General Chat

Hi Allan Hi Jan
thank's anyway thought I'd ask in case there was any from Sydney on here.
Yes I am well but very tired thank you Allan, working 7dys a week doesn't help, cant wait till October when I have a week off, only have time off every 12wks.

Diane

Yes, Diane. I'm in Sydney. So is Colin.
I don't know anyone by the name of Willmore, but Sydney is a sprawling metropolis.

Is there anything I can do for you?

Good morning all,
The sun is attempting to break through but having a hard time of it,it is still very windy

I do hope it does pick up because we are going to a friends for a charity lunch, to raise money for the local girl guides. The idea is to sit out in the garden, but it looks like we may all be huddling in the house.

I was thinking back to the toilet discussions of yesterday. although the terraced house I was first brought up in had a bathroom,the toilet was outside in the yard. When I was nine, we moved into a house with an inside toilet, the height of luxury.

Occasionally we would make the journey to visit my mothers sister who lived in a small village outside Huddersfield in Yorkshire. Thanks to google maps, I know it was only 96 miles, but in those days it was an epic journey. We had a car, an old black Ford of some type, with no creature comforts. In those pre motorway days, it took forever. My memories of these journeys are of feeling car sick..

At that stage my aunt lived in a very old rented house with an outside toilet. Unlike ours, this was not one of the flushable types. It was an earth closet, there was a wooden bench type seat with a circular hole in it and once you had done whatever, you had to pick up a bucket and tip some ashes from the from the fire on top of your offerings. I hated it, just sitting here is bringing back memories of the smell....... Once a week? month? a door on the back was opened and the contents were removed. This was in the mid to late fifties, it seems amazing now that people were still living like that. I must say that I was extremely pleased when they moved into a more modern house which while it still had an outside loo, was at least of the flushable type.

Hello, everyone:))

Linda your aunt's toilet sounds ghastly. We had an outside "dunny" which was a shed with a big can with a wooden seat for a toilet. Once a week the "dunny man" would come and collect it and replace it with a clean one. I remember looking out my bedroom window if I woke early enough and one day asking my dad why he had a big leather mat on his shoulder. I won't tell you what the answer is - I'll leave that to your imagination. We eventually got an inside toilet in the late 60's.

We had our sausage sizzle and, as Berona suggested, with the weather being sunny and warm we did extremely well. We made lots of money, met lots of nice people and had a laugh together as I work with a wonderful group of people. Worth all the hard work.

Janet sorry you're not feeling well - looks like your cold has taken hold. Hope you feel better tomorrow.

My daughter had a load of photos to show us of their holiday in Queensland. I know that everyone who has grandchildren think they are the best looking children but mine really are:))

I hope you Pommies have a wonderful Sunday and good evening Aussies.

Sue xx

Sorry Diane - I didn't say hello:) Nice to see you posting on here. I will do something as simple as look in the white pages. It's sometimes the easiest way to find someone.

Sue xx

Good to hear the sausage sizzle was a success, Sue - and what a lovely day to be outside! It didn't get to the 29 as our Weatherman promised, but it did get to 26 and was a glorious day. Many flocked to the beaches, but not many braved the water. The water still isn't warm enough for swimming.

Hi, Berona. It was glorious outside. It was amazing to see children in shorts and t-shirts in what is usually the worst month of winter. Went outside not long ago and there is a warm wind blowing - it's incredible. Hope you had a good day:)

Sue xx

26 and the sea isn't warm enough for swimming! Goodness that is positively tropical, well in comparison to here it is.

When I was a gal, we used to brave swimming in the North Sea. Sue, I think that you may once have mentioned the fish sands at Old Hartlepool. we used to go there and there was a wooden raft moored in the bay. We used to swim out to that and chat to the boys - oh memories of my teenage years.

Yes, Linda. Too cold to swim. We saw lots of people on the beaches on TV, but those who dared to go into the water said it was 'freezing'.
Our temp may have got to 26 by lunchtime, but the pre-dawn temp was only 4 and we have been told not to put away our winter woollies just yet.

Sue - I felt all morning that I could smell those onions and I was very tempted to take a drive all the way down there just to get a sausage sandwich. However, I remembered two things - one is I already have sausages in my freezer. The other is that I'm not supposed to eat them!

Also - my family would chain me to the bedpost if I attempted to drive that far. No reason why I shouldn't except that we seem to have had a role-reversal and I sometimes wonder who is mother and who is the child?

Have PM'd Diane about her relative. No luck with phone directory (I'm old-fashioned) or whitepages on line for NSW. Very uncommon name.
G'night all (except have a nice afternoon in the UK). Colin.

Hi Everyone......

Well it's a cool 18 deg here today, and cloudy - summertime?

Berona Hello,
Your comment about your family's attitude to your driving reminded me of this - not aimed at you, so you must not take offence.

Two elderly ladies were out driving in a big car - both could barely see over the dashboard. As they were cruising along, they came to a junction.
The stoplight was red, but they just went on through.
The lady in the passenger seat thought to herself "I must be losing it, I could have sworn we just went through a red light"
After a few minutes they came to another junction, the lights were again on red. Again they went straight through
The lady in the passenger seat was almost sure the lights were on red, but was really concerned she might be losing it. She was getting nervous.
At the next junction, the lights were again on red, and sure enough they went straight through. So, she turned to the other lady and said,
"Mildred, did you know that we just ran through three red lights in a row?
You could have killed us both!"
Mildred turned to her and said -
"Oh Hell - am I driving? - I thought we were in your car"

Tec.

As our hobby takes us into the past, and given that we have dealt with very basic toilets, including explosive ones, I thought, it being Sunday, I would raise the tone a little, and talk about........SMOG.........

When I was a boy (and I was once) in the 1950s, I lived just outside London. Every winter we suffered the unpleasant effects of Smog.
This would come and go, depending on atmospheric conditions.
Hardly any houses had central heating, just coal fires. Consequently, thousands of chimneys were belching out coal smoke over a concentrated area. Also, it being before Clean Air, and Anti Pollution Legislation, the many factories were also belching smoke, and other chemicals into the atmoshere on an industrial scale.

Should there be low cloud, and heavy moisture content in the air, then there was a combination of smoke and fog = smog.
These conditions were very dangerous for elderly people, and young people with respiratory conditions - many people died at this time.

Apart from the more serious consequences of the conditions, there was also a humourous aspect.
When the thick yellow smog descended, it could arrive very suddenly. Everything would be thrown into chaos. The police would light fires in oil drums at road junctions, in a vain attempt to guide the traffic. Traffic lights became invisible. I can remember walking in front of my father's car with a powerful torch underneath my arm, pointing backwards so that the beam shone on the windscreen. I would follow the kerb, and father would follow the torch. Many times I walked into the back of a parked car, nearly getting crushed. One morning after the smog had cleared, there was a double decker London bus securely wedged between two huge trees on the grass verge of a dual carriageway. Not in broad daylight could the driver have driven so expertly between the trees. The bus remained there for several weeks while the Bus Company, and the Council argued over whether the trees should be cut down to free the bus, or whether the bus should be cut up - the Council won that one.
Should the smog descend while we were in school, then we would be sent home early. The school issued smog masks that went over your nose and mouth, held in place by tapes behind your ears.
Getting home was fun. Having found your particular road off the High Street, you learnt to count how many street lights, that gave off the slightest yellow glow, there were before your house, and how many steps between the last lamp post and your front gate. I still remember it was seven street lights, and fifteen paces to my house.
Mothers could be heard at garden gates, plaintively calling to their offspring. "Is that you Jimmy?" - "No" came back the terse reply.......
"Have you seen Jimmy?"......"No"

Hooray for the Clean Air Act

Tec.

That was very interesting Tec, of course I am far too young to remember such things , or more to the point I lived in a small village away from the industrial centres

Of course you're too young to remember Linda!

I believe you.......really I do!

Tec.

Hello, everyone:)) I'm up very early this morning - I went to bed too early.

Tec that was a fascinating story. Totally beyond my experience - we don't even get fog here. Of course up in the mountains they get a heavy mist in winter that lifts about 10am and descends again around 3pm.

Berona I do understand what you mean about role reversal. We now find to our amusement and annoyance that our children are getting quite protective of us and at times treat us as if we're decrepit elderly folk. As my OH only turned 60 yesterday and I'm just a few years younger it can be quite exasperating at times.

I'm off to my craft group this morning. I do a craft called scrapbooking which I started because of the numerous old photos I have. I wanted to preserve them for posterity and this seemed a good way of doing it.

Hope our Aussie friends have a good start to the week and our Pommie friends enjoy the rest of your evening.

Sue xx

Good Morning SueMaid,
My word, you are up early. Is it daylight yet?
Glad you liked my smog story - I can't imagine how todays traffic would cope with that. I mentioned earlier that I had written an account of my early life, and the proof reader, a young lady in her 30s was absolutely fascinated by the social history of the times. I of course take it for granted, whereas younger people find it incredible - how little time things change so dramatically.

I hope you enjoy your craft session - that sounds very interesting.
Enjoy your day Sue.

Tec.

Just calling in to say Good night to you all. Another early night, I must be getting old? lol
Enjoy your day if its just beginning. xxx

Tec, I always enjoy your stories as I do everyone's. I remember my father telling me a story about being evacuated - from Bramley near Leeds - out into the Lincolnshire countryside. However my brother and I couldn't work out the maths - the dates just didn't match up. He said he missed his mother and wanted to go home and that he was only away for 6 weeks. His mother passed away in 1937 when my dad was only 10. Even when in the depths of dementia his story never varied. We did wonder if dad may have been ill and sent off to recuperate but he told us his whole school was evacuated. So I decided to do some investigating. My cousin belongs to the Bramley Historical Society so I asked him to ask a couple of questions at the next meeting as they have a large number of older members. Well it turned out he was right. The local bigwigs were aware of an imminent war and Leeds, being an industrial city, would be an obvious target. So they acted, prematurely, and evacuated whole schools of children. Then realising they had "jumped the gun" the children were all brought back after 6 weeks. My dad had many interesting stories to tell and he knew the names of his grandparents which helped no end when my brother and I started our family research.

Sue xx

Edit - Hi, Posh nice to see you posting. Sleep well.

Tec, I didn't answer your question - yes I did get up early this morning. If I can't sleep I have to get up:))

Hi, all

Tec, I enjoyed your smog tale...it reminded me of Manchester: same story and the taste of the smog.

Linda my OH's dunny was a cross beteween a WC and an earth closet. It was waste water closet, or tippler toilet: No flush but a special device with a tippler mechanism. The water from the kitchen sinks was piped into the toilet where it filled up the tippler box, which when full turned upside down to flush away the toilets contents. It could take ages between the use of the toilet and the flush.

Of course, kids being kids, they soon worked out that half a brick dropped down the toilet could render the mechanism useless. As these toilets were shared by many families, you can imagine the result!

Tec, yes thank goodness for the Clean Air Act, but also for the Housing Acts which automatically condemned the old "back to back" houses as unfit for habitation and also brought about wholesale slum clearance

Sue, I'm pleased that your suasage sizzle was a success

Hi to Janet, Berona, Posh and Diane


Allan

Good morning, Allan. I was just thinking that only on this thread could we discuss toilets:)) Hope you have a great day.

Sue xx