Jump to content
 

Recommended Posts

11 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

No one here has cracked a funny since 1983

 

I have to take issue with that.  From my viewpoint on the far side of the sphere, the tragically late John Clarke used to hit the spot as frequently as anything we have to offer:

 

The front fell off.

 

and your Honest Government advertisements can be applied almost anywhere in the world with the names suitably changed.

 

After the fires.

 

I think we're still awaiting an apology for Paul Hogan, though. 

 

Whatever happened to Bob Downe?  I saw him twice at the Edinburgh Festival in about 1990 and thought he was hilarious, then he seemed to disappear.

 

  • Like 2
  • Funny 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Well at least you apparently had enough comedy gold to get a volume 2.

 

No one here has cracked a funny since 1983, which is why Australiana by Austen Tayshus is still our biggest ever selling single, knocking Shaddap  ya face from its comedy throne.

 

 

As a somewhat cynical Australian I must tell you that we have long lost that fine concept of subtlety that was present in Mr Tayshus' humour. These days it is so unspeakably pure that it aims towards the socially aware or, as one likes to think the "I've discovered something to be really shocked about" crowd. There is a word for these people and it rhymes with bankers.

 

However search youtube for Kevin Bloody Wilson if you want quintessential no holds barred anti PC Australian humour. 

 

 

What can one say? - however in my archaeological survey days I regularly worked out of prospecting camps where Kevin was top of the pops and it really does liven up the sheer mind numbing, hot as hell, fly blown boredom of the great Australian outback as a place to be working for months on end, even if the ice cold fizzy amber liquid flowed freely :jester:   

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Kevin Bloody Wilson if you want quintessential no holds barred anti PC Australian humour.

 

Oh, yes.   I saw him live in Cambridge about 30 years ago and the memory still brings a chuckle.   Funnily enough, my then girlfriend who was about as right on and aware (I suppose we'd say 'woke' now) as they came was the person who introduced me to his work.

  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:
16 hours ago, wagonman said:

Mr Coward obviously never tried to cycle from Cley to Blakeney on the A149.


My limited experience of the A149 on a bike suggest he’d be dead by now if he had, not from exhaustion but as just another piece of road-kill.

That and very old age...

  • Funny 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, it did occur to me afterwards that he’d already expired some considerable time ago, but I couldn’t work out how to turn it into an “historic hypothetical” sentence, because I left primary school way before the Govification of the curriculum.

  • Like 1
  • Funny 2
  • Friendly/supportive 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

prospecting camps where Kevin was top of the pops 

Yes, I worked at a few oil and gas seismic survey camps in the Cooper and Eromanga basins in the 80s where  I learned all I need to know about swearing.

 

And getting gastric when the guy in charge of getting the water from a nearby waterhole would drop the pump nozzle on top of the body of a dead sheep floating in it.

 

Speaking about waterholes, how come any post  about German spies landing on the English coast and that JA picture pops up straight away, yet here Malcolm and I have spent over 1100 pages setting up the opportunity to mention outback waterholes and it goes straight through to the keeper..

Edited by monkeysarefun
  • Round of applause 1
  • Funny 3
  • Friendly/supportive 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

But back then Leonis Britannica would have given Ursus Muscovidia a punch on the snoot, solving the problem. Things don't work that way nowadays.

 

Edited by Hroth
Ushual spelin...
  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Hroth said:

But back then Leonis Britannica would have given Ursus Muscovidia a punch on the snoot, solving the problem. Things don't work that way nowadays.

 

Although that affair in the Crimea wasn't exactly an unalloyed success all told.

  • Agree 5
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
2 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

Although that affair in the Crimea wasn't exactly an unalloyed success all told.

 

It had a number of useful outcomes, none of which were directly related to the military or political objectives.

 

Where would we be without the cardigan, balaclava, or Florence Nightingale?

  • Like 3
  • Agree 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, webbcompound said:

Although that affair in the Crimea wasn't exactly an unalloyed success all told.

 

The Crimean war was fought on the basis of the Napoleonic war. Battlefield technology was beginning to shift, but tactics were still firmly wedded to 40 years previously. We should be thankful that machine guns weren't around then; The Infamous Charge would have been even bloodier.

 

Britain could afford to throw its weight about on the battlefield against the Russians back then.  We're not in that position nowadays, the best we can do is speak sharply and hope that we can hold the hackers off.

 

  • Like 1
  • Friendly/supportive 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Dug out Tiny Signs GWR "Poster Boards" and some posters.  They seem to conform to Kevin's Double Elephant.

 

Thank you all.

These are the Southern Railway's instructions for putting up posters from the 1934 General Appendix.  After the period, and I suspect intended to rein in the worst excesses of the pre-Great War period when it comes to publicity.

SR poster regs 1934.pdf

  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

These are the Southern Railway's instructions for putting up posters from the 1934 General Appendix.  After the period, and I suspect intended to rein in the worst excesses of the pre-Great War period when it comes to publicity.

SR poster regs 1934.pdf 1.17 MB · 4 downloads

 

Poster boards headed for the big four are often seen at each other's stations. I need to do some digging around to see if the practice prevailed pre-Grouping. I expect not to any great extent, except at shared junctions or on joint lines - I think I've seen photos of CLC stations with poster boards for the Midland, Great Central, and Great Northern. Once the working agreements of 1908 onwards between the Midland and LNWR were in force, there was certainly some sharing of advertising as well as joint "town" receiving and ticket offices. I suppose similar arrangements would have been made between the Great Central, Great Northern, and Great Eastern once they reached their working agreement - 1909?

 

Googling around, I've just come across the Sankey Scenics pre-grouping poster range. I can't say if their boards are the correct sizes but I would presume the posters are reproduced at the correct size. Looking at the "Northern" set of posters there are a number I recognise - more 1910s - post Great War than Edwardian.

Edited by Compound2632
  • Like 2
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Poster boards headed for the big four are often seen at each other's stations. I need to do some digging around to see if the practice prevailed pre-Grouping. I expect not to any great extent, except at shared junctions or on joint lines - I think I've seen photos of CLC stations with poster boards for the Midland, Great Central, and Great Northern. Once the working agreements of 1908 onwards between the Midland and LNWR were in force, there was certainly some sharing of advertising as well as joint "town" receiving and ticket offices. I suppose similar arrangements would have been made between the Great Central, Great Northern, and Great Eastern once they reached their working agreement - 1909?

 

Googling around, I've just come across the Sankey Scenics pre-grouping poster range. I can't say if their boards are the correct sizes but I would presume the posters are reproduced at the correct size. Looking at the "Northern" set of posters there are a number I recognise - more 1910s - post Great War than Edwardian.

This photo, taken, I think at Bexhill, shows that in Edwardian days "foreign" poster boards were common. Visible are LNWR, GNR, GWR and Midland poster boards, with a hefty over-dose of GWR! It's interesting to note that there doesn't seem to be any consistency regarding size, and whoever installed them seems to have had a free rein.  There are timber strips set within the brickwork, and it seems the boards are fixed to them in the most secure way.

 

image.png.2f89b6fe43b29c0f70c4634d23c745d4.png

  • Like 5
  • Informative/Useful 5
Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, I recall seeing foreign boards fairly often in pictures.  I think it likely that competitors' boards would not be welcome, where uncomfortable neighbours or vying for the same destinations.  Other companies that can provide onward connections for your passengers, are probably more welcome.  It's nothing to the Brighton whether you go to Scotland up the left or the right of the map, or, indeed, straight up the middle!

 

Thank you for the tip about Sankey Scenics.  I have contacted them to see if they would produce a set of WNR boards.

 

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

No. 81 lost the name Beulah in September 1905, according the Brighton Circle's website, providing a convenient terminus ante quem for that photo.

 

I read that Beulah was used by Bunyan and Blake  "as the name of a mystical place, somewhere between Earth and Heaven" which I suppose does put it somewhere in Surrey along with several of its classmates.

 

Could anybody actually read that Great Northern timetable?

 

 

  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
  • Funny 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

The hallmark of the countryside, in my experience, is that it's generally covered in sh1t.

 

As are the towns and cities...  and less able to soak away to recycle, due to the concrete / tarmac and other soil coverings.

 

Pigeons  in the street, you take it with you on your shoes and off the public benches we sit upon.  

 

Pigeon shits on the field it's feeding on, you keep your shoes clean and the guano makes useful fertiliser.  Same story with the town rats, rooks, foxes, beetles, mice, sparrows etc too.  Oh, yes and even more so with the domestic dogs and cats.

 

Julian

 

  • Friendly/supportive 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Beulah Hill is very near Crystal Palace, in fact the hill with Crystal Palace on it might originally have been the crest of Beulah Hill, I’m not sure, so it probably was in Surrey once. Typical Brighton practice of naming locos for the places they might work (like Lake Como).

 

’The Norwood Builder’ must be set on Beulah Hill, because it was the detached-villa part of Norwood, called Upper Norwood. Remember how Holmes solves that one?

 

EDIT: I'm wrong again - I just checked and The Norwood Builder's house is explicitly in Lower Norwood, which is a pointed distinction. I'm sure Sir AC-D was inspired by a very ornate builder's yard premises that is a bit of a landmark as the train trundles through Norwood Junction, over a bridge that once collapsed under a train (cast iron girders).

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Informative/Useful 4
Link to post
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Malcolm and I have spent over 1100 pages setting up the opportunity to mention outback waterholes and it goes straight through to the keeper..

I'm prepared to nick one that hopefully flies between slips and gully....

2248.jpg.35abd31ec45d202b394bd323dd797032.jpg

Alan

  • Like 3
  • Craftsmanship/clever 1
  • Round of applause 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, jcredfer said:

 

Oh, yes and even more so with the domestic dogs and cats.

 

Julian

 

 

Dogs yes, but cats are more particular. My then girlfriend had an urban cat who appreciated indoor 'plumbing' – she would spend the morning in the garden before coming inside to defecate (in her allotted space) then promptly going out again. This was her normal behaviour. Perhaps it's only London cats who are so house trained?

Edited by wagonman
  • Friendly/supportive 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

I once had a cat that worked out from observation what a WC was for and could use it while perching on the seat. He was once accidentally left in the house while we were out all day, and when we got home he'd left a deposit in the bath (I guess he couldn't lift the lid of the loo).

 

Upshot was the best primary school news-book entry ever, by by now grown-up elder daughter: "The cat did a poo in the bath and my mum said nothing!", accompanied by a drawing that made the cat look like set of tartan bagpipes producing a small, brown richard the third.

  • Like 1
  • Funny 9
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...