50s/60s Britain and Now

[iL Dottore]

6 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Nobody's mentioned music or football ..........

Well, if I must....

 

I’ve never been much of a footie fan (preferring “to do” rather than “to watch” in matters sporting), but the old chestnut “football is game played by gentlemen and watched by hooligans, rugby is game played by hooligans and watched by gentlemen” was much more of a truism back then. Of what I recall of interviews with, or stories about, footballers from those days was that whatever their foibles or weaknesses, they certainly didn’t have that Prima-Donna attitude present in today’s players; Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton spring to mind (I think the rot started with George Best). And whilst on matters sporting, does anyone recall the Professional Wrestling? (usually broadcast from somewhere like the <Slipper Baths, Camberwell>) Theatre as sport!!  My maternal Grandfather was a devoted watcher of Grandstand, I wasn’t much interested in the programme, but I can still recall the opening credits and theme music! Probably because it was always on before Dr Who on Saturdays.

Which brings me nicely to “music”. My family was more classical oriented, musically, than modern (probably as the maternal side were all involved in Ballet in one way or another) so my exposure to “popular music” came from the TV - one abiding memory being that of the 4 Beatles being on Juke Box Jury. (Your Host: David Jacobs) and one of their songs being played. I distinctly remember one of them saying (in broad Scouse - a TV novelty then) something along the lines of “they’re not bad, could go places” My first “pop” acquisition was a 45 (big hole in middle for juke boxes, small insert for home use) of Mary Hopkins singing “Those Were The Days” on the Apple Label (for you young’uns, there was another Apple Company long before Steve Jobs).

 

I wrote above that hearing broad Scouse on the TV (or radio) being very much a novelty. In the 50s/60s nearly everything on TV/Radio was in BBC RP (received pronunciation), “Cockney” “Scottish” (but nothing as specific as Glaswegian) or “Northerner” (again, non specific) if used, was done for comic, or sometimes dramatic, effect. Much as I appreciate regional accents (it’s amazing how a Glaswegian or Belfast accent with the right tone, delivery and modulation can make a young woman more attractive [to me, anyway]), it would be nice to hear RP on the News and Weather again!

[rockershovel]

One comment on that rather lovely card, I don’t remember anyone having built-up studs on their football or rugby boots. I certainly had interchangeable aluminium studs on my rugby boots in the 1960s, and the dangerous nylon ones (these would rapidly wear to  sharp flange on concrete dressing room floors!). 

 

Adidas and Puma both seem to have introduced boots with interchangeable studs in the early 1950s, those boots are a bit “Famous Five” I think...

 

[rockershovel]

Ha ha, wrestling, yes. Also speedway, dominated in those days by the likes of Peter Collins and John “Tiger” Louis, with World of Sport showing scrambling from Hawkstone Park, featuring Jeff Banks (BSA), Dave Bickers (CZ) and Vic Eastwood... not to mention the dastardly Soviet teams, professionals in all but name (boo, hiss!)

[rockershovel]

Long before the EU came to plague us, the Promised Land looked like this...

 

 

 

 

Steve McQueen wearing RayBans, riding a Triumph Bonneville in San Francisco, how cool is THAT?

Edited April 26, 2020 by rockershovel

[TheQ]

55 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Ha ha, wrestling, yes. Also speedway, dominated in those days by the likes of Peter Collins and John “Tiger” Louis, with World of Sport showing scrambling from Hawkstone Park, featuring Jeff Banks (BSA), Dave Bickers (CZ) and Vic Eastwood... not to mention the dastardly Soviet teams, professionals in all but name (boo, hiss!)

Barry Briggs,  Martin Ashby, Mike Broadbent,  yes I was a Swindon  Robins supporter. 

[Johann Marsbar]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Ha ha, wrestling, yes. Also speedway, dominated in those days by the likes of Peter Collins and John “Tiger” Louis,

 

John Louis is more '70's than 50's/60's though....

Went to my first Speedway meeting at Foxhall Stadium in 1972 to see Ipswich v Leningrad Neva, and continued to attend up until the late 1970's. Ipswich had a very strong team back then and it was an added bonus to get a number of high profile international events held there as well.

Still got several of the event programmes of that era in my loft, as I "rediscovered" them whilst sorting through things earlier this year!

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

I don’t remember anyone having built-up studs on their football or rugby boots

I did on my first (second-hand) pair.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

I can't remember what it was called, but the racing around muddy fields and hills with various off road machinery, Haflinger springs to mind.

 

Mike.

[rockershovel]

19 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I did on my first (second-hand) pair.

 

I’m sure they were banned for rugby a long while ago. 

[Nearholmer]

My footballing “career” was exceedingly short: deeply secondhand boots, which looked as if they’d first seen the light of day c1937, and playing on the right wing; managed a break and had a clear run at goal; referee (deputy head teacher) managed somehow to run across in front of me, obstructing the shot (Thinking about it now, I was possibly off-side); I shouted “You s*d, Sir!” at the top of my voice (notice the respectful ‘Sir’); sent off instantly; never allowed to play for the school ever again!

 

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by Nearholmer

[60021 Pen-y-Ghent]

59 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I did on my first (second-hand) pair.

So did I. These studs were nailed onto the leather sole of the boot. I well remember trying to play footie wearing a pair of boots so adorned when the nails had come through the sole. Agony! No wonder I was useless.

[Colin]

12 minutes ago, 60021 Pen-y-Ghent said:

So did I. These studs were nailed onto the leather sole of the boot. I well remember trying to play footie wearing a pair of boots so adorned when the nails had come through the sole. Agony! No wonder I was useless.

Me too, I had toe infections for weeks. I always liked football but was never much good at it, at my old grammar school we were all asked on our first ever games lesson who had played for their junior school teams - the rest of us were given a couple of old, lumpy footballs and told to “have a match”. I still think that I might have turned into a fairly capable player with a bit of coaching, but it never happened. The following year, we were forced to play rugby...... 

[Hroth]

29 minutes ago, Colin said:

The following year, we were forced to play rugby......

 

For the first three years we "played" rugby  in the winter and cricket in the summer.  I never understood rugby and cricket terrified me, there was always the possibility of being hit by a small hard red ball.  Later we could do "alternatives" so I ended up with hockey and tennis. With hockey, you could always keep clear of the ball and yet seem "enthusiastic" and with tennis the ball wasn't as damaging.....

 

Field sports.  Track running, hurdling and long jumps...   The shot was an exercise in not hitting your toes, but the discus and javelin were quite fun!

 

Gym.  Never saw the point.

 

The most dreary, pointless sport however was cross-country running.  In the cold, wet, rain. Cross-country was reserved for the weeks when the rugby pitch was more like a WW1 battlefield...

 

 

You can tell that athletic pursuits were not my forte!

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by Hroth

[jcm@gwr]

I had an 'interesting' relationship with PE/sports at school, having endured cross country

running and football for the first few terms at secondary school, I caught things!

 

It started with athletes foot and verrucas and progressed to Ringworm and Shingles, all

of which meant I couldn't use the showers, because they didn't want me to infect others.

Although uncomfortable, none of them were too bad, and of course, it meant that I had

to miss out on sports (what a shame!), as soon as I got to my 3rd year, when you chose 

your preferred subjects, I dropped PE, and strangely stopped 'catching things'!

 

I might add that these were all genuine, diagnosed by the local GP, I hadn't even heard

of some of them, the GP was surprised , especially Shingles, which he said that he hadn't 

heard of anyone under the age of 27 catching it. 

When the 'episode' finally ended, the GP actually wrote in my notes 'Allergy to PE'!

[petethemole]

Football; Dad was a steward at Highbury so I was allowed in free to some home games and can remember seeing Stanley Matthews and Bert Trautmann in the 50s.  I was useless at most games at school, the only time I scored at primary school soccer (with built-up studs) I was offside.  Ater 11+ it was rugby, which being small and slightly built I hated, not helped by games masters with sadistic tendencies. One had a whistle cord with knots in, that he used to whip your bare legs if you weren't running fast enough. Runs, mostly round suburban streets, were equally unpleasant, being supervised by prefects who clearly had ambitions to be games masters.  I quite enjoyed cricket for a while, being a fairly successlul but erratic bowler, but at 14 I got a ball full in the mouth straight off the bat at Silly Mid-off. No concern or sympathy for my split lip and bleeding gums, just a rollocking for not catching it, which put me right off the game.

[chrisf]

I didn't get on terribly well with PE either.  I resented getting cold and wet, and on occasions muddy.  My co-ordination was hopeless and I was no good whatsoever at ball games.  I also hated cross-country running but to my amazement I was good at it and came perilously close to being selected for the house team.  As it happens, the house cross-country captain was a bit of a wide boy and was known for hoarding file paper against times of shortage, of which there were many.  I put it to him that it would be a pity if the Head found out and he soon came to realise that he could assemble a perfectly good team without it containing me.  Mr Bright, the PE teacher, and I did not get on.  My rewrite of Psalm 23 did not help, especially when it ended up in the school magazine:  "The Lord Bright is my shepherd.  I shall not want him.  He maketh me to collapse in green pastures" and so on.  He had the last laugh.  In my final school report he wrote: "He has shown some effort this term and will never live it down".

 

Chris

Edited April 27, 2020 by chrisf

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

The most dreary, pointless sport however was cross-country running. 

I wasn’t “sporty” at all, that was my middle bro’s province, but I did actually quite like cross country running. It’s got some strange similarities to cycling, which I’ve always enjoyed: the fight is against the environment and yourself, rather than anyone else; main requirement is bloody-minded determination, rather than any actual skill; it’s outdoors; it’s not massively dissimilar from taking a dog for a walk, only without a dog.

 

Rugby was the one I detested most: utterly, utterly tedious, with so many stoppages for bizarre and pointless rituals; way too much hanging about in a biting east wind.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Fat Controller]

8 minutes ago, petethemole said:

Football; Dad was a steward at Highbury so I was allowed in free to some home games and can remember seeing Stanley Matthews and Bert Trautmann in the 50s.  I was useless at most games at school, the only time I scored at primary school soccer (with built-up studs) I was offside.  Ater 11+ it was rugby, which being small and slightly built I hated, not helped by games masters with sadistic tendencies. One had a whistle cord with knots in, that he used to whip your bare legs if you weren't running fast enough. Runs, mostly round suburban streets, were equally unpleasant, being supervised by prefects who clearly had ambitions to be games masters.  I quite enjoyed cricket for a while, being a fairly successlul but erratic bowler, but at 14 I got a ball full in the mouth straight off the bat at Silly Mid-off. No concern or sympathy for my split lip and bleeding gums, just a rollocking for not catching it, which put me right off the game.

Being very short-sighted, I was absolute c**p at team sports; the only way I could identify other players was by falling over them. I usually contrived not to be picked; if the PE teacher tried to put me in one or other half, there would be cries of 'Do we 'ave to 'ave him, sir..'

At least for a while, I could escape the tyranny of the flanneled fools over the summer holidays; that was until one of the PE staff bought a caravan on the same site where we spent our holidays . He thought he'd organise a cricket team, and chose me as wicket keeper. My mother said she could see my heart wasn't in it, when she noticed I was reading a book behind the wicket.

Cross-country wasn't too bad; we were meant to do two laps, each of about two miles. The route passed my grandmother's house, so some of us would pop in for tea and sympathy- the knack was knowing which runners were behind you when you had your 'pit-stop', so that you weren't too far from where the master expected you to be. You wouldn't want to be picked for the school team...

What I didn't know at the time was that I had been born with a defective heart valve, the merest mention of which would have got me off PE for the duration. Alas, I wasn't made aware of it until more than 25 years afterwards, and it would be repaired for another 20+. It would have been the perfect excuse, having lots of medical terminology beyond the limits of PE teachers..

[J. S. Bach]

6 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Well, if I must.... ...snip... one abiding memory being that of the 4 Beatles being on Juke Box Jury. (Your Host: David Jacobs) and one of their songs being played. I distinctly remember one of them saying (in broad Scouse - a TV novelty then) something along the lines of “they’re not bad, could go places” ...snip...

I remember seeing the Beatles first appearance in the US on the Ed Sullivan show and Dad saying something to the effect of "They will disappear quickly." Well, he lived long enough (1978) to see that he was wrong, altough I do not know if he ever remembered that remark and I never thought to ask him.

[J. S. Bach]

4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Long before the EU came to plague us, the Promised Land looked like this...

Steve McQueen wearing RayBans, riding a Triumph Bonneville in San Francisco, how cool is THAT?

 

That California license plate is real, not a movie prop; here is my first ever car's tag (the Maryland one is from much later):

 

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by J. S. Bach

[J. S. Bach]

3 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

I can't remember what it was called, but the racing around muddy fields and hills with various off road machinery, Haflinger springs to mind.

 

Mike.

Over here it is sometimes called "mudding".  Very imaginative!

[Kingzance]

1 minute ago, J. S. Bach said:

Over here it is sometimes called "mudding".  Very imaginative!

We knew it as Scrambling, or Motor Cycle Scambles, in the 1960's.

As for the picture of "cool" Mr Steve McQueen, is that Ali McGraw on pillion?

[J. S. Bach]

40 minutes ago, chrisf said:

 ...snip... My rewrite of Psalm 23 did not help, especially when it ended up in the school magazine:  "The Lord Bright is my shepherd.  I shall not want him.  He maketh me to collapse in green pastures" and so on.  He bad the last laugh.  In my final school report he wrote: "He has shown some effort this term and will never live it down".

Chris

Chris,

 Will you please print the whole thing? I (and maybe others)  might like to read it.

 

I remember one that supposedly was on the pilot's readyroom door at an SR-71 base: "Yea, though I fly through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. For I am at 50,000 feet and climbing."

[Guius]

Cool? or just a cogent reminder that motor cyclists contribute  important proportion of organs to those awaiting a transplant.

Guy

[chrisf]

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

Chris,

 Will you please print the whole thing? I (and maybe others)  might like to read it.

 

How very kind of you to ask!  If [big if!] I can find my copy of the Huntingdonian for 1966 I'd love to.  Knowing where to look is the problem.  A lot can be mislaid in 54 years.

 

Chris