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The more widespread culture of married couples consisting of a male "breadwinner" and a female "housewife". Often resulted in men being wildly and hopelessly out of their depth if their spouse was ill or away from home to look after a sick relative leaving their hapless husband grappling with...

West Indian bowler Michael Holding was bowling to English batsman Peter Willey, causing the commentator to observe "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey'."

On the subject of letters. Employees answering customer complaints in writing with the typed version being posted to the aggrieved customer in pre-email days could become a bit of a saga if the customer was not satisfied with the reply and wrote back with another salvo which then prompted a...

And probably, when he was still living, some of Mr Smith's letters would have been addressed to John Smith Esq.

There's no doubt a rich seam of wartime songs which would qualify for this thread. Two examples: "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" and "Keep the Home Fires Burning". 1728741193 The Rapide/hostess services finally came to an end in 2000 but many such services were...

Certain areas of BR, usually the ones controlled by Chris Green and others like him, thought that customer care was something to be invested in rather than a soft target for cuts. One example - highly visible welcome hosts/hostesses in bright red jackets at major stations selected for their...

Childrens fiction school stories of yesteryear sometimes depicted brothers at the same school, usually a boarding school, as, for example, Wharton major for the elder sibling and Wharton minor for the younger brother. For all I know there may be some schools, Eton perhaps, where the custom...

There used to be a convention, in parts of Scotland at least, to refer to two unmarried aging sisters, perhaps still living in the family house, as (for example) "The Misses White" or "The Misses Smith". I think that custom has probably fallen largely by the wayside.

Paul Simon wrote a song called "Kodachrome" - a title which probably wouldn't mean a lot to today's youth. Of course the BBC embargoed its transmission on all their outlets due to the use of a title which was a brand name. Slightly off topic but The Kinks song "Lola" was originally banned by the...

Perhaps the supposed 3-day commerciality is only sustainable if the other 3 days are in operation on a subsidised basis?

The song "Food Glorious Food" includes the lyric 'Pease pudding and saveloy'. From a Scottish perspective I don't think that either pease pudding or saveloy would ever have been familiar terminology north of the border. How familiar would they be now to younger generation English folk? I quite...

Likewise "Sylvia's Mother" (Dr. Hook) "And the operator says forty cents more For the next three minutes"

Yes the clinging to past formality does still exist to a degree.

The former expectation that an adult would only be addressed by his/her first name where encouraged to do so by the person concerned. Especially true if the adult was elderly or professional or generally 'old school'. Such a person would almost certainly recoil from today's informality where a...

The late Scottish artist Dame Elizabeth Blackadder. Difficult to disassociate the surname from the TV character. 1728750135 BBC radio presenter James Naughtie has been banned from the road after he was caught behind the wheel of his car while over the drink drive limit.

Chris Moneymaker, 2003 World Series of Poker main event champion.

Older ladies still expect/appreciate it and ditto for stepping back to let them proceed first. Occasionally younger ladies can seem slightly resentful of the preferential treatment arising from their sex.

The "table manners" which adults often insisted that children observed in the days when eating most meals together at the dining table was the norm in many households. These usually included an embargo on resting elbows on the table and a mandatory requirement to say "please may I leave the...

Started thinking about onetime once a year appearances at Christmas. As well as nuts and dates, there were sugared almonds. And those big plum-shaped, plum-coloured apples (from Canada I think) which looked so impressive in the bowl but tasted of yellow mush. And home-made ginger wine: sticky...

Noticed this fairly appropriate surname in an online newspaper article. The locality of part of his parish being "Grimsay" also seems fitting. "In 2022, Rev David Blunt, minister of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) in North Uist and Grimsay, reportedly said the profusion of ferry...