50s/60s Britain and Now

[Reorte]

3 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

For some inexplicable reason we used to get them for a Chinese Takeaway in Leicester.  I used to put on a faux Chinese voice and take the orders if the person on the other end became shirty.

The type of people who decide that they can't have got the wrong number and it must be you being awkward for insisting that you're not who they say you are?

Edited April 20, 2020 by Reorte

[tomparryharry]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

 

 

 ...................wearing a black cloak and carrying an hourglass and a scythe...

 

 

 

In my dream, it's a long-legged woman wearing a black cloak and carrying an hourglass figure and a scythe*

 

* Scythe is optional. Thigh-high high heel leather boots are also optional, but recommended. 

Edited April 20, 2020 by tomparryharry
Poor Grammar, again.

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

The type of people who decide that they can't have got the wrong number and it must be you being awkward for insisting that you're not who they say you are?

 

They then berate you for answering the phone to a wrong number!

 

Mik.

[Phil Traxson]

4 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

The skin off the rice pudding, oh yes.

Caraway seed cake. 
Billy Smarts' Circus on Blackheath 

Spangles. Yes, I remember, but I wasn't too fussed about those. 

Getting off the train at Brighton, and getting the full aroma of the seaside. 

Raining at Ramsgate. It always rained when we went there!

 

Cream soda? Yes, we had R. Whites, with a blue label. (Or, was it Corona?)

Greengage jam.

ABC Saturday pictures.

Airfix kits suspended with cotton on my bedroom ceiling.

 

Memory has the capability to reach out over the years, and touch you on the shoulder. 

Fortunately, for me, my sister still makes Caraway seed cake to my mums old recipe, and the skin off rice pudding used to have ground nutmeg on it and the greengage jam was home made with fruit from a tree growing in grandad's hen run at the bottom of the garden. Mmm, mouthwatering subject. 

[tomparryharry]

Rowntrees fruit pastilles, and Rowntrees fruit gums.  The gums? proper false teeth removers!

[Nearholmer]

Party ‘phone lines?

 

Maybe that was actually the 70s, thinking about when we got one, but interesting listening to Mrs L next door gossiping to her pals.

 

When our chimney caught fire sometime in the 60s, I got sent to run to the ‘phone box, while my mother looked after they little ones’. All very exciting!

 

Fruit gums and pastilles came in boxes, but only when our grandmother visited, because she used to buy them at Waterloo on the way between the SW and SE stations

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, Reorte said:

The type of people who decide that they can't have got the wrong number and it must be you being awkward for insisting that you're not who they say you are?

Dem's de fellas, to be sure, begorrah, the wee divils.

 

3 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

 

In my dream, it's a long-legged woman wearing a black cloak and carrying an hourglass figure and a scythe*

 

* Scythe is optional. Thigh-high high heel leather boots are also optional, but recommended. 

You've been watching those Elvira videos again, haven't you.  Wearing thigh leather boots and a cloak, but that's all...

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

When our chimney caught fire sometime in the 60s, I got sent to run to the ‘phone box, while my mother looked after they little ones’. All very exciting!

My childhood home was on the side of a small valley, and my mate Tim lived the other side of it about ¼ mile away; we could signal each other from our bedroom windows.  He rang me up one evening (we were middle class so we had phones, this was about 1966) to say there was a chimney fire somewhere by me.  You know what's coming next; it was our chimney!  Fire brigade put it out easily enough, they'd obviously done this before and had a routine.  Before anyone says, we had it cleaned every year (ooh, that's another 50s/60s one, going outside to see the chimney sweep's brush appearing from the chimney pot).  

 

That was the last of our coal fires and father went out and ordered central heating the following day.

[pH]

We had our first phone installed in the mid-1950s. The work was finished about midday. The first call made on the phone, a couple of hours later, was a 999 call for an ambulance. A woman walking past on the street had collapsed outside our front gate. 

[Philou]

The Rowntree Fruit Gums in the boxes were fruit shaped - and more expensive - normally outside my pocket money range, whereas the rolls had the same flavours, but more affordable. Talking of rolls, are Rolos still available? Oooh ooh and Jargonel Pear Drops, Sherbert Pips, Everton Mix ........ yeah I spent a lot of time in Mrs Pascalls' sweet shop on the corner of City Road and St Peter's Street on my way home - I have the gaps and fillings to show for it!!!!

 

There was a 'pop' factory at the back of my grandparents house in Coronation Road (not Street - I have a tale to tell about that too) - I don't remember whether it was Corona or Lowes - but it caught fire and of course all the lemonade got over heated and made for some spectacular mini-explosions.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[TheQ]

I know the personal phone line number of the Marquis of Bath... 

Why? 

Because if you swap the last two digits over you got my late grandparents.. A 6 and 8. They moved nearby to Longleat in the late 1960s, when grandad retired from being a ganger.. 

 

Yes I remember the sweeps brush sticking out of the chimney,  I can't  do that now..

A, because I'm on the end of the rods, I do my own chimney. 

B,  because I fitted cowls,  because I was fed up with stupid pigeons falling down the chimney. 

 

My great grandparents had one of the first phones in the village,  but they were the local coal merchants.

 

And the phone here when we arrived in 1999 still said on the paper label, in the middle of the rotary dial,    village name , 3 digit phone number. 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by TheQ

[Reorte]

5 hours ago, tomparryharry said:

 

In my dream, it's a long-legged woman wearing a black cloak and carrying an hourglass figure and a scythe*

 

* Scythe is optional. Thigh-high high heel leather boots are also optional, but recommended. 

Susan?

[57xx]

16 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Susan?

 

At least it's not the rat...

[pH]

20 minutes ago, Philou said:

There was a 'pop' factory at the back of my grandparents house in Coronation Road (not Street - I have a tale to tell about that too) - I don't remember whether it was Corona or Lowes - but it caught fire and of course all the lemonade got over heated and made for some spectacular mini-explosions.

 

A corner shop near where we lived use to store crates of aerated waters outside at the back. (I wonder what health inspectors would say about that now!) The back of the shop faced south. One very hot summer's day, the bottles started going off. With each bang producing flying glass, and the explosions being random, there was no way that anyone could get to the crates to move them. They just had to be left till the sun set and they cooled down. 

[57xx]

5 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

They then berate you for answering the phone to a wrong number!

 

Yup, had one of those. He was getting very aggressive, I was just enjoying winding him up more. He even went as far as physically threatening me as he "knew where I lived". Pointing out he couldn't even dial a phone number correctly so it was extremely unlikely he could even find my house let alone his figure out his @rse from his elbow got him even more woud up. A few "yo mama" type insults finally broke him.

[rockershovel]

One of my experiences of food in my travels, is that “authenticity” is greatly over-rated. I’ve seen a lot of things on my plate that could charitably be described as “challenging”, extending to “perfectly foul” with a generous sprinkling of “stringy”, “less than fresh” and “SOMEONE will eat it”. 

 

Italian pipelay barges tend to be notably disappointing that way. West Africa seems to specialise in vegetables which will undoubtedly be eaten eventually, by someone. If there’s a Russian word for “chef”, there shouldn’t be...

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by rockershovel

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

When our chimney caught fire sometime in the 60s, I got sent to run to the ‘phone box, while my mother looked after they little ones’. All very exciting!

When I was young it was not unknown for people to deliberately set fire to a sooty chimney to save the cost of a sweep!

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Party ‘phone lines?

 

 

Don't they start 09XXX?

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

Susan?

 

Only when she can't get out of it....

 

The "Family Values" portrait has the boots to a T.  And the rat, and Quoth.

[rockershovel]

I don’t recall party phone lines in the UK, although I do recall being amazed and intrigued by them, visiting family in the US. 

[peach james]

6 hours ago, Philou said:

The Rowntree Fruit Gums in the boxes were fruit shaped - and more expensive - normally outside my pocket money range, whereas the rolls had the same flavours, but more affordable. Talking of rolls, are Rolos still available? Oooh ooh and Jargonel Pear Drops, Sherbert Pips, Everton Mix ........ yeah I spent a lot of time in Mrs Pascalls' sweet shop on the corner of City Road and St Peter's Street on my way home - I have the gaps and fillings to show for it!!!!

 

 

 

I can get both here -or could in December.  A bit expensive as "import", but even Wal-Mart carries them in bags.

 

James

[tomparryharry]

6 hours ago, melmerby said:

When I was young it was not unknown for people to deliberately set fire to a sooty chimney to save the cost of a sweep!

 

I'm restoring a house which has had a chimney fire in the past. The damage was extensive, and what's worse, suffered a load of bodged repairs. 

[St Enodoc]

12 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Party ‘phone lines?

 

Maybe that was actually the 70s, thinking about when we got one, but interesting listening to Mrs L next door gossiping to her pals.

 

When our chimney caught fire sometime in the 60s, I got sent to run to the ‘phone box, while my mother looked after they little ones’. All very exciting!

 

Fruit gums and pastilles came in boxes, but only when our grandmother visited, because she used to buy them at Waterloo on the way between the SW and SE stations

Ah, sweets at stations...

 

Payne's Poppets from the machines on the Tube (any relation K?)

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Payne's Poppets from the machines on the Tube (any relation K?)

 

Payne's Poppets were also a popular item at cinemas, when you only went to see the film and not spend money on vastly overpriced popcorn, soft drinks and mix-n-match sweets. 

 

And when did you last go to a cinema with an INTERMISSION, with salesgirls walking up and down the aisles offering tubs of icecream and foil topped cups of orange drink from a tray to fortify you through the second half?

 

I can't remember the film now, but the cinema in Hexham had an intermission, and that was less than a decade ago...

 

 

[Nearholmer]

4 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

(any relation K?)

If there is, it never ensured a lifetime’s free supply which, when we were boys, we always thought it ought to.

 

Waterloo always seemed very special to me, what with a WHS where you could buy Ian Allan postscards, The Combined Volume, Gomm enamel badges etc etc.

[BigMal]

9 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I don’t recall party phone lines in the UK, although I do recall being amazed and intrigued by them, visiting family in the US. 

Remember having a party phone line in the early 60s until the phone company installed enough new cabling to enable us to all have separate lines.