Web Page 932

First Picture: Now who remembers those odd three wheelers like this one? But who manufactured them?


Second Picture: Another picture of the Southsea Miniature Railway





Bring back any memories? I like these they make you think!!!

Some younger person asked me the other day, 'What was your favourite 'fast food' when you were growing up?' I said, 'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' and I informed him. 'All the food was slow.' 'C'mon, seriously’. He said ‘ Where did you eat?' I answered 'It was a place called 'home,'' I explained. 'Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.' By this time, the lad was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer some serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I'd figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card. My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle and had to use it. And my mother never did learn to drive.

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 10. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 pm, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people...

I never had a telephone in my room because we never had a phone!

Pizzas were not delivered to our home... but milk and paraffin was. All newspapers were delivered by boys and girls, seven days a week. Most of them getting up at 6AM every morning.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing


MEMORIES from a friend:

My Dad was cleaning out my grandmother's house and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a group of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something similar. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many of these do you remember?
Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Hand operated chokes
Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about.

Ratings at the bottom.


1. Sweet cigarettes
2. Coffee shops with juke boxes
3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles
4. Party lines on the telephone
5. Newsreels before the movie
6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning.. (There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])
7. Peashooters
8. 33 rpm records
9. 45 RPM records
10.78 RPM records
11. Hi-fi's
12. Metal ice trays with levers
13. Blue flashbulb
14. Cork popguns
15. Wash tub wringers
16. Spud guns
17. Making your own bow and arrows
18. Going out to play and going home at 'meal time'

If you remembered 0-3 = you're still young
If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
If you remembered 7-11 = Don't tell your age If you remembered 12-15 = You're positively ancient!
I must be 'positively ancient' but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

Don't forget to pass this along!!

Especially to all your really OLD friends... I just did!!!!!!!!!

Stay in touch,

Yours,

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.co.uk

School Report.

Web Page from 9 years ago.

The School TripIt is strange but I have very little recollection of school trips or visits when normally you would think that any event that took us out of school during term time would be indelibly impressed on the brain. Those I do recall are only very sketchy memories. A trip to London, one to Wookey Hole and one to the Isle of Wight, I know some of our year went to Paris, but I do not remember being offered that and I seem to remember that some people in lower years went on the ‘SS Uganda’ sailing round the Med. But not me.

The reason for the visit to London I believe was to visit the Royal Tournament and the day that was picked was one of the days when the Portsmouth Field Gun Crew raced, so I supposed we cheered ourselves hoarse, but I don’t remember if they won or not. What else comes to mind from that day ? We stopped at the café at Hindhead on the way up and back and we had lunch outside the then almost brand new Royal Festival Hall and now comes the only clear memory of the day. Here I took a snap of Reg Davies and Bill Greer as they talked outside the hall. This photo is the eighth picture posted in the Manor Court pictures section of the Friends Reunited Web Site. There are also some pupils in the shot but who they are ………..? I have no idea, but I believe that both Steve Carter and Melvyn Bridger were amongst the happy band on this trip.

The Wookey Hole visit is the one that caused me acute embarrassment, nothing of the visit remains in my memory except being sick in the coach coming home. I was looked after by one of the female teachers, I do not remember whom, and eventually was sick into an old school towel. When we got back to school I was given the towel in a bag to take home and have washed. I was so embarrassed that I could not bring myself to tell my mother what had happened so when I got home I sneaked up the garden and hid the towel under the hedge. I never took it out so I suppose someone years later had a nasty surprise. I went to school for the next few days dreading being asked for the newly laundered towel, luckily this request never came much to my relief.

The visit to the Isle of Wight is equally as vague but I do remember that June Blitz was one of the accompanying teachers, why do I remember that? No idea. I we visited Carisbrook Castle and watched the donkey on the treadmill then on to Blackgang Chine but the only clear memory I have of the trip is climbing the steps up to the light at St Catherines Point whilst talking to Peter Westcott, Melvyn Bridger and June Blitz.

There were also visits to the Portsmouth Schools music festival in a church somewhere in Copnor Road and School Prize giving in the Northern Grammar School hall before we moved into Manor Court itself. A visit to the Kings Theatre to see Macbeth and as Melvyn Bridger reminded me the bus trips to East Lodge on sports days where we all had to try and change in the bus on the way, very tricky.

Obviously School trips were wasted on me no lasting impressions were made and memories stored. What do you remember? Can you fill in the gaps in my memory banks?


You Write:


Griff Writes re renaming the school:-Best guess is that the Secondary Modern title was dropped when the school became a Comprehensive School so Portsmouth Education Council probably decided to change the name at the same time.

If anyone knows what link "Springfield" has to the siting of the school or the area then I would like to know myself because it doesn't relate to anything I know about the area whereas Manor Court does.

What they have achieved by name changing is to basically air-brush out the previous 20 years of the school when it was called Manor Court thus destroying any school heritage......It's like we never existed!

They have school reunions held at the present School but only if you attended as Springfield student/pupil.

News and Views:A collection of hundreds of letters and postcards written by John Lennon will be published in October in the appropriately-titled "The Lennon Letters,". The book, apparently the first in a series, has been authorized Yoko Ono.



On this day 24th April 1960-1965.
On 24/04/1960 the number one single was My Old Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Armchair Theatre (ABC) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was 3000 killed in Persian earthquake.

On 24/04/1961 the number one single was Wooden Heart - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions


On 24/04/1962 the number one single was Wonderful Land - The Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 24/04/1963 the number one single was How Do You Do It? - Gerry & the Pacemakers and the number one album was Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & the Shadows. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Mandy Rice-Davis arrested.

On 24/04/1964 the number one single was A World Without Love - Peter & Gordon and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Liberal Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Hunt on for Nazi fugitive.


On 24/04/1965 the number one single was Ticket to Ride - The Beatles and the number one album was Rolling Stones Number 2 - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.