Things you don't see any more

[Badger's mate]

avocado bathroom suite

In a former life, Mrs B used to have one of those...

[StokeySue]

I remember the crepey kind of loo rool found all over the continong inmy youth, Spanish was the worst that I remember. In Germancalled Toilettenkreppapier, which said it all
There was a fad for what we called wholemeal loo roll, very rough recycled paper in rather small rolls with flecks of the original papers still visible, in the Ernest Eighties

In France the handwashing facilities usually included a wall mounted soap holder, complete with a block of (usually lemon scented) coarse soap that was supposed to rotate but seldom did, so it was difficult to actual obtain a useful lather. A variant, which worked slightly better, grated the soap, rather like a Parmesan mill

In the UK we had those squat nickel plated wall mounted soap dispensers that tipped over to either dispense a minute smear of liquid pink carbolic soap or to flood the basin with a slimy pool of it. No compromise seemed to be avaiilable.

[Ratatouille]

They are still around Sue: The tourists seem to love them
https://www.frenchsoaps.co.uk/products/ ... lemon-soap

[scullion]

i want one - well, i want two, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom!

[earthmaiden]

I'd forgotten wholemeal loo roll! Just to add to Suffs' comment about the indoor Bronco, when we moved from Surrey to Norfolk we moved from nice bathroom with flushing loo to no bathroom and a non-flush privy in the garden. We had always used Bronco, as seemed to be used in other houses we visited, but changed to Andrex in Norfolk as it biodegraded more successfully. As a 6 year old I had never seen soft loo paper before. I wonder why people tended not to use it in London surburban homes. It must have either been expensive or perhaps the medicated aspect of Izal, Bronco etc was considered a good thing! Actually, I seem to remember that people were worried it was a little less sturdy (to put it politely!) and to use more than one piece at at time in those days was considered extravagant.

[StokeySue]

One of the things that made me think of them was that I saw one in the restored late Victorian café on the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch just before Christmas, though I've never really thought of them as British - theirs is even niver, with a long swan neck shaped bracket

This is what I meant by the British liquid carbolic dispenser, this is posh ceramic one from a hotel or some such, but all metal ones were found in schoolds and public toilets

[TeresaFoodie]

Combining our toilet talk and an article I watched on This Morning with Alice Beer this morning (funnily enough) about how often certain items in the home should be cleaned/wiped, I got thinking about those awful linen, usually blue, rolls of hand drying towels in a dispenser that you had to either tug and tease out very gently, or grip tight and pull with all your might to get a clean bit out. Obviously depending on how many people had paid a visit governed whether it would run out before it was due a change. We had these at college and in a hotel where I worked in the housekeeping linen department in the eighties. Rotten, horrible things!

[StokeySue]

i didn't mind the one's that gave you a clean bit each, if they were properly maintained (which they seldom were I agree, after all you got a clean piece of nicely laundered fabric every time (when they were working

The ones I objected to were the roller towels, a towel rail with a towel sewn into a loop hanging over it, invariably left in places like church halls, youth clubs, and so on until stiff as a board, and visibly grimy

[Seatallan]

Wright's Coal Tar

Oh I love the smell of that!!

[TeresaFoodie]

Sorry Sue, those roller ones were the ones I meant. At the hotel we'd send them off for laundering and they'd often come back clean but still complete with stains depending on what people had been wiping on them I suppose.

[Pepper Pig]

Loganberries. Or was that just a marketing thing?

[StokeySue]

Loganberries. Or was that just a marketing thing?

I think Tayberries have taken over
They were never that commonly sold iirc, more something people including my dad grew in gardens I got a punnet in Borough Matket last summer and sat in the sun and ate them slowly (only about 125g I think). They were

Loganberry jam

[Gruney]

I bought a couple of new shirts today, and remembered how you used to rip your fingers to bits on the extremely sharp pins they used to use to wrap them around the cardboard insert. They've been replaced with what look like plastic hair grips.

[Badger's mate]

I used to see tins of loganberries. Haven't looked for a while but the bushes are still commonly available. I've got 3 on the plot that were castoffs from a friend. They multiply quite readily I think, like blackberries the shoot tips produce roots if you pin them down. They certainly produced more fruit than we needed last year.

Maybe they are on sale from PYO farms or FMs. One of our local PYO farms has stopped growing soft fruit and the others tend to stick to strawbs & raspberries.

[Badger's mate]

Haven't seen jellied veal for a while

[suffolk]

Gas pokers

[patpoyntz]

Gas pokers

We’ve got one! OH uses it to light our wood burner. I use a fire lighter and kindling. The fire is lit every day, so we take turns.

[PatsyMFagan]

When we moved into our brand new (council) house in 1948, the council supplied a gas cooker, gas poker for the fire in the back room next to the kitchen and a gas fired copper for doing the washing ( made of some grey metal (not copper ?). It also had a large square bathroom upstairs and separate toilet as well as an outside toilet along with a coal shed and tool/workshop/shed, these all being in one brick built block. Hot water for bathing was by a back boiler in the back room and an emersion heater in the airing cupboard in the main bedroom.

[suffolk]

Wow! I've not seen one since Granny moved from her big house which must've been in the late 60s/early 70s ...... I always thought they were lethal things ... if they were invented now they wouldn't be allowed

[StokeySue]

Some of the council flats round here,probably same era as Pat's or slightly later, were built with a little gas burner fixed in the grate to use instead of a gas poker. Much safer as the most dangerous part of a poker was the hose, I've seen people patch them with gaffer tape them smoke while using them

[patpoyntz]

Wow! I've not seen one since Granny moved from her big house which must've been in the late 60s/early 70s ...... I always thought they were lethal things ... if they were invented now they wouldn't be allowed

They are still available, but of course now the gas is from a calor gas bottle. The blades do wear out...but replacements from e bay...I think they come from Poland.

[Badger's mate]

gas fired copper for doing the washing ( made of some grey metal (not copper ?).

Ours were the same. I imagine they were made of galvanised iron, like the 'tin' bath

[PatsyMFagan]

gas fired copper for doing the washing ( made of some grey metal (not copper ?).

Ours were the same. I imagine they were made of galvanised iron, like the 'tin' bath

That must be it ... couldn't think of any other grey metal apart from zinc

[earthmaiden]

All these gas fired items passed me by! All the coppers I knew were heated either by a fire underneath or electricity and fires were lit with kindling, newspaper and choice language .

We moved into a large brand new 'all electric' maisonette in 1958, my grandmother lived in the one above. We had (cold) Marley tiles throughout, carpet (not fitted) in the sitting room and small rugs in the bedrooms. It was considered so modern and streamlined and our fairly modern furniture fitted in well. My mother was in seventh heaven but we didn't have a fridge or washing machine, they were considered a luxury too far. There was an electric fire fitted into the fireplace and an immersion heater for hot water. We already had a Baby Burco for washing. Two years later we moved to the house in Norfolk with no mod cons at all - what a contrast!

[suffolk]

When we moved to Suffolk in the mid 50s we arrived in a place with no electricity and bottled gas lighting and Ma did all the washing by hand in the kitchen sink ... and don't forget farmers get very dirty.

I think we had to wait 18 months/2 years before electricity arrived in our village.

However when we visited relatives back in Bedfordshire/Bucks there was mains gas, electricity, television, fridges .......... it was like another world .........

[StokeySue]

My granparents' "copper" was a brick construction, in a corner of the pub kitchen, wooden lid, coal fire underneath. Always known as the copper though.
Th first house I remember was buikt in the thirties, the bathroom was original and had an Ascot "geyser" to heat the water. Can't remember how hot water got to the kitchen sink, I think it came from the same geyser
I was slightly perplexed when in South Africa people kept talking about the geyser, meaning the immersion heater in the tank in the roof of the garage, to me a geyser is always gas

[uschi]

I remember the crepey kind of loo rool found all over the continong inmy youth, Spanish was the worst that I remember. In Germancalled Toilettenkreppapier, which said it all
There was a fad for what we called wholemeal loo roll, very rough recycled paper in rather small rolls with flecks of the original papers still visible, in the Ernest Eighties

The Krepppapier is still to be found in some official loos here.

As for the recycled paper, it did not match the East German offerings for scratchiness - splinters and all.

One relative told me that this was the Socialist Party's doing: "So every last arsehole will be red."

[StokeySue]

Love a bit of gallows humour uschi!

[uschi]

They had plenty of that, Sue!!! Otherwise they would have wilted and died.

[earthmaiden]

Of course! The geyser!!

[Pepper Pig]

Tramps. Regular tramps who came round once a year and came in for a cup of tea.

[suffolk]

I used to see a Gentleman of the Road quite regularly in the summer months on my trips to visit the Aged Ps ...... not been doing those trips for the past couple of years so ....
We also used to have regular summer visits from some travellers ... a real Romany couple ... who toured the villages in the summer sharpening knives, shears and scissors etc. Sadly they were attacked, beaten up and robbed in their wagon and decided not to travel about any more. This would've been back in the early to mid '80s. After that the lady came a few times with their daughter and grandchildren selling pegs, lace and telling fortunes and they happily accepted some of my children's outgrown clothes, but that was just day trips in a Ford Transit type van ... they always stopped at the local pub to have a bowl of soup in exchange for some goods for their lunch They wouldn't eat pureed/creamed type soups as they couldn't see what was in it. The lady was quite elderly by then and I think she stopped her visits in the late eighties.

[Busybee]

What do you call a traveller who doesn’t travel anymore? We have a gentleman who lives in a traditional gypsy caravan on a deep grass verge near us. The caravan hasn’t moved in years, in fact we were speculating if the wheels would even turn it’s been there so long. He keeps the area very tidy, has an open fire to cook on and a cycle that he uses to get to the nearest town to shop etc.

He seems to look after ponies and horses for some of the travellers who live on a council site in York.

I always shout hello if I pass or wave if in the car.

BB

[earthmaiden]

Our generation (if you are of a 'certain age') saw the last of the kind of traveller who visited annually I think. I can remember brush salesman, French onion sellers, Romanies, knife sharpeners etc as a young child and my mother's generation could remember the cat's meat man, the muffin man and other daily salespeople as well (I am sure I remember a lamplighter where my grandmother lived in Hampstead in the 50's but may be imagining it).

Anyone living by the side of the road seems to get moved on these days or offered a place on a permanent site. Just the other day I saw an article about a man who was living seemingly harmlessly in a caravan but the caravan was removed by the council. Some 'travellers' leave a filthy mess, steal water and other utilities and are generally disliked for it which has resulted in all being tarred by the same brush. Oddly enough, local homeless people are being encouraged to sleep in a local park in tents which have been donated and it is starting to look like a campsite. They all seem quite happy but I wonder how long it will be before it turns from being a 'good thing' into a health hazard.

[suffolk]

What do you call a traveller who doesn’t travel anymore? We have a gentleman who lives in a traditional gypsy caravan on a deep grass verge near us. The caravan hasn’t moved in years, in fact we were speculating if the wheels would even turn it’s been there so long. He keeps the area very tidy, has an open fire to cook on and a cycle that he uses to get to the nearest town to shop etc.

I've known a couple of gentlemen like that ... one in the village where I grew up ... he lived in a traditional caravan with it's own garden around it in a piece of land belonging to a chap in the village. The other chap lived in an old railway carriage on a 'wide verge' alongside some common land in the tiny hamlet where I lived when I first married. He used to drive his pony down to the pub on a Friday evening and would sing Farmer's Boy if I gave him a kiss on the cheek His nephew inherited the carriage and site and moved in and taught me to drive a pony and cart ... they were lovely people.

There's another 'static travelling family' I know who live out that way ... I remember R & T's wedding and it was amazing ... it lasted three whole days and everybody camped and I've never seen so many beautifully braided hairdo's ... and most of them were on the chaps who had embraced the biker style.
R built up a wonderful business reconditioning and selling vintage motorbikes, exporting them by the trailer load to the US ... he can't read or write, but fortunately he married T who can One of the kindest most honest, hard working and decent families I've ever known and I've been privileged to know them and count them as friends.

[StokeySue]

We used to have seasonal travellers who moved along the south coast, mainly picking fruit (Ribena). They stopped for a while then one older couple came back in a traditional horse drawn wagon, apparently winding down to retirement. They sold pegs and he was a godsend as he would, for a reasonable fee, do a blitz tidy of an older person's garden (or anyone else's but it was the OAPs mainly)

We still occasionally get quite large groups of them in modern caravans trying to establish camp on the nearby common. The noise of the generators drives everyone nuts, and many folk are scared of their dogs. Although the vans are always immaculate, some (by no means all) leave an awful mess around them