THE FLATLEY DRYER

[PanBiker]

Indeed, my care continues with one of my outreach worker at LGI another Laura, still part of the rehab team and along with her colleague one of the girls that I can ring or email if I have any questions or concerns about my surgery, recovery or what I can and cant do. She spent a good 15 minutes with me on the phone to make sure I was coping OK at home, checked my current level of mobility and where I was at with the physio's. She will update the holistic information that she holds on me accordingly. I reported all was well and certainly had no complaints about the treatment I had received. She knows that I have my first official review with Mr Anderson later this month and will ring me again after that for a further update.

[Stanley]

Thank God for the 1945 Labour government!
One of the consequences of the war was that there were no new commercial vehicles or buses so we got used to seeing and using the old pre-war vehicles. Horse transport and steam powered wagons were also used through the war. I noted the same thing in Berlin in 1954 when I was there, the buses were all straight out of the Berlin of 1930 and the police were the only people with new vehicles, they used Volkswagen Beetles. In Stockport the police still had big pre-war Wolsleys with a chrome plated bell on the front.
The main A6 through the town, Wellington Road, was still granite setts. Incredibly hard wearing but polished by many years of traffic and if slightly wet they were like shot ice!

[Stanley]

One bonus we had in Stockport was that we were within striking distance of the huge pleasure gardens at Belle Vue at Gorton on the South side of Manchester. A direct descendant of the late medieval pleasure gardens in London it had many attractions. A speedway stadium, Greyhound racing, a boating lake, funfair, regular Saturday firework displays and a famous ballroom. There was a zoo and in winter their own circus which we never missed. The exhibition hall was the largest outside London. They even had their own brewery at one time. Apart from the fact that we could watch the fireworks each week from the attic of my friend Bill's house, we had regular trips especially to the speedway as many of the riders were Aussies and of course compatriots of my father. The last time I went was to the speedway in the early 1960s. A magic place but unfortunately all gone now. See THIS Wikipedia article. I note that all that remains of Belle Vue today is a greyhound racing stadium and a snooker hall built in the stadium's car park.

[Tripps]

Wow - lots of memories here.

I was taken to the speedway when very young. Hated it - why are those men leaning over and throwing cinders at me? was my memorable quote afterwards.

The zoo was a great day out on the number 53 bus. I've seen some footage on youtube, and the animals especially the elephants and the hippos looked quite wretched by today's more enlightened standards. They had a chimps tea party every afternoon.

We went to the circus several times on Christmas Eve - pre -TV age and magic.

Then the dogs - too much to tell you about, but a literally jaw dropping moment happened when I found this on the Interweb thingy. Lavender Lily Note the date and the registered owner! I've still got the final kennel bill, but the letter asking me to take her away has gone.

I'll say nothing about the dance hall - those memories are just for me.

[Tizer]

Manchester has lost the Belle Vue Pleasure Gardens but has gained the Ice Village... LINK

[Stanley]

David, nice! My dad and Tommy O'Connell had a dog in training at the competing course, the White City. It never did anything and in the end sold it to the trainer who immediately made a fortune out of it as it was unbeatable over hurdles. Not hard to see who the mugs were there.....
Can you remember George Lockhart who was the ringmaster at the circus for years? Dorothy and I had to give him a cigar from my dad in the ring each year, we hated it! I remember the chimp's tea party and I suspect you are right about the conditions in those days.
Tiz, I don't thing the Ice Village quite cuts it the same way that Belle Vue did.....

[Stanley]

Looking back, Belle Vue was an exception, our usual leisure pursuits were home grown. My mother was very good with us, she was always taking us in trips, largely I suspect because she needed distraction as much as us! We used to get on the tram and go to Middlewood near Poynton for walks and picking blackberries in season. Occasionally she got more adventurous. I remember one day we got on the train and went to Liverpool and had a trip on the Royal Daffodil over the estuary to Wallasey. The two things I remember most (apart from the ferry trip) are the overhead railway and the lunch we had in a large apartment store which was a salad with small boiled seabird's eggs. I don't know what they were but they were off-ration and a nice variation to our normal diet. This would be around 1943 and the port was full of shipping......

[Tripps]

My dad and Tommy O'Connell had a dog in training at the competing course, the White City. It never did anything and in the end sold it to the trainer who immediately made a fortune out of it as it was unbeatable over hurdles.

They weren't competing courses - Both owned by the GRA. The White City dogs all lived at the Belle Vue track, and were taken to White City for their racing, each Monday and Thursday. I only went once - didn't like - too big and empty - no atmosphere.

Dogs which were not 'genuine' or 'fighters' were often put to hurdling (still are in fact). The idea was that coping with the hurdles gave them something else to think about other than attacking their competitors.

[Stanley]

Thanks David......
Reading Dorothy Hartley she mentioned the common use of a whole goose wing as a whisk brush for sweeping light dust and ashes. This reminded me that I had seen one being used at Pool Farm Congleton when my dad evacuated us all to to get away from the bombing at home. We were there for about a month before moving to Burr's Mount at Great Hucklow in Derbyshire and it was then that I saw the goose wing being used as a brush....

[Stanley]

Our 3 months at Burrs Mount away from the worst of the bombing were idyllic. I was 4 years old and my sister was 3 years. We got into all sorts of mischief, fed pigs with coal and made friends with Mr Chapman down the lane to the farm who still had a working tin mine which he ran on his own. He had a house full of cats and a wonderful Gold Coloured clock under a glass dome that was surrounded by the flags of all nations.
I mixed warm linseed mash for the hens every morning and fed them and always watched the afternoon milking in the byre. I often think it was these memories that prompted me to opt for farming at Lionel Gleed's later when my dad gave me the choice.



Father and I at Burr's Mount in 1940. I later found out that he was told about the farm by a mate of his who was a member of the Gliding Club on top of the escarpment behind the farm. It was closed during the war.



I revisited the farm twice first to go camping there in about 2000 (The gliding club was still operating then, the gliders came over our heads at the camp site during the day) and then in 2004 when I took this pic just before it was sold to a wealthy surgeon for an enormous amount of money. It hadn't changed one bit! (Except for a different owner. The Hancocks had retired to the village long before.)

[Tizer]

There's no tin ore in Derbyshire so it was probably galena being mined to provide lead, perhaps also fluorite. Two mines at Great Hucklow are Mildam Mine LINK and Silence Mine LINK

[Stanley]

Quite right Tiz, a slip of the brain, it was lead. I don't know the name of his mine but it was small and he found deer antlers down there that had been used as picks so it must have been old.



This water colour hung on the wall in Peter and Mary Hancock's house in the village. This wasn't Mr Chapman's mine, his was just an adit into the hillside, no headgear.

[Tizer]

..he found deer antlers down there that had been used as picks so it must have been old.

What's known to the miners as `The old men's diggings'.

[Stanley]

Indeed. And believing the Romans to be the biggest international civil engineering outfit of all time I suspect they will have been in there as well!
Thinking about the Roman's takes me back to my school days when I was taught a version of history that fitted the aspirations of our rulers but did not stick accurately to the truth. It seems to me now with the advantage of hindsight and a lot of reading and research that they regarded History and Geography more as propaganda tools then strictly scholarly accurate teaching. It was drummed into us that we were a proud independent nation of Britons who had never been permanently conquered or assimilated into another culture and owned the largest empire the world had ever seen which was a stunning success and achievement. Every one of these 'facts' is a lie.
If you ask me to, I can bore you indefinitely with the proof that this is true but this isn't the time or the place. What interests me is that I suspect the overwhelming majority of the public still believe these canards and the question is why hasn't this failing been addressed over the years. Could it be that the root of the matter is that the lower social strata are regarded today just as they were in the 19th century as a disposable asset to society which should only be maintained as the need arises? At one time this was as cannon and factory fodder. Thanks to the mismanagement of Capita who are 'in charge' of recruitment the former has failed, less recruits for the forces from the 'British Working Class' than at any time in our history and the rapid decline in low skilled factory jobs which will get much worse in the next 50 years due to AI and Robotics....
Food for thought.
(Did I go slightly off piste there? I apologise!)

[Tripps]

(Did I go slightly off piste there? I apologise!)

Yes indeed - not a word about Flatley Dryers.

[Stanley]

But all part of the ethos which led to a tin box with coat hangers in it and an electric light bulb in the bottom being cutting edge technology. I remember a bed-warmer that was a sealed round tin packed with insulation material around a 60watt light bulb. (They were sealed but I once took one to bits to see what the heat source was) If you left them in the bed for more than the recommender time they scorched the sheets. Modern living in the 1950s!

[Tizer]

I'm not sure how Stanley's post relates to the previous ones...?

Mrs Tiz's father made one of those electric bed warmers for the elderly lady to whose Norfolk house he was evacuated from London in the Blitz.

[Stanley]

I'll not argue with you Tiz, I knew I was slightly off piste but it was still history and the way we were taught history was definitely Flatley Drier country. Nice to hear that Mrs Tiz's dad made one at about the same time. I have never come across one anywhere else. Just goes to show how inefficient the old light bulbs were, they generated a lot of heat. Like small electric fires......
Thinking about that, one of the ways we have advanced in the last 100 years has been in improving the thermal efficiency of machines, high standards of thermal efficiency, bangs per buck, are part of the certification process for all domestic white goods today. All that mattered in the early days was did it work when it was switched on!
Notable exceptions have been the electricity generation and transmission industry and the internal combustion engine. Both very inefficient. More to do with the physics of the process than any lack of investment in R&D. New concepts will be needed to overcome shortcomings in those areas.

[Stanley]

Looking at the Xmas lights I am reminded of the state of Xmas tree lighting when I was a lad. Our Xmas Tree was an artificial one with paper leaves on wire branches and each branch had a small candle holder on the end. These were lit on Xmas Day only and I remember they looked wonderful in those times when we were deprived of so much. All went well until one memorable day just after the end of the war when the tree caught fire! It was extinguished and the burnt bits trimmed off and in that guise it served us for many years afterwards but never had candles on again! Funny how that stunted tree looked just as good to us in those days as the modern trees with myriads of lights on them.
I don't know how they managed it but mother and father made sure that we always had one good present each right through the war. Usually secondhand, I remember Dorothy getting a quite magnificent dolls house which was her pride and joy. I got a wooden scooter one year made by the carpenter at father's works and towards the end of the war I got the enormous No. 10 Meccano set with added parts that was the best present I ever had. That was secondhand but no worse for that!



I can still remember making this on the day I got the set and went on to even bigger things like the block-setting crane that was the Meccano advert at the time.

[Stanley]

It was much easier 80 years ago to believe in Father Christmas. We could send Santa messages by burning them on the open fire and watching the letter vanish up the chimney. I can remember the day when I lost my innocence, it was at the works Xmas Party when Santa lost his false teeth as he was doing his Ho Ho! In the process of retrieving them and restoring them to his mouth he had to remove his facial hair and I saw it was my Uncle Tom. Things were never quite the same after that.
I suspect kids lose their innocence much earlier these days.

[Stanley]

I compared our innocence 80 years ago with the estimate of how many kids are sucked into gambling by modern digital media and the fact that it is estimated that 55,000 are 'problem gamblers', in other words probably addicted. Part of the report was about the amount of disposable income these kids have. This is completely outside my experience and is a good example of why this topic exists. I see such violent contrasts between my childhood and what is evidently the norm today, it is a foreign country to me.
I know this is a product of age but it is also significant social history. We naturally expect progress and improvement as a result of technological progress but it seems there is a significant downside as well.
Emerson once concluded a book with the question "Is what we have to report progress?" We would do well to ask the same question now.....

[Tizer]

Don't forget the woman who is getting about £260 million `compensation' (salary etc) from her online gambling business.

[Stanley]

Two of the favourite genres of TV shows are cooking and antiques. Yet we are told that people cook less and and don't gather as much 'stuff' as they used to. The fashion is ready made food and minimal interiors. (I saw Wiltshire Farm Foods delivering in Wellhouse Street yesterday....) As I think you all know, my house is full of 'stuff', the kids say it is like a museum and one of my mentors once remarked that I had 'Populated my own space'.
I once read a piece about Zen Buddhism and contemplation which recommended making a contemplation room that had in it items that carried memories for you and use them as the starting point for quiet reflection. I think I might be a bit of a Buddhist! All the 'stuff' in my house is there for a reason, every item carries a memory and I am constantly reminded of these as I look round.
I once had a friendship with a lady who was vice-principal of a large college. Over the years I picked up that she had had a difficult time with relationships and I noted that in her house she had minimal 'stuff' and only a couple of books, her old maths text books from school. I never pressed her on the matter but I have an idea that my attitude to books and stuff was perhaps more healthy than hers. Of course it could be argued that she was more advanced than I was and didn't need the stimulus I get from them. It's a funny old world and I know that I am seen as an oddball. I will not be de-cluttering at any time in the foreseeable future!

[Wendyf]

We used Wiltshire Farm Foods for my mum when she was struggling to cook anything for herself with her failing eyesight. They provide a good range of meals in small sizes suitable for small appetites and delivered straight into her freezer once a week by a local man who always had time for a chat. Very useful at the time!

[Stanley]

Understood Wendy. I am obviously a bit obsessed by this......
I'm at it again in Stanley's View.....