General Chat

Just come back to this thread.......
MY! it HAS moved on hasnt it?


Bob

Hi Bob........I'd forgot how people would wait at a phone box for someone to ring them......sometimes in a queue. I remember at work in the 1970s arranging to ring a phone box number at a given time to get back to someone with information they wanted!! People who got fed up with waiting would rap their knuckles on the window. They had phone directories in them then too and stank of stale cigarettes and worse.........always a good place to shelter in a downpour though.

Being a tomboy, I always wanted one of those trolley carts the boys made with pram wheels and planks, with a rope tied to steer them with. Some were quite good and even had a brake I seem to recall..

Asperin type tablets with cotton wool in the bottle and just a screw top jar cos no one wanted to harm anyone they didn't know, and other really easy to open packs, jars etc. oh and instructions you could understand and only in English, or the country which you were in at the time.

Hi Peeps!

Well we were all nice and settled after our move to a bungalow only to discover that the gas central heating system was even older than the one we left behind! We knew some of the electric's needed upgrading too..so it's all happening this week!

Plumber started on Monday taking out the really old thin radiators, old obsolete pipes etc. Today - replaced with new radiators, which meant carpets and floor boards being taken up..oh joy!

Tomorrow new boiler being fitted plus the sparky doing his bit with electrics for central heating bits n pieces and then the lights all need rewiring.

So tomorrow my lovely bungalow will have 5 workmen getting under my feet and needing contant supples of tea and coffee. But it will be worth it in the end!

Lots of gardens in our 'new' road have the old fashioned pinks growing which I haven't seen since I was a child and my late Mum used to grown them.

My new neighbour, Jean, gave me some cuttings of her pinks which I have promptly planted in my back garden. Can't wait to see hem flourish.

We just love it here. So glad we bought this bungalow and not the other 2 we sooo nearly bought and lost!

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Morning Amanda and all,

Yes another sunny day here with blue skies.

Susan I member those pill bottles with the cotton wool inside. Then they changed it to foam rubber, but now they are all in plastic pop out packs.

Talking of the old red phone boxes we still have quite a few of them around here. None of them take money anymore only phone cards.

I am going to have to try and get some water up to the top border today as the new plants put in the other week are having a hard job getting started.

Morning to one and all,

Annx, I think the law is a ass, allowing these people to arrive and stay in a nice quite area, jusr because they will put down Tarmac. What must it have been like for the chap who had caravans all around him. The best of it is these people don't pay tax's but allways seem to have new caravans, and lorry's. I DISPEAR.

The old red phone box, we had on the corner Tele:- No. Buckhurst 3965. If as a kid we were playing around the Box and it rang. They might ask to speak to Mrs whoever at Number --- and one of us wouyld run to the house and get her. Our favorite trick was to push paper up the return coin scoop. so when they pressed button "B" the money would be stuck. For us to get tuppence was a right windfull.You could also make a phone call by tapping the phone rest the number of times for the area and number. i.e
Wan1884.

We lived close to some steep hills, so out trolly's were perfect for going at high speed down the hills. We would often crash and buckle the wheels, so it was of to the TIP to find more wheels. Prams or whatever.

Teresa, My Dad had the whole border down the back path covered in Pinks. They smelt a treat and would be picked and placed all around the downstair rooms. As a boy of 10 I would pick a bunch and take to my latest girlfriend, Funny how these things Jog your memory.

Glad to hear J & C are having a nice break. 14th century cottage eh. suit the ol' girl then !!!!! don't you dare tell her that.

It is such a lovely day today and I wanted to go to market but have to stay here because the man is coming to pick up all the hanging baskets I did.

Well Frank you have told her that have'nt you?

I always remember being a child and using the phone and saying to mum that we should have buttons to press instead of have to put your finger in the hole and dial. Of course nowadays we do just that. Our number when I was small was Wanstead 2200 and then they changed our exchange to Crescent. Then when first married and lived in Ilford our number was 8448 and when we had the minicab office in the old bowling ally at Wanstead it was Wanstead 4444.

Good Day ---DD agian here Getting fed up yesterday was so hot now chilly---Going to make me sickor DIZZY (( OK-NO-CRACK-FRANK))))
Please what's the proper name for ''THE-PINK'S ''you are talking about?

Jane may think she is (((( Jane Austin)) Frank lol xx

Teresa, are you talking about Carantion Pinks ??
Susan I bought a bottle of Aspirin not that long ago that had cotton in side.

we would wait outside phone box when we saw a fellow in his ''cup's''
make call--and sure enough he would leave money in or forget to take his money out..--- Sat night was good !!!!

Hi Everyone,

Mandy is right I think about the pinks being Dianthus.......I have a few of the alpine ones in the front garden......all in flower now and have a lovely smell. I must pick a few to put in a glass in the bedroom.

Lycra shorts has been today.......but sadly not wearing shorts!! The hall floor is all done now and all the doors shut properly, so now we have to assemble the IK*a drawers to go in there. OH has painted half the shed today, pale green this time like the arbour.....the back and side out of the sun.....it has been baking out there and there are some small bumble bees that seem to have made a home under a paving slab near the shed. I didn't know that they had their nests in places like that. I have weeded, flopped and sat in the shade and watered things that looked as flagging as me. lol

Jane will be 'having your guts for garters' Frank when she gets back.......!! You don't hear people say that anymore.

OH YES IT'S SAID -- ANN IN MY HOUSE ALL THE TIME LOL XXTO OG

Hi I have been in the garden all afternoon, well in the tunnel actually. I have cleared the top corner of the junk that was left there and think I may put a marrow in that bit, a green bush one. I also chopped down the old chard which was nearly up to the tunnel roof!!!! and it's a tall tunnel. I thought it may have been stopping a blow through as it was so tall and also shading the tom plants in the opposit bed. Now the baskets are out of the way I can really get down to some more planting and sowing. It has been so hot in there today I had perspiration running down the side of my face. Now I am going in the shower and then bed I think so will say night night.

Mel

night night over there xxxx

I'll be around for a ''WEE'' while yet.

Morning All,

Bright and sunny yet again but I don't think we have the breeze today. Have'nt been out yet but the back door is open and the birds are singing their heads off.

Only our Mel up bright and early,
Another bright and sunny day here, Have got my recliner out, and SHORTS on, ready for a session in the sun for a couple of hours.

Ros is out shopping, so I can do what I like. Off to Edith Weston at lunchtime tomorrow for weekend, you watch thw weather change !!!!!

Whens ol' Jane back. Sat or Sun. Trust here to pick a good week of weather.

Last time I was in Portugal. I pick up a seed pod from a loverly tree. I found it in the greenhouse a few months ago, and decided to plant it. It's taken and about 6" tall looks very healthy and likes the conseratory. No idea what it is other thanfrom a 40/50" high tree with wonderful blue flowers on. Lets hope I can keep it alive.

My London Childhood Memories.

I was born at the Elephant and Castle in South London in 1946 in a block that is today called a period building and a one bedroom flat sells for £210,000.

This was a London of bomb- and building-sites, of street markets and coal merchants, a cockney community that had essentially been untouched for generations, where children played in the street and escape from the hard grind of daily life was sought in the local pub. The faces were pinched and aged with hardship and deprivation, and almost exclusively white. Elephant and Castle was one of the most heavily bombed areas of London. Life was harsh and grinding, but full with boxing and music halls, its jellied-eel stalls, thieves and good-time girls. Gone now is the genuine Victoriana and polished counter top of the local pub, gone are the flat caps on the heads of men talking at street corners, gone are the bespoke tailor, gone are the scenes of bartering at the market, and gone is the scene of the baby being bathed in a tub by the fire.
Levy’s the tailors - “76 years in the locality” -
which dressed everyone from the local barrow-boys to boxers and sober Rotarians; the cloth-capped fellows at the local, being served by a moustachioed, white-coated barman. Poverty was all-pervasive. The place where in the market, a woman, her head in a scarf and a fag hanging from the corner of her mouth, inspects cheap wares where small boys in grey woollen shorts and socks play amid the squalor of a grubby coal depot or look longingly in the toyshop window, crammed higgledy-piggledy with clockwork trains and matchbox cars, no doubt selecting what they would buy if they had the money. Wide boys in trilbies and a barrow-boy with a rakish grin strike a deal in the Horse Repository over a pony, for there were still blacksmiths operating in this part of town.
You would see a horse - it may be a likely mare - led from her stall and stood ready for her turn, and you would probably value her at, to be reasonable, 20s, When her number goes up at the window you would see her shown at her best at a run, soon a chill would run down your back as you hear the bidding. 'Three! Three and a half! Four!' a long pause. 'Four and a half! Five!' shouted the auctioneer in the corner, 'For the last time! Five!' Knock. Five guineas.

Playing on the Bombsites we would make our way down into the air-raid shelters looking (scavenging!) for “treasure” was one of the perks of bombing, there was nobody to tell us off for searching in the rubble. Actually we didn’t often find much because everybody was so poor they didn’t have anything of value or, mostly, because everything got smashed up in the explosion. Sometimes we might come across a tramp looking for a place to sleep or a bald headed man covered in tattoos and we would run away petrified.
Our Saturday morning hangout was the troc or Elephant Cinema (ABC) and we would sing along to the song.

We are the boys and girls well known
as Minors of the ABC
And every Saturday we line up
To see the films we like
And shout aloud with glee
We love to laugh and have a singsong
Such a happy crowd are we
We're all pals together
The minors of the ABC

And also the Wurlitzer Organ which was in the Trocadero Cinema opposite my dad would take me to one or the others of these cinemas every Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we would be in a big queue and I remember on the way him dipping into his jacket pocket and pulling out his handkerchief, and spitting onto it to wipe my face (arggh) but 50 or so years later and with my dad being dead over 30 years, I still have it clean and tucked away in my drawer.

Bill Haley & The Comets touring the United Kingdom in the spring of 1957, during which Haley and his crew were mobbed by thousands of fans at Waterloo Station in London at an incident dubbed the Second Battle of Waterloo by media and we decided we would have a skiffle group, I was duly sent to get mum's washboard and I remember Billy and Harry two local brothers getting a tea chest and broom handle for the bass!

I moved from Bath Terrace (the period Building) to the upper floors of a house in Heygate Street, that was owned by a local landlord, we had three rooms and a landing the kitchen was on the landing with a sink, kitchen cabinet (yellow in colour) and a gas stove, another family moved in downstairs , Billy and Harry , sister Rose and baby Linda the eldest Arthur who was I think away in the RAF, living with them also was their granny, she stayed in bed because she only had one leg and she would shout as you walked past her bedroom to get to the Lav in the garden, she would call" get us some bread and sugar gal" I would take it to her in her room and she would be sitting up in a white cotton nightie and wearing bed cap, she scared the life out of me why I don't know, I never ever saw her out of bed.

We used to play in the street or go and build camps and light fires, we would play knock down ginger or run outs, build carts or scooters out of bits of wood and had a great time. Our house was next to the Synagogue and many times we would try to climb to look inside, it was called The Borough Synagogue and I remember one day climbing to look inside I got caught on some barbed wire and was hanging upside down unable to move, Billy or Harry had to run to get my dad to come and get me down. We never did get a good look inside.

In my street lived Charlie Drake Born Charles Edward Springall in the Elephant and Castle, he took his mother's maiden name “Drake" for the stage and, later, television and film, achieving success as a comedian.
He appeared in the television shows Laughter in Store (being particularly remembered for his opening catchphrase "Hello, My Darlings!" I remember the filming of the Charlie Drake Show by the BBC was cut short, however, by a serious accident that occurred in 1961, during a live transmission. Drake had arranged for a bookcase to be set up in such a way that it would fall apart during a slapstick sketch in which he was pulled through it. It was later discovered that an over-enthusiastic workman had "mended" the bookcase before the broadcast. The actors working with him, unaware of what had happened, proceeded with the rest of the sketch which required that they pick him up and throw him through an open window. Drake fractured his skull and was unconscious for three days. It was two years before he returned to the screen.
Walworth was changing my street Heygate Street, Deacon Street and the neighbouring Street's were due for redevelopment, with Guilford’s the Bakers where you could buy stale cakes and broken biscuits, Marie's Cafe that sold the lovely italian ice cream, Snellings the bag wash shop where everything got washed in the bag and would often come back with all inside pink or blue when the dye ran from something coloured inside, Dad often had a nice pink vest or pink pants, All will have to go to make way for the development of the new heroine The Heygate Estate (see you tube), my house, lovely neighbours, friends ect all would soon be gone! and in its place a concrete jungle, now also soon to be demolished! That’s progress!

As each Family moved out possessions that they no longer needed or required were left behind and I remember the lady down stairs ended up with 3 Formica kitchen cabinets in different colours standing tall in her scullery, which us from upstairs had to go through to get to the garden and the Lav.
I remember when one of their Cat's died and we decided to have a Funeral, Billy dug a hole in the bit of dirt along the side of the garden and Harry went to get a few kids to attend the Funeral, Alvin was a boy who lived down the bottom of our street who Down's syndrome and was one of the few who said he would attended the funeral, we the mourners all sat on the tall wall that surrounded the garden for the funeral to take place, Billy walked out with the dead cat wrapped in one of his mum's headscarves and Alvin fell backwards off the wall straight into the neighbouring garden and could be heard screaming and crying for his mum, who someone had to run and fetch to come and get him, he had a big bump on his head. The funeral carried on and we all ended up crying for the poor cat, "Blackie" Billy and Harry made a cross from two lolly sticks joined together with elastic bands and the funeral was over. We all trooped back inside to lemonade and and bread and sugar for the funeral luncheon.

Alvin was a mate and although he had his disabilities he's mum let him play out, on a Saturday morning notepad and pencil in hand he would knock on my door announcing "tally man" and mum would come and give him a couple of pennies and he would march off, One Saturday morning I went and opened the door as I could hear him making a commotion shouting “tally man” and their he stood, “what’s that I said and Alvin replied a beard! Mum came down the stair with some coppers in her hand and stood shocked Alvin had what I found out later was a Sanitary lopped from ear to ear under his chin. Mum said “take that off immediately you are too young to have a beard” and off he went. (I wonder what ever happened to Alvin).

We never ventured to far from home, maybe to Baldwin’s the Herbalist for a glass of sarsaparilla or a thing that was a liquorice stick that looked like a twig of wood, or I remember once going to Jail Park and asking a policeman the way back home.

Carol,

Oh what loverly memories, I was born in Woodford, and remember the war years, with the bombing of the docks, and london in general. We could stand on "Drapers Hill" and see the docks burning, and see St.Pauls Cathederal silloetted against the flames. Memories you could never forget. The incendry bombs that set light to houses and fields. Seeing half blown down houses, with the bath and toilet still hanging on the remaining walls. Going out collecting scrapnel, and swapping bits for other things the local kids had.
We lived on the No 10 bus route between Woodford and Aldgate or Victoria bus station. My mum and dad would sometimes take us to Stratford broadway to the theatre. and see the organist come up from under the stage. It was mainly a comedy show. which helped people keep the war of their minds.

In my "TEDDY BOY YEARS" we would go to the E & C on some Saturday night, Canning town hall for dances. We were always dressed in a smart suit clean shirt collar and tie. Pollished shoes or steamed swede shoes. Not quite like the youth of today. !!!!

I think we all had the formica cabinets with the little air vents in the doors, and the pull down table type thing. ours was Bright Yellow.

I am sure you will enjoy our thread. Most are a lot younger than me, but I have been accepted into their "little family" and really enjoy all the banter that I get.
They are bound to say "FRANK has a new girlfriend" but then they are all my girlfriends!!!!