THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Whyperion]

BBC R4 Disinformation, A User Guide

[Wendyf]

My brother and I have been reminiscing this morning about Arnold Laver's the timber & wallboard company that our father worked for from about 1954 to when he retired 30 years later. I have just found this bit of old film on their website and thought it was worth sharing! Although the film begins with the wallboard products that I remember so well because that was Dad's speciality, it goes on to some wonderful footage of 1950's Hull (or Immingham) docks with timber being unloaded from the ships. It finishes with a few shots of the Leeds branch which Dad set up back in 1956.

[BBvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU8R ... D-G_bwawLM[/BBvideo]

[Wendyf]

I found this photo of the Leeds premises on Camp Road before the huge warehouse was built. We think the vehicle parked alongside might be our Ford Prefect!

[Stanley]

That's a good coincidence Wendy. One thing I am seeing more and more in these old pictures is that the road surfaces were so much better then. I noted it in a 1982 pic of mine in Barlick the other day and it's the same here, look at those lovely well-laid and level setts. I think the conclusion must be that the roads were better then because they were over 50 years younger! In 1945 at the end of the war, despite no maintenance hardly during the war years the main road though Stockport, the A6, Wellington Road, was setts like that and just as good.

[Stanley]

I have been triggered over the last few days into looking more closely at the state of maintenance on our roads and streets. It's not simply a matter of potholes, it applies to street furniture as well. I noticed an old concrete bus stop sign standard next to the Strategy Bar yesterday which is unused and has deteriorated to the point where all the reinforcing bars are exposed. If you keep your eyes skinned you can find plenty of other examples, add also my long-term beef about the remaining Rediffusion cables festooned round the town.
As in so many things we are still riding on the back of early twentieth century infrastructure and in the case of buildings, even earlier. The old lamp posts are a case in point, made exclusively of cast iron they were virtually indestructible. Their replacements are showing their age.



The light coloured standard with the 'no entry' sign hung on it is a sewer gas vent at the top of Newtown installed in the late 19th century. Still performing its function today but when did anyone ever bother to give it a makeover? This is the mind set that is all too common and of course is exacerbated by the lack of funding.

[PanBiker]

There is a similar CI sewer vent on the corner of Wellhouse and Valley Road. It was in good condition when I was a lad, still doing it's job but rotting from the top down now, last time I looked I think it's lost it's cap.

[Wendyf]

Did anyone get chance to watch the video I posted earlier?

[plaques]

Yes. Very interesting. Wall boarding was very popular when I first got married. Used it allover the place.

[Wendyf]

Our house was practically covered in Formica! It was the footage of the docks that fascinated me though, especially the way the timber was stacked up on the decks.

[Stanley]

I used to load regularly out of a firm of timber importers called Glicksten's in Stratford, East London and one of my destinations was Arnold Laver in Leeds. Glicksten's imported hardwood logs as well and milled them including veneer logs that were so dense that they only just floated in water. Another destination was the Remploy furniture works, I went to one regularly in Leicester and they specialised in using off-cuts. To unload, everyone in the works formed a human chain and each took what they could manage. There was every disability you can imagine but they all did what they could and it was surprising how fast we could get ten tons of timber under cover!
What surprised me at the time was that the best timber went for boat-building and bar and shop fitting. Apart from Remploy I never delivered to furniture firms.

[Stanley]

We hear a lot today about immigrant workers and my mind goes back to the use of prisoners of war by the local authority in 1944/45 for road repairs. I suspect they did other jobs as well but as schoolchildren we saw them on the roads. They seemed to be mainly Italian and were a cheerful bunch, always talked to us. I suspect they thought they were much better off as prisoners in England than free men fighting on the front line.

[Stanley]

One aspect of medical treatment that seems to have vanished completely but was quite common when I was a lad is the concept of someone being 'bedfast'. This happened when someone had a complaint that was beyond the knowledge of the medical profession and their only response was to advise the patient to go to bed and stay there until the ailment improved. My Grandmother was such a case and was confined to her bed and a rocking chair in front of the bedroom window for the whole of my childhood, I never saw her in any other circumstance. It all seemed to be perfectly natural. It was quite common then and I heard of other similar cases. Now I realise that in the majority of chronic cases it was totally unnecessary and ruined many lives.

[chinatyke]

One aspect of medical treatment that seems to have vanished completely but was quite common when I was a lad is the concept of someone being 'bedfast'. This happened when someone had a complaint that was beyond the knowledge of the medical profession and their only response was to advise the patient to go to bed and stay there until the ailment improved. My Grandmother was such a case and was confined to her bed and a rocking chair in front of the bedroom window for the whole of my childhood, I never saw her in any other circumstance. It all seemed to be perfectly natural. It was quite common then and I heard of other similar cases. Now I realise that in the majority of chronic cases it was totally unnecessary and ruined many lives.

In those days there was no remedy for a lot of common ailments that are now cured with easily available chemicals such as antibiotics. Even if a person's ailment had been diagnosed there may have been no treatment options. Thank goodness we've moved on from the good old days of kids with heads painted with gentian violet.

[Tripps]

Did anyone get chance to watch the video I posted earlier?

Yes - I watched and enjoyed it. I wondered whether to record the fact, and decided against as such posts just fill the thread with information which is largely uninteresting to all but the original poster.

I like films from that era - amazing to see what dock work was like . I didn't see much safety equipment - not a yellow jacket or hard hat to be seen.

This site is great - I'm well known as the 'Barlick Bore' among my small but select group of friends - and my only small criticism is that there is no 'like' button, or approval tick box. I think we had such on the previous incarnation, but I know all the bells and whistles were removed. It's a shame though - you like to know what effect your posts have - for good or ill.

[Wendyf]

Thanks Tripps.

[Stanley]

I enjoyed the film also David.
I did a lot of dock work in the 1960s. I loved the fact that there was so much of interest to watch and hated having to wait, often for days, to get unloaded. The queue of wagons was one of the best clubs in the world and don't get me going on the stories. I've told most of them anyway on here.....
David, I use the emojie to signify I have read but have nothing to add.

[Tizer]

Tripps, I can't see how you could ever be called a `bore', Barlick or otherwise!

[Stanley]

Quite......

[Tripps]

David, I use the emojie to signify I have read but have nothing to add.

You've made my point. Apply Tripps' Test 'What would happen if everyone did that ?'

[Stanley]

There would be less posts left with no indication at all they had been read.....
Here's one to get Tiz going. In my youth hundreds of thousands of postcards were sent. Every seaside promenade had racks and racks of them so we could send them to our friends bragging we were on holiday..... Every one fro that era recognises a Bamford Card immediately and Frith's had a virtual monopoly of scenery and townscapes. The only place you see them now is at auctions and where they sell ephemera.... They left far more evidence of social history than text and email can so we will be poorer for the 'improvement' in communications.

[Stanley]

We have all seen how scares can 'go viral' on social media. This is nothing new, there are plenty of examples in history of it happening, a good example is the Witch Craze of the 17th and 18th centuries. I can remember during the war there was a scare about men giving poisoned sweets to children and it must have impacted us because I can remember me and my sister Dorothy being in the pram outside the digs when we were on holiday and a man gave us sweets. We pulled up the false bottom of the pram and put them in there. Even at that early age, I would be about 4 and Dorothy 3, we were aware of the scare and took notice even though sweets were a tremendous temptation in those days.

[Tizer]

Here's one to get Tiz going. In my youth hundreds of thousands of postcards were sent. Every seaside promenade had racks and racks of them so we could send them to our friends bragging we were on holiday....The only place you see them now is at auctions and where they sell ephemera.... They left far more evidence of social history than text and email can so we will be poorer for the 'improvement' in communications.

Yes, that get's me going, but I'm just about to go for a haircut so I'll say just this for now...
I read recently a postcard collector saying he'd been travelling abroad and found that `over there' there seems to be a resurgence in selling postcards from shops. Racks prominently displayed outside and inside shops. Let's hope there's a similar resurgence here!

[PanBiker]

I can also confirm that postcard carousels and racks are alive and well on the Greek islands, all of the ones we have visited anyway.

[Stanley]

Good, they were the email of their day.....

[Stanley]

Another method of communication that has vanished is the telegram. These had a bad name as they were sent during both wars to report a dead or missing relative. They were associated with bad news but were a very effective way of getting a message to an address very quickly.
During the same era, other ways of communicating were slightly less speedy. I once had to ring a person up in a remote location on the west coast of Ireland. The call had to be put through from the local exchange but they were closed from 6pm to 6am! I found out later that the postmistress had heard my call and even though regulations precluded her from answering it she got on her bike, went to my friend's house and told them to call me first thing in the morning.