Nostalgia aint what it used to be........

[Dave Hopkin]

Having just exploded through my 60th year on this planet I have become quite retrospective and a tad maudlin.... things that seem to have vanished for ever leaving a small but significant gaps in our lives

 

Sally Army girls rattling collection tins in the pub, specifically in my case the "Dirty Duck" on the Hagley Rd

Walking home cos you'd missed the last bus home on a freezing January night burning your fingers on chips while delving in the newspaper bag for the pickled onion

That weird noise your computer used to make when connecting to the internet and no-one could use the phone cos you'd nicked the line

Party Line telephones

Davenports Beer at Home and Watney's party seven cans

Being able to fill my mini's tank for a fiver

Ten bob notes

Milk Floats

Penny Trays

Buses with the open door area at the back

The white dot on the telly

Vertical Hold

An era when the world didnt revolve round the stock market

Situations Vacant boards outside factories

The maroons going off at 11am on Remembrance Sunday

When Milk came in bottles and was either "Milk" or "Stera"

Thinking tinned fruit cocktail was exotic

Vesta Beef Curry and Chicken Chow Mien

Spoone'rs Baby Cottage loaves with corned beef in em (sorry unless you know Handsworth Birmingham that wont mean a thing)

 

What else is there?

Edited By Dave Hopkin on 04/02/2016 09:35:55

[Dave Bran]

Drippjng Toast made on an open coal fire.

Frys Tiffin

405 lines

The Navy Lark

Party Sevens

DC power supplies, twin fused

78's

Wind Up Gramophone with spare needles in a box

Tri-ang Scooter with big wheels

Plated unpainted Roller Skates that adjusted for length with a wing nut and had red leather straps

BRITISH cars

First trip abroad, in a Bristol Brittania

[GONZO]

Not far short, just over a year, of crashing through the 70th barrier.

When TV and the world did not revolve around football. It was a very small side issue that hardly anyone I new as a child took any interest in, other than when we would kick a ball about ourselves.

The flypast over London on every 'Battle of Briton Day', September 15th. Which also happens to be my birthday.

Finding spent and sometimes live bullets in the bomb ruins in central London(Elephant & Castle)

Playing in/on the bomb ruins.

Outside lav and no bathroom. First time I lived somewhere that had an inside toilet and a bathroom was April 1969, and all this was in central London!

Also, the weekly ritual of getting in the tin bath and boiling up the water in metal buckets on the gas stove. Then having a bath in front of the coal fire.

The smell of Lino floor covering and my mother polishing it each week with lavender tinned polish.

Ice on the inside of the bedroom windows in winter, even though it was central London.

Green grey thick smogs that smelt of sulphur.

Going with my father to the Cenotaph on rememberance Sunday. Always a sad time for him as he was in the far east fighting the japs(Chindits)

Lots more but getting a bit maudlin.

[Dave Hopkin]

Four mechanical buttons on the telly to change channel that went "KeeeerClunk" when pushed

Dancette Record Players

Open Reel Tape Recorders

Pans People

[Graham R]

The Goons, ether (diesel fuel), jetex, gob stoppers and black jacks.

[GONZO]

Gas street lights.

Gas house lights.

Watching the GPO engineers repair a telephone cable in the street and doing a lead wiped joint. Cable was lead seathed with paper insulated copper wires.

Horse drawn coal delivery cart.

Chimney sweep.

Anaseed balls

Edited By GONZO on 04/02/2016 09:53:29

[Wingman]

Vesta curry is still with us - 3 quid a pop - **LINK**

[Colin Carpenter]

Gonzo. I was born near Southwark docks and lived on a bridge over Surrey Canal. Surrounded by bomb sites. We found a German hand grenade on a site and took it to the bridge and chucked it into a passing empty barge with huge expectations ! NOWT !!! We knew what it was but it was the 50's and no H & S !!! Colin

[ken anderson.]

home bargains still have the vesta's ...£1.00.....you've never lived unless you have had bread and dripping,toasted crumpets/bread done on a coal fire.......and filled up and sat in a tin bath......we were hard up in the north east---we still use sand paper for loo roll....

ken anderson....ne...1 domestic dept..

[Pete B]

Four way Family Favourites whilst my grandad sharpened the carving knife on the back doorstep....

Pete

[GONZO]

Colin, would that have been Wells Way bridge. I remmeber the Surrey Canal well, one of my junior school friends drowned in it. All filled in now and made into a park at the Walworth road end. My last flat in London was in Portland Street off the Albany road.

More things that have gone, thank goodness;

People queing in the street to get a chest X-ray in the X-ray van (TB )

Outbreaks of Typhoid, cholera and polio

The children from the Peabody Trust building with no shoes or trousers and just a buton up woolen top full of holes.

[Bob Cotsford]

Oh yes Dansette's, motorbike and sidecars as family transport. No 37 buses with conductors. Potato Puffs and a cup of Bovril after swimming at the local baths.

"Situations Vacant boards outside factories" - you could have just said 'factories' around here!

[GONZO]

The end of rationing (1954) and always feeling hungry.

[Engine Doctor]

Growing up in SW London and playing on bomb sites and abandoned vehicles . A day out at Battersea Park Fun Fair with my mates for a couple of bob ,Roasting chestnuts on top of a paraffin heater with my grandad who still suffered badly from being gassed in WW1 with Mustard gas and was given no help by the government .The smell of the paraffin after the delivery man had been down the road filling leaky cans . Then radio controlled boats ! Tx with 10ft aerial in sections , batteries that weighed a ton and lasted  half an hour if you were lucky. Worked sometimes and then didn't   Crashed into the concrete pond  . Petrol 2s 6d a gallon but only earned thirty bob a week !  When I was 18 I joined the LFB and went to the same houses to put out the infernos fueled by years of paraffin drips . Those were the days through I think rose tinted glasses . Some good memories, some bad memories . Would I want to go back ?.............No.

Nostalgia ............Its a thing of the past.

Edited By Engine Doctor on 04/02/2016 10:25:50

Edited By Engine Doctor on 04/02/2016 10:30:29

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Yep dripping off the Sunday joint, step worn where knifes got sharpened, football with a washing up bottle, disappearing all day as a kid and coming home to a dried up dinner, Summers always long and hot

Ena Sharples

John

[Dave Hopkin]

Yep playing Bomb sites..... still with us in Bham in the 60's big area just behind Rookery Rd and Oxhill Rd, was all overgrown with elderberries and other stuff walls about a foot high some had cellars you could get into if you could stand the pong

The abandoned concrete AAA positions on Hill Top Farm (wonder if they are still there)

(Shamefully) Finding the door on a little wooden railway workers shed unlocked, sneaking in and nicking one of the warning detonators then trying to set it off on a brick by throwing rocks at it - thankfully it didnt go off!!!

Falling into the boating lake three times in Perry Barr Park on the same day trying to balance along a little wall, each time rescued by the attendant and plonked in his little hut in front of a coke brazier while Big Sis went gleefully home to get dry clothes and grass me up to mom

Our celler in Perry Barr flooding and being told in no uncertain terms we couldnt go swimming in it

[ken anderson.]

mr pastry,castor oil if the farmer caught you in his field,tattie picking in october ...milk with proper cream on the top,packets of crisps with the packet of salt inside...fish and chips 1/6p...wrapped in newspaper that we used to poked a hole in to get at the chips...cardboard for sole inside your shoe's to get a bit longer out of them.......wellies that marked your leg's(agony)...mustard that would burn your gob off......hand me down pants that were three sizes too big.....good old day's/not.

 

ken anderson...ne....1 ....rose tinted dept.

 

PS...not forgetting that the model you had been building for weeks+actually lasting more than one flight! ...you knew you were getting something right/ish...... on the learning curve to where you are now.

Edited By ken anderson. on 04/02/2016 10:54:31

[Glyn44]

The start of my creative modelling... A go cart using old pray wheels. I crashed that a lot as well!

[Glyn44]

(Above post) For pray read pram. And there was none of this predictive spelling.,You had to learn it yourself.

[Dane Crosby]

Living in Edgeware we used to catch the edge of London Fog. A nasty black sooty after taste and zero visbility. Stll cycled to school though.

Triumph TR2 (longdoor) many miles of fun but plenty of time sat motionless at the side of a road.

And, in the 60s, no-one has mentioned HOTPANTS

[Colin Carpenter]

Gonzo. No . The bridge near the new Millwall ground by the primary school in Ilderton Rd .Strangely enough the whole area around my old house has gone apart from 6-7 houses on the bridge approach ! Found that on U tube.Not been back in decades ! Would I want to go back in time ? No way !!! Colin

[Graham R]

Parrafin lights lighting the way during those London smogs. Red rover tickets, seeing my first jet airliner with all the prop jobs at Heathrow. Watching planes in the warmth of the lounge at Gatwick whilst having a drink.

[Dave Hopkin]

3d on Pop Bottles....

Liquorice root from the Chemist

The spud display in greengrocers that if you touched one an King Edwards avalanche would ensue

The ond Bull Ring, bombed out but still used as a market..... the Eel stall with a galvanised water tank full of lice eels and always being threatened by dad if we didnt behave he would put us in it

Kunzles cakes

Cadbury Mishapes in jars in the sweet shop

School trips to Cadbury's but you weren't allowed to see the Creame Egg production

School High Jump into a sand pit that was 20% sharp sand, 30% rubble, 50% fag ends

Trying desperately and failing miserably to do a "Fosberry Flop"

 

Edited By Dave Hopkin on 04/02/2016 11:01:19

[Dave Bran]

Posted by Dave Hopkin on 04/02/2016 09:42:42:

Pans People

Especially Babs.............................

[Dave Hopkin]

Posted by Pete B - Moderator on 04/02/2016 10:04:44:

Four way Family Favourites whilst my grandad sharpened the carving knife on the back doorstep....

Pete

God yes... forgotten that....Cliff Mitchelmore saying "Come in Cyprus, Come in Cyprus..." and getting a stony silence while you were eating Sunday Dinner.....

 

Edited By Dave Hopkin on 04/02/2016 11:05:41