THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

One consideration was the relative lack of suitable large timber Tiz but I agree with you we are positively antediluvian when it comes to house building. We were big on timber framed houses from the earliest dwellings right up to the 16th century when the Dissolution of the Monasteries re-distributed the masons amongst the public. Until then the only builders in stone were the Monarchy, aristocracy and Church. In essence we have hardly moved on form there in basic design. Henry VIII has a lot to answer for but until now I had not fully recognised that house construction was one of them!
In Northfield Minnesota Martha and Rogers house was a mail order timber house bought from I think it was Marshall Field's in the late 19th century. The original square core has been extended over the years. It is totally timber construction and despite the savage Minnesotan winters, was always warm. Very well insulated with I think it was a paper based insulation layer inside the walls. The original timber cladding was as sound in 2000 when I stripped it all back to bare wood for painting as it was when installed 140 years before. It was protected originally by two heavy coats of boiled linseed oil on all sides of the timbers. It sat on a stone foundation and basement which was very poor quality rock.



Another advantage of a well built timber framed house is that house moves are literally possible. This house was bought for $10 after it was submerged in an industrial estate, transported by the haulage firm to their yard and sold to the next owner for a profit and the cost of re-installing it on a foundation. I watched this move in Northfield over three days and was impressed. When they got it on the new foundation all the doors and window still functioned normally. I've seen far larger timber houses than this moved in San Francisco.

[Wendyf]

Timber framed houses have been popular in Scotland for many years.

[Stanley]

[Tizer]

Was it Martha's house that you almost burnt down while stripping the paint, Stanley?

[Stanley]

"almost burnt down"
Thankfully that's a bit of an exaggeration but yes, there were some hairy moments because of hot air getting in to the old flammable insulation via gaps in the weatherboarding. It was a high risk activity! Than there were the wasp nests..... All those older houses were painted with multiple layers of lead base paint and it's a big problem when you come to sell. That house got a clean bill of health for both the surface and the garden soil. I'll bet that was worth a bob or two!

[Stanley]

Lead based paints used to be the norm up to about 40 years ago when the dangers were realised and the use of lead was banned. In addition most modern paints have abandoned the old solvents that could be as dangerous as the lead. I have had experience of them both, the solvents when I was painting a large industrial chimney in the shop at REW with the door closed and Les, the tinsmith, had to come down and stop me when he noticed my behaviour was erratic. His work place was up on the mezzanine and I think the vapour was heavier that air so he wasn't affected. As for the lead, I made a very good job once of grinding all the old paint off a wrought iron gate, it was outside but I started hallucinating later that day and it lasted for about 36 hours. It was the old lead based paint of course and that taught me a lesson!
Be aware of the dangers of old paint if you have to deal with it, it can be extremely dangerous.

[Stanley]

I bit my tongue the other day when the surgeon informed me that 'smoking causes bladder tumours'. I have no doubt that this could be true but refrained from giving him a list (Like Tiz mentioned) of all the other nasties I have encountered.
Ammonia gas when recharging large refrigeration compressors. Vaporised stainless steel when welding it in enclosed spaces. Did you know that smoking a cigarette in an Ether laden atmosphere produces Phosgene? (The ether was in Easy-start, still sold I think.) Chlorinated greases for water pumps. Some very nasty nerve agents in now banned agricultural herbicides, Denocate and 2,4D spring to mind (Remember Agent Orange?). Cymag for gassing vermin in their burrows, the equivalent of Cyclon-B used by the Nazis in the gas chambers at concentration camps. Organo phosphorous sheep dips. And of course more asbestos than you could poke a stick at. I have absorbed them all. Thankfully many things have changed in the last 50 years.
The miracle is that I have survived this far!

[Wendyf]

On top of all that it's possible that raised glucose levels in your urine have played a part.

[plaques]

Without going into 'I told you mode' all the reasons you site is generally the reply to people who say "my dad only lived until he was XX years old". The conditions at work in their time was deplorable and we should be thankful of the HSE regulations. On the other hand, as my railway pal often says "all the Capstan full Strength smokers are dead now". Its worth thinking about, the choice is yours.

[Stanley]

"all the Capstan full Strength smokers are dead now" To bloody right, they were real coffin nails. Never smoked them....

[Tizer]

As we walked past Queen's College, Taunton, today I took this photo of the artwork they've put up for Armistice Day. It consists of 2D silhouettes of WW1 soldiers.

[Stanley]

I've seen the reports elsewhere and I thoroughly approve. Very effective and evocative, such a simple idea.

[Stanley]

We are very lucky in that people were so moved by the Great War that memorials, usually of very high quality, were erected in villages, towns and cities all over the country. Even the local district of Heaton Moor where I lived had a fine statue of a soldier in full kit with his rifle reversed. Names of the fallen were added after WW2 and as in the case of Barlick, dedicated people made every effort to add any names that had been missed in the original inscription. This is no criticism of the originators of the original lists, the passing of time and modern resources gave much better information.
However, when I was in Rothenburg ob der Taube I found a war memorial....



on the medieval wall and noticed that new names were being added. I enquired and found that the list included all the civilians killed in the war and the reason why new names were being added was because of information coming out of the newly unified east Germany. I thought at the time that this was such a good idea!

[Stanley]

Comments in another post about the lessening of levels in manual dexterity among young trainee surgeons reminds me of the fact that when I was a lad, in the absence of electronic gizmos, we spent a lot of time using our hands. We built dens in wild places, most of us always carried a knife and some string. No, the knife wasn't for personal defence, it was essential for our other activities like whittling wood and den-building. Our ambitions were to get into what we saw as the important things like being an engineer or better still a locomotive driver on the railways. Our haunts were foundries, loco sheds and quarries. Deep water fascinated us and as I have recounted elsewhere we made bombs out of pop bottles with carbide in. Many of our activities were, by modern standards, reprehensible but they were all educational or skill enhancing. I wonder what would be made of playing 'devil up a spout' on mill drainpipes, this was inserting newspaper in the pipe and lighting it, it roared up the pipe and burst out of the top in a shower of sparks! We would be gaoled for arson!
No, things have changed and in many ways for the better but I wish the youngsters manual dexterity could be stimulated in some way. Come to think, the teaching of 'domestic science' and woodworking isn't common in schools now is it?

[Tizer]

It's good the drainpipes were iron and not plastic like they are now!

[Stanley]

Too right Tiz! When I look back even I wonder.
One of the gang's dad worked on the railways and we got hold of a 'detonator' which was also called a 'fog signal'. It was a small copper disc with a clip on it so that it could be attached to a rail line. I suspect it had fulminate in and a small charge of black powder perhaps. If a train was stopped for any reason where it shouldn't have been the guard protected it by walking back down the line and attaching a couple to the rail. If a following train ran over them they exploded with a loud crack and gave audible warning of the obstruction ahead.
We decided to see if they worked..... We put it on the line just south of Stockport centre and hid at the side of the line. It worked! As soon as it exploded the train slammed its brakes on and skidded to a halt with sparks flying from the wheels. Needless to say we ran like hell and escaped detection. Totally reprehensible! I know that now but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
We got hold of a bottle of balls of pure sodium in oil once. We tipped the lot down a grid with water in the bottom in a school playground and were treated to an impressive smoke and flame display. Makes you cringe......
Were we delinquents or simply inquisitive little lads!

[Stanley]

One of the foods that were revived due to rationing was the old practice of boiling beef bones to make stock. Today, one of my favourite books is Dorothy Hartley's 'Food in England' which is full of medieval and later cooking and is a goldmine. The 'stock pot' was always regarded as an essential in the kitchen. When things were tough at Hey Farm in the 1950s Vera used to get beef bones and boil them and Fly my cattle dog got the bones afterwards. Marrow bones were particularly good if sawn in half. A modern cook would be surprised by how good bone stock is and the way it enhances stews and other cooking. A practice well worth reviving . (And very nutritious)
Here's a LINK to a copy similar to mine on Bookfinder. You can get much cheaper modern editions but they don't have Dorothy's original pen and ink sketches which are worth the price alone. A delightful and useful book, I recommend it.

[Stanley]

It's funny how some things stick in the mind, I call it 'Velcro memory'. My mother made good rice puddings but always cooked them until the skin was almost charred! (It's not burned, just well done) It was a bit like Marmite, you either loved it or hated it. I was lucky and used to love scraping the outside burned ring off the dish it was cooked in. There was a definite split in the family and I used to get the lion's share of the skin.
Home cooking was always like this I suspect. I remember one family at a farm in Barlick where the cook hated salt and never put it in her cooking despite the family's protests. They just had to put their own salt on at the table and as we all know I think, it's not the same.

[Tripps]

You're really ahead of the curve here - Bone broth diet

[plaques]

Having renewed my driving licence for the umpteenth time and now getting every 3 years I came across my very first provisional motorcycle licence. 15/- (75p) still expensive even then. Being a learner it had to be below 250cc. which was OK by me. A BSA C12 at around 120mpg was economical enough but had this affinity to fall over on tight corners. Those were the days.

Drivers Licence B.jpg

[Stanley]

David, I knew nothing about that. It's good advice but of course not a 'superfood', just good housekeeping. I was told about the unique benefits of marrow all those years ago....
P, like you I keep things. Somewhere I have the Provisional Licence I had to take out when I went to work for Lionel at Whatcote in Warwickshire. I had to have 'L' plates for the tractor on main roads and didn't need supervision so I was sent on errands for miles like picking up spare parts at Stratford on Avon. Never had any problems and it was magic for a young lad!

[Stanley]

One slightly peculiar episode in my driving career was the effects of Barbara Castle's 1968 Transport Act. Apart from the improvements in vehicle maintenance there was a complete reorganisation of the licensing system for drivers. Prior to this all you needed to drive a wagon was a normal All Groups Driving Licence. The Heavy Goods Vehicle licence was instituted and it had three divisions which roughly speaking covered 4 wheel wagons, six wheelers and then heavy vehicles like 8 wheelers and articulated vehicles. (I think I've got that right....) The allocation of the different grades was by 'Granddad Rights' and the evidence for this was provided by your employer who had to certify what you were actually driving. Even if you had artic experience you only got the lowest grade. We protested but to no avail. The only saving grace was that the for wheel licence allowed trailers so we arrived at the anomaly of me driving the biggest wagon in the district, a 60 ft long maximum weight wagon and trailer.
However, in I think 1972, responsibility for supervising licensing in Barlick switched from Leeds to Manchester and when I received my new licence I had a Class One, covering the heaviest vehicles. What did I do? I kept quiet because it was obvious I qualified and so I finished my driving career with what I should have had in the first place, a full Class One HGV licence. Nice........

[Big Kev]

My father got his class one HGV by 'grandad' rights. When I got mine it was called an LGV C+E, it doesn't show on my licence anymore and I'd have to have a medical to get it back not that I need it but it's useful to know it's there

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

As I experienced the peak efficiency of the NHS yesterday I remembered my experience as a client of the old hospital system before the NHS. Stockport Infirmary was a Victorian barracks of a building, I suspect it had been a workhouse but am not sure. It was cold, bare and forbidding.
When I was young I was deemed to be anaemic and in need of weekly iron injections. Today this would be a routine procedure at the health centre in town. Then it involved a seven mile tram ride into Manchester and a visit to Gartside Street which was the children's hospital. If the inveterate complainers about the NHS had had that experience I suspect they would be a bit more grateful for modern medicine!