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Growing Up In Brum - Roy Blakey Inspired.

Hi Roy. With regard to "Lining it up for the Summer, #566" I note that I did quite a few cycle trips in the Summer of 1958, when I was aged 15. As I lived on the south side of Birmingham (Hall Green) most of these trips were to places like Earlswood Lakes and Henley-in-Arden. My longest cycle trips that Summer were to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shipston-on-Stour and back; and also to Alcester, Evesham and Stratford. The length of these rides would have been about 65 miles. I did do two rides to Tamworth and see that on the 21st August 1958 I saw the engines Princess Royal and Princess Marie? Louise. My favourite cycle rides were always through the Warwickshire countryside. Went cycling with my wife today in Surrey but only did 7 miles. Do you still cycle? Dave.
 
To farmerdave. No Dave , I've not been on a bicycle for quite a while . Nice to hear that you had a little cycle ride to-day down there in Surrey. Is the wife still expecting you to give her a little ' saddle push ' up the gradients these days ?
 
No, she is usually ahead of me. This area, not far from Box Hill, has become a centre for cyclists since the Olympics. We also have quite a number of cyclists cafes where you can buy a coffee and get a puncture repaired if necessary. Dave.
 
farmerdave said:
Hi Roy. With regard to "Lining it up for the Summer, #566" I note that I did quite a few cycle trips in the Summer of 1958, when I was aged 15. As I lived on the south side of Birmingham (Hall Green) most of these trips were to places like Earlswood Lakes and Henley-in-Arden. My longest cycle trips that Summer were to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shipston-on-Stour and back; and also to Alcester, Evesham and Stratford. The length of these rides would have been about 65 miles. I did do two rides to Tamworth and see that on the 21st August 1958 I saw the engines Princess Royal and Princess Marie? Louise. My favourite cycle rides were always through the Warwickshire countryside. Went cycling with my wife today in Surrey but only did 7 miles. Do you still cycle? Dave.
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Our bike rides, in the mid-50s, allways started down the Alcester road from the Maypole. We would normally go towards Evesham, (Stratford charged twice as much for a bottle of Mason's lemonade).
Once we had moved up to bikes with "Double clangers" Gorcott hill held no terrors for us !
I remember, as we rode along, we'd see trees, laden with pears, hanging over the road. Having filled our saddlebags with them, we would then see beautiful plums, so our saddlebags were promptly emptied to accomodate them and so it went on, until we reached our destination, Huxley's Ferry, Evesham.
An hour watching the ferry and the fishermen there and we'd head back again.
We'd arrive home, after a round trip of roughly 60 miles, exhausted, and our parents weren't even aware of where we'd been,
God, those were the days !
 
THE OLD ' ZIG ZAG ' TECHNIQUE.
( Going back to when most bicycles were limited to " Single Speed " gears and motor traffic was minimal.)
On a countryside bicycle trip a common sight would be seeing cyclists, negotiating steephill gradients, making life easier by Zig Zagging across the road.
Had to travel a bit further but made it easier to reach the top of the hill.
 
I seem to remember that I was able to cycle to Henley-in-Arden from Hall Green without going along the Stratford Road. The route would have taken me via Earlswood, Tanworth-in-Arden, Ullenhall to Henley. A very pleasant ride. No visit to Henley-in-Arden was complete without a visit to the famous ice-cream shop. Is it still there? Sometimes I returned via the Stratford Road but then had to tackle Liveridge Hill, which seemed to go on forever. It was quite a triumph to cycle up the hill without getting off the bike. Dave.
 
We take the same route to Henley-in Arden but these days it's by car - and yes the ice-cream shop is still there!
best wishes
PatHayward
 
farmerdave said:
I seem to remember that I was able to cycle to Henley-in-Arden from Hall Green without going along the Stratford Road. The route would have taken me via Earlswood, Tanworth-in-Arden, Ullenhall to Henley. A very pleasant ride. No visit to Henley-in-Arden was complete without a visit to the famous ice-cream shop. Is it still there? Sometimes I returned via the Stratford Road but then had to tackle Liveridge Hill, which seemed to go on forever. It was quite a triumph to cycle up the hill without getting off the bike. Dave.
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It was a climb Dave, but in the late forties, early fifties, there was a great café at the top of the hill. Always full of 'shattered' cyclists! Probably no longer there.

Eddie
 
In the first instance let me say how pleased I am to know the ice cream shop still trades. If I ever manage to get to Wythall I must stop off at Henley-in-Arden on route. I think the last time I was there was around 1965 when we stopped for afternoon tea. I had been showing my newly wed wife around Stratford-upon-Avon and that area.

Regarding cycling to Stratford-upon-Avon there were many ways from the south of Birmingham and district: some direct others less so. I often used the Stratford Canal towpath to Lapworth then on metaled roads. A dangerous move for me as I could not swim and I still cannot.

Of course a bonus was a train or 150 bus ride there.
 
I seem to recall that the Ice Cream shop was saved when the then owners (Ross?) were putting it up for sale. Thankfully the quality seems as good now as I remember it.
 
" WATCH OUT OUR KID. DAD'S A BIT VEXED "
( It made sense to quickly slope off some where else.)
Like many men our Dad would carry out D.I.Y jobs around our house and garden. He was mainly successful in most things that he attempted but there was the odd ccassion when something didn't come off quite right, it was then that it paid us kids to read his mood a bit. Like most blokes of the period he worked long hard manual hours and sometimes if a D.I.Y job at home didn't quite meet his expectations he could get a bit frustrated. I don't mean in any sense that he took it out on us kids or Mom but on the few occassios that he got up a bit tight. it paid to leave him to calm down a bit.
A classic situation that I will always remember was the day that he decided to fit a set of door riser hinges to one of the living room doors ( Dad and Mom had just bought their first full size living room carpet which Dad had already laid himself and made a good job of it ). The bottom of one of the doors to the living room was however catching on the new carpet hence Dad began to fit a set of riser hinges. Part of the process required Dad to shave off a slice along the top of the door.
After removing the door he took it out to the back yard and commenced to shave off the required amount of wood from the door.
My brother and I are watching with interest all this going on.
Job done Dad brings the door back into the living room and starts to offer it up for the fitting part.
There was an almighty burst of naughty words suddenly coming from Dad. I looked at my brother, he looked at me and we both did a quick runner out the back door.
I guess we must have played around in the street for a while before returning home. On returning, the door had been fitted and Dad was having a cup of tea with Mom in the kitchen. When my brother and I discreetly viewed the finished door we could see that something was not quite right. What Dad had done in the first instance was to shave the wood off the wrong end of the door and then had to shave another piece off the other ( correct ) end. There was now a sizeable angled gap at the bottom of the door ( never did look right after that ). That gap on the bottom of the door was still there over 50 years later and as far as I know, it may still be hanging there to this day.
Balancing the story a bit. Our Dad was a good man and never ceased to provide for us all. We loved him dearly.
We all get a bit frustrated sometimes though, don't we.
 
DICK BARTON-- SPECIAL AGENT. ( BBC Radio 1946- 1951 ).
Here was another radio programme series that would get the older kids hurrying off the streets in order to listen to it. This was an early evening programme and on every week night. It was a short drama featuring " DICK BARTON and his mates
" JOCK " and " SNOWY WHITE ". Private investigators and sometimes Special Agents.
Moms, Dads and the older Children would, in general, all find this programme a " not to be missed " event.
I brought up one of the original programmes recently on " You Tube ", Got the memories flowing a bit.
Another little ' gather round the radio ' family occassion' was good old " Dick Barton ".
 
I was only very young but I remember "Dick Tracy", on the radio and the "Ovaltineys", and listen with Mother. Thanks for the memories. Paul
 
DICK BARTON - SPECIAL AGENT. Light Programme. Monday - Friday, 6.45 - 7.00 PM.

Never missed it. "Come on, Snowy, come on Jock". Finally succumbed, if I remember right, to The Archers.

Also recall Paul Temple, and the programme theme tune of "Coronation Scot".

My younger sister and I would also stay up to listen to Valentine Dyall "The Man In Black"

Eddie
 
Eddie,

Between Dick Barton and The Archers were two series of The Daring Dexters about a circus. A few years ago, some pirate episodes of Dick Barton appeared online and I downloaded episodes 1 & 2, however, the remainder were taken down before I had a chance to grab them. Somewhere I still have those two episodes where they all met up. If I remember right, Dick was a captain in some branch of the Army and Snowy was his batman. I can't remember where Jock fitted in.

I had to go to bed just as Paul Temple came on at 8:00pm and The Man In Black was even later, so I rarely caught any of that unless Dad fell asleep in his chair with the radio on and it was a night that Mom was working as a tote operator at the dog track!

Maurice
 
Maurice,

I had completely forgot The Daring Dexter's!

By the way, congratulations to your 'adopted' town of Bournemouth. In the Premier League. Little 'ole Bournemoth!

Eddie
 
Dick Barton. You just knew as soon as you heard the introductory music that you would soon be whisked off to a land of danger at 100 miles an hour. Amazing back then what they could do with some dialogue & sound effects. "Look out Dick, he`s got a gun" Bang! & then a few seconds of silence. "I`m all right Snowy, he missed"

I don`t know if "Journey into Space" came before or after Dick Barton but i can barely recall it. & my favourite of all time "Around the Horn" All brilliant stuff.
 
Dick Barton (Capt. Richard Barton MC a commando) was great. A pleasant interlude at evening meal time and quite relaxing - despite the drama -before the obligatory 'homework' had to be done. I am not sure, either, where 'Jock' fits in, I guess he was just another OR sidekick.
I remember being dismayed that Noel Johnson (the first to play DB,) was summoned for speeding. How could they, he was a friend of the police surely.

https://archive.org/details/otr_dickbartonspecialagent

https://www.turnipnet.com/whirligig/radio/dickbarton.htm
 
You could even buy a "Special Agent" stamp album. The one pictured is dated 1951, when I was 8 years old. It's a bit faded now, like its owner. Dave.
P1020282.jpg
 
THE GOLF BALL EXPERIMENT.
( A typical " I wonder if " try out by the kids ).
Early 1940'S. One day whilst we were playing out on the street corner one of the lads pulled a Golf Ball out of his pocket that he had been given by someone. Golf Balls we had heard of, but at that time none of our crowd had handled one before. Bouncing it on the pavement we were all impressed with its ' high rebound ' characteristics. In next to no time it turned into a competition to see who could bounce the Golf ball off the floor and achieve the highest rebound.We played this game over a period of days and then began to notice that the cover on the Golf ball had begun to split and break up.
We became curious regarding what lay under this outer cover so we began to peel it off. We discovered, undernaeath, a perfectly shaped rubber sphere formed by long thin wrap around elastic strips. Unwinding the elastic we eventually found ,right in the centre, a tiny enclosed bag that contained some sort of liquid. We figured that it was the tightly bound elastic that had provided the extra bounce effect and that the little bag in the centre was some sort of core.
Why not have a go at making our own high bounce ball became our thought.
We collected as many different size elastic bands that we could lay our hands on and some thin cut strips from an old bicycle inner tube, then using a pretty big ball bearing as our centre piece we began to build up a sphere by wrapping the elastic bands and inner tube strips around the ball bearing. Eventually we achieved a sort of a ball shape of a descent size.
Came the time now to try out our home nade ball.
We did, to some degree, achieve the high rebound characteristis of the Golf Ball but we couldn't guaratee the direction of the rebound ( bouncing it off the pavement it could shoot off in any direction , almost to the point of being a bit dangerous ). We had to admit that the game we had been playing with the Golf Ball was not possible with our own home made version. We had a think about this and we figured that we hadn't achieved a perfect sphere shape and that the elastic bands were not uniformly spread and not compact enough.
No matter, we maybe hadn't quite reached our goal but we had learned a few things and it had certainly been a bit of fun.
 
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SORTING OUT THOSE " AICHES " AND " FOIVES ".
" Stop that please. Start again and speak properly this time ".
How many times might the kids be told something like that by their parents ( always seemed to happen when Uncles and Aunties were visiting ).
The parents would be trying to get their kids to avoid using ' slang ', avoid dropping their ' aiches ' and tone down a bit on their local accent. I think that they some times connected the BBC radio announcer accent with the possibility of success in both education and career opportunities for their kids.
A Brummie kid probably found it a bit difficult to avoid the accent bit. He or she might find it difficult to understand what was wrong with saying FOIVE ( for five ), NOICE ( for nice), ALOIVE ( for alive ) and so on. Heck, all their friends around them understood what they were saying, added to which most of their friends used ' slang ' as a sort of super language.
As regards trying NOT to drop your ' aiches ', start that sort of thing and you risked getting a few sideways glances from your mates.
So to please your Mom and Dad, the best you could do was to slow it down a bit and think it out it out before it got out of your mouth. Could be done but needed a bit of practice and patience.
I think that it definitely paid to go careful when putting your ' aiches ' into your conversation because if you got it wrong you could sound a right ' Charlie '.
Slang was a bit it easier to handle. Accent eliminating. This was like like trying to grow a new arm or leg. Difficult.
I don't think that I made too deep an inroad into the ' elecution ' field but being exposed as a Brummie suits me fine.
 
My father always used to say; "You spend the first five years teaching your child to walk and talk correctly, and the next fifteen years telling it to "Sit down and shut up!"

Eddie
 
Hello Paul. I think that having "Rhyl" on the signpost on the cover of my 1951 "Special Agent Stamp Album" is a subtle piece of advertising as the album was published by Thomas Cliffe Ltd, Rhyl, North Wales. You never know of course, Rhyl might have been a centre for landing spies, smugglers and all sorts of people, hence attracting the attention of Dick Barton. Dave.
 
Those golf ball interiors were a fascination to me. I remember sitting in front of the fire place and decided to cut into the ball. To my surprise there was a rush of white liquid which went straight into the wooden carving of the mantelpiece. This was stubborn to remove and remained on view until wooden mantelpieces became out of fashion years later. I believe the white liquid was white lead paint, or so we thought to add weight to the ball.
 
SQUEEZING THAT LAST BIT OUT.
We would see our Dad, on occassions, as soon as he got home from work during the winter period, bring his bicycle lamp batteries into the house and place them on top of the warm oven. This was during the general shortage times of the war and post war years. New bicycle lamp batteries were one of the items that were hard to get. I recall, as a kid, asking him why he did this. He told me that he believed it was possible to get a bit of extra battery life by doing this ( by warming it up ). To this day I still don't know if he was on the right track or not.
Talking about ' warming up '. During the same period I recall that some people used to try and freshen up a piece of early stage stale bread by lightly spraying the bread with water and then placing it in the oven on a low heat.
Patches on clothing, darning socks, knitting creations, making up ' un rationed ' food concoctions and repairing every thing in sight seemed a talent that everyone had in some form or another during this period
MAKE DO AND MEND was the challenge, BUY AND THROW hadn't been invented yet.
Photo : Ready for a warm up ?image.jpg
 
Roy,

All this reminds me. What was that piece of wire, with a little cage on the end, that our Mum would use to put in the bits of left over soap?

Mum would then swish it around in the water, until a few bubbles, or foam appeared. The we would wash in it.

Eddie
 
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