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Living in the Past
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peter scott



Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Posts: 7113
Location: Edinburgh

PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:37 am    Post subject: Living in the Past Reply with quote

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/12/modern-life-is-rubbish-the-people-whose-homes-are-portals-to-the-past?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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1939 SS Jaguar 2 1/2 litre saloon
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lowdrag



Joined: 10 Apr 2009
Posts: 1585
Location: Le Mans

PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Growing up in the fifties, my first memories are of cousins saving their cheese ration for me, and then the wonderful day that chocolate came off ration and I made myself sick, spending all my pocket money in one go. Seeing a banana for the first time is another memory. Catapult competitions, tops with leather whips, wind-up toys, Meccano, Horny Dublo - all this tactile hands-on life left its memory. Fixed-wheel bikes with cow-horn bars for dirt tracking, no need for a gun licence, taking down the hay rick with a circle of guns pointing outwards to kill the vixen and cubs when finally they broke - plus all the rats! Working on the farm in holidays, picking potatoes or riding the bale sledge after harvest. Going to buy the milk or bread with those little coins with a robin on too, and arriving home with the warm cottage loaf topless.

It was fine as a child; a world where our parents and aunts and uncles indulged us after five years of privation, but as an adult I reckon it was a pretty hard world to live in. Moving to London in the sixties, the wonders of the new age of music, no more light programme stopping every ten minutes to stuffily say "the time is seven forty; seven forty" but Radio Caroline on my tiny valveless Sanyo radio was really my formative years. Digs in Brixton at £3 10/- including breakfast and dinner, working for Sun Life in the city for £300 p.a. plus an extra £30 for the London allowance but at the same time seeing the seedy underbelly of life in those times.

Would I go back to live like that? Not on your nelly I wouldn't! Life in the main has been kind to me, but like everyone I have my scars. I love the comfort of central heating and watching a tele where I don't have to stand holding the aerial in one hand while I am told "left a bit, no, right" and hands groping behind trying to regulate the horizontal and vertical hold, all the while trying to regard a Pye 14" fuzzy 425-line black and white image of Uncle Mac.

Sadly, memories are that, but at the same time, they are, like the tele, warm and fuzzy and in the main will remain in black and white. And should stay there.
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peter scott



Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Posts: 7113
Location: Edinburgh

PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 9:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's true that we look back with rose coloured specs but that's what's good about old cars and living in the past. You can have the glamour without the all the miseries. Well, with fewer of the miseries anyway. Wink

Peter
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UmTumTiddly



Joined: 14 Oct 2016
Posts: 35
Location: Ringwood, New Forest.

PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

lowdrag wrote:
with those little coins with a robin on too,.


Yes, remember it all (with some affection). All very well recounted. Thank you!

(Pedant alert: I am sure the "little coin," [Farthing -the smallest coin], had the smallest British bird on its reverse - a Wren rather than a robin.)
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BigJohn



Joined: 01 Jan 2011
Posts: 954
Location: Wem, Shropshire

PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

in the mid 60's I remember a mate and I, aged about 10 or 11, wandering into the chemist's with a shopping list, the chemist saw it and said,
"Gunpowder lads?"
"Yes"
"What you doing with it?"
"Blowing up tree stumps"
"Take care now."
And gave up our requisites.
Happy days.
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Ellis



Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1382
Location: Betws y Coed, North Wales

PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I will have to be discreet here.

There is one family here in the village who keep their main lounge exactly as it was when they moved here in 1957 - same carpet rug, three piece suite, ornaments, period record player, wireless (or radio) and even the Bush 15" television set in burr walnut and so on.
The reason? The younger family members who are left are able to look to the past and the values and opinions they deemed important to the family then. I have seen the lounge and it is a true time warp experience because everything is pristine, unused really.

The remainder of the house is modern but the impression I got from that room was a feeling of permanence.

I think we may all have this trait. For example I still have the Sanyo "Solid State" radio from the mid 1960s. No FM of course but there is short, medium and long wave and it still works - 3 HP2 batteries.

I know it's been said countless times here and elsewhere that those of us who have classic cars are perhaps trying to hold onto a past. Who knows?

What I do remember is Quentin Willson writing in one of the classic car magazines in the 1990s that we own classic cars "to wear" and that if we are really honest about it that ownership is, in Willson's words " a slightly off focus fantasy".
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MikeEdwards



Joined: 25 May 2011
Posts: 2464
Location: South Cheshire

PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've only recently stopped using a CRT television, just because I couldn't quite bring myself to bin a TV that worked perfectly well. Until it stopped during the first lockdown, and I had no choice but to replace it - otherwise it would still be here. Not quite to the same extent as some, but I generally struggle to throw out things that still work (and some things that don't if there's a slight chance that they might again).
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Rootes75



Joined: 30 Apr 2013
Posts: 3788
Location: The Somerset Levels

PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 1:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do think the hobby of driving/collecting vintage or classic cars is for us taking one step into the past. Its pure nostalgia.
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Peter_L



Joined: 10 Apr 2008
Posts: 2680
Location: New Brunswick. Canada.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Over the last year I have spent considerable time and some expense in researching the history of a significant property in Yorkshire. I was asked via FB, Quote "why?, what's the point ?, waste of time and money" End Quote: to which I replied "Doubtless you have ignored so much for so long, that you now know absolutely nothing about everything"

In reply to Rootes 75. It is all about what we want to do while at the same time "contributing". What worse an epitaph than "Came - Went - Did Nothing"
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alastairq



Joined: 14 Oct 2016
Posts: 1950
Location: East Yorkshire

PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 5:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Over the last year I have spent considerable time and some expense in researching the history of a significant property in Yorkshire.



Not Castle Howard, by any chance?? Smile Smile
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Peter_L



Joined: 10 Apr 2008
Posts: 2680
Location: New Brunswick. Canada.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Alastair. Nothing quite so grand. Pinder Oaks, Barnsley. I was born there, and at one time lived not far away. Ignored by photographers and historians, it was demolished in 1969. Origins go back to 15th century as a farm.
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Penman



Joined: 23 Nov 2007
Posts: 4751
Location: Swindon, Wilts.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Peter.
I see it has a transport connection as well.
https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/435211/405188/12/100571
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Peter_L



Joined: 10 Apr 2008
Posts: 2680
Location: New Brunswick. Canada.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Penman wrote:
Hi Peter.
I see it has a transport connection as well.
https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/435211/405188/12/100571


First the tramway but later the Bus Depot for Yorkshire Traction. Now all gone. A new hospital on the site of "Pinder Oaks" and new houses where the "Tracky Sheds" were.

BTW I also use National Library of Scotland (NLS) and I have the 1771 Jeffreys Map CD
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