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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: I remember... (For older shipmates?)
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
When I go to the supermarket and select a couple of peaches (with only one consumer you don't want them to go brown before you can eat them) or two potatoes...
I remember when you went to the Chinaman for your fruit and veg and you mustn't handle the fruit; you said "I'd like a pound of the peaches"; and some fruiterers were a bit sniffy if you asked for just one or two apples or bananas...
When singing lessons at primary school at various stages included tonic sol-fa, diaphragmatic breathing exercises, and lots of wonderful folk songs. (On a long bus journey a few years ago I sang folk songs in my head for miles to amuse myself.)
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Ah, being served in shops...
'Half a pound of mixed biscuits, please'
Shopkeeper places paper bag on scales, goes to shelf and heaves down large square tin, removes lid and cautiously shakes contents into bag, both of you watching the tembling needle approach 8 oz. Relids box, replaces it on the shelf, picks up bag and twirls it and places it on the counter.
'And a half pound of bacon'
Shopkeeper goes to the corner of the counter with the bacon slicer - above which hangs the flypaper with its speckling of luckless bluuebottle. You watch the curling strands of red and white. These too are weighed and wrapped.
'A quarter of rhubarb rock'
You process to the other end of the counter where the confectionary lives in ranks of glass jars. More bags, more scales, more weighing.
It used to take for ever.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
It did take forever but that didn't matter as much. Many things took longer but the pace of life was slower. When I first started work, we still typed things on typewriters, and there were still carbon copies and you had to take care over typing accurately. Electric typewriters or not.
It was amazing when electric typewriters that could actually remember a standard letter and pause for you to fill in the gaps came onto the market. Insert a sheet of paper into the rollers, align it carefully (because it would usually have the company logo, which you didn't want to accidentally overtype), press one key and the letter would start typing by itself. And you didn't have to bang the carriage return lever at the end of every line.
The problem was that you had to type the standard letter carefully with no mistakes and there was only room in the tiny memory for one such letter, but it was a start and quite incredible.
In my first job photocopying was done at the local post office/newsagents so out I would go with a bundle of papers and some coins clutched in my other hand.
The phone rang a lot more often and people didn't expect instant responses to their letters. Some colleagues smoked like chimneys - you learnt to open certain office doors carefully when misty blue fug seeped out from underneath.
[ 30. January 2016, 08:13: Message edited by: Ariel ]
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
I remember going to see my mum in her office when she started working for the Education Department and the photocopies came out wet and had to be hung to dry on a conveniently placed line close by.
Those tins of biscuits were such a wondrous sight to me - and the Chocolate Digestives individually wrapped in foil! My dad called them Chocolate Died-yesterdays for some obscure reason.
...and nothing was presealed in plastic!
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
In my first job photocopying was done at the local post office/newsagents so out I would go with a bundle of papers and some coins clutched in my other hand.
In my first job we didn't have a photocopier. Copies were made by cutting a stencil in a thick plastic template. You had to do it on a special typewriter which was strong enough to cut the letters right through the plastic. One mistake and you had to start all over again. Then the stencil was used to run off copies in a sort of mangle affair, which printed in purple-pink ink. We thought it was incredibly high tech.
Later our Prof's secretary had one of the first typewriters with a memory. I remember her coming into coffee one morning as white as a sheet. "What's wrong?" we asked. "I don't know what I did, but it's suddenly printing all Prof's letters in italics". Poor Rosemary. I think they had to get someone from IBM to reprogram it.
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
All trains were pulled by proper steam engines. None of them were preserved. They were driven and fired by people who were paid to do it, not volunteers for fun. And when you went on holiday in another part of the country, they were all quite different. Some of them, even had polished numbers on plates instead of painted on the sides of their cabs.
Oh, and in the trains, you sat in separate compartments.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
In my first job we didn't have a photocopier. Copies were made by cutting a stencil in a thick plastic template. You had to do it on a special typewriter which was strong enough to cut the letters right through the plastic. One mistake and you had to start all over again. Then the stencil was used to run off copies in a sort of mangle affair, which printed in purple-pink ink. We thought it was incredibly high tech.
Offset litho! My school made copies that way, and it was part of the curriculum at secretarial college! I'm envious of Ariel's typewriters - there were two electric ones at my college (golf balls) and the rest were manuals. I often wonder whether my fingers would strong enough to type on them for any length of time now.
And the sweetie shop with the jars! I used to go in after school if mum said I was allowed, and get a quarter of Pink Pips or Cough Candy, weighed out by the shop lady and handed to me in a little white paper bag.
We used to have the chimney sweep to the house as well; everything had to be shrouded in white dust sheets.
And who's calling who an older shipmate? It wasn't that long ago! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
In my first job we didn't have a photocopier. Copies were made by cutting a stencil in a thick plastic template. You had to do it on a special typewriter which was strong enough to cut the letters right through the plastic. One mistake and you had to start all over again. Then the stencil was used to run off copies in a sort of mangle affair, which printed in purple-pink ink.
Not offset litho but a Banda machine like this one - ah, that lovely smell of alcohol on the fresh copies, the true scent of geography lessons. My wife managed to do line drawings in three colours on them!
[ 30. January 2016, 09:46: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
In my first job we didn't have a photocopier. Copies were made by cutting a stencil in a thick plastic template. You had to do it on a special typewriter which was strong enough to cut the letters right through the plastic. One mistake and you had to start all over again. Then the stencil was used to run off copies in a sort of mangle affair, which printed in purple-pink ink.
Not offset litho but a Banda machine like this one - ah, that lovely smell of alcohol on the fresh copies, the true scent of geography lessons. My wife managed to do line drawings in three colours on them!
You're right; my mistake. Yes, they featured a lot in my geography lessons too. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I remember Bandas. We had one in the chaplaincy at uni for doing notices (and at school, but we never saw that one.
We did have a typewriter at home, which I occasionally used, but it was hard work. When I first started to work, all our memos had to by typed by the office secretary, with duplicate paper, on a typewriter.
I was working in IT - software development, so cutting edge. We have half a dozen terminals around the office, and had to code on coding sheets, then get them typed up by the punch girls (and yes, they were all female).
And after work, there were 4 channels on the TV, that closed down sometime after midnight. That was luxury compared to the 3 channels we used to have, and the TV that you had to get up and tune.
Does anyone else remember having to switch their TV between 405 and 625 lines (the latter for BBC2 only, I think).
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
It's been a snowy morning - which reminded me what an epoch it was when we first got a wall-mounted heater in the bathroom. Before that, getting out of the bath was like surfacing in the Bering Sea.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Curiously, I have come into the house having a discussion about Bandas (with mirror written ink on shiny sheets) and Gestetners (with ink in the drum and waxed paper stencils, with correcting fluid like nail varnish), because I had raised the question of how people spread conspiracy theories before the internet, and convenient photocopiers.
The school was given a photocopier, which was a long box - six foot? - about a foot deep, with a roll of paper, and a tank of fluid in it, which I (as responsible for audio-visual stuff) had to drain every holiday. It had a peculiar smell. The copies were damp, and faded. As did the Banda copies.
[ 30. January 2016, 16:06: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Not offset litho but a Banda machine like this one - ah, that lovely smell of alcohol on the fresh copies!
Spirit duplicators, we called them over here, or simply Ditto machines. And only the school secretary was allowed to operate the Xerox machine -- we teachers couldn't -- and it took a special kind of paper.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
I can remember when we got our first TV - hired, not owned, of course. It was to watch the wedding of Princess Margaret Rose to Anthony Armstrong Jones.
And the first 'fridge! Oh, the sheer delight of ice cream that wasn't half-melted.
But it being a parsonage house I was into my teens before we had reliable heating and I had my first really hot bath.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
And after work, there were 4 channels on the TV, that closed down sometime after midnight. That was luxury compared to the 3 channels we used to have, and the TV that you had to get up and tune.
Does anyone else remember having to switch their TV between 405 and 625 lines (the latter for BBC2 only, I think).
My earliest memories of television are of Watch with Mother (Andy Pandy, Tales From the Riverbank etc), news broadcasts that seemed to take about ten minutes and two channels; we were always tuned to the BBC but there was also "the other side" as my Mum always called ITV.
I remember getting our first 625 line (UHF) set in 1969 and it coincided with the rollout of BBC2. Maybe there wasn't room on the old VHF/405 line band for more TV channels?
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
I remember the school trip to see a computer. It filled a whole room - we weren't allowed in the room, of course, we just looked at it through big glass windows.
Later, in my first job, we got a huge new machine, called a facsimile machine - apparently, it meant you could send letters down the telephone line! It was terribly exciting and completely useless, because no-one we dealt with had one.
M.
[ 30. January 2016, 16:50: Message edited by: M. ]
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
And the sweetie shop with the jars! I used to go in after school if mum said I was allowed, and get a quarter of Pink Pips or Cough Candy, weighed out by the shop lady and handed to me in a little white paper bag.
Saturday treat, my dad and I would call in at the newsagents on the way back from the library. I usually had a quarter of American hardgums and "coconut teacakes" to eat as I read through my newly borrowed library books.
The jars weren't limited to sweets. In Dublin we used to call in to Bewley's in Grafton St, all highly polished dark wood counters and shelves with an array of huge canisters coloured with Oriental designs. The aroma of freshly ground coffee was everywhere. You could ask for a half pound of a particular coffee or tea and have that weighed out of one of the huge canisters onto the scales and poured into a packet for you.
The only place I know that still does this is Cardew's in Oxford, although their canisters are smaller and undecorated. The smell is still rich and aromatic, though.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
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Posted
I remember my phone number had two letters followed by just 4 numbers. We had a party line which we shared with two other homes so you had to listen to make sure someone was not using the line before you started to dial. I remember that we waited until the evening to call long distance because it was less expensive. I remember when there was no emergency number and you dialed the operator for police and fire. I remember in Washington D.C that women were not allowed to sit at a bar and could only have a drink while seated at a table. She also could not stand up with a drink in her hand. No drinks were served on Sunday. You could not purchase anything you had to cook on Sunday, so you could buy bread or milk but not eggs. They were called blue laws.
Posts: 2641 | From: Third planet from the sun. USA | Registered: Nov 2004
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
Lots of little shops other than in the high street. I remember at least 5, plus a butcher and a baker. And we had two department stores, one of which sent money around the store in tubes on wires.
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Speaking of shopping, Saturday was half day. If you didn't manage to get the shopping completed by midday, tough luck, the shops had closed and the markets had packed up and you had to wait until Monday.
Wages came in cash, weekly, in small brown pay packets which you queued up to get from a sour-faced employee behind a grille.
Milk was delivered in glass bottles from a crack-of-dawn milk float and left on the doorstep. The birds sometimes used to peck holes in the foil tops to get at the cream, and we would have to throw the rest of the pint away.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
The transition from typewriters to computer keyboards (even for punch cards) was more difficult than expected for those who were used to doing their own typing, because of course one used the lower case "el" for the number 1 and the upper case "oh" for zero. Somehow the computers didn't understand that approach...
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
My earliest memories of home include a telephone like this. Then, when I was eight years old, we moved out in the country and had this as our phone. Except ours wasn't this pretty.
It felt like we had gone to the dark ages.
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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John D. Ward
Shipmate
# 1378
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
It's been a snowy morning - which reminded me what an epoch it was when we first got a wall-mounted heater in the bathroom. Before that, getting out of the bath was like surfacing in the Bering Sea.
This, so very much so. And this is fairly recent history as well. I moved into my present house in 1988, and heating in the bathroom was conspicuous by its absence. A few years later, when I had wooden window frames at the back of the house replaced with aluminium, I had a wall-mounted fan heater installed in the bathroom. Taking a bath in the winter months was no longer an extreme form of self-mortification!
Posts: 208 | From: Swansea, Wales, U.K. | Registered: Sep 2001
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Hilda of Whitby
Shipmate
# 7341
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Posted
My mother ground meat from the butcher using a meat grinder she would clamp onto the kitchen counter. Something like this.
She would dampen clothing to be ironed (there was lots and lots of ironing) using a clean soda bottle filled with distilled water. The bottle had a cork stopper with a sprinkle head attached. Like this.
We used to have a wringer washer in the basement. It looked like the one on the far right in the picture. My mother used it in the 1940s and sometime into the 1950s.
For years we used to hang our clothes up outside to dry, and in winter inside on wooden racks in the basement. It wasn't until 1963 or so that we got a dryer.
Mom used metal pants stretchers . She would wrestle the wet pants from the washer onto these drying racks and the pants would dry with a nice crease.
She used to wax the floors with Jubilee floor wax , which has been reintroduced, She would clean the oven with this ghastly oven cleaner from Easy-Off. It was this horrible brown muck that she would paint onto the interior of the oven--it was a huge mess.
I remember all this stuff because my older sister and I helped with housework!
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"Born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad."
Posts: 412 | From: Nickel City | Registered: Jun 2004
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
My grandparents' tin bath was stored in a shed midweek. It was taken in on a Saturday night and filled with jugfuls of hot water. The side of you facing the fire burned and the side away from the fire froze, resulting in an odd red/blue mottling of the skin which we called tinker's tartan.
At least they had an inside toilet - one of Granny's sisters still had her toilet at the bottom of the garden.
[ 30. January 2016, 20:39: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
If the milk was left when there was a frost, there could be a milk candle projecting up from the bottle, having pushed the top up and off with its expansion.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Milk was delivered in glass bottles from a crack-of-dawn milk float and left on the doorstep. The birds sometimes used to peck holes in the foil tops to get at the cream.
You didn't have one of these on your porch for the milk bottles?
And remember letting the milkman know if you wanted anything extra delivered via one of these (fifth photo down) stuck in an empty milk bottle?
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
Early 1950s, my aunt's house in Greenock had the toilet in the kitchen. Years later they built a cubicle around it. I think it may have been classified as a near-slum, but we didn't mind - it was a nice place and a friendly neighbourhood.
Many more years later, working in Edinburgh, if I wanted a photocopy my boss would wish me good luck and I went on bended knee to the Manager's secretary to request the key to the machine. If she didn't approve, then that was the end of it - no copies.
And then there was petrol for my first car... Three gallons for £1.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
And remember letting the milkman know if you wanted anything extra delivered via one of these (fifth photo down) stuck in an empty milk bottle?
No, it was the good old fashioned method of writing a note on the back of an envelope or similar then rolling it up and carefully wedging it into the top of the empty bottle. Sometimes it slipped down into it, and had to be extricated carefully with tweezers and curses. No such thing as the flag system. It was either that or one of us sprinting down the road very early in the morning trying to catch the milkman before the float disappeared.
Strangely enough I actually saw a milk float as recently as last week, delivering early in the morning. I don't see why not, given that home deliveries seem to be back in fashion and increasing in popularity; but it was the first milk float I've seen in - oh, a good 20 years.
[ 30. January 2016, 21:08: Message edited by: Ariel ]
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Does anyone else remember the switch from town gas to natural gas? For us, this was done a street at a time, and caused havoc with roadworks and individual upgrades.
We had a gas boiler put in, meaning we no longer had to stoke the coal one. My mum is still using it (must be 45 years later). We converted our coal store into a more general store room, and it is now a downstairs toilet.
That is going right back into my earliest memories!
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Our kids (8 and 10) think it's normal to ring granny on our phone , and normal to have to start again if you mess up one of the 11 digits!
And we use a hand-wound meat grinder like the one above (lacking the correct Kenwood A701 attachment, which I guess I could find on ebay). Except, in terms which are perhaps questionable within the politics of sexual preference, we call it the 'mincer'.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Landlubber
Shipmate
# 11055
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Posted
I remember the shock the first time I saw items from my own lifetime in a museum. (I am, alas, accustomed to it now.) I remember a knitted swimsuit which I think I saw in the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (how mine did hang down once wet and how cold and clammy it was when I left the water).
I do admire Hilda of Whitby's wringer washer. My grandmother had a copper and a mangle and I remember the excitement when my mother got a twin tub washing machine, although the wet clothes still had to be hauled out of the washer into the spin dryer.
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They that go down to the sea in ships … reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man
Posts: 383 | From: On dry land | Registered: Feb 2006
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
A television programme, I can't remember which one, had a weekly "mystery object." One week the "mystery object" was a darning mushroom, identical to the one in my sewing box. It was described in terms which suggested that no-one alive would be likely to recognise it. I'm not that old!
(Socks being cheaper than darning wool, I no longer darn, but it was a perfectly normal thing for someone born in the 1960s to have learned.)
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
You didn't have one of these on your porch for the milk bottles?
And remember letting the milkman know if you wanted anything extra delivered via one of these (fifth photo down) stuck in an empty milk bottle?
In the Bay Area, milk freezing wasn't ever a problem. We had a plywood crate for our milk bottles.
I do remember the order dingus - hadn't thought of those things in ages! Don't remember ever using one, though. It may be that we didn't order things much from the milkman. (I grew up on a steep hillside: the milkman had to back his truck up the hill because it wouldn't make it up in a forward gear, and the road was a dead end at the top.)
Speaking of milk deliveries, did anyone get interesting things on the stoppers of the milk bottles? Our dairy ran a series of US Presidents. I saved the little cardboard stoppers (after Mom cleaned them!) and glued them to the scorecard the dairy provided. That's how I memorized the names and order of the presidents. In those days the series ended with JFK...
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stercus Tauri:
Early 1950s, my aunt's house in Greenock had the toilet in the kitchen.
A quarter century or so later, my parents bought a house with a toilet in the kitchen. The first thing we did was get rid of it and put one somewhere else!
I was quite small at the time, and had a regular school exercise on Monday to write about what I did at the weekend. My classmates all wrote about going to the park, riding bikes and going swimming. I wrote about bending pipes and installing radiators.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jedijudy:
My earliest memories of home include a telephone like this.
Ours was like that, except the cord was not coiled and was covered in fabric, and there was no dial. You picked up the phone and gave the operator the number you were calling.
Party line numbers ended in a letter: J, M, R or W. Our number was 4927-W. You could call someone on your party line, for example 4927-J, by telling the operator, "Ring J, please."
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by M.:
I remember the school trip to see a computer. It filled a whole room - we weren't allowed in the room, of course, we just looked at it through big glass
The computer mouse must have been enormous, elephant sized.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
... only the school secretary was allowed to operate the Xerox machine -- we teachers couldn't -- and it took a special kind of paper.
It did indeed, and it was horrid. It had a ghastly scratchy quality about it and smelled funny. Not like the delectable aroma of a freshly-run Banda.
Reading Firenze's post about the shop-keeper made me think of this.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
We did a local survey in the early 80s and the collator entered all the data on to punch cards.
Then I had (briefly) a computer studies class a bit later. Computers were much simpler then – Maybe 1984. When I was going to be away for a week I divided the class into groups and arranged for them to visit places in the city where computers were used – city council, library etc. One lad who was probably more knowledgeable about computers than most of the class went to the multinational computer company that the Grandad was currently working for and was amazed when they sent a computer message to their US parent and got a reply straight back.
Telephones not so long ago disconnected if you were dialling and paused to check a digit. You had to start again and dial the number without a break.
And I remember the hours I've stood on the table while Mum/friend/husband pinned up a hem and got it dead level. Hah!!
GG
[ 31. January 2016, 06:48: Message edited by: Galloping Granny ]
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
Telephones not so long ago disconnected if you were dialling and paused to check a digit. You had to start again and dial the number without a break.
They still do.
Nobody has yet mentioned that it was the era before mobile phones. On public transport, people would read real books or newspapers, or actually talk to each other. You made arrangements in advance on where to meet, or you drew up a shopping list before going out instead of phoning someone from the supermarket to ask what was needed when you got there. (It was also possible to avoid phone calls you didn't want just by getting out of reach of the landline.)
Journeys were relatively peaceful unless some rebellious youth had brought a transistor radio with them. Or someone was smoking like a chimney on the bus.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Does anyone else remember the switch from town gas to natural gas? For us, this was done a street at a time, and caused havoc with roadworks and individual upgrades.
I remember that and the "High-speed gas" slogan. It was quite the thing and caused a bit of a hoo-hah as the natural gas had a higher calorific value than town gas, so the price was higher per unit volume.
It set a trend however as there were some cowboy electricians in the 'Seventies going round doing conversions for "Nuclear electricity"!
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
The party line. I grew up in semi-rural NZ, and telephone lines were shared between up to 6 or 7 houses. There was a particular clicking noise that meant someone was listening to your conversation without participating.
The advent of an inside toilet was epoch making in our family. I think I was about 16.
Milk deliveries by horse and cart - my town was the last in NZ to have these, and the last one was some time in the 1980s.
Full school earthquake drills. The ones where you got under your desk every month until the bell rang the all clear. As a child I took them for granted: its only as an adult that I've realised that 1931 wasn't all that long ago for the adults around me at the time. (There was an earthquake that flattened the two cities in the area in 1931, and my grandfather was sworn as a special constable).
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I still get a doorstop milk delivery, but it does not come on a horse drawn float, or even an electric one.
There was a good practical reason why horses were used for delivering milk long after everything else had been motorised.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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anoesis
Shipmate
# 14189
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Posted
This is hilarious. I'm thirty-eight, so I don't think I even qualify as middle-aged yet. But: I remember, let's see, manual typewriters, yes, carbon copies, yes, banda machines, yes, two channels only on the TV, the TV ending at a certain time of night, yes, bakelite telephones yes, party lines, yes, glass milk bottles delivered by milkmen, yes, darning mushrooms yes (my Dad darned his own socks of an evening while listening to a big ugly SONY wireless with a literal dial you wound to change frequencies). Oh, and everyone smoking all the time, yes.
On the other hand, I most certainly don't remember steam engines as anything other than curiosities or biscuits that didn't come already packaged. Or chewing tobacco and the associated spitting, which my father-in-law (late sixties) was relating to us as a normal part of his childhood a few months ago. That was a little hard to wrap my head around (he's not OLD-old, after all), but what really made my eyes widen was when he mused, 'I remember the first time I saw something made out of plastic. I suppose I was about twelve.' Obviously there's a lot of old shit that I am old enough to remember, but in my life plastic has just always been - although perhaps less ubiquitous than now.
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The history of humanity give one little hope that strength left to its own devices won't be abused. Indeed, it gives one little ground to think that strength would continue to exist if it were not abused. -- Dafyd --
Posts: 993 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2008
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
I can just remember working steam trains. Our local station is on a branch line, and it was the last line in the old British Rail Southern Region to be converted to diesel. The "up" trains (going "up" to London) went through a tunnel immediately before the station. As the engine came out of the tunnel there would be an enormous burst of smoke which had been confined by the tunnel. The engine would appear as a monster through a dense cloud of smoke - and the noise was extraordinary.
As a very small child I was terrified. I remember hiding behind my mother's skirt on the station platform. I was convinced the monster was going to attack me. So I hated going to London because it meant waiting for the scary train.
One day we were going to London and I was fussing and complaining. My mother said, "Don't worry, it's a nice train now". And when we got down to the station the train came in quietly with no smoke at all - the service had been converted to diesel. What a relief! This must have been in the very early 1960s.
My mother preferred the diesel trains too, because they were so much cleaner. The steam engines covered every surface with a black sooty deposit.
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
On public transport, people would read real books or newspapers, or actually talk to each other.
Really? On the London Underground (especially if the train stopped in the tunnel) people gazed across the carriage, trying not to cough and studiously not meeting the eyes of the person opposite.
And on compartment trains you could be "trapped" by a loquacious companion, especially if the train had no corridor.
Generally, I agree, travelling was quieter, and better for it.
Re. "Spitting" - I remember arriving in Glasgow in 1975 and being puzzled by the "No spitting" notices in the Subway trains. They must have been the last places to have them - we certainly didn't have them in London.
And another thing: bus conductors! Who has them now (except, I think, for one "heritage" route in London and a route in the Dundee area)?
[ 31. January 2016, 08:13: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
The engine would appear as a monster through a dense cloud of smoke - and the noise was extraordinary. As a very small child I was terrified.
I was frightened at seeing sparks flying out of the chimney as they rushed past at night.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
Bakelite telephones remind me of my grandmother ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Signaller
Shipmate
# 17495
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Milk was delivered in glass bottles from a crack-of-dawn milk float and left on the doorstep.
It still is round here. We leave a stack of empty yoghurt pots on the doorstep for the milkman to put over the bottles to stop the birds pecking the tops.
Doesn't everyone?
Posts: 113 | From: Metroland | Registered: Jan 2013
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Landlubber:
I do admire Hilda of Whitby's wringer washer. My grandmother had a copper and a mangle and I remember the excitement when my mother got a twin tub washing machine,
AS a child my arm followed the clothes through the wringer. It hurt, but the shirt sleeve was nicely pressed.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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