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Occupations That Have Faded Away
- Thread starter I Am Nico
- Start date
- Status
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
i still prefer the bag wash though Our Maurice. its warmerPete,
There's even one here in Aghios Nikolaos, and again it's used by tourists and people living in single rooms or very small flats. I can foresee a need for them in the right places for years to come.
Maurice
Richard Dye
master brummie
Absolutely Maurice! When our children were you we would take more clothes in our station wagon on holiday than you could shake a stick at! Then we noticed that most places we stayed had a small launderettes, three or four washer and dryers. It took a while to convince my wife to use them for our children's clothes, but quickly realized the benefit! we traveled very light afterward.Lauderettes still get used by people in single rooms and also used to be used by me, until a few years ago, when we were touring around Europe and the UK. It was a handy facility.
Maurice
I Am Nico
master brummie
I did that with Nan she made helping her make the beds a game.
Bob Davis
Bob Davis
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
a bag wash is were to put your washing in a bag of some sort and take it to a launderette to wash it,or get them to wash it.and bring it home in a bag
I Am Nico
master brummie
The Launderette, according to my mate's late gran who was Irish. There is no launderette where I live now. There was one where I used to live in bedsit land. Then the estate agent said all the houses have washing machines, it is expected. Our old one became a shoe shop.
Small Pet shops are rare too apart from big places.
No leather goods shops.
No pork batch shops. Here when I was in my teens some butchers would open a side window for the pubs and clubs at night.
Looking at the news it's the demise of the department store too now.
Remember those shops that sold ribbons and ladies undergarments buttons and linen and muslin.LIke a habadashery plus.
In France I was pleased to see basket wavers still going and rattan chair repairers. My parters cousins laundry basket and her washing basket and shopping baskets are wicker. She was surprised when I said ours are plastic.
They still have creameries too selling dairy products especially cheese. But even they are dwindling.
No fishmongers any more. I used to take the details from the Grimsby fish supplier, A Mr Bark. He called everybody mo' love even if it was a bloke he was talking to. The refrigerated vans came at the weekend on pub car parks I think the minimum buy for a box of fish had 8 pieces in it.
I also took the adverts for the Pick Your Own Fruit farms now dwindling as they are building on them. I remember Cross Lanes, Brandon Lane, Cloudsley Bush it's amazing what sticks in this head!
And The animal food suppliers. Mr Ball of Madeley. A lovely customer. Sigh!
I Am Nico
master brummie
I still have my parents' laundry bag, they used it for heavy shopping. It's big reinforced sort of woven plastic hessian if that makes sense, blue and white small checked. We use it for small logs twigs and heavy garden rubbish and things.
and bring it home in a bag
Lady Penelope
master brummie
Have we mentioned typists? Oh, those awful days on Remington/Olivetti or some such. Making a mistake when you have 4 carbon copies in the machine. Putting little bits of paper behind each carbon while you rub out the mistake and then forgetting they are there so that you have a set of carbon copies with a neat square on each with no writing. I still have a typewriter rubber at work with a brush on the end to dust the rubbings out away. Not noticing a mistake until you'd taken out the paper and then trying to align everything up. And all that while trying not to chip your nail varnish....
Do people remember Sash Cord Ken who would replace peoples sash cords in the old wooden windows in the Birmingham Area , that was a job i did as an apprentice with the Housing Dept a dirty dusty job and i don't think tenants were too happy if i replaced them after they had newly painted their window that was back between 1968 to 1972 . Raz x
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
i remember the weights
there are loads of weights in a barn by were i live.
i have 2 taking up the slack in my aerial dipoleHi Morturn yes i worked out of James Street Sub Depot on Lozells Road as an apprentice from 68 to 72 and worked in the Perry Barr Lozells and Handsworth areas and at times pushed a hand cart along the road with tools and materials in , nowadays they all have vans don't know they are born , and we use to have a laugh you couldn't nowadays someone would be offended . The carpenters i worked with were Jonny Underhill and Clive Parry there was also Peter the Plumber , Jeff the Lorry Driver and i use to have a right laugh with Danny the Labourer he was a nice bloke the work was harder in them days no battery tools and i had to walk to each job. Raz x
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izzy eckerslike
master brummie
Interestingly, we still have an attended petrol pump here at a garage in Mount Pleasant, Redditch,
izzy eckerslike
master brummie
I think a lot are probably attended abroad, we hired a little automatic Fiat in Cyprus a few years back and went up into the mountains,I think it must have been Sunday and there were no petrol stations open anywhere and we began to panic as the gauge showed way less than half full and we had a long way to drive back.All are attended here in Greece, Vic, and they must give you a receipt.
Maurice
We stopped to ask someone where we could get petrol and managed to get him to understand, we drove about 10 miles to find it was also closed so we asked another passer by who directed us to a nearby village.
We had to look for a sign saying Benzolene and when we pulled up there was no pump. A rather suspicious lady dressed in black finally came out and we managed to tell he we wanted petrol, she said you want Benzolene? There was a big drum with a little lever like a pub bar on the top and she pumped some into a big jug and poured it in with a funnel, we asked for another jug and then asked how much to pay. I can't remember now how much but we definitely paid way over for an unmeasured amount and she also had no change for the large notes we had, we were extremely grateful nevertheless. I expect the old lady walked away chuckling to herself.
sospiri
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Vic,
Yes, we're OK on the main east-west highway and a couple down on the road to the south coast, but get up into the mountains and they are few and far between and are shut after midnight in the winter and 1:00am in the summer apart from those at the airport some 40+ miles away. But a bit like getting stuck in the mud miles from anywhere, there's always a farmer who has the means to help you - at a price!
Maurice
Yes, we're OK on the main east-west highway and a couple down on the road to the south coast, but get up into the mountains and they are few and far between and are shut after midnight in the winter and 1:00am in the summer apart from those at the airport some 40+ miles away. But a bit like getting stuck in the mud miles from anywhere, there's always a farmer who has the means to help you - at a price!
Maurice
maypolebaz
master brummie
Speaking of ocupations that have disappeared. When's the last time anyone saw an Errand Kid ? In the 50s I used to deliver from a grocers in Kings Heath, taking orders to customer's houses, on a bike with a basket on the front. Impossible today, in today's demented traffic the kid would end up as a red smear on the road !
chrissweep
master brummie
I think it might be called " Deliveroo " these days, we also have people here that go round on bikes with a large cage in tow collecting waste . They really hold up the traffic !
I Am Nico
master brummie
I remember the sign for National Benzol
I Am Nico
master brummie
I remember the Butcher Boy as he was called riding a bike with a big wicker basket on the front, the bike was too big for him. He wore a white cow gown. The street sweepers with a big square hand cart which folded open each side like a tool box. In Corporation Colours with the crest on it. They started to struggle when people had more cars and parked in the streets. I vaguely remember an ice cream cart with 2 wagon wheels on a trip to Kensington Gardens with mum and dad as a child. It was painted pink and white. Two hairnets weather again Baz! I remember the road sweepers having gloves with the fingers out.That's where I first remember grandad saying it was brass monkey weather as I have a vague memory of an old man sitting by a brazier? A waist high sort of dustbin with holes in with smoldering coals. I don't know why he was sat there. Nan never liked him. She would say 'they got the road up again!' he looked too old to be a navvy. He wore a long shabby thick brown coat. And a normal sort of felt hat, a bashed in hat a bit like Flanagan (or Allen) not a work hat. He used to make the tea for the men in this sort of rudimentary tent with an iron kettle on the top of this thing. Nan always steered me away from him, or it.
I Am Nico
master brummie
izzy eckerslike
master brummie
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'
I do indeed. He would stop kids in the street if it was school time. I was playing the wagg and was in a friend’s house whose mum was at work, when the School Board Man knocked the door.
Fortunately, my friend answered the door and kept a cool head; saying his mum had told him to stay at home because he was sick. The school board man then asked my pal if he knew where the grove, I lived in was. He could not find it in the AtoZ.
Again, my friend kept his cool head and give him wrong directions. We both lived to play the wagg again.
Fortunately, my friend answered the door and kept a cool head; saying his mum had told him to stay at home because he was sick. The school board man then asked my pal if he knew where the grove, I lived in was. He could not find it in the AtoZ.
Again, my friend kept his cool head and give him wrong directions. We both lived to play the wagg again.
I Am Nico
master brummie
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.
I Am Nico
master brummie
I joined an ex Employees site which is interesting. It has contributors from all over the shop. The Birmingham papers ex employees have joined but they don't seem to contribute as yet. Everyone says about the multiple skills that went in to producing quality newspapers. And the media now. As Sospiri says, and how embarrassingly bad and inaccurate they are, and the blatant lies they get away with.Nico,
Not much real journalism now - they all copy off each other!
Maurice
Someone already posted something similar on the Forum, a lady, but, one of my many now defunct skills was printing with the Gestetner and Banda machines for the secretaries. I was at the beck and call of every secretary but they always asked my boss first. I always wondered if Banda fluid was drinkable! It smelled like gin to me. I used to sing in the Banda Room as it would just be me. To "Yes Sir I can Boogie," Yes Sir I can Banda, etc.... Banda, Amanada Wanda. She was my number 2. The MD's secretaries daughter. There was a lot of nepotism. My boss said if the place ever folded, (then) whole families would be out of work. I would be fetching faxes as there was only one then, plus the news bulletin one. Boss's unofficial officious number two insisted we said the Facsimile Machine.
I used to fetch block pulls from the Comp(osing) Room. I had to ask permission of the Chargehand to take an apprentice off his job to pull me one. He would lock my metal block, an advertisement, in a chace, with 'furniture' which was to pad out the blank space, ink it up with the roller, these were quite small, and print several off for me. No matter what position of the Advertisement Dept we were in we were all trained in all the processes and what everything was called. So if you passed an empty office with a phone ringing you were allowed to answer, "Coventry Evening Telegraph, Mr So and So's phone, how may and help you?" and hopefully you would be able to.
So when the new processes came in, like in paste up and with colour film overlays, I was able use that in part of my RSA French Exam. We had to do a presentation, in French, on anything.
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