the one where you swing the ball on a chain round the post it's nailed to to try and knock over the skittles...?
Teehee, might actually stop and have a bite now. All those gobstoppers and stuff got into my head. Bring back unhealthy food (eh what?) from the days when I was cooked at home in a fring pan that was used from new to chucked away uncleaned and never degreased!
Sorry Brian...we wuz in a roll. how can you do 10k extra words? TSK
Don't know where this post is in the charts right now......perhaps a few 'rates' might get it to the top......I know! lend us a few snippets from your dissertation, that'll boost the responses and help your edit!
Yeah, I am wondering about us too. Bergerac has been closed for some weeks and will reopen at end March (well, perhaps give or take a month) with the runways resurfaced and lounges finally cleaned. Somebody will pay, namely the punters. No more Stansted for loose change there then...
Oh scrotum! My wife has just messaged me from her office that this annotated bibliography we have to complete in the next few days is a max of 10,000 words. I have produced over 20,000 and she now has to edit down. Fink I've not concentrated enuff... Bloomin' reminiscing...
Yes, it is strange that you can fly to here, for nuppence, ( my wife and kids have done it, taxes paid ) not, however, the taxis, which would cost you 120 Euros from Montpellier.
Luckily (?) we now have ( thanks to 'O Leary ) the new Beziers/Cap D'Agde airport, 15 kms away. A holiday in the UK will, I guess, now cost a King's ransom.
Wow Andrew!
the old stomping ground indeed. Yes, the Cowley road baths ( Veruccha city ) were in the same street as my school after 11 years of age. And there was, of course, the inimitable Hinksey...... A mate of mine used to echo the words "You Gonapinksi? " ( trans: "are you going up to Hinksey pool later, if so I'll join you" ) which he always thought sounded like a Russian dissident/author/revolutionary. He also coined the phrase "Yoogownupblabbudlees?" ( clue: the No I bus from the city centre ) mind you he was a nutter!
Do you know of the old 'Bar Billiards' table game? can't decide if that was just an Oxfordshire game...great game, either way.
IoW, first holiday without parents, went camping with mates - great laugh. Years holidaying in Salcombe, ended up living in Devon and marrying a girl from Teignmouth but that's another story, Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, Uni at Exeter... I remember the first package holiday with mates, how things have changed now, it cost us a fortune and now you can get wherever you want for next to nothing!
Went to Bournemouth with my great-aunts once, was spoiled and put on weight in the region of rotting teeth. Days at Brighton, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton the sunburn capital of the UK were about it. Sometimes we went up to the family in Scotland. Think about it. Going from a shabby but recent council estate in London to Aberdeen and Dundee industrial tenements for a holiday! Adults all got drunk (Scotland used to close down all industry and so on for two weeks at the beginning of August, so adults got drunk for two weeks) and children went out scavenging. Main diet: chips with fish, mealie pudding, sausages or black pudding. Dessert: custard (Birds, of course) with perhaps some treacle tart or other concoction made to keep dentists in overtime. Transport: always heavily polluting steam trains that seemed to be in a lot of tunnels which allowed in choking smoke and sulphurous fumes which were the closest thing you really got to a change of air. Wonderous days...
....'smee again. Yes I do have work to do Brian! but I just wanna see If I can help push this posticle to the top. Why? because it's there.
My next train of thought is....wait for it laddy....Holidays. Si, Oh yes, this was in the days when Benidorm was a charming fishing village in a foreign country, Greece was stuff you lathered round yer potatoes for roasting, where did we go? mainly we went to Ourgate! But twice we ventured to tarrah... 'The Isle of White',
JOKE: What's brown and steams out of Cowes backwards...the Ferry! Yes siree, Shanklin, Alum Bay, which, from memory, was the Nania land of Muticoloured sand, now there's an MSP for the tourist board. People must have dug up tons of the stuff, to fill up the little glass toobs in a layered fashion. ( still got one somewhere! )
I'm pleased that the traditional English seaside hol has seen a revival in recent years, re-populated, no doubt, by nostalgerists ( look it up ) like ourselves. Sure it's loads more expensive nowadays, and it IS guaranteed to rain, but the saving grace is that you do not have to board a Ryanair jet.
Our family did go the The IofW twice, the only hols I remember. But that's the thing, seaside holidays were great as the were packed with all the wrong things....candy floss, toffee apples, dodgems, itchy woollen cosies, slot machines, cor.... hot dogs and onions ( with Colman's mustard ), diesel, that electric smell at the bumping cars, the klaxon sounds and above all stand to attention Fish 'n Chips.
As the seas become de-nuded of their stock, take stock, who knows? the smell and taste of crunkley Cod 'n 4 Penneth may be, in 20 years time, a distant memory. Hmmm getting a bit peckish now. I can't quite understand that the country who claims to have invented the 'Freedom Fry' and have fish coming out of their ears ( Babel ) and certainly know how to excersise a good battering, but can't put the components together.
Holiday recollections from the olden days anyone?
OOOOh. I grew up within five minutes of the Wandle that gives Wandsworth its name. In the 1950s it was classified as the most polluted river in Europe and warnings about children bathing in the foam and scum that were proportionately more than actual water in my memory made no difference. We went in. Gyspsies watered their horses in it and the only aquatic life any of us ever found was leeches. There is a National Trust park at Morden Hall where it flows through which had a herd of dairy cattle (perhaps still does) who waded about in that river and I imagine fed the leeches. The milk was purchased by the Co-op and that I remember from raiding the churns they delivered for the milk to see if we could find anything useful (lids made great things like the since invented frisbee).
Nice life...
pool in cowley Ron, I got weils disease/poisoning and was violently ill for a few days as were others after swimming in the Cherwell - pissed as farts falling off punts!!! but used to swim in the Thame when I was a kid (grew up and went to school in Thame before moving down to the west country, via a spell in London...!)
I was very lucky to have spent most of my life in Oxenford, which unlike its Counterpart Cambridge, was town AND gown. I don't remember any indoor pools, the school swimming trip was to the likes of 'Tumbling bay' a Municipal hive off of a section of the Thames which split into either the Cherwell, Evenlode, Windrush or Isis...Changing rooms? sort of...diving boards? ( to a degree ) slippy/slidy steps to the well.... green abyss and squelchy bottom. Nope , it didn't kill us, but it was pretty gruesome.
I was a Cub Scout, ( a sort a mock paramiltary more laid back version of the Hitler Jugend ) dib dib, woggled up and ready to do my duty for Queen and country, and Chief perv Baden Powell. Hmm a bellyfull of Quinnine after a drenched hike, an arse full of splinters from the hall's un varnished floor...That all certainly filled the time...as did Train Spotting...WTF?, and then ( I'm not sure if it was just us ) we used to collect car number plates...not the plaques, just the numbers, dutifully jotted into a notepad. Pretty futile in hindsight.
Ha, me 'n my buddy David Griffiths ( RIP ) were photographed and appeared on the front page of the Oxford Times carrying out this mindless ( but fun ) task. But yes, when the only things digital were your fingers, like many we walked every where, lessin' we had home made tracky bikes.
The River featured a lot, in my early days, Gudgeon, the catch of the day...not so Bream, Trout, Dace...I was no fisherman, but 'ledger' fishing was triff! The Summer days seemed to last a lifetime, was it really always sunny? I believe it was, and the Winters cold, crisp and snowy, and in the Autumn ( Fall, for Chris ) the leaves fell from the trees. When Spring sprung it was, well...Springy!
Mary had a little lamb
She used to call it Frolics
She used to throw it in the air
And catch it by the tail!
Anon ( anon anon )
What with the little mushroom things that looked like the thing my mother used to darn socks? Darn socks, nah pop in to Carrefour and buy a truckload now... Aunt Sally, woman with a clay pipe? We had one at our hangout pub, not used but part of the collection of things that used to be years earlier...
@Brian… UGGA ME, aniseed balls, great, a really good suck, last an age right down to the little whatever it was in the centre. And you could rest assured that you would not be followed by any dogs that day. Gob stoppers, FEW! give one of those( esp the Billard ball sized ones ) to any GobShite today, that’d shut 'em up for a bit…innit! Any of you guys remember ‘Bar Billards’? or was it an ‘Oxford’ thing? How’s about Aunt Sally?
@ Richard.
Poingnant and precise as always.
I'll idle with you in your thoughts. I once, not so many years ago at that, drooled over a Morgan two seater. With two small children not on. It had original indicators! Should have bought it then.
Oh yeah. Flying saucers. There were always some slightly smaller versions in Lucky Dip bags. The name was inappropriate because there was no luck in finding the crap inside, but we guzzled it in six minutes, including the aniseed balls. Not just Muffin but Pancho, now that Mexican guy was something else. Must work...
Idle thoughts really…they do say that we are hotwired to view out passing lives with fondness…ie the older you get the rosier your past seems ( unless you live at Fritzl’s house ) But I really do look back and have a mental picture of an easier life. Sure outside loos, tin baths, coal fires etc have there downsides, but we were never bored. Even when the techo revolution hit, many an hour would be spent smacking the back of the Bakelite box, to stop the 6 in screen rolling, Muffin the Mule ( they can’t touch you for it ! ) must a have been dizzy Miss Lizzy.Yeah the whole scene, Humber Snipes, 'Press button ‘B’, Penny coins the size of a Wagon Wheel. Cars with indicators that flicked out of the side, extending far enough to take a cyclist out! ( for the French viewers an 'indicator is a device that a motorist utilises in order to inform other motorists is which direction they intend to go ) Sherbet dips, dabs, Lemons etc. and the Barrats toobs with integrated liquorice sucky sticks…( how clever! ) and of course 'Flying Saucers…a sort of ‘speed’ look-a-like-filling encapsulated in a Eucharist sandwich.
Frankly they tasted disgusting, possibly because the powder was a chance discovery during some ghastly chemical experiment, but a must buy when bringing your tally of shrimps, blackjacks and fruit salad chews up to the full tanner’s worth… Oh yes, a squelch-throughable Turkish Delight some half inch thick! and remember when you could make a real liquorice stick last last day, in fact all week…? Yup, a facefull of rotten teeth ( thanks Ribena ) but happy we wuz.
But did you ever get to stand virtually under one of those skirts the rock chics wore just when your ardours were developing? That's when you have lived, pity the young today - well the lads at least. All they have is their team to follow, our eyes followed the seams on the stockings in a generally upward direction.
Oh well, rather than cause heart attacks among my contemporaries, I'll leave it there. Fond memories.
Well I've been mugged in Hamster Jam, Shown a gun in Bangkok, Motorcycled to the Golden Triangle, hitch-hiked alone from Cassis ( Sud France ) back to Blighty with 5 Francs which I never had to spend, all worthy of posts in their own right, but I wunt scared once. But don't axe me to walk through the Swine-town Twenty on a Saturday on a matchday! That's how times have changed ( or is it me? ).