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Growing Up In Brum - Roy Blakey Inspired.

Smudger:

On my own Facebook website, I list both To Kill A Mocking Bird, and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. I also enjoyed The Shawshank Redemption.

Recently, as a drummer, I decided to watch Whiplash, a story about a drummer striving for recognition, and perfection. The drumming in the film was wonderful, but the storyline was a little over the top. Blood pouring from his hands as he practiced, getting hit by his teacher, and being bullied to become even better. I would not have lasted five minutes if that was the 'norm'. That is exactly what I mean by impact without substance.

There are good films being made, but one has to really search for them.

Eddie
 
norfolk brummie said:
Smudger:

On my own Facebook website, I list both To Kill A Mocking Bird, and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. I also enjoyed The Shawshank Redemption.

Eddie
Click to expand...

Eddie, Just goes to show you`ve got good taste. I must admit i`m a sucker for sentimental films like "The fault in our stars & The book thief" Pass the tissues :-}
 
Another film genre where the actor or actress in a film might win an Oscar is in the portrayal of a person with a medical condition or affliction and how they come to terms with this. In 2015 Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar for best actor in The Theory of Everything for the portrayal of Stephen Hawking who has motor neurone disease. The best actress award for 2015 was won by Julianne Moore in Still Alice who plays an academic professor who begins to be afflicted by dementia. Another famous example is the best actor award in the Oscars for 2010, won by Colin Firth in The Kings Speech for his portrayal of King George VI with his speech impediment. These are three modern films, without boom and bang, that are very moving and have been well-received by the public. Dave.
 
BACK TO SCHOOL. ( Not all ' bad ' though ).
For starters it was good to meet up with some of our school chums that we hadn't bumped into during the holiday period.
Then there was this part of the year where the " nights where starting to draw in "and we were having to come in off the streets earlier each night.
The plus side of this was that we began again to play in the living room with our brothers and sisters with our ' made up ' games.
Who could do the tallest construction build using the old set of " Dominoes ". There had been one of the Dominoes missing for ages, so it didn't matter that the rest got knocked about a bit. This was a bit like how the kids would play with modern Lego to-day.
Playing " through the holes " with our marbles up in the corner of the room kept us happy for a while.
Sometimes we would be told to keep it a bit more quiet so we would switch to doing pencil drawings ( we loved that ) or we would shuffle through some of our old ' Comics ' and read them again.
Then there was another game that we loved ( Mom and Dad would join in with this one ). Back then this game was called
' Housey- Housey '. It's the same basic game that everyone calls Bingo to-day. I remember on this one, that because we eventually lost most of the ' marker counters ' out of the box ( we sometimes played Ttiddywinks with them ), our Dad had to buy a new game box just for the markers.
So although the school holidays were over and we couldn 't play out as long anymore, we really enjoyed the ' family ' time.
Photo : Housey-Housey family time.image.jpg
 
The other game that only involved the use of an old blanket was building a den, with a slight arrangement of the living room furniture. Mom wasn't too keen on this one so it happened on the nights that she did her part-time job as a tote operator at the greyhound track (Hall Green or Kings Heath in her case) and Dad, who was supposed to be looking after us, was fast asleep in his chair after eating his evening meal. We always made sure that we had finished and everything was packed away, and we were in bed long before she came back just after 9:30pm.

Maurice
 
SHORT AND SWEET. ( Save on the Pennies ).
Very much a change in " telephone call duration times " appears to have taken place over the years. Thinking back to the times when many began to first use the telephone, this would most likely be either from a public phone box or from their very own first home installed telephone. Paying for each separate call and paying " by the minute " during each call made us all a bit " frugal " with our words and our call durations.
It's almost unbelievable now-a-days to see ( and in many cases hear ) the folk walking about carrying out what seems like
endless telephone conversations on their mobiles.
Can't deny it though. I'm pretty sure we would have done exactly the same ourselves when we were younger, if back then
we had been presented with the same device and opportunities.
Footnote : Down to the old Red coloured phone box, enter, lift the receiver and make sure you've got the dialling tone, put your guessed amount of money required in the slot, dial the required number, wait for the respondent to come on line and then press the button that released your money into the system.
Begin your conversation.
If you were lucky your input money versus the call allocation time would balance out okay and you would be able to complete your call. Otherwise you would hear a bleeping tone on the receiver which would be telling you that your money was about to run out and if you intended to continue the call you would need to put more money in the slot.
DEFINATEY COME ON A BIT SINCE THOSE DAYS.
 
STECHFORD3946 I can still remember our phone# This from the late 40s on. My Dad always had a home phone. He was i Insurance and real estate so it was needed. Funny how things stay with you. John Crump Parker,Colorado USA
 
I remember, as many of do, the early days of dial-up internet and many of us knew about the system in America when all local calls and hence internet connections were free or very cheap and convinced that that day would never come in the UK. But it sort of did. and not that long afterwards, the start of FreeBMD, which saved us a lot of trips to the Family History Centres and wading through heavy bound indexes in London. Good job - I would struggle to pick them up now!

Maurice
 
Loved the old telephone boxes and phones. Sometimes we could make a call without putting in pennies. We got to know the number and tap system. Not guaranteed to work, but it often did.

Having just returned from the South of France, direct to St. Pancras, I pointed out to my wife that a few years ago, at the end of a long journey the train, or even the airplane, would be littered with discarded newspapers. Not any more. We arrived at St. Pancras. Not a newspaper in sight, anywhere on the train. Everyone on i-pads all the way through France and into the UK. I think my wife and myself were the only people having a face to face conversation.

Now, it has been stated on Radio 4, that very soon, no one will be able to read a map!!

As Roy says: "Definitely come on a bit since those days".

Eddie.
 
Loved the old telephone boxes and phones. Sometimes we could make a call without putting in pennies. We got to know the number and tap system. Not guaranteed to work, but it often did.


Indeed, Eddie, a favourite occasional game played, I am sure, by most school age teenagers. Of course there was usually a debate about who to call as most people did not have telephones in their homes until the late 1960's I believe. How different it is today when so many people are unable to walk or shop without being engaged in a telephone conversation.
 
Eddie,

Up until recently we could get some British newspapers, printed in Athens with the old oily ink that came off on your fingers, but. of course, minus the inserts and freebies that you get in England. The price was 2.50 euros too, so quite a bit higher I believe. Now the local shops have given up selling them and I don't even know if they are still printed in Greece.

I still prefer a map to all this GPS nonsense, though I generally print the online versions. But Brussels without GPS is almost impossible to navigate - so many underpasses and you never know where you are going to come up! My son & his family have lived there 14 years and still, like most Brussels residents, have to rely on GPS.

I don't like a lot of this modern world, but there's nowt we can do about it.

Maurice
 
norfolk brummie said:
Loved the old telephone boxes and phones.

Eddie.
Click to expand...
But sometimes when you wanted to make a call there was always someone taking their time making a call in the telephone box.
DSCF1152old.jpg
 
When I was growing up in Brum I had a toy electric Shocking Machine as a Christmas present.

It had two metal handles connected by wires to a coil to which a large battery was connected. The level of shock was adjusted by moving a plunger within the coil and it could be set to give a shock level which made your arms jerk about and ache, you could hardly let go of the handles. We used to see who could stand the largest shocks.
It seems unbelievable and would probably be banned these days, but I remember it came in a nice coloured box with instructions.
My Dad said it also helped ease his rheumatism.
friendly_wink.png
 
Maurice: Your posting has just given me a thought.

As a newspaper boy, in 1947/48, I would deliver the full range of morning newspapers from around 80 to 100 homes.

The newspapers these days are usually 30 or 40 pages, plus all the other rubbish included. How does a paper boy deliver these days, with that amount of paper. Or am I out of date. Do they still deliver, even with modern technology?

Eddie
 
Eddie,

I've no idea! In the towns here we have loads of kiosks and you get papers, cigarettes, and that other soon to disappear commodity, postcards. I don't think many people send those now. At one point we went through a short period when some people would buy postcards to save carrying a camera, but with cameras in almost all the mobile phones these days, that has gone out of the window too.

My mobile phone has sat uncharged on the table for weeks, and being deaf, I avoid the phone like the plague! But then I love email - I can answer it at my leisure and have a record of everything I have said.

Maurice
 
Our phone was installed in the mid 1950's. My Father worked for the Midlands Electricity Board and had to be available for emergencies.
The thing is it wasn't very good for me since very few people I knew had a telephone in those days!
 
We didn't have a home telephone until the mid 60's and then we were on a 'party line' with another (unknown) house as it was a cheaper option. You just had to hope they were not on the phone at the same time as you wanted to make a call! That rarely seemed to happen though.

Only one of my junior school friend's family had a phone - the original old fashioned black variety - that was because her father worked for the Birmingham newspapers and he needed it to make calls for work.
 
sospiri, ( ref Post#916, this thread ). Maurice, I'm with you all the way regarding the email type communication. I also find it favourable to stick mainly to communication by email. I like it from the point of view that response is entirely our choice, can be responded to or not ( our choice ), can be responded to at a convenient time to us ( our choice ) and a record of the communication can be kept in store or not (our choice ).
The telephone call on the other hand ( for me ) is mainly in the " Intrusive " category. Yes I agree as well, when your hearing is starting to go downhill a bit, that doesn't help much either.
Heck, how would we get a nice afternoon ' snooze ' in if we left ourselves open to the ' beck and call ' of the Mobile Phone.
 
We lived by a telephone box and we often tried the buttons to see if we could get some pennies that someone had forgotten! Was it button "B"?!
rosie.
 
Rosie,

Yes, Button B was the coin return and you lived in hope that the previous user had not used it!

Roy,

We think alike. Like most southern Mediterranean countries, Greeks have a 3:00pm to 5:30pm nap and are taught to do this more or less from birth. All bar touristy shops close at 2:00pm to enable the workers/owners to get home for their nap (siesta in Spain), but then, of course, they are open again at 6:00pm and may stay open until 11:00pm, so all in all a long day. Anyone in the UK that has worked split duties knows how tiring this can be. Even in the villages, which are largely agricultural, everything goes quiet at 3:00pm and at the height of summer everyone, particularly builders, are forbidden to use power tools or hammers by law at this time. It makes sense as it is too damned hot to work in the heat of the day.

We frequently have a nap around this time too and rarely get interrupted by phone calls.

Maurice
 
Hi Rosie, I would guess that this might be a typical public phone box scenario that gave the kids expectations to pop in and just give that 'B' button a push, fingers crossed.
Folk needing to make a call from the local phone box would get that bit of paper out with the phone number on, put their pennies on that little shelf and then go through the process of ' dialing' and making their call.
Engaged, couldn't get through. Try again. Still engaged .
Have to leave it for now and try again sometime later.
Halfway back home comes the realisation that they had forgot to press the 'B' button to get their pennies back.
You couldn't blame the kids who might later try their luck could you.
Photo : image.jpg
 
Hi Roy, I wasn't "lucky" but the lads who lived closer were, I think they kept a "look-out"!!!
I envied one of the lads, he could do proper cartwheels in the road! I had trouble with a gambol!
rosie.
 
sospiri, you bringing up the mention of 'Siestas ' brought to mind the period just after the war ( 1945-1946 ) when we had just started our ' proper Job ', having recently left school. Our after work bus journey back home took us past the Alexander Sports Stadium, Perry Barr. If you happened to be on the top deck of the bus you could see into the stadium grounds and it was to be seen , on a regular basis, Italian Prisoners of War playing football in the centre of of the stadium.
We were all pretty whacked out after our days work which I recall brought about the odd remark " It's alright for some ain't it " and " It looks like that lots managed to get in an afternoons Siesta ".
The fact that those Italians were not going home that night to their families,wives and sweethearts,(but we were ) and that the chances might be that they had already been out and about helping out somewhere around the city, didn't seem to occur to us at the time
Since then I've often reflected that we were a bit over envious at that time, but seeing them playing football whilst we were still grimy,dressed up in our overalls and decidedly a bit tired and hungry seemed to annoy us somehow..
I bet in truth that they didn't get a shot at the old ' Siesta ' really.
On the other hand, they did look a bit energetic for that time of the day.
Hmm.
 
Roy,

You will probably never know the full story, only what you saw. I certainly know, having done it, that split duties can be very tiring. You never get to mentally relax between the two shifts. Likewise owning a small business when your employees have all gone home and you are still grafting away hours afterwards. But for all the problems and hardships of the past, I still wouldn't like to be a youngster just starting out on a career.

Maurice
 
Roy Blakey said:
Hi Rosie, I would guess that this might be a typical public phone box scenario that gave the kids expectations to pop in and just give that 'B' button a push, fingers crossed.
Folk needing to make a call from the local phone box would get that bit of paper out with the phone number on, put their pennies on that little shelf and then go through the process of ' dialing' and making their call.
Engaged, couldn't get through. Try again. Still engaged .
Have to leave it for now and try again sometime later.
Halfway back home comes the realisation that they had forgot to press the 'B' button to get their pennies back.
You couldn't blame the kids who might later try their luck could you.
Photo : View attachment 101063
Click to expand...
There were those who would block the chute that returned the 2d with a "silk" stocking so that when it was removed the accumulated coins could be "harvested"! Not that I would do such a thing.
 
Roy;

One thing we have not mentioned about the old public telephone boxes. The local telephone directory.

I seem to remember that the directory was always there, for the use of everyone. Tattered and fingered maybe, but still there. Always kept in the space just beneath the telephone.

Later it became a habit of ripping pages out of the directory for numbers required, then finally taking the directory home for personal use. Many is the time I have tried to make a 'phone call, but the directory had disappeared. Consequently the Post Office stopped putting them in the box.

Eddie
 
From my memories .... in the early 1950's I made a 'trunk call' (anyone remember them ?) from a phone box to a shop in a faraway place called Glasgow. You had to dial '0' for operator and tell her the city and number you wanted to call.
She would then tell you how much it would cost and you then had to feed in the coins as she counted them.
When I got through to the shop the young assistant who answered had to find the boss who took so much time getting to the phone, I had run out of call time and had no more coins to extend the call.
 
oldbrit said:
STECHFORD3946 I can still remember our phone# This from the late 40s on. My Dad always had a home phone. He was i Insurance and real estate so it was needed. Funny how things stay with you. John Crump Parker,Colorado USA
Click to expand...

John, We were on VICtoria 3764

Eddie
 
during my 30 plus years as a PO Telephones Engineer (1956 to 88) I did a stint on call box maintanence and the commonest fault reported was 'coins wedged', I would unlock the front and piles of pennies and sixpences would tumble out due to obstructions pushed down the coin chute, this was more noticeable in the later grey coin box mechanism, the next commonest fault (particularly in the ASTon cross, VICtoria and EASt exchange areas was missing handsets, vandalism was fairly common in the coin boxes - and occasionally used as toilets. Because of the 999 service they were given emergency attention. Eric
 
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