THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

It was a very heavy coating Tiz and all the ones I came across were that dark blue frit. They were good things to clean and stood up to being steam sterilised well. The only place you ever saw any chipping was around the rim for the lid.

[Stanley]

I know I am a dinosaur in some people's eyes but what happened to principle and ethics in the last fifty years? Am I viewing the word through rose coloured spectacles or was the ethos of politics and the business world more honest then than it is now?

[Tizer]

The problem was always there - look at tobacco, asbestos, lead in petrol and there were many smaller-scale scams, but I think there is a difference now. It seems more widespread and is often openly celebrated by certain parts of the population and on TV and movies. There is also more opportunity and, especially in large organisations, less monitoring by management (look at the VW diesel scam). The `I'm worth it' trend also plays a part - people with a bit of power being greedy and taking advantage (e.g. local authority staff managing to redirect funds to their own advantage).

[Stanley]

Whatever the root is is a regrettable and retrograde step and one of the biggest changes I have seen in society. We humans are a nasty species......

[Stanley]

I listen to the news that Trump has called the Senate together for a statement on policy towards North Korea. Nobody knows exactly what he is about to say and given his unpredictability I can't help considering worst case. It all reminds me of the days in the 1960s when Vera and I talked about the advisability of having children in a world that seemed to be on the brink of Atomic War. In the end of course we decided to go ahead and it was the right decision but at the time we couldn't be certain. I don't want today's young people to be in that position but this may be a case of history repeating itself.

[Stanley]

75 years ago when I first started school one of the first things we were taught after our times tables was what was called 'mental arithmetic'. We were shown the short cuts in thinking like the fact that the 20 cwts in a ton could be equated to 20 shillings in the pound. They tested us frequently and I use it every day. I often wonder whether the seeming inability of shoppers to work out change in their heads is the cause of so many of them not bothering but simply presenting a note. Think of the number of games we played like darts and cards where the ability to reckon up in your head affected your chances of winning. I was reminded of this last night by the snooker players being able to recognise what they needed to score to force snookers. I think that, apart from these specialised fields, it might be a lost art.

[Stanley]

I'm fighting to maintain a positive attitude but we are living in a funny old world. Is it me or is there more cynicism and nastiness about than there was in the past? It seems to be endemic in every field of life and is quite sad actually. I have said it before, we are short of 'nice' these days......

[Stanley]

I was reminded this morning of the popularity during the war of condensed milk. Anyone who has been in the armed forces will have experienced tea and cocoa made with sweetened condensed milk from huge urns in the cookhouse. My mother used to make lovely salad dressing with condensed milk even during the darkest days of rationing. Another thing in its favour was that it was a good staple to have in the store cupboard, it lasted forever and was highly concentrated. No doubt why the armed forces used it so much.

[Stanley]

I remember that during the war we got a lot of dried fruit. It was compact and could be carried without refrigeration. Canadian Apple Rings were great and made lovely apple pies. They seem to have vanished from the supermarket shelves these days.....

[Stanley]

I was trying to remember whether Bank Holidays were observed during the war. If they were I don't remember them. At one time the Textile Districts didn't observe Bank Holidays but had a week in September instead. The bins are being collected today so this regime must still survive somewhere but you'd never know it from Barlick this morning, it's dead, nobody stirring apart from a couple of late night revellers staggering home!

[Stanley]

It struck me yesterday that Hoover made a hand held vacuum. I think it was called the Dustette.

[Tripps]

75 years ago when I first started school one of the first things we were taught after our times tables was what was called 'mental arithmetic'. We were shown the short cuts in thinking like the fact that the 20 cwts in a ton could be equated to 20 shillings in the pound. They tested us frequently and I use it every day

Pity Diane Abbott didn't have the benefit of your education. However I think the media have been a bit harsh on her. She seems, to me, to be 'numerically dyslexic', and unable to visualise the difference between 250, 2,500 and 250,000, neither can she apply the 'is that reasonable' test after her mental calculations. They probably didn't teach that at Newnham College Cambridge, though in fairness she studied History.

Good job Jeremy didn't make her Shadow Chancellor though - that could have been really embarassing.

[Stanley]

And it shows the tone of the election that her mistakes are more important than policies to the Tory wonks. I think their mental age is about 9 years....

[Stanley]

I can remember elections when the only source of national news was the BBC and the newspapers. I don't think our democracy was any worse for it and the decisions were usually rational. Is what we see today progress?

[Stanley]

One thing I have noticed throughout my life is that I get a version of post natal depression whenever I finish a big project. That's the case now with the finishing of the latest engine in the shed. I shall have to force myself to get going again!

[Stanley]

The news this morning of the hacking of French computer systems in an apparent attempt to manipulate the Presidential Election reminded me that this fear of outside interference is not new. During the war there was a fear that the BBC news could be jammed and replaced by fake news bulletins in an attempt to damage national morale. The BBC response was to have the news reader announce his name (It was always a man) and have a very distinctive voice. I can still hear it, "...news and this is Alvar Lidell reading it." (LINK) To my knowledge the interference never occurred but I can remember Lord Haw Haw, my dad used to tune to him to have a good laugh! (LINK)

[PanBiker]

15th September 1940

1940-09-15 BBC Alvar Liddell Reports 175 German Aircraft Destroyed.mp3

[Stanley]

Bloody hell Ian! That took me back over 70 years! My dad must have been the 1930s equivalent of a tech nut because our wireless was top of the range, an Ekco 8 valve superhet in a cabinet with an enormous speaker in the base and a large square tuning dial with a long slim needle. It could get short, medium and long wave broadcasts and I spent many hours searching the air waves and looking for signals from strange places like Hilversum on the short wave band. (LINK)

[PanBiker]

I have quite lot of the classic announcements, speeches and outside broadcasts given throughout WWII. I got them as complete sound archive download from somewhere but I can't remember where.

Here's another:

1944-06-05 Eisenhower's Pre D-Day Announcement to Troops.mp3

[Stanley]

Another gem Ian and such good quality (as was yesterday's). I doubt if it was as clear as that when first broadcast!

[Stanley]

Thinking about Trump and vaccines. When I was a lad the 'Fever Wagon', in Stockport it was a bright yellow ambulance, that occasionally appeared and took someone away to the Isolation Hospital. It was usually Scarlet Fever and the house had to be fumigated and quarantined. (LINK). Measles and Diphtheria were common and you often saw people with the tell-tale hollow in the throat that was a sign they had been operated on, that was for Diphtheria I think. During WW2 we had jabs on a regular basis and I don't think anyone had a second thought about it.

[Stanley]

Then there was the programme of jabs you went through in the army. The joke was to be at the front of the queue so you got the benefit of the sharp needle.
Ever heard of a 'short arm inspection'? That was another culture shock for a young lad who had led a sheltered life! I always wondered what they did with the pencil afterwards.....

[Stanley]

In the 1930s my dad and his friend Doctor Tommy O'Connell (who was also our family doctor) were partners in a greyhound they had in training at the White City in Manchester. The dog never did any good so they sold it to the trainer who immediately set it to hurdling and it won many races. Father and Tommy never forgot this. I cite this as an example of a pastime that used to be common but has almost died out now.

[Tripps]

I know more about this subject than perhaps I should, and that made me smile. It is well accepted that dogs which are ungenuine are often changed to hurdle races - the idea being that the fences give them more to think about than taking a chunk out of the other dogs, or deciding they had done enough when they hit the front. Still happens - though as you note the game is on its last legs - so to speak.

[Stanley]

I have a story about greyhounds. Here's a bit from me memoirs. 'Jimmy' was Jimmy McCall, my clearing house in Glasgow.....

There were other occasional entertainments. I was sat in Jimmy’s one day on my own. Everyone had got a load except me but there was a chance of one from Arran Barytes later in the day so I was taking it easy. Norman wasn’t in the office that day, there was only Jimmy and me and he was digging into my past. I remember that at one point, I’m not sure if it was then or on an other occasion, he told me I was very unusual and wouldn’t be on the tramp for long. The door opened and a little dark complexioned man in a black overcoat with velvet facings on the collar and a black homburg hat came into the room followed by two enormous uglys in black Crombie overcoats and bowler hats.
Jimmy evidently knew the bloke because they threw themselves on one another like long lost brothers. When they had calmed down, the little bloke asked Jimmy to come out for a beer and, looking at me, asked if I was a driver and if so I should come too. Off we went, Jimmy and the little bloke, the two minders close behind and me trailing along at the back. We went into a little bar under the bridge just up Clyde Street opposite the British Restaurant and Jimmy pulled out a white Linen Bank fiver and ordered beers all round. The little bloke picked up the fiver, looked at it and said it was a long time since he had seen one and could he have it. They were like the old English fivers, big, white and printed on one side only. Jimmy said of course he could have it and the little bloke turned to one of the minders and said “Fix him!” At this point I was weighing up the fastest route to the door. The minder unbuttoned his overcoat, reached inside and pulled a fiver out of the top inside pocket and gave it to Jimmy. I say ‘top’ because I saw that there were four pockets and they all seemed to be full of money and I reckoned there was a matching stack on the other side of the coat, no wonder these blokes looked big! We had the beer and the crack, went back to the office and after saying his goodbyes, the little bloke and the minders left.
As soon as they were gone I asked Jimmy what was going on and told him what I had seen when the minder opened his coat. Jimmy laughed and told me I was lucky, I had just had a drink with a legend, it was Sammy Davis. Now this wasn’t the Hollywood Sammy Davis, this was one half of a pair called Davis Brothers, the other being Jimmy. They were, amongst other things, haulage contractors in London. Like a lot of other private hauliers they had been nationalised after the war when British Road Services was formed on the 6th of January 1948 but bought back their business when BRS was privatised with a change to a Tory government. They were chiefly famous for overloading, running without log-books and generally acting like marauding Vikings. On one memorable occasion the Traffic Commissioners issued a report which said that they weren’t fit to hold a licence for a dog, let alone a haulage business.
Sammy was a dog fancier and was in Glasgow to run a dog at Powder Hall the big greyhound racing track. Jimmy reckoned they would have been running a ‘ringer’, that is a dog which looked exactly like another, better dog and had the same tattoo in its ear. The ringer was run in a few races and did nothing which took the price way out because the bookies knew it had no chance. The sting came when the real dog was run in a race which it was odds on to win but would be rated at long odds by the bookies and punters. The two minders were carrying the stake money and how they worked it was that they had a network of punters all over the city who, if given money, would put it on just before the off at their local betting shop. As the money went on late there was no time for the reports to get back to the track and lower the odds, so the dog started at long odds but with a lot of money riding on it. As soon as the race was over the punters collected the money immediately and waited for the minders to come round, collect the winnings and pay them their commission. By the time the bookies realised they had been had, the lads were on the train and going back to London. Jimmy said he couldn’t be sure of this but he was almost certain that this was what was going on. It strikes me as I sit editing this fifty years later that you could be forgiven for blinking a little and wondering how the little lad from Stockport Grammar School comes to be out drinking with gangsters in Glasgow. To tell you the truth I have often wondered about this myself. I think it must be something in the genes, I know that when I got back home and told my dad about the ringing of the greyhound he knew all about it, he had got there before me!