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Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now
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Both of my local pubs had them until fairly recently and I'm fairly sure I've seen them in barber shops. I don't think my local chippy uses one any longer, but it certainly used to.
Of course now that it's easy to print things out, many of these signs will have been replaced by various laminated A4 sheets displaying such wonderful typefaces as Comic San's...
I used to have a grudge against Comic Sans but these days I'm starting to appreciate people who at least have a go at their own signs rather than the dreaded AI generated ones!
Here is one I made earlier simply by typing in 'can you do a flyer for my cafe business rail cafe'
I genuinely wish more pubs had these, or at least something similar.
It seems now that most pubs don't advertise their prices at all, so you order a pint and then they say that'll be £7 please and you wonder how remortgage interest rates are doing at the moment.
In the early '60s I did a London Co-op milk round for a few weeks. We delivered the following:
silver top - pasteurised full (cream) milk
gold top - Channel Islands full cream
red top - skimmed milk, - i.e. cream removed.
At home we had United Dairies milk, usually blue banded top, - showing that it was Tiberculin Tested, and occasionally gold top with a blue band which was TT Channel Islands, used when a small amount of cream was needed for cooking etc..Another thing I remember, - when there was a frost, if milk was left on the doorstep too long, it would start freezing and the contents would expand leaving about 1 inch of cream protruding with its aluminium foil cap on top.
WesternLancer
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I thought pubs were required to display a price list somewhere.
Is that no longer the case?
I haven't held a personal licence for quite a while so it may have changed.
But I certainly don't think places display their prices as prominently any more. It may be an A4 sheet of paper at the staff bar lift side of the bar.
Still required, but often not prominent
WesternLancer
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that seems likely now you put it like that
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Yes, I see what you mean - agree with that
swt_passenger
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I remember my parents and grandparents having ‘gas pokers’ to help start coal fires in the early 60s, they were connected just like a school Bunsen burner, just a rubber hose pushed onto a spigot.
I've never seen them in use, but I have seen the spigots next to fireplaces. It always seemed a little odd having, effectively, a gas fire to light your coal fire - but I guess coal was a lot cheaper than gas in pre-natural gas days.
My Grans one ran off a small 4KG butane cylinder, we ended up using the bottle in exchange for a larger one when we got a gas barbecue.
WesternLancer
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and you could "come home to a real fire" as I think the British Coal adverts used to say...
My grandparents had one. They'd never have had a gas fire in their drawing room, but the gas poker made having an open fire much easier.
...and the militant Welsh Nationalists... (objecting to second homes taking property prices out of reach of the locals.)
Yikes, I remember those gas pokers now. Very good at starting fires but I'd hate to do a modern risk assessment for one! I always liked putting newspaper across the hearth opening to really get a draught going. The trick was to remove it before it caught fire but you learnt the hard way!
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I recall "Not the Nine o'Clock News" doing skit on that - "Come home to a living fire - buy a cottage in Wales"
Gas pokers worked very well, and (maybe by coincidence) removed a lot of nasty smoke caused by people lighting up with all sorts of rubbish. We had one for the Parkray with a back-boiler when we moved into a Victorian house in 1978, and in addition the kitchen gas stove was originally connected via a bayonet fitting too. It was very useful for when you needed to drag the cooker out to clean underneath and behind it. Unfortunately when we had a new stove the fitter told us they had been banned and scrapped it... then I discovered they hadn't been banned, bought another one and fitted it myself.
My parents had the gas-heated washing machine in the late '50s, and somehow my dad connected up a long rubber hose from the bayonet gas fitting to a Bunsen burner for me to melt lead just outside the back-door!
Howardh
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Your son/daughter giving you three rings to come and collect them, or a reverse charge if they were in difficulty!
Lloyds siding
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It was, of course, the children’s job to get the fire going, being the first into the house just after 4pm. This meant that the house was warm, and some hot water from the back boiler, by the time the rest of the family returned from work. You would use a gas poker if you had one, but more likely some rolled up newspaper and some sticks of fire wood with small coals on top to get it going, the newspaper spread across the top of the fire opening worked a treat to get a good draught. The risk of the newspaper bursting into flame was very high, fast reactions were needed!
If the area became a smokeless zone, but the house was going to continue to use solid fuel (smokeless of course), then part of the conversion was the fitting of a gas point for a gas poker (because smokeless fuel was difficult to light....having had all the volatile [and smoky] bits driven out of it),
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WesternLancer
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Yes. Wasn’t that a Not the Nine O’clock News sketch?
in which case you just let go and saw it disappear up the chimney in flames. Not a problem if the thing had been kept swept, but if it was encrusted with soot...
Our semi-detached neighbours had a chimney fire once, it was really dramatic, roaring up the flue and out of the pot at the top. I remember that the fire brigade insisted on inspecting our loft as apparently the pressure in their chimney meant that there was a risk that jets of flame could come out through any gaps in the mortar and set our loft alight too!
Ashley Hill
Established Member
I remember doing this to my parents.
Not quite the same, but this goes back to the days when long-distance international calls were very expensive (pounds per minute). My parents had one friend who, when travelling, would do the opposite: place a reverse charge call from himself if he was fine and not reverse the charges if he really needed to talk.
His wife would, naturally, decline the charges knowing that he was safe.
That is very nifty!
Brightonboy
Member
A couple across the road from us about 20 years ago had a chimney fire which was first recognised as such by my Father In Law who had been a long term retained fireman and was just going home from ours. He knocked on their door and started the process of controlling it while we waited for the Fire Service to arrive. He had some experience of dealing with chimney fires alone, having once had one at their own house when he was still a retained fireman - he dare not call his colleagues out so drove to the fire station, collected the necessary equipment and returned to extinguish it himself!
That's interesting. ISTR that the first thing to do is grab a sack, soak it and fill it with something wet and stuff it up the chimney to starve the fire of air...
Our family had a small range of codes using a varying number of rings to inform the recipient if all was well or not. Mum and dad would count the rings, up to five IIRC, before bothering to get up and answer the call. The phone resided on a plinth in the hallway.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Likewise!
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We had free coal as a perk from the NCB - maybe 6 tons a year - selling of it would be instant dismissal of course - but we used to sieve the ashes and give them to an OAP neighbour for use , with maybe a few choice lumps buried under the cinders of course. Delivered of course in a galvanised coal bucket !
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Houses with an indoor coal bunker/shed. Our 50s/60s terraced council house had two front doors with the second door to access two coal stores side by side and a bit of storage. Only one coal bunker got used with 1 or 2 sackfuls bought each week from the coalman.
Large pebbles, yes. Built near Tring a couple of years back (google maps pic). Watched them do it, poor fellas.
