Items that have faded away

[Oisin]

Whoever made pads to protect "togs" during sliding would've been wasting time with kids like me and my peers, who had no arses in our trousers to start with. ride:

 

[I Am Nico]

I pad my holes out with matchsticks, a tip from my better half. I still have some original wooden plugs over my firepaces which would hold the heaviest of mirrors they are drilled at least 4 inches deep.

 

[Big Gee]

Whoever made pads to protect "togs" during sliding would've been wasting time with kids like me and my peers, who had no arses in our trousers to start with. ride:

One of my long-gone old man's more amusing phrases was to say that he was on the bones of his ...., meaning he was skint! That always used to give me fits, but he meant it dead seriously. A good old Brummie expression, no doubt.

G

 

[Vivienne14]

Remember when oranges used to come wrapped in tissue paper? I remember them in greengrocers, a few unwrapped and the rest in tissue paper. And someone mentioned on another thread buying 'old potatoes'. Don't see that title used anymore.
Viv.

 

[podgery]

Remember when oranges tasted like oranges i went to Cyprus last year and the oranges there tasted like they did hear when i was a kid.

 

[maggs]

Doesn't most food we have today seem like that? I remember when bacon had a lovely flavour, today it's just horrible. When its fried/grilled, it all milky and seems to cook so hard it's difficult to chew.

 

[I Am Nico]

Remember when tomatoes tasted like tomatoes and were full o flesh and not pips. Which reminds me of my gran singin to the air of the irish Washerwoman - "with egg and tomata all over me garter!"
Remember single Gloucester?

 

[brenda barr]

Viv, l remember the wrapped oranges, when mom shopped at Griffins in Newtown row for oranges we thought we were in luxury as we would smooth out the tissue and hang it on the nail in the lavatory, it beat newspaper anyday......Brenda

 

[I Am Nico]

In upbeat French shops they still have tangerines wrapped in paper, and peaches. I just stare at the fresh food displays and they think I want serving. They have assistants that still serve you and they know which melon for example will be good for travelling. The also form an orderly queue like we used to do. Their clientele appear to be the older generation. And you get a brown paper bag or your cheese wrapped in greaseproof paper with a waxyx outer finish. Of course you pay for this.
Here I am confronted with "you wanna bag or what!".
Going back to Brenda toilet paper, Nan says her dad came out with once, "that's the fost tarm arve wiped my xxxx on Sugarpuffs."

 

[carolina]

If you worked in an office and had to send out a lot of post, there used to be a contraption which had a small roller which held water underneath it and you had to roll over the sticky part of the envelope and then it could be sealed. If you didnt have a franking machine and had to stick stamps on you used to have a small round piece of sponge in a plastic container.

 

[Jayell]

What about the Banda and the Gestetner copiers - the typist made a template and this was put on the machine and copies rolled off? I used both of these in my days as a secretary - both were quite messy to use. What a time saver it would have been to have had a photocopier in those days!

 

[carolina]

Judy if you made a typing error it was pink stuff that you put on it and then typed over it. Sometimes it hadnt set and the typing would just look like a blob and the more you tried to correct the worse it got.

 

[Jayell]

Exactly Carol - it was like pink see-through nail varnish. That was for the Gestetner stencils, the letters being cut out when you typed. The pink corrector sealed the page so that you could retype on it when dry. Was very messy if you typed on it before it dried! For the Banda you used to type on a sheet which transferred a purple sort of wax on to a bottom sheet which transferred the type to the back of the first page (like carbon paper) and this was then put on a drumroller to produce extra copies. Took ages to get the dye off your fingers.

Judy

 

[Dennis Williams]

Exactly Carol - it was like pink see-through nail varnish. That was for the Gestetner stencils, the letters being cut out when you typed. The pink corrector sealed the page so that you could retype on it when dry. Was very messy if you typed on it before it dried! For the Banda you used to type on a sheet which transferred a purple sort of wax on to a bottom sheet which transferred the type to the back of the first page (like carbon paper) and this was then put on a drumroller to produce extra copies. Took ages to get the dye off your fingers.

Judy

Tippex? And I never typed....but I did go to the Post Office with my nan in the late 40s and saw the Counter Lady counting forms with red hedgehog thimbles on...never forgot them...

 

[Jayell]

Oh yes Dennis I remember those rubber finger covers. You never see them today. And Tippex yes, another nightmare at times! Especially when it got old and thick, it was like putting artex on your paper!

 

[Dennis Williams]

Oh! And those ticket racks the Conductresses had on the Trams and early buses...before they dinged them with a punch machine...(you would be too young Jayell...)

 

[I Am Nico]

If you worked in an office and had to send out a lot of post, there used to be a contraption which had a small roller which held water underneath it and you had to roll over the sticky part of the envelope and then it could be sealed. If you didnt have a franking machine and had to stick stamps on you used to have a small round piece of sponge in a plastic container.

We had one of those envelope gluers and the water used to go manky in it. I used to end up soaking the manilla envelopes. The franking achine always jammed usually by me. You had to take the drum out with the prices and date on and manually turn the dates etc round with a sharp object usually a pen which broke. I was always covered in red ink. The label feeder was useless. I weighed the enveloped and hand glued the labels. Usually the money counter went round bu t the labels came out blank. The franker was set for a total amount of money if it ran out you had had it.My 1st job was to give the post out and deiver proofs to businesses and shops round the town. And fetch arcels from the station and the midlands red, happy days.

 

[I Am Nico]

Exactly Carol - it was like pink see-through nail varnish. That was for the Gestetner stencils, the letters being cut out when you typed. The pink corrector sealed the page so that you could retype on it when dry. Was very messy if you typed on it before it dried! For the Banda you used to type on a sheet which transferred a purple sort of wax on to a bottom sheet which transferred the type to the back of the first page (like carbon paper) and this was then put on a drumroller to produce extra copies. Took ages to get the dye off your fingers.

Judy

Remember carbon paper there was something you could paint on that some secretaries typed on stencils. One lady typed new accounts on a piece of card then cut them out in thin strips and fitted then in to a vertical sort of metal page holder, these were attached to a vertical metal plinth, they looked like pages in a book which you flicked round, they called it the tower.The reps wrote their orders on tiny blue order books with a blue paper to make their copy. A chap wrote them on to a huge ledger in a and bound giant diary, a page a day, then the tower lady tyyped the details on to an A4 card all differnet colours which she kept in a metal trolley on wheels which went down to the accounts to be charged. In the lift!
Another chap planned the newspaper A4 dummy for the adverts taken from the giant ledger. Then he made 2 more copies of the dummy, one for the comp room, one for the subs and one for him.
The ads were made in hot metal nound in a chase then the pages were printed on to something and reprinted on to a rubber flong then on to the paper. That was web offset. It was a bit long winded, very accurate and emplyed lots of people. Now its all smash and grab crap rubbish.
My mate can read back to front and upside down as he was a compositer. The one that fell in the mud Carolina.
I typed enveloped on a Remington Rand Tyepwriter.
Nico

 

[Oisin]

Anyone remember the old fax machines which operated on a punched paper ribbon? They cost a fortune and took up the space of a small car.

 

[poihipi]

How about the comptometer now replaced by the calculator. We still have those type of tickets on our local trains here in NZ.

 

[DavidGrain]

Anyone remember the old fax machines which operated on a punched paper ribbon? They cost a fortune and took up the space of a small car. :05.18-flustered:

Are you sure that you mean fax machines? I remember in the late 1970s buying two early fax machines which I installed one in my office in Birmingham and one in our London office. They took 6 minutes to send an A4 document.

Now telex (or Teleprinter) machines often had paper tape which you could punch out you message on. You then threaded the tape back through the machine as it could send your message at 60 wpm faster than most of us could type saving the time on the line for your call.

 

[Oisin]

Hi David,

Yes, you're quite right. Thanks for the clarification. I was having a "senior moment", they were telex machines. You never hear of them now!

 

[DavidGrain]

A couple of years ago I went round the museum at Bletchley Park and they had telex machines there. It does come as a start when you can look at a museum exhibit and say "I've worked one of those!"

As for comptometers, I could only do adding up on one of those. I used to watch in awe, the girls doing multiplication and division on them with their fingers spread across the keys making rapid repeated strokes. Not just the machines but the girls who were trained to operate them have gone. One place where I worked we had one gathering dust on top of a filing cabinet and the new finance director came in one day and said he had not seen one of those for years.

 

[rosie]

I remember giving my grandaughter an old typewriter to play with and she said "Where's the screen"!
(Rubber thimbles are available at the high street stationers, they are handy for gripping things with arthritic fingers!)
rosie.

 

[carolina]

I can remember when I first started work and because I had such small fingers, the thimbles were too large, so I had to turn them inside out. (Thimbles not my fingers)

 

[Dennis Williams]

Asked on another channel, but anyone remember these Churchwarden's clay pipes?...here's a pic of my Dad, Uncle and friends, in the Richmond Smoke Room circa 1953....must be a Club or sect or summat....before my time...eventually I was a St Bruno or Philips Digger man myself...

 

[rosie]

Dennis, my Dad liked St. Bruno Rough Cut! Many years ago he had a Churchwarden and the stem broke but he mended it with some brass tubing!!
He had some of those pipes with a metal stem with a removable bowl, I think it was Falcon. The Dentist actually made a special dent in his denture so it was more comfortable, don't think they would do that these days!
He had a lovely pipe rack which was like a five-bar gate, he didn't use it as the "dottle" (as he called it) ran back down the stems.
We used to use his pipecleaners for hair-curlers!!!
rosie.

 

[I Am Nico]

Dennis, my Dad liked St. Bruno Rough Cut! Many years ago he had a Churchwarden and the stem broke but he mended it with some brass tubing!!
He had some of those pipes with a metal stem with a removable bowl, I think it was Falcon. The Dentist actually made a special dent in his denture so it was more comfortable, don't think they would do that these days!
He had a lovely pipe rack which was like a five-bar gate, he didn't use it as the "dottle" (as he called it) ran back down the stems.
We used to use his pipecleaners for hair-curlers!!!
rosie.

Dad had a wooden pipe rack too not a gate though and ashoe horn made from a cow's horn. A St Bruno man has something more. Dad like Aromatic. I used his pipe cleaners to make sheep with, and burned his spills. Can I light it for y dad!

 

[I Am Nico]

Are you sure that you mean fax machines? I remember in the late 1970s buying two early fax machines which I installed one in my office in Birmingham and one in our London office. They took 6 minutes to send an A4 document.

Now telex (or Teleprinter) machines often had paper tape which you could punch out you message on. You then threaded the tape back through the machine as it could send your message at 60 wpm faster than most of us could type saving the time on the line for your call.

The newspaper employed 2 people just to deliver faxes round the building but mainly to the editorial dept. It was caled the Creed Room. I used teleprinter type machines 3 years ago. With punnched hole paper at the ends you ripped off. The printing presses were deafening I don't if they are less noisy know. The men were supplied with ear plugs by law but the containers were always empty.
They had a team of copy typist taking down news bulletins and a team for reading the adverts for errors. But they didn't rea actuall ads as you would see them in the paper, they were on thin paper with punched holes too with specil Reader's marks. It was an appreticship to be a reader.
I liked to watch the lino type operators in motion too.

 

[johnpress]

I also remember corona pop delivered to your door , but then I also remember our mom giving us worm cakes to eat . I also remember buying tub butter which was from a huge tub and the milkman with his horse drawn float in the late 50's / early 60's . My mate who was older than me lived in the maypole , he never saw a horse drawn milkman ?