THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

I couldn't agree more Ian. During the war at Hope Memorial school in Stockport in winter we used to put the crates in the hearth of the enormous fireplace in the one big classroom. It had a big coke fire in it and was a lovely and warm. Modern safety would never allow it today and they don't know what they are missing. As for putting the milk in the hearth to warm! Can you imagine the reaction to that today...
By the way, no foil tops, they were wide mouth bottles with the waxed cardboard tops with the push out in the middle for inserting a straw.
The only fault I ever found with the system when I was delivering was that the bottles were never washed. They should have taught the kids to swill the bottles out after drinking the milk. When you delivered the first milk after a holiday the bottles had been standing right through the holidays without washing out and they stank! They were a bit of a problem at the dairy as well. I have an idea we washed them twice, even the hot caustic solution used in the washers couldn't get them sterile with one pass....

[PanBiker]

With the foil tops, If you were careful taking the top off fully rather than poking a straw through it. The tops made great flying saucers, you could hold the side between your forefinger and middle finger and get them to fly with a quick flick of your fingers. I seem to remember the orange juice had gold tops on.

[Stanley]

The wax tops made good formers for making woollen Pom-poms....
The school dinners came in insulated aluminium boxes, I remember them as well.
I had a key to the fridge as I had to load at about 3AM. One day 24 gallons of cream went missing and I was suspect because I was there on my own so early. I pointed out to the police that their theory of me pinching cream to make butter fell down once one realised there was ten tons of butter stacked in the same fridge.....
Not me guv.....

[Stanley]

I've remembered it was sergeant Pearson that had the brilliant but flawed theory about me being the Phantom Cream Snatcher. Not a well liked man. If my memory serves me correctly he got into a spot of bother later and left under a cloud. We didn't miss him. Later we had a much more sensible sergeant and I remember once making a Citizen's Arrest of two lads who were breaking car headlights for fun, including mine.... I persuaded them to come to the police station on Manchester Road and they complained I had assaulted them. They went to court and had to pay restitution but let it be known they were out to get me. The sergeant used to pop in and sit drinking tea with me in King Street on Saturday night and one evening he asked me how I got on with the brothel almost next door in King Street. He laughed when I told him I had no idea it was there, I thought the lasses were just popular when they had lads calling. To the pure, all things are pure as they say. By the way, they never did 'get me'!

[Stanley]

In 1954 I had three days in Colchester Military Hospital (Yes, there were dedicated MHs in those days!) with an impacted Wisdom tooth and abscess. The reason I thought about it this morning was that the biggest problem in those days was recovering from the anaesthetic, it took over two days. Yesterday I was walking round (a bit unsteady) and eating toast an hour after coming back to the world.... They have improved things a bit!

[Stanley]

As a lad I remember that two family friends both managed large cinemas which were far more popular then in the days before TV. Mac Parker was the manager of the Carlton in Stockport, later changed to Essoldo. (The name was derived from the family names of the new owner, Essie, Soloman and Dorothy) Jack Brannand was manager of the Odeon in Didsbury. Cinema manager was quite a high status job in those days.
I remember Jack Brannand telling us that when they showed 'The Cruel Sea' they had to have St John's Ambulance Brigade on duty because so many people were seasick watching the film!
Another thing that imporessed me was the fact that Mac Parker had a fully uniformed member of the Corps of Commissionaires on the door. He opened the door for customers and welcomed them with a salute. I see from tinternetwebthingy that they still exist and claim to be the oldest security firm in the world.

[plaques]

Raising ones hat as a sign of respect or courtesy used to be a common sight. It was almost considered as compulsory if a funeral cortège was passing. Today's men's fashion of no hats or beanie hats etc: have more or less cosigned this token of respect to the dustbin of history.

[Stanley]

I still do it sometimes for effect, it surprises people so much. I also find that kissing a ladies hand has the same shock factor and is always welcome! (Old Smoothie tactics. If you really want to see a woman melt, drop on one knee before doing it!)
I always wear a hat. In my youth it was universal and in many ways a badge of rank. Foremen wore bowlers, the workers Cloth Caps and it was almost unthinkable to break this rule in the workplace.



Johnny Pickles would have felt undressed without his bowler!

[Stanley]

Another big sartorial change in my lifetime has been in working clothes. (Include weekday clothes for us school kids.) Everyone had 'Sunday Best' outfits that were used for church, weddings and funerals etc. In the case of kids we often grew out of them but in adults, particularly working men, the Sunday Best became every day weekday wear. In some industries like cotton spinning there was recognised work wear. Incidentally it was a matter of pride between housewives that their husband's overalls were scrubbed and bleached until they were white! In other industries the Sunday suit became work wear. This was still true in the 1960s particularly the steel industry. I regularly saw melters and pourers in shabby suits (with the obligatory white silk scarf!) turning their backs as a pour took place and gobbets of molten iron and steel showering them. Today we have 'protective clothing' supplied by the management but in those days it was unheard of. One thing in particular I noted was that the foreman melters always had a pair of dark glasses as they had to watch the colour of the flames issuing from the converters to judge when it was time to shut down the blast and pour the metal. If for some reason they had to have a new pair it was a big problem as the tint of the new glasses was never exactly the same and they had to re-calibrate.
The first improvement was the advent of the boiler suit and then came good waterproofs and high viz clothing. I always thought that a big incentive for the management to provide outside workers with waterproofs was the fact that they could then give up the time-honoured practice of retiring to the site hut if 'rained off'. I don't think that happens these days....
Look again at the picture of Johnny yesterday. That suit was his work wear and was almost certainly a demoted Sunday Best suit.

[Stanley]

Does anyone remember the enormous liquid filled magnifying screens that some people used to 'enhance' the experience of the tiny screens on the newfangled TV sets?

[Stanley]

I was reminded yesterday of the days when work was scarce and I spent a lot of time at home at Hey Farm polishing the wagon. We had no telephone and if Billy Harrison wanted me he sent a telegram. Within 15 minutes of sending a lad arrived on a bike from the Post Office, delivered the message and I jumped into the wagon and went to Thornton. Contrast that with today! Can you imagine today's youngsters with their smart phones being able to understand that?
(And I have just been talking to daughter Margaret who is in Lancelin, 170k North of Perth, sat in a pub garden having lunch..... It's a miracle!)

[Stanley]

Long ago, if you had a leak in the cooling system the cure was to crack a couple of eggs into the water or add a tin of Coleman's Mustard, more often than not this would stop the leak. Later there was a specialised product called 'Rad weld'. Made by Holts and I see it is still available.

[Tizer]

My father-in-law phoned us one day in the 1980s to say he had a breakdown in his old MGB and couldn't get home. The radiator top hose had burst. Off we went to effect a rescue. In those days I always had lots of odds and ends in the boot of the car from the days of my A35s and Morris 1000s. I found a hose but it was a bit too large so I slit it lengthways and placed it over the burst hose with the slit on the opposite side to the burst in the original hose, then wrapped it in insulating tape. It got him home, albeit at a slow pace. When he replaced the bodge with a new hose, he kept the bodged one, mounted it on a spike on a wood base and kept it on his mantlepiece!

[Stanley]

Marvellous what could be cured using insulting tape! I once serviced a mate's car and noted that he had a bottom hose that looked peculiar. He said it was the corrugated hose from his old ARP gas mask and he wanted it left for sentimental reasons...... It seemed to do the job OK!
Can you remember the days when Morris Cars had a thermometer incorporated in the Radiator cap on the front of the bonnet? My mate had one and it was handy for shooting rabbits at night because the windscreen opened by turning a handle on the dash, just right for poking the barrel of a 12 bore through. He wasn't best pleased one night when I blew his thermometer off..... Ah, those were the days......

[Stanley]

That thermometer was on an Austin Ruby.



My mate Graham Maz had a very fast Triumph Thunderbird race tuned by a firm at Shipston on Stour, a very fast machine. His parents worried about this and told him they would buy him a car.... I remember him bringing it back to Harrod's Farm after a weekend at home in London. He drew into the yard, got out and said "Please don't laugh!" We did of course! On a good day and downhill with a following wind it could just about top 50mph and at that speed it shook like a nervous pony. But, he had started courting Ettington Annie and this took the edge off his disappointment. With the benefit of hindsight it was a lovely little car within its limits. Much later I came across one that had been converted into a Post Office van complete with brass handles. Postman Pat country.
By the way, I used to spend quite a lot of time in Arisaig on the West Coast. There was a Ferryman's Cottage nearby on the Rhu peninsula and the local gossip was that the John Cunliffe the author rented this at one time and Pat was based on the local postie.



The view across to Eigg from the cottage on Rhu. Before the railway reached Mallaig this was the ferry jetty for the Small Isles.

[Tizer]

One of our previous neighbours only ever wanted one classic vehicle - an A35 van. It took him a long time to find one, let alone a good one, but he got there in the end. I remember during that time seeing an awful example. It was in every day running order but had been painted completely black - but using what appeared to be bitumen rather than paint. If it rusted away he would have been left with a bitumen replica!

[Stanley]

You've reminded me of the infamous Austin A40..... A bloke in Barlick bought one new and on the Suday trook some friends to Harrogate. Coming back he showed off a bit and drove at speed over the undulations in the road at Blubberhouses. When they got back home only one door of the car would open. He took it back to the dealers and in the end it was decided the body shell had distorted! They gave him a new one but he didn't keep it very long!

[plaques]

I remember my pals second hand A40, the doors were getting stiff to open. We peeled back the carpets and found a crack running across the floor from both side and making its way over the propshaft tunnel, The next road bump and it would have broken in two.

[PanBiker]

When I was a young bloke we once made an impromptu run down to Torquay one Friday night from Barlick in a mates A35 van. We went to see Slade at the Town hall and came straight back after the gig. We drove all night to get there and all night to get back, I think it did about 50mph with a good tail wind. You do funny things when you are bored.

[Stanley]

That was some trip and not funny. Over 600 miles there and back. I remember doing the same journey with the cattle wagon, no joke and I was paid for doing it! One thing about doing trips like that with a small petrol engine, it cleaned them out and they ran better afterwards! As good as a decoke almost.

[Tripps]

in a mates A35 van.

The attraction of such a van in those days is that they were purchase (?) tax free. We had a mini van on that basis. There was a very basic sort of seat in the back but of course no side windows. From memory the cost was about £360 rather than nearly £600 for the saloon car.

I think you could fit windows after a certain period of time. We never bothered.

[PanBiker]

Kevin was an apprentice motor mechanic at Prestons in Earby and had bought it for next to nowt to do up. It was battleship grey of course. Six of us went on the jolly, two up front and four in the back, probably the most uncomfortable ride I have ever had. We took turns in the luxury of the passenger seat for a bit of respite. We were all 18 or thereabouts and up for anything hence it seemed like a good idea! Kevin slept all day on the beach and got a touch of sunstroke. We had to swap drivers (no one else had passed their car test at the time) on the way back as he was rambling. Got back late Sunday morning, slept the rest of the day and everyone was back at work on Monday. It was good gig as well.

[Stanley]

I occasionally did a load of cow hides from a skin-yard at Beverley to a tannery near Exeter. That was a fair trip and usually done virtually non-stop as I wasn't welcome anywhere! The skins were stacked with layers of salt between and that's how they were loaded on the flat. They gently dripped effluent all the way..... Not the best job in the world but an education.
Have you ever come across Henry Mayhew? His classic. 'London Labour and the London Poor' describes how the poor lived in London and one of the trades he mentions is the collectors of 'Pure'. Pure is dog faeces and it was collected because it was used by tanners to condition leather hides. The white turds were the best and so many rolled darker ones in lime to get a better price. The funny thing is that long before I came across Mayhew I saw a dog shit tank in the skinyard at Beverley. I don't know where they got their raw material from but the tank was full of it soaking in water and it was the liquid that was used on the hides.
When I was first told about this I thought it was a leg-pull but no, it was true. I wonder whether the same process is used today. It wouldn't surprise me because I was told that the main use for it was in treating very fine leathers like the ones used for Kid Gloves.....

[Stanley]

At one point in my career, after bottling stopped at West Marton and the dairy stood idle while being converted to cheese making I was put in the garage with Wallace Neave which was an experience in itself.... But then the dairy's own sewage pant was built just across the road in Bale Farm land, at the top of their lane. They needed someone to look after it. Guess what, Stanley was given a crash course in Anaerobic and Aerobic Digestion and put in charge as part of my garage duties. At first I wasn't overjoyed but then got interested in the process and the maintenance that had to be done to keep it working properly. I was told it was only temporary and the plan was to put me on tankers when things settled down as we were were taking over a bulking dairy at Lancaster, J E Hall's, and I was booked for one of their tankers. I trusted them (rightly as it turned out) and settled to the sewage plant.
It was fascinating but frustrating. One a good day the effluent flowed out of the settling tank over the saw tooth stainless steel cill as clear as gin after passing through the reaction vat where I pumped air through large cotton socks 24 X 7. This was the basis of the Aerobic process. But..... occasionally I'd go down and find brown porridge flowing out into the beck. Eventually the brains department identified the culprit and I think it was caustic soda in the inflow. This severely inhibited the bacteria in the Aerobic vat and stopped the process. Eventually we got it to settle down and at that point my tanker arrived and saved me!



My future beckoned and I liked it!
What started me off on this was thinking about the dog shit and what a horrible job it was dealing with it. On the face of it you'd think that being up to your oxters in sewage would be as bad but I quite enjoyed it once I got used to the challenge. I learned a lot about sewage treatment but also that if you are doing a job that nobody else wants, you have a great advantage, you are left alone! Nobody ever came down and bothered me and I have to admit that I had a lot of quiet moments contemplating nature, smoking my pipe and eating my butties secure in the knowledge that as long as that water was clear going over the cill I was master of all I surveyed. There is much to be said for this.

[PanBiker]

Eventually the brains department identified the culprit and I think it was caustic soda in the inflow. This severely inhibited the bacteria in the Aerobic vat and stopped the process.

Clarion House uses a similar arrangement for the output of our toilets. No mains sewers up Jinny Lane, It was built back in the 1930's along with the outside tippler toilet block and urinal which are still there and fully functional. The system is of red brick construction and the settlement tank has two large concrete capping blocks on top. It was built by Stan Iveson with help from Gilbert Kinder and some lads who were apprentice Nelson bricklayers. The outside toilets were the mainstay of the house until this century when we had an inside toilet block built during our refurbishment. Still uses the same system which works well as long as the teams keep the detergent and cleaning products used in the kitchen to a minimum. New brewing up teams have to be trained to only use the weak detergents we get for washing up. We once had a terrible time back in the 1980's when one new keen brewer up decided to have a good swill round with neat bleach. We reckon he killed most of the bugs in the tank and we had to do some serious remedial work to get it started again.