Memorable stuff from your formative years

[RBMK]

Queueing in the rain to call your girlfriend from the only un-vandalised phone box for a 5 mile radius whilst someone with £5 worth of 10p's was in the box....

 

[Trackpen]

Not just in the home but outside. The MoD/MoS house we moved into mid 50's was on an estate.
... The houses also all had decent size gardens. My father grew all the vegetables my mother needed in it.

IIRC, it used to be a regulation that a percentage (25%?) of individual MQ gardens had to be under cultivation.
Until this requirement ceased, my parents’ quarters always had veg patches.
I don’t know exactly when they dropped the requirement, but when I moved into our first quarter in Tidworth in ‘78, I didn’t have to tend the spuds and runner beans.

 

[tiv]

IIRC, it used to be a regulation that a percentage (25%?) of individual MQ gardens had to be under cultivation.
Until this requirement ceased, my parents’ quarters always had veg patches.
I don’t know exactly when they dropped the requirement, but when I moved into our first quarter in Tidworth in ‘78, I didn’t have to tend the spuds and runner beans.

Can't help you there. My father was in a reserved occupation and started growing veg during the war then just carried on afterwards. We ended up in that house mid 50's as father was due to move to ROF Glascoed from the RGPF but 'they' stuffed it up somehow and we were left homeless as our house was already sold. We moved in with a relation and a house on the estate that was being built for the RGPF at the time was rushed through for us. We moved in before the roads were laid and I had a great time poking around the houses under construction. When some more kids arrived we turned a big pile of rubble into a sort of castle. Happy days!

 

[tiv]

Your fellow patients obviously didn't have a war-served harridan running the waiting room.

Anarchy, I tell 'ee.

Why do you think sisters and matrons used to be so fierce, mostly ex military so my wife tells me. They trained her and I once saw her in action. Lets just say I'm glad I've never really upset her!

 

[Chef]

Queueing in the rain to call your girlfriend from the only un-vandalised phone box for a 5 mile radius whilst someone with £5 worth of 10p's was in the box....

Going to the phone box and using directory enquiries. I spent a pleasant ten minutes hunting down a French phone number with a helpful operator. No charge.

 

[adouglasmhor]

Trolley buses.

View attachment 553307

When I was a primary school I lived near a terminus for one of the trolley bus routes in Glasgow, I was always amazed by what they did if one overshot the overhead lines, the driver used to attach cables to the lines using a big wooden pole, then drive the bus back under the lines.
I don't fancy writing a risk assessment for that if it was still done nowadays.

 

[vinniethemanxcat]

I may have told this before. Early 70s before pulse dialling on a circular dial became tone dialling. I was shown how to tap dial. Dial each digit of the number you're calling, and as the dial spins back to its start position, tap the cradle as many times as the digit you dialled. One for 1, two for 2... ten for zero. Repeat for each number you dial in turn. Connected without money. Cheers easy.

In 1976, back from Omagh, I discovered that the phone box behind Bhurtpore, Tidworth (we were next door in Aliwal. The Aliwal NAAFI was on the boundary between them, and the phone box on Coronation Street essentially adjacent, but behind Bhurtpore) still had a pulse dial phone. So every week me mum got a free SitRep.

Went away to UNFICYP for six months. Shiny new phone in the box. Tap dial home. "Hello?"

"Hello, mum. I'm back from Cyprus."

"Who is this?"

"Er, is this not Whitburn 293088?"

"No, it bloody isn't. You've called an Andover number, you're in the call box in Tidworth and tap dialling doesn't work any more. Stop bloody calling me."

Búgger.

We knew that trick in the 60's

Trouble was, we didn't know any one rich enough to own a phone that we could ring.

 

[ancienturion]

Free 60 mm commandos with packs of OMO washing up powder. Still got them !!!
Must be 60 years old now.

View attachment 553511

I doubt they were 60 mm then.

 

[Old_Sparky_RE]

I remember sharing these with my grandmother while watching Crown Court in the 70’s. Well sharing isn’t correct as her dentures would clog up and I’d eat the rest.

 

[adouglasmhor]

Also remember the ashes being used to create a path up the garden. My parents were in an MoD house at the time and the fire was rubbish. After a few years they were replaced in all the houses with an enclosed thing I can't remember the name of, had a door with a glass panel in and a thermostatically controlled air vent. Last thing at night you could bank it up after a good poking, turn the thermostat right down and it would smoulder slowly all night. In the morning, empty the ash pan, top it up and you were away. With the radiator on in the drying cupboard in the kitchen it kept the whole downstairs warm.

Raeburn?

 

[adouglasmhor]

The other thing from back then that is still in use is the Belling Bed Warmer Belling Bedwarmer, 1960s, Original | Object Lessons - Houses & Homes: 20th Century - Present

Only problem with it now is getting replacement 40W bulbs. The batch I'm currently on have minimal solder on the contacts and I have to get out the soldering iron and build them up a bit to get good contact.

If they are just ordinary 40W bayonet fitting Amazon has plenty but they are a bit steep in price. They call the traditional filament type "rough service".

 

[RBMK]

Scraping the ice off the inside of the single glazed, aluminium framed windows in the morning. Aluminium is an excellent heat conductor.

Perfect for single glazed windows.

Remembering to put a candle in a jar under the high level cistern of the outside toilet to prevent it freezing. more importantly remembering to light the candle...

 

[tiv]

Scraping the ice off the inside of the single glazed, aluminium framed windows in the morning. Aluminium is an excellent heat conductor.

The Crittall Steel Frames used to ice up in the kitchen ISTR.

 

[adouglasmhor]

I may have told this before. Early 70s before pulse dialling on a circular dial became tone dialling. I was shown how to tap dial. Dial each digit of the number you're calling, and as the dial spins back to its start position, tap the cradle as many times as the digit you dialled. One for 1, two for 2... ten for zero. Repeat for each number you dial in turn. Connected without money. Cheers easy.

In 1976, back from Omagh, I discovered that the phone box behind Bhurtpore, Tidworth (we were next door in Aliwal. The Aliwal NAAFI was on the boundary between them, and the phone box on Coronation Street essentially adjacent, but behind Bhurtpore) still had a pulse dial phone. So every week me mum got a free SitRep.

Went away to UNFICYP for six months. Shiny new phone in the box. Tap dial home. "Hello?"

"Hello, mum. I'm back from Cyprus."

"Who is this?"

"Er, is this not Whitburn 293088?"

"No, it bloody isn't. You've called an Andover number, you're in the call box in Tidworth and tap dialling doesn't work any more. Stop bloody calling me."

Búgger.

NI late1980s, discovered that you could call free from tone dial boxes with a tone control for an answering machine, dial via mouthpiece than dial 999 on the phone dial. After about a year of every singly scaley in the province doing it BT fitted filters to every call box to stop it. As my GF at the time was in Berlin at uni it saved me a fortune.

 

[Mike Barton]

Rawlplugs ?,you were well off...Bryant and May spent matchsticks,snapped to length !

Does anyone still use matches these days? I don't think I have seen any in years.

 

[tiv]

Raeburn?

You know it might have been. Parkray was suggested earlier and I thought that was it but my addled old brain just can't cope. It had a glass windowed door and a knob on the side.

I need coffee!

 

[endure]

When I was a primary school I lived near a terminus for one of the trolley bus routes in Glasgow, I was always amazed by what they did if one overshot the overhead lines, the driver used to attach cables to the lines using a big wooden pole, then drive the bus back under the lines.
I don't fancy writing a risk assessment for that if it was still done nowadays.

The route that I lived on had quite a sharp turn and one of the electric poles often came off. Every bus had a bamboo rod with a hook on the end that was long enough to reach the poles. The conductor just got the rod out and hoiked the pole back onto the overhead line.

 

[adouglasmhor]

You know it might have been. Parkray was suggested earlier and I thought that was it but my addled old brain just can't cope. It had a glass windowed door and a knob on the side.

I need coffee!

This is a fitted type, other models existed, and I got the spelling wrong, it should have been Rayburn. I think Parkray was another manufacturer of them though. They both did kitchen ranges as well.

 

[RCT(V)]

And the BBC TV test card......they don't make shows as informative as that these days.

TV ?! . . . You had a TV ?! . . . LUXURY !! .

The Saturday mornings, of my formative years were spent listening to Uncle Mac, and such serious music as this . . . .

 

[RoofRat]

Does anyone still use matches these days? I don't think I have seen any in years.

Always got a couple of boxes for emergencies,to go with the box of candles.

Sad I know but,it's a left over from the early 70's, when the power cuts were unpredictable !