OneGuyFromBarlick

Those were the days!

One of the things I miss most in my cooking is the old pot-bellied cast iron pan. You can't beat them for even cooking on the stove. Has anyone got one about their person that they could bear to part with?

Funny how things come back to mind. Can anyone remember how impractical knitted swimming costumes were?

I love old advertisements. Here are a couple of pages from a 1963 Model Engineer. No online selling in those days!

I came across some images of a paper chase yesterday where a runner sets off with a bag of paper pieces and scatters them as he runs for the main pack to follow. Highly illegal today but I never saw one. Did anyone ever see one or take part in one?

Not with paper but we used to do a similar thing as kids with sticks from the hedgerow set down as arrows pointing the trail. Usually around the paths and lanes around town. Springs, Greenberfield, Brogden etc. Ten minute lead for the fox team, we used to leg it for miles until you found a suitable hiding place. Also played it around town with chalked arrows, used different colours for each swap of team. Both derivatives of chasing game or other hunting pursuits I would think.

I can remember the articles in comics that purported to give away the secrets of the signs that tramps used. Come to think I haven't seen a tramp for years, they used to be quite common. There used to be a small facility on the west side of the old road between Penrith and Carlisle. It was a place where tramps could call in for a meal, a bath, a bed and get cast-off clothing. Don't know who ran it but I remember it being closed down while we were still using the old road, it was before the M6 opened, and I used to see tramps in the area who had no doubt headed for there because they thought the refuge was still open. A sad sight.

Funny how things pop into your head. Does anyone remember the small soft plastic ampoules of lighter fluid you could buy and opened by twisting the teat off the end?

Stanley wrote:small soft plastic ampoules of lighter fluid

Reminds me of the Globe pub in Glossop, we were regulars there drinking Openshaw bitter, we were tipped off that the landlord was putting left over drink back into the barrel, one night we left a few half drunk pints on the table into which we had squirted lighter fuel from the above capsule. The next day we went in the landlord was fuming, he had a full barrel of bitter that had gone "off", it was impossible to get a head on it, we asked him later what happened when he returned it to the brewery, they wouldnt refund him because the barrels before and after his were all ok so the contamination must have occured on his premises, in those day barrels were individually branded with a number and these were traceable on delivery notes etc.

I remember the Openshaw brewery.... That was an imaginative use of lighter fluid! Can you remember trying to use road fuel petrol and how badly it smoked and tasted?

Bodger wrote: into which we had squirted lighter fuel

I suppose that when the customers collapsed in a heap in the tap room they weren't drunk they had just run out of petrol!

Listening to all the chatter about race and immigration reminded me of the turbaned gentlemen who used to knock on the door when I was a lad selling small items of haberdashery (where did that word go to?) and I often wonder how many of them developed into wealthy business owners. Does anyone else remember them?

Stanley wrote:Listening to all the chatter about race and immigration reminded me of the turbaned gentlemen who used to knock on the door when I was a lad selling small items of haberdashery (where did that word go to?) and I often wonder how many of them developed into wealthy business owners. Does anyone else remember them?

Yes, I remember him, probably the same chap. A Seikh turban, always very colourful and neat. I was impressed, but I was only about 8, that makes it around 1954.

Is 'racist' a racist word?

I can remember two Sikh gents who used to sell around Barlick in the late 50's early 60's. I think they had the Betterware franchise or certainly sold the same kind of stuff from their brown suitcases. I remember as a kid all manner of things and for some reason the miniature tins of lavender scented wax polish they sold. Always immaculately dressed and perfectly groomed, very polite at the door with no pressure sales pitch. Reflecting now I think they could have been ex military with their demeanour.

That's a good point Ian and I think you could be right. They were certainly very polite, well turned out and didn't push their goods.
We used to get gypsies at the door as well selling scraps of lace and white heather..... always women.

What ever happened to the wearing of hats..... Remember the 'Attaboy' and the slogan, "If you want to get ahead, wear a hat!"

...and when almost all men wore hats. Here's my grandad's bowling team (from the Orchard Working Men's Club at Seven Trees, Blackburn) in their caps and straw boaters. Grandad was an odd one out at work - he didn't like wearing a cap and went without cap or hat most of the time but would wear a straw boater on special occasions (he's in the middle of the back row wearing it in this photo). There are 28 men in the photo and only one without a hat. (Click photo to enlarge.)

I still do wear a hats, problem is there is never anywhere to hang it in most establishments, the hat and coat stand is a thing of the past, invariably you have to look for a flat surface somewhere where it wont get crushed.

Todmorden Cricket Club in about 1880

I was thinking today about going shopping for my mother at the corner shop on Didsbury road. I had a basket, the spuds, complete with dirt, were poured into the bottom, the unwrapped loaf on top and anything else on top of that. Wonderful how we survived without modern packaging! Perhaps this could be the reason why I have no allergies and an excellent immune system.....

Washing day and housework 50 years ago.

Does anyone remember the old style clothes pegs hawked round, door to door. Made from a piece of split hazel with a band cut out of an old tin can round the top to stop them splitting?

Chemistry sets sold as educational toys that contained some interesting ingredients! With the addition of some powdered match heads we made some very satisfactory bombs by getting two bolts and a nut, the bigger the better, screwing one bolt in for a thread or two, inserting the mixture and tightening the other bolt on top of it. Then we threw it at a wall until we got the right contact and a very satisfactory bang! Remember that this was during the war and explosions were part of our lives. One of my mate's father worked at a wholesale chemists and we occasionally got some very interesting stuff off him! Have you ever dropped balls of sodium into a water-filled grate at night? I can tell you that it's impressive!
No wonder I took to bigger bangs so easily in the army. Did you know that the Waltham Abbey Modified Tubular (WAMT) cordite used in artillery shells is exactly the same diameter as a cigarette? Take some tobacco out, slip a piece of the cordite in (it looked just like the cylindrical liquorice pieces in Liquorice Allsorts) repack the end with tobacco and give it to someone. When the burning tobacco reached the cordite you got quite a satisfactory flare...
Quickest way to light a Tortoise stove was to put a knob of (Nobel) Explosive 808 in, pile coke on top and light the 808 with a match.
To fell a tree. Flat plates of 808 laid in a ring at the base, multiple detonators connected by Cordtex instantaneous fuse, attach another det to the Cordtex and then the safety fuse. Light the blue touchpaper and walk away. The tree was sheared off at the base and the funny thing is that the leaves always fell in a pile on the stump if you had got it right.

Replying on Energy Matters I was reminded of the 'black out' during the war. No lights at all during the hours of darkness, car headlights covered with louvred caps that cut them down to a weak glow. White painted stripes round the wheel arches of vehicles to make them more visible in the dark. Luminous paint for door numbers and enamelled luminous buttons to wear in the dark so your presence could be detected. Everyone carried a small torch and funnily enough I can't remember any shortage of batteries. All windows, both domestic and commercial had to either be painted black or have blinds fitted using 'black-out' material, black cotton cloth. In Bancroft weaving shed some of the old fixtures for o[perating the windo blinds were still visible in the 1970s.

Nice piece on Today this morning about the last clogger in Wales taking on an apprentice so he can pass the skill on. I wore clogs all the time I was driving on cattle wagons because the cows could hear you coming and you got kicked less often! Clogs are very kind to your feet because in affect you are walking barefoot on a solid wood floor. When I went into the engine house I changed to Doc Martins and my feet were never as good again.