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Post by onlymark on Jan 23, 2012 5:11:25 GMT
mich, I think virtually all over the houses were sold over the years. The mines caused massive amounts of subsidence in some areas, affecting the houses to the pit. These were very cheap to buy, either from the National Coal Board or the County Councils who owned them. But then you had the problem of sorting out the subsidence. This meant claiming from the NCB who at one time, for some mines, were paying out more in subsidence claims that making in profit from selling the coal.
A lot of the older houses were 'back to back' as you have described and where the bathroom is through the kitchen tacked on to the back of the house in the yard. I lived in one of these for a year or so when I first left home, was born in one and my Aunt still lives in the same one since she first married.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 24, 2012 17:25:44 GMT
Anyone else remember door-to-door salesmen? Fuller Brush, Encyclopedia Brittanica and Kirby vacuum cleaners, plus the better-known Avon Lady, all went away when women went to work and houses sat empty all day. I bought a Kirby............. |
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 25, 2012 1:58:01 GMT
I bought cookware. My son still has one piece of it. I tried multiple googles trying to find an iconic image of Dagwood locked in combat with a door-to-door salesman, to no avail. That's pretty amazing, but perhaps not as amazing as this strip: Surely this is not official Dagwood!  |
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Post by tod2 on Jan 25, 2012 9:33:47 GMT
Love it Bixa!
Door-to-door salesmen do not exists here anylonger as nobody can get to anyone's door - what with all the security and alarm systems, high fences and fierce dogs! The best they can do is walk along the road calling out "Brooms! Nice brooms!"
But, I do remember my parents falling for a library of childrens story books called "Golden Casket" It took them years to pay it off.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2012 10:21:22 GMT
In West Africa there are apparently travelling saleswomen who walk through the corridors of hotels calling out "C'est l'amour qui passe," in case anybody is interested.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 25, 2012 14:30:37 GMT
Tod, what you describe is common here, too, with people selling even heavy items such as concrete washboards. But there's still door-to-door. Tortilla ladies have regular customers, so don't usually ring every doorbell, but other salespeople come around with all manner of things, including libraries of books with endless payment plans.
Are the W.African love for sale ladies allowed in by management? That wouldn't make for a quiet hotel experience.
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Post by bjd on Jan 25, 2012 14:41:07 GMT
Are the W.African love for sale ladies allowed in by management?
Management probably gets a commission.
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Post by Kimby on Jan 26, 2012 16:34:48 GMT
Old enough to remember when married couples on TV sitcoms wore full pajamas to bed AND slept in twin beds, too! How things have changed.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 26, 2012 17:28:33 GMT
Old enough to remember when married couples on TV sitcoms wore full pajamas to bed AND slept in twin beds, too! How things have changed. They have? Nobody told me.............. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2012 18:21:08 GMT
Old enough to remember when married couples on TV sitcoms wore full pajamas to bed AND slept in twin beds, too! How things have changed. Even in the 21st century, a lot of American movies (and those of a few other countries) still have the famous L-shaped sheets that cover the woman to her neck and the man to his waist. |
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 26, 2012 19:35:39 GMT
I think I mentioned this one earlier, when we got onto the subject of Eisenhower jackets.
Marginally related: has anyone noticed how often on tv or movies there will be a madly passionate sex scene where the couple is going at it with crazed abandon, starting from the moment they're alone together. Fast forward, & the man gets up wearing underpants or the woman sits up in bed wearing a bra. It's made me start wondering if most of the world is making love partially clothed.
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Post by patricklondon on Jan 26, 2012 19:42:52 GMT
It always made me laugh that in Sex and the City Samantha is shown getting up to all sorts but never actually taking her vest off (sensible girl - I mean, she could have caught her death).
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Post by Kimby on Jan 26, 2012 21:51:00 GMT
It's made me start wondering if most of the world is making love partially clothed. Maybe it's the women who spend enormous portions of their budget on expensive lingerie that keep it on for maximum effect. Though I thought the intended effect was to make the man want to rip off her clothes. (AND that lacy stuff is damned itchy and uncomfortable anyway.) And that wouldn't explain the man sleeping in his undershorts. (Maybe his boys get cold if he rolls off her and conks out in the buff?) |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 19:04:56 GMT
I remember Spiro Agnew's speech that mentioned the silent majority.
May 9, 1969: "It is time for America's silent majority to stand up for its rights, and let us remember the American majority includes every minority. America's silent majority is bewildered by irrational protest..."
I'm sure that everybody knows that Vice President Agnew was forced to resign, and then President Nixon was forced to resign. Due to the very strange American political system, this created the presidency of Gerald Ford, a person that nobody had elected. In normal countries, elections are organized immediately if a president resigns.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 16, 2012 21:27:33 GMT
I remembered TWO things for this thread.
But I've forgotten them. I hate when that happens.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 22:33:35 GMT
We probably need another thread called "old enough to forget."
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 16, 2012 22:47:57 GMT
Or a really good, damning thread called "things I wish I could forget" ;D
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Post by Kimby on Feb 20, 2012 20:21:51 GMT
One of them came back to me:
I remember when you could turn in your drycleaning receipt for reimbursment by a
ski area if their chairlift had dripped grease on your ski jacket. THAT would NEVER happen now!
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 21, 2012 0:08:55 GMT
That may get the prize for most esoteric memory so far, Kimby!
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Post by Kimby on Feb 21, 2012 15:41:06 GMT
(I hope that was a compliment, bixa dear!)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2012 13:26:57 GMT
I remember having to stop at the borders in Western Europe. That seems so quaint now.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 23, 2012 14:28:04 GMT
(I hope that was a compliment, bixa dear!) Oh, anything like that from me is always a compliment! I remember having to stop at the borders in Western Europe. That seems so quaint now. It seems as though that was the distant past. But when was it, really? |
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Post by Kimby on Feb 23, 2012 14:28:21 GMT
I remember not needing a passport to cross into Canada from the US...
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Post by bjd on Feb 23, 2012 16:40:58 GMT
#561 I don't remember exactly, but already in the mid-1990s I remember driving from Belgium to France and a Hungarian car in front of us started to slow down at the border and the guard just waved them through. They were very surprised if the look on their faces was anything to go by.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2012 18:05:08 GMT
There were already long standing customs and immigration agreements for certain areas many years ago: UK-Eire (1922), Benelux (1948), Norway-Sweden-Denmark-Finland-Iceland (1952).
As for the Schengen agreement area, the borders came down in 1995. It now covers all of the EU except for UK-Eire and Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus and includes the non-EU countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the micro-states of Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 23, 2012 18:24:11 GMT
I remember having to stop at the borders in Western Europe. That seems so quaint now. Last year when all the Tunisians were pouring over to Lampedusa the French closed the main rail line at the border between Italy and France. The Italian government was not amused. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2012 18:48:29 GMT
Yes, just about all of the Schengen countries have exercised their rights to "temporary controls" from time to time. I think that those rights are excessive.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 23, 2012 22:37:39 GMT
I was surprised that there was no border control at all traveling by train from CH to Italy. You had to walk by a rather disinterested looking Swiss border official going the other way across.
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Post by mich64 on Feb 24, 2012 1:27:30 GMT
We too were surprised driving around Europe. We always had our passports out and ready, but never stopped. The only interest we seen was in Leichenstein where Border Control had tour buses pulled aside and people outside they had their documents out.
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Post by rikita on Feb 24, 2012 16:23:41 GMT
i think in the mid-90s i was still quite used to border controls (though admittedly my main travels abroad at that time had been to poland, which wasn't in the EU then), so when we were on vacation in sweden and did a day trip to norway, i found it so cool, that a border could be nothing more than a sign at the road announcing that now you are in a different country...
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