THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

If the Asian inbreeding was a complete answer there would be no other kids affected. I very much doubt that.
Gownin's law means that any historian who references the history of Germany and mentions Hitler has 'lost the argument'. I don't think so!
Reading the book that David gave me on the underworld during wartime brought back many memories. He is correct to detail the instances where ordinary, normally law-abiding citizens, were party to illegal activities but I feel he missed the point that a very human trait was at work. Yes, many things were against the strict interpretation of the war but against this should be set the fact that 'getting one over Hitler' was a valuable boost to moral. (according to Godwin's Law I automatically lose that argument) He picks up on the fact that ironically the best way to remove the colour from 'Red Petrol' was to filter it through the activated charcoal gas mask filters.
Not underworld connected but another example of understandable human feeling was our attitude to area bombing. I was once asked by one of my American students what our attitude to it was and I said that of course now, with the benefit of knowledge and hindsight, I deplore indiscriminate bombing and the death of civilians but at the time, when you had been subjected to overnight bombing raids, the nights in the shelter and the death and destruction that were common place we were all in favour of giving the enemy a taste of their own medicine! As I say, I know better now but at the time we listened to the reports on the news about bombing raids on Germany and were all in favour of it. (I remember wondering why this place 'Marshalling Yards' was attacked almost every night....) The same applied to news of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, imagine the attitude of prisoners in Changi concentration camp (Now a 'life style' airport and how many travellers know this?) in Singapore. Would we blame them for jubilation?
We learned the hard way what total war meant and I for one have never forgotten it. It would be good if the people who rail against the EU and want to get out had some of this insight.

[Stanley]

Not everything during the war was bad. I have very happy memories of Walter Pitcher, the jeweller from Oldham, making us small animals out of candle wax (Our only light) on top of the suitcase he always brought home with him that contained his most valuable portable stock. Small things....
In many ways we had a lot of freedom because our parents were so busy making sure my sister and I survived. It was a relief for mother when we went out to play, usually in the small park 100 yards away behind the avenues. Despite the war, there was a park and greenkeeper in constant attendance during the day and discipline was maintained! I remember particularly him taking exception to public nudity one day because Dorothy only had a pair of knickers on as it was a blazing hot day. She made it worse by using a used margarine paper to lubricate her bottom on the slide. We were chased off!
One of my favourite haunts was about two miles away, the Heaton Mersey Motive Power Shed of the LMS where the locos were cleaned and prepared for their work.



For me, this place was magic, the enormous machines, the small and the fact that they were working and nobody at all worried about me walking round and asking questions. On one memorable day I got a ride on the loco down to the coaling tower and was allowed to blow the whistle.... magic for a young lad.
This and other examples couldn't happen today, can you imagine it in a modern engine shed?
No, the war wasn't all bad and we made our own memories....

[Stanley]

Dried egg, fresh liquorice root, Canadian dried apple rings and Care parcels from the US. All part of the war and I haven't seen any of them for years.

[Stanley]

There were more 'cripples' about in those days and the standard of medical aids and wheelchairs was very poor. Hunchbacks were almost common and you often saw people with bandy legs caused by rickets, in turn due to malnutrition in childhood. The Hungry Thirties left their mark on a generation. We have the opposite problem now, obesity! Us war time children were OK because our diet was being controlled by the government aided by able nutritionists like Sir Jack Drummond. We got regular free supplements of Cod Liver Oil and Concentrated Orange Juice free from the clinics that were set up by the government. We should have them today!
Sounds funny to say it but we kids were very lucky, we have been called 'The last healthy generation' with good reason. It was a good time to be growing up as long as you survived.

[Stanley]

The end of war time restrictions spurred on the search for ways to make a living in peace time. The return of the requisitioned and modernised mills used by the Shadow Factories during the war meant that we had cheap modern factory space and a skilled work force in the area looking for an outlet. This led to the inception of Silentnight at various mills in Barlick, Carlson Ford, Armorides at Brook Shed in Earby and Bristol Tractors at Sough Bridge Mill. There were a range of other businesses as well down to a manufacturer of Hypodermic Syringes at Butts Mill together with a caravan manufacturer and an ice cream maker. The empty mills were soon filled and employment returned. Not all these industries stayed the course but we had a reasonably smooth transition to normal peace-time industries in the area the crown jewel of course being the fact that Rolls remained and on the whole prospered.
We are now in a different world and one has to wonder what the picture will look like in twenty years. Remember that the cotton industry looked invincible but only lasted 100 years. Rolls has been in the town for about 80 years now......

[Tizer]

I've beed reading a superb 1960s book about the steam paddle boats running the Plymouth and Tamar ferry services from the 1800s into the 1900s. The author has managed to draw together a wonderful collection of photos of these boats. The book is a mine of information about the boats but also about the people involved. For example, the ferry operators ran `market boats' down the Tamar so the people from upriver could bring their goods, especially fruit and veg, to the city and to Devonport docks (which had a massive RN victualling yard). However, these trips were much more than just that. Families would board the boats in the morning with their goods and then enjoy gossiping with the other regulars all the way to Plymouth. In spring and summer the morning boats would be piled high with goods and the passengers travelled in a fug of heavy scent from flowers and fruit. At the end of the day you can imagine the trip back, probably with a drop of cider to pass the time with friends! It's no surprise then that when the railways arrived and pessimists said it was the end of the market boats they continued for decades because the families still wanted those memorable journeys down river with old friends rather than sending their goods by train.

Another bit of history...during WW1 many of the Tamar paddle steamers were sent elsewhere to play their part in the war effort. These small boats sailed to ports around Britain and even as far as Scapa Flow. But none more so than the `Brunel' which sailed under its own steam to Mesopotamia to become a naval river boat!

[Stanley]

That sounds like a good one Tiz. Give me the title and author please.... A very similar story on the Clyde of course.
During the war my mother used to take me and my sister for a day out to Liverpool by train. We always rode on the overhead light railway in the docks, had lunch at a department store which was off ration and I remember sea gull's eggs in the salad. Then we always had a trip on the ferry to Birkenhead and back. That was the highlight! An excursion on the water is always attractive to us landlubbers. On reflection, mother was an adventurous soul.....

[Stanley]

During the war when food production was so vital the government instituted War Agricultural Committees (The WARAG) in all areas and Barlick was one of them. The WARAG had the power to force farmers to plough land and change their production methods, if necessary by force, they could take over a farm. Mainly in this area it was by forcing the ploughing of old pastures and growing arable crops like cereals. They got over the problem of farmers not having the right equipment by Importing Ford Standard paraffin tractors and farm machinery from North America and running their own organisation to do the work by contract. My mate Danny Pateman worked for the WARAG as a lad and he told me that they were always busy.
Once tractors were introduced to the district horses started to fade away because when times got better the farmers bought their own machines, they had seen the future because it was forced on them. Hard to imagine Barlick being surrounded by fields of wheat and oats but that was how it was then. In a way they were going back to medieval times when those crops were grown here because of the difficulty of transporting them in from elsewhere. It was the improvement in road and rail transport that made grass and dairy farming possible in the 19th century.
So, as you note the changes in agriculture in Barlick as dairy farming loses it's predominance, reflect that this isn't the first or the last change. Like any other industry, it moves on looking for the most efficient way to survive.

[Tizer]

In the 1980s we spent a week's holiday driving around Sweden. I was impressed by how the Swedes grew crops of oat on very rocky and uneven ground. There were small undulating fields with rock outcrops and giant boulders, probably left from the Ice Ages, but with oats anywhere they could be planted.
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I found this the other day - an assortment of model jerry cans for scale modellers!

[Stanley]

The shiny silver one in the centre is what the army called 'A flimsy' because they were. Very thin metal and intended to be disposable. Used for transporting and storing fuel in battle zones. The 1930 German design, the 'Jerry Can' was intended for re-use and was so good that we soon adopted it. (LINK)
Another seminal design was the '40 gallon' steel drum. very popular as a load with wagon drivers on the tramp because it was easily handled, stable and you could move a lot of weight in a very short time. Occasionally on the docks, if the loading was going slowly (a frequent event!), the dockers would be put on tonnage rate to speed things up and when that happened they would come down the queue looking for wagons loaded with barrels as they were the most profitable work.
I have a story about 40 gallon drums.....
A noble tradition amongst tramp drivers was running two wheels of the wagon for yourself. A London driver loaded with sheet steel in Glasgow one day and went to his usual back street clearing house and got a consignment of molasses in barrels which sat tidily on top of the steel, he was overweight but it would all be in his back pocket. When he arrived at the place the barrels were intended for he got a nasty shock, one barrel had been leaking and the steel was covered in congealed molasses! He realised there was no way he could cover this up and so went back to the yard and confessed. He was a good man and the firm didn't want to sack him so they had a word with the customer for the steel and they agreed there was no rush and as long as the molasses was cleaned off the steel it would be OK. So the steel was off-loaded in a corner of the yard, the driver given a bucket and a scrubbing brush and told he was suspended without pay until they were clean. For a week he had to put up with his mates ribbing him but finally delivered the clean steel. He became famous on the road and the word was he never accepted a foreigner of molasses again!

[chinatyke]

A noble tradition amongst tramp drivers was running two wheels of the wagon for yourself.

These are not noble actions, the perpetrators are thieves.

[Stanley]

You weren't there China.... The thieves were the people who kept the wages to 15p an hour and forced excessive hours on the drivers....... Driving tramp was like living in the Wild West!
In about 1950 Michelin started making a revolutionary tyre, the Michelin X which was the first tyre with radial cord construction. Metal was used in the carcass and the big innovation was that sidewall construction was treated differently from the tread. This enabled the walls to be more flexible and have less rolling resistance, they looked different because they had a pronounced bulge where they contacted the road and compared to conventional cross ply tyres they looked as though they were flat. Lancia were the first car firm to adopt them and they rapidly gained popularity as their improved properties became common knowledge.
By the 1960s large Michelin X tyres for wagons were made and because of their advantages soon replaced cross ply completely. We soon got used to them looking 'flat' and eventually learned that they required different tracking angles on the steering wheels, instead of a pronounced toe in they needed to be nearer parallel.
I well remember seeing a grossly overloaded four in line trailer at Felixstowe one day with Michelin X tyres that didn't bulge. When I asked about it the Davies Brothers driver told me they were inflated to 150psi. He said they stood up to it OK but if one burst the explosion was so violent it often turned the two wheel independent union over on its side! They regularly loaded the ten ton capacity trailers with 20 tons.... (I told you it was the Wild West China!)

[chinatyke]

You weren't there China.... The thieves were the people who kept the wages to 15p an hour and forced excessive hours on the drivers....... Driving tramp was like living in the Wild West!

You forget I worked for Windbag and Shirker Windle and Bowker for <6p an hour. And they made sure every penny was earned! I hated it there.

[Stanley]

Quite!
In those far off halcyon days moving from the war zone of Tramp Haulage to the regulated wage at the Dairy where our wages were controlled by an industry wages board was like heaven. We had guaranteed wages and conditions and regular upgrades depending on inflation. It was the same at the mill, I can remember in the 1970s when inflation peaked we got regular substantial increases that blunted the worst consequences.
A far cry from today's labour market where many work with no benefits or even overtime. Some even with no guaranteed hours or wage! This is not progress......

[Stanley]

The overriding impression at the end of WW2 was that quite suddenly everything was getting better. Improvement was all around after the hardships of the war, NHS, Housing and working conditions all contributed and the one thing all parents were sure about was that their kids were going to have an easier time than they did. Then there was the technology revolution, much of it stimulated by war demands. There seemed to be no reason why progress would falter.
Unfortunately the late 1960s saw the first cracks appearing in this golden future when Reagan and Thatcher coincided with Chicago School of Economics based on the ideas of Friedman and we saw the start of the dismantling of economic regulation that was put in place to control the Inter War depressions. From then on the supremacy formerly enjoyed by industrial capital which had done well under the demands of war was eroded and the Financial Lords of the Universe began to gain control of not only the economy but politics as well because they provided the income needed by government. Despite the flaws of this hegemony exposed in 2008 when credit collapsed the financiers have retained this supremacy because politics didn't have an answer to 'too big to fail' syndrome.
This is where we are now and for the first time in living memory parents can no longer count of their kids exceeding their success. The outlook is bleak and getting bleaker as the latest political mistakes shatter old certainties. We have not yet seen the worst effects or any signs of a recovery. This is not progress.

[Stanley]

For most of my childhood, for a variety of reasons, we were hard up but what strikes me today is that the only long term debt we had was the mortgage on the house. This was largely because there was no instant access to credit such as exists today. This 'freedom' so generously offered by the financial world means that no matter how bad your credit you can amass relatively enormous debts and of course in the long term these can result in, at worst, total destitution and at best constant insecurity and pressure.
I have to wonder once again, is what we have to report progress?

[Stanley]

Sorry to set a negative tone again but I have thought about it and I don't think it's just an old man's whinge, I might have a point.
Looking back on my own life and reading the history one thing that repeatedly strikes me is that when Seebohm Rowntree founded the Rowntree Trust in the late 10th century and directed it to enquire into the most common problems in society, poverty and ill health his researchers quickly came up with clear evidence that the main factor was low income. Further, in subsequent surveys they noted that this applied even when a family had a wage earner.
150 years later the Rowntree Trust is still doing valuable and trusted research into society and the astounding fact is that they are coming to the same conclusions today after all the progress we have seen in other fields. Poverty still blights society and the main cause is the division of national wealth, in fact it is worse now under Austerity than at any time in the past. The thing that has changed, and not for the better, is that the pressures of modern advertising to increase sales and profits has produced a society that is assessed on its ability to consume. Because of relative poverty this means that the poor feel even more deprived than they did in the 19th century. This in turn means more stress and concomitant depression and insecurity. As we 'progress' it is obvious that the level of society where this is a factor is climbing steadily as the allocation of wealth moves further up the scale. The 'white collar workers' and middle classes are being affected now and with AI and robotics this will get worse.
The bottom line is that despite all the effort and fine words we are not making any progress towards any semblance of equity in society and there is no sign of any change in the foreseeable future.
Can you wonder that I am in a pessimistic frame of mind? And I would add that this is evidence based!

[Tizer]

Something today reminded me of the comics I read as a child. We had few books in our house but my parents realised that I read comics cover to cover so they had 4 different ones delivered with the newspaper, on different days of the week. This sounds like I was wasting my time looking at cartoons, but that's not so. Yes, the Beano was all cartoons and that was just fun to read. The Eagle was different. It had cartoon style stories but some were factual rather than Dan Dare type fiction. I particularly remember one story that ran as a series and was the story of Winston Churchill's life. The other two comics were Wizard and Rover and these were predominantly text-based stories, again some fact, some fiction. What struck me today was the length of these text stories and the lack of pictures, yet I read read them word for word. There I was, a young child, yet reading stories in dense text that were longer than most articles in today's best newspapers!

[Stanley]

And the Hotspur as well! I have often reflected on the fact that those text based comics were good reading practice. They were also very well written with good grammar, syntax and spelling. Old fashioned journalistic standards! Regarded by some as 'Penny Dreadfuls' but I reckon they were good training.
I think I was a voracious reader! If I went into Stockport Public Library I could still show you where the shelves were that held Percy F Westerman, W E Johns and Shalimar (F C Hendry). And in the nearest non fiction shelves to the counter was a section on lighthouses. I remember that because having decided to read every book in the library that's where I started and still have a good working knowledge of them!

[Bodger]

Limp along Lesley, Rockfist Rogan, Alf Tupper, these guys showed that you could succeed without a grand life style !

[plaques]

Wilson athlete in the Wizard. A Yorkshireman and the first to do a 3 minute mile. Also climbed mount Everest. Wilson. bred em tough in Yorkshire.

[Tripps]

Public Library I could still show you where the shelves were that held Percy F Westerman, W E Johns

I found this photo from Manchester Archives of the Library where I got my fill of W.E. Johns etc. It was a modest affair. No frills - just books, and if you were overdue, no fines for children, the stern lady seized your tickets, and kept them for a week.

NEW MOSTON LIBRARY.jpg

Interestingly here it is today. Now an Aquarium shop, next to a Curry shop, and between two Pizza shops.

New Moston Library as was. . .

From food for the mind - to just food.

[Stanley]

Lovely! I think we have proved that on OG at least, the good comics were read and appreciated.
Love that pic of New Moston Library, particularly struck by the modern semis reflected in the window. A lot of information in there!
I'd read anything and remember Mother had some Victorian novels by lady authors on 'improving' themes. One was about a poor man living on a hill and befriended by two children (By Mrs Florence Marryat?). Tear Jerkers. I also read father's Practical Engineers and the Woman's Weekly. I was fascinated by Mary Marryat's column, one of the first agony aunts.
And of course all sauce bottle labels and advertisements!

[Tizer]

A couple of good old postcard images, the first in Littlehampton in 1914 and the second in Brighton in 1909. The images are taken from an advert by Toovey's auctioneers.

[Tripps]

particularly struck by the modern semis reflected in the window. A lot of information in there!

And even more if you rotate the view in the link. I didn't remember houses opposite, and sure enough there are more shops as I remember it. Must be an up to date google view since the advert on the poster is quite recent.

Good to see that a library was high priority.

The only business I remember was Calcutts the barber. The bank on the corner (now closed of course) was Williams Deacons - my first current account. Very hard to get a cheque accepted anywhere. No bank cards etc, and certainly no credit cards. The other bank was built from scratch by Nat West I think - the detached building on the left. Now repurposed.

This reminded me of a particular book The Wolf Patrol by John Finnemore. Of course I've just gone and bought it on Abe for £4.

"Cette sauce de haute qualité est un mélange de fruits orientaux, d’épices et de vinaigre. Elle est absolument pur et ne contient aucune matiere colouratif ni preservatif. "