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Occupations That Have Faded Away

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Banda fluid was alcohol based. Think it was coloured like meths used to be. We used banda machines when I started teaching. If you ran worksheets off very close to using them in a lesson the pupils would sniff them. Nightmare if you were first to use the machines in a morning as they took ages to prime.
 
pjmburns said:
Banda fluid was alcohol based. Think it was coloured like meths used to be. We used banda machines when I started teaching. If you ran worksheets off very close to using them in a lesson the pupils would sniff them. Nightmare if you were first to use the machines in a morning as they took ages to prime.
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Yes. I had the the exact same experiences preparing worksheets with banda machines in the 70s and 80s. Both hand and electric versions. Science and geography teachers took great pride in their multi coloured banda worksheets.
 
cba said:
Yes. I had the the exact same experiences preparing worksheets with banda machines in the 70s and 80s. Both hand and electric versions. Science and geography teachers took great pride in their multi coloured banda worksheets.
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Rhe secreteries used pink correction fluid as I recall and the banda sheets were dark pink. I think the Gestetners were grey?
 
And the hand date stamps where you turned each section, or got it wrong. I broke many a biro nib doing that. Like they had in the public library. Some were round with an outer section that moved up and down. The franking machine worked the same. I got covered in red ink every day. I used to jam it accidentally on purpose so the nice girl in accounts would come and help me. And the typewriter ribbons. Mine used to jam. We 2 finger typed addresses for the proofs to go out every night for the next morning. You could hear us 3 lads drumming away on our Remington Rands and ratcheting them up. How many times did I type plumbong and have to correct it. We were not allowed to hand write them. Brown manilla. And the taste of the gum, one lad didn't mind licking, blurgh! We had what we called a licking machine. It was grey with a vertical space and you filled it with water, too much and it soaked the envelopes and they all stuck together and it had 2 black rubber rollers you passed the envelope through. Too thick and it wouldn't go through the franking machine. I called that nice girl over again when it did. I was supposed to use tape in it for big parcels. But that often ran out. Only the parcels we made up to send back were hand printed. Re used and reused. And some wrapped in brown paper. There was a dispatch driver, another occupation for the metal cases for London. Like a small suitcase with a security lock on each side that you spun round. I don't recall them having sandwich boards but they had rigid ones and boxes where the paper sellers shouted. See tye fye nail. Teel a greeeayaph.! Light seet eye!
 
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Completely forgot about the meter guy. It's mazing what you can remember but also what is forgotten. That is the joy of this site to remind us of all that went on
 
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Nico said:
Remember Park Keepers? And the Nit Nurse. The School Nurse. Do they still have Dinner Ladies as in ones walking round the playground? We had Parrot Face and Fish Face. The Bread Man who delivered the bread. Nan had a big wicker basket for it on her step. There were two men where I worked. One of the wise crackers called them the men with no jobs. To their faces. Off the Newsroom was the Creed Room. These 2 chaps took faxed news bulletins to the News Desk all day. Copy runners. Errand runners. Proof Readers. The Block Store where they files the metal blocks when it was hot metal. Then plastic plates came in,.. Then Pasted Up artwork. Compositors, the chap who pressed out the made up pages to be cast. Foundry men. Linotype operators, colour process operatives, machine minders, the men who put the plates on the presses, the men who monitored the papers trundling off and bundled them in those horrible plastic binders. I think they were string before that. The Readers had women workers and the paste up at the very end of it's run. They had a typing pool all women who typed on typewriters like a teleprinter except it went on the back page of the paper. At the last minute. And the likes of me. All gone.
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Hi all does anyone remember The Park Keeper ginge in Aston Park you were worried if he caught you in there after 8.30 / 9.00 i think it was respect back in them days . Raz
 
izzy eckerslike said:
The saying' it would freeze the balls off a brass Monkey' is nearly always misinterpreted. It actually refers to the method of storing cannonballs piled up in a pyramid on a brass casting. In freezing weather the balls would have to be dislodged with a heavy mallet so in actual fact the saying should be 'cold enough to freeze the balls ON a brass monkey'
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My Grandad would say, "I have seen a brass monkey looking for a blow lamp today."
 
raz ullah said:
Hi all does anyone remember The Park Keeper ginge in Aston Park you were worried if he caught you in there after 8.30 / 9.00 i think it was respect back in them days . Raz
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Ours was Gosford Green, Coventry. He had a fair sized corrugated tin hut to cook and make tea in. Hidden by some bushes. My friends called him the Parky. They led me astray. Tipping the benches over to annoy him.I told mum she stopped me going. We could do with him now though. The police stopped our elderly friend jogging in the Memorial park at daybreak as women joggers had been attacked so she jogged round her local green and pond and they stopped her again.
 
Paddling Pool Attendants. And First Aid stations manned by kindly old ladies with sticking plasters and compassion
.
 
Nico said:
Remember Park Keepers? And the Nit Nurse. The School Nurse. Do they still have Dinner Ladies as in ones walking round the playground? We had Parrot Face and Fish Face. The Bread Man who delivered the bread. Nan had a big wicker basket for it on her step. There were two men where I worked. One of the wise crackers called them the men with no jobs. To their faces. Off the Newsroom was the Creed Room. These 2 chaps took faxed news bulletins to the News Desk all day. Copy runners. Errand runners. Proof Readers. The Block Store where they files the metal blocks when it was hot metal. Then plastic plates came in,.. Then Pasted Up artwork. Compositors, the chap who pressed out the made up pages to be cast. Foundry men. Linotype operators, colour process operatives, machine minders, the men who put the plates on the presses, the men who monitored the papers trundling off and
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as i have posted i was a park keeper. at weekends. when it was bham city parks dept and small holdings.
 
I was telling my Leicester mate about this. His uncle who was blind was a gate keeper. Unpaid. He opened a gate on to private land where a road/path ran through it. There was a bell on the locked gate. He would come down and oblige from his cottage. A good walk says my mate. He recognised people by their voice. Those who were short with him were denied entry.
 
My dad got expenses at Coventry City FC as a Steward. On the terraces. He wore a Sky blue nylon coat. He kept order. He quit when it got rough. early 70s. Thugs.
 
In our local family run funeral company, they employed an elderly lady to sit with bereaved families and just talk to them, if they wanted to. And explain things or just listen. Her name was Vi. A friend of ours delivered flowers in a small van. When no mourners were around he would grab Vi and swing her around for a waltz. Or a polka. Then she would try and compose herself.
 
Nico,

I used to work occasionally with a trumpet player in Christchurch, who ran a funeral service. If you were gigging with him, while the band was playing he would come out with the most amazing stories and have the other members of the band so creased up with laughter that they would struggle to play. In one particular hiotel, we were all laughing so much that one old guest told the hotel manager that we were laughing at him. Of course, we weren't, but we still got hauled up into the office to explain ourselves. :)

Maurice :cool:
 
Morturn said:
5 Crazy Jobs That You Don't Need Anymore! | British Pathé
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Re the Urine Collector job. I read a good book I am sure it was called Black Rain, apertaining to coal dust that got in to everything, even the rain. There is another book with this title, mine was about Welsh miners. In it there was a character a lady who emptied the loos every day and collected it in buckets her name was Sarah The Pissio.
 
Nico said:
R. In it there was a character a lady who emptied the loos every day and collected it in buckets her name was Sarah The Pissio.
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Hi,

In the past it was used in the cloth dyeing industry as a mordant, - it set the colours fast in the cloth.

Kind regards
Dave
 
Morturn said:
5 Crazy Jobs That You Don't Need Anymore! | British Pathé
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Looking at this video reminded me of when my mother would go to the grocers at the Warley Odeon
( Singletons ) where they would roast coffee in the shop. The smell of roasting coffee is so distinctive I can still remember it now after 70 years but is not found in any shops now.
 
Arnold Mason said:
Looking at this video reminded me of when my mother would go to the grocers at the Warley Odeon
( Singletons ) where they would roast coffee in the shop. The smell of roasting coffee is so distinctive I can still remember it now after 70 years but is not found in any shops now.
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In the mid 60s I worked for Maxwell House Coffee. I loved the roasting coffee, unfortunately the smell permeated my clothes and hair. I was taking classes at University in the evening and received a number of complaints from other students and Professors! Took later classes and went home to shower (sometimes)
 
I would think with modern machines now, one of my birth mother's early jobs would be defunct. She worked at Typhoo and she operated a lever that guided the tea in to packets as tea was bought in, on those days. She was in the clouds and she was not operating the leaver, the packets went one way and the tea the other and she was sacked.

Mu mum's first job was in a galvanised bucket factory. I wonder if they are still made.



mikejee said:
One way to get rid of chilblains, let rats nibble them. But we are getting off subject.
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