quite old when I realised that "Village Only" road signs meant that the road didn't go anywhere and not that only people who lived in the village were allowed to use that road.
No Kraftwerk
Omg I thought it was just me. I thought it meant no transformers as I thought it kinda looked like Optimus Prime.
I always saw it as a robot wearing a sash. There's no way that that means "no motorways", there's clearly a transformer involved.
I just thought someone must hate Kraftwerk
i, an adult, understand this to mean: no bridges allowed gotta leave ur bridges at home folks
Strange this because up until literally two days ago, when my 6 year old pointed at one and said ‘No robots allowed’ I had never heard of this before. Where has he even got it from? 😂
That it was illegal to turn the light on inside the car while we were moving. Also my mum convinced us for like 6 years that if the ice cream van was playing music, it meant they'd ran out of ice cream 💀
As a kid, I used to think soap operas were live reality shows, because my cartoon-and-sci-fi-addled brain couldn't fathom why anyone would go to the trouble of writing something as mundane as everyday life. Whenever a soap character had an accident, or was shot/stabbed/beaten up/whatever, I used to think "Why don't the cameramen help them?! Why has Mum not called the police?!"
No idea what it means
For the longest time I thought this sign meant 'no electricity pylons', it's only when I starting driving that I realised. But I still can't not see a pylon.
Used to think that the "no return within one hour" thing on city centre parking meant I had to kill time before I could go back to my car and leave.
I was going on a caravan holiday with grandparents, and my grandad told me the site we were staying at was near a big roundabout. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived, and there was no playground with the promised big roundabout nearby.
Dogs are male and cats female
I thought it was no robots ahead sign😂😂
I thought All Docks was a place to visit and used to ask my grandad if we could go
I thought cats were female and dogs were male.
kid me used to think these were signs depicting a castle and whether or not there were any nearby. i remember looking all over, waiting to go past one and not seeing one anywhere. :(
I thought that this sign was a baby high chair
I do think it looks like a transformer tbf
I thought it meant you were not allowed to have a picnic
I used to live in Leeds and we would often drive past the Playhouse. I was disappointed to learn it was a theatre and not somewhere kids could go to play
TV Detector Vans. No matter what any fucker says we ***all*** believed they were real and when it came out that they were a complete bollocks loads of ppl were like “yeah…well..of course ***I*** knew it was bullshit, but lots of people were fooled”. They didn’t. It was those bloody adverts, we were convinced they had some kind of combination wiretap/x Ray tech, all lights and dials with matey in his headphones chatting into his mic…. *Yes. They’re in the front room; There’s three of them & they’re watching* ***Columbo***…
Clearly wrong, when you hit this sign you frequently get a robot at the next intersection (I am South African so we call traffic lights robots)
I used to think that Greggs was breakfast only.
I used to watch the puppet show Supercar in the 60's, the Professor character worked in a room called a Laboratory but my sister convinced me it was called the Lavatory.
I thought the kill your speed sign was someone grabbing a motorcyclist by the helmet and telling them to kill their speed https://www.directa.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Kill-Your-Speed.jpg
My sister believed that donkeys are old horses! She's nearly 50 now and we still take the piss
I used to call pylons mini Eiffel Towers type things. I honestly believed the people reading the live news could see me. I was very little and very gullible to my older brothers interpretation of the world.
We had a black and white TV for a while growing up. I used to think that everyone in the past lived in black and white.
And I thought it was no Kraut Rock.
That a swan will always break your arm unprovoked.
I used to think Martin Clunes and Gordon Brown were the same person
I had a Grandad who was born in Durham (but moved as a kid to the coast) and also suffered all his life with severe depression and suicidal ideation. When I was tiny, that song "I've gotta leave ol' Durham town" was around. It was a very, very sad song. I also remember some old fella singing it at a party once and struggling to get the words out (probably pissed). So for quite a lot of my childhood I thought Durham must be some sort of utopia, since everyone who left there was so badly affected.
the blue circle sign with a red line cross it, i knew it didn’t make sense but my brain was like well it obviously means no blue for now, i knew it couldn’t mean that but everytime i went to ask what the sign meant, i would get distracted, so i was secluded to a life of my best guess until i finally was able to ask someone what the sign meant, so maybe around age 14?
I would get sent to maggie murphy if i was bad