THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

Yes, we had one tank at Marton that was subdivided. When we tanked milk into Doncaster Co-op we off loaded in the railway sidings where they used to accept the rail tank wagons.

[Stanley]

Police constables patrolling in pairs with their capes over their shoulders. Flatley Dryer now. The cape was a very useful tool, apart from keeping your shoulders dry it was a handy weapon, a clout with a well swung cape was no laughing matter. Useful also in a knife attack.

[Stanley]

For many years I had a pair of police uniform trousers which I wore for work running the engine at Bancroft. They were incredibly hard wearing thick black woollen twill that seemed to wear forever. They had a truncheon pocket next to the right hand trouser pocket (I wonder if they made left handed ones....) Just deep enough to hold the truncheon with its leather tab hanging outside for easy access.
The wooden truncheon was standard. Inspectors who went out on the beat to check on their constables carried a longer stick at night, called (would you believe) a night stick.

[Stanley]

This morning I am wondering whether the service by qualified BG gas fitters is a thing of the past. I think they are outsourcing to independent gas fitters. If the one I had yesterday is par for the course they can include me out.

[plaques]

There are some perfectly good plumbers central heating fitters in Barlick why not use them.

[Big Kev]

I have a Barlick man coming next week to service my boiler, it was £50 last time he came to the Park Street house.

[Stanley]

Who is it Kev? My contract runs out about now.

[Tizer]

I have a Barlick man coming next week to service my boiler, it was £50 last time he came to the Park Street house.

£50! It's a very long time since anyone charged as little as that for a boiler service in Somerset!

[Big Kev]

Who is it Kev? My contract runs out about now.

Crane.JPG

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Kev, I shall get in touch with him.

[PostmanPete]

Thanks for that Kev, I shall get in touch with him.

He's really near you at 25 Wellhouse Street if you want to save a phone call.

(and it shouldn't take 4 phone calls for him to find your house........)

[Stanley]

That's right Pete. Funny, I hadn't realised that!

[Stanley]

I was thinking about living on Heaton Moor in Stockport when I was a lad. It was an affluent part of the community but none of the centres like the cinema or any of the shops had car parks beyond parking on the road in front of the venue. People didn't drive everywhere but saw nothing wrong in walking to the shops, cinema or public house. Definitely not the case now.

[Big Kev]

Thanks for that Kev, I shall get in touch with him.

Had the 'full dismantle' boiler service this morning. It also needed a double check valve, for the filling loop, as it should have had one at installation (2017). £70 all in.

Very pleased with that.

[Stanley]

Thanks Kev. He is on my list.
Looking back and thinking about car parking, I can't remember any provision for parking in the town itself. As I remember it, if you went into town in a car you just parked anywhere where there was a space. It worked because there were so few private cars then. The big move to providing space for parking cars was a cunning wheeze after the war to use and make profits out of bomb sites. If I remember rightly that's how National Car Parks started.
[I had a furtle and found I was right. See THIS history of NCP.]

[Stanley]

We forget today how good the Post Office letter deliveries were in days gone by. In the days of the 'Manchester Man' from each mill going to the exchange on the 07:30 train out of Barlick every morning, the office boy would be sent down to the station to give any orders that had arrived by the morning post to the Manchester Man who would do the deal on the ;change. A letter posted in Manchester the night before was guaranteed to be delivered in Barlick the following morning in time to be sent down to the station. I have been told by old office workers that they could remember the representative accepting a contract for the cloth, ordering the yarn and it being delivered at the mill before the representative got home from Manchester. All Flatley Dryer country now but we couldn't beat the speed of their reaction to an order even now with email and the web.

[PostmanPete]

We forget today how good the Post Office letter deliveries were in days gone by. A letter posted in Manchester the night before was guaranteed to be delivered in Barlick the following morning in time to be sent down to the station.

On a similar note but smaller scale, when I became a Postman in 1992 and for a couple of years afterwards, we used to empty the Barlick post boxes during the morning and any letters for the Barlick and Earby area were taken out and delivered the same day on the 2nd delivery. Nowadays those letters will travel miles and miles before returning to our area to be delivered...!

[PanBiker]

My new to me camera was posted in Norwich last Saturday and I received it Monday morning. The service used said it would be today.

[Tizer]

In the golden days of the postcard in Britain (roughly 1900 to 1920) people used to send a card to their friend or relative in the same or nearby town in the morning saying I'll meet you at the `pictures', or in the Dog & Duck, at 6.30 this evening. Men at the office would send a postcard to their wife at home saying what time they'd be home that evening. Another world! The telephonic apparatus then took over until the mobile phone came along...

[Cathy]

I remember during lockdown my little street was visited every day by so many white vans (couriers), Aust. Post vans, and supermarket trucks. Today your lucky if you see one of each.
It’s mainly just normal residents vehicles now.

[Stanley]

White vans and drivers suddenly became essential workers here Cathy and still are.

[Stanley]

Home grocery deliveries used to be the preserve of those who had aspirations to join the gentry! Now they are far more common so that has changed during the pandemic.
I wonder how the return to 'normal' will pan out. I fear a lot of things are going to become Flatley Dryer country. Look at the number of pubs that have closed there doors for just one badly damaged area. Then add the big stores. We could be past some sort of critical mass in the High Street.

[Stanley]

Everything in my shed with the one exception of the lighting, is Flatley Dryer country. Lovely!

[Stanley]

I was wondering yesterday what the state of the tramping business was. By that I mean the concept where a driver sets off with a wagon and finds his own loads, the wagon can belong to a gaffer or to the driver, the process used to be the same and remember in those days there were no cell phones, once you started up and left home the only contact with you was if you phoned in. There wasn't a lot of that!
It was a rough life and uncertain, you never knew where your loads would take you and as you were taking the loads nobody else wanted, you couldn't be sure you'd get paid.
Having said that I have always said that it was an education and I am glad I did it although there were times when my enthusiasm would have been hard to detect! One thing is certain, If I come across a fellow tramp driver, we have plenty to talk about. I am lucky, I have one at the top of the street!
Flatley Dryer country I suspect......

[Stanley]

Today's Flatley Dryer item is a bit different. The old delivery bike like the one above was ubiquitous when I was a lad. Every grocer's shop had one for local deliveries. Shades of Granville in Open All Hours! They gradually vanished and by the 1960s were an extinct species. Then a strange thing happened, they came into use again. Two things drove the renaissance, fast food delivery and a better way to negotiate congested city streets with items too bulky for hand delivery. So whilst the old sit up and beg bike and the shop lad has gone, the more modern cycle courier survives.