(1203) Afternoon all … AFD is over … just a few more items for now. (1224)
17. Try these
16. Marine again
15. Farm news
14. For our boys
13. Getting to appreciate her
12. Population reduction news
11. Receipts
Tuesday [11 to 17]
unherdable cats
this is blog hq for nourishing obscurity and unherdable cats
#17: you don’t seriously expect me to remember the answers to al those, do you?
Why not ask easy stuff e.g. do I remember Spangles?
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JH: Well of course. I scored zero by the way. Plus slinkies. And yoyos. Plus marbles.
17. Scored 3
I’ll have a sherbet dab please 🙂
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JH: I avoided sweets.
I can claim six; viz. 7, 8, 9 , 10, 12, 13.
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JH: Poor, deprived boy. 😟
17. Try these – I’d score 20/20 if the question was ever instead of never. Everything went downhill after Mars changed the name of their Marathon bar to Snickers. Sad day indeed when I ate my last one 35 years ago.
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JH: Yes indeed.
The quiz. I scored 1. But only because I never deliberately listened to a “Boom Box”
In town and public transport it sometimes unavoidable.
Played a wind up gramaphone? Written with steel pen nib on a stick with ink well.
Wound down train carriage window with chunky leather strap. To lean out and open the door.
Turned the handle on a clothes mangle. Knows what a ” blue bag ” is. Worn one of those waist belts with the “snake” S-hook fastener.
Ah, nostalgia is not what it used to be.
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JH: Snake S hook … never on my own belt but think I once tried one. Boombox … like the others … not under that name but radio cassette recorder for sure … mine I think was AIWA from memory.
Same here Doonhamer, unless a Philips radio cassette recorder counts as a boom box.
Rhubarb and custard sweets, Ha’penny shrimps… my mum was grateful that I didn’t have a sweet tooth. Except for her homemade jams and honey from dad’s beehives.
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JH: Homemade jams and honeys … both parents were at that, I wasn’t allowed near, interestingly.
Mum wouldn’t allow me into the kitchen when the jam was on the hob. Dad encouraged me close when he was fussing with his beehives.
You will know what a “jelly bag ” is then.
Known in these parts as a ” jeelly bag “
Not to be confused with a ‘Jelly-piece’. The Glasgow name for a jam sandwich.
“How British commandos helped bring the *see eye A* into the heart of the Ukraine war
Ben Wallace accused of ordering the sacking of a Ukrainian general who failed to attack Russians”
https://archive.is/21sQy
Colour me unsurprised.
Karoline Leavitt gets it.
https://t.me/realKarliBonne/292286
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JH: She would, given how she’s situated.
‘belts with the “snake” S-hook fastener’ our school uniform belts were like that.
I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember when we wore our school caps. I suspect they spent most of their lives crammed into our raincoat pockets. Yet we sported our Wolf Cub caps happily. Odd buggers, little boys.
Here’s a real challenge: did you ever use the special blade for getting stones out of horses’ hooves?
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JH: I saw it done.
I thought that it was a sort of curved spike, pulled out of the knife frame. Like a short marlin spike.
Seemed to standard Commonwealth Army Issue.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.Pnq1BPZM-jMy9AWq-DXFOgHaGg%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=f8b40d3478b4cebbe4a1bf0bf0ecf07d8f62722eb85c796d63d2a4b994ae85cd&ipo=images.
11. Receipts – she’s channelling her inner Matt Gaetz..
https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/1906842919195013241?
Yep, I scored zero.
What’s more, I did or had most of the things everyone else mentioned: played records on a wind-up gramophone, slinkies, yohos, marbles (actually bought some marbles this very day….). I didn’t use a pen with a steel nib at school or anything, but I currently have ink, inkwells and pen handles with lots of nibs. I ate all the sweeties mentioned (though not all at once, much as I would have liked to). I currently have some black jacks in a dish on the table. I can’t remember where I bought them but it was very recently, just in case you thought I’d saved them all these years.
I never used the blade for getting stones out of horses hooves, but I watched somebody else do it. I’ve milked a cow, too. And I have several darning mushrooms, and the darning yarn wound on to cards – all very boring sock colours like brown and grey. Neither myself nor my beloved have socks in those colours!
We also have several types of Spong mincers, berry crushers, and so on. And we have one of the earliest Kenwood mixers, which still actually works.
Mum had a mangle, but got rid of it when she bought a twin tub with a spin-dryer. The mangle was annoying as you had to take all the buttons off the clothes, otherwise you’d … er … mangle them. Mostly we only mangled sheets, towels, etc. When I was a young child, I’d go with her to the steam laundry, where they had rows of sinks with wash boards in them. Not entirely sure why it was called a steam laundry. At the time I assumed it was because the atmosphere was very steamy with all that hot water.
Goodness, all this nostalgia!
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JH: Wow yes … about to put up a closing item which might interest you … an old thing.
Steam laundry. In Glasgow they were called the “steamie”. A big good looking sandstone building containing a swimming pool, Turkish baths – steam rooms, private bath tubs to get personally clean, big individual tubs to put washing in with scalding hot water and soap flakes to be mashed up and down with a “dolly”. Then squeezed dryish through a mangle before being hung along long pull out racks, pushed back in, and completely dried with dry heat. All heated by the dreaded coal, hand shoveled into a furnace. All provided by the Cooncil at a reasonable cost. A boon when big families lived in a tenement Single Room and Kitchen. And father worked in genuine, dirty, industries – making steel, lots of the world’s ships, locomotives, cast iron and steel structures. Not so many Turkish barbers though.
There is a very good 1960s or 70s TV play, called, of course, The Steamie.
Like Isilme I scored zero. And I can vouch that I have played records on a wind-up gramophone etc as per Isilme including milking a cow. But I did use a pen with a steel nib out of an inkwell at school until we progressed to fountain pens – I still have my Parker and Osmoroid (?). My Mum had a mangle, but also got rid of it when she bought a twin tub with a spin-dryer. It’s all as a result of being old – 75 in my case.
Annoyingly, I scored 1 (possibly 2) – because I’ve never used a floppy disc, and I’ve definitely rented VHS tapes, but can’t remember if it was from Blockbuster. Not only did I use a rotary (dial) phone, I used to repair them as well. I also recorded radio programmes onto open-reel tape and then edit onto cassettes…
Thx Doonhamer, Chris, Microdave on those.