WEB PAGE NO. 2886 27th February 2022 First Picture: Sunlight Soap

Second Picture: Washing Line

Third Picture: Clothes Horse

Forth Picture: Wash board

Random Thoughts on Washing Day.

Now to test the memory who remembers their mother or grandmother grating a block of yellowish green Sunlight Soap into the wating hot water so she could do the washing|? Also, the use of Reckitts Blue to keep the washing bright and white. Mind you Recketts Blue or Blue Bag had a secondary use, when dabbed on a bee or wasp sting it took away the sting. The big drawback on washing days was that, especially on boiling days, was that the whole of the kitchen, despite the back door and the window being opened and much of the ground floor was, for hours, wreathed in wet steam! Also one of the major pieces of equipment that was put to use at this time was the washing board, that’s if it not been ‘borrowed’ for use in a skiffle group, Once washed, rinsed, mangled and wrung it was time to try and dry the washing. We were lucky we had two washing lines, one high one attached to the top of the house and a normal one below it. On a good, windy drying day the back garden resembled a sailing ship in full sail as the various items flapped and swayed in the breeze. Rainy days were, of course, a nightmare as mother had to try and distribute the washing in front of or coal fire before father came home from work and we settled down in front of the living room fire for the evening. This is where the old wooden clothes horse came into its own. We always knew that on a wet washing day we would never be allowed to use the clothes horse as a tent for us to play in. Once the washing was done and dried it was time to iron it. I remember my grandmother having a fearsome green mottled gas iron which was plugged into a special terminal by the gas stove. This iron always seemed spit and splutter and appeared to me to be a very dangerous fire breathing article. Mind you she also had a gas fridge and I could never work out how that really worked. However, I still think that the most dangerous method of ironing was undertaken by my mother and millions of other women when they plugged the electric iron into the ceiling light in the kitchen something that is unheard of today. The one thing I have forgotten was the use of a flat iron heated up on the kitchen gas ring to the required temperature. I still have one of my grandmothers’ flat irons, I use it as a door stop, I also have my grandfather’s cobblers last which I use for the same purpose! These were the days when Monday was washing day for a good 75% of the population, today with automatic washing and drying machines that has seemed to go by the board and nowadays washing day is any day of the week. Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com

WEB PAGE NO. 2884 20h February 2022 First Picture: Goodbye Woolworths

Second Picture: Comet Closing Down Sale

Third Picture: Dusty Springfield at Radio Rentals

Forth Picture: FHW advert

High Street stores that have disappeared We all remember Woolworths going but here are a few more. Dixons. The electrical chain, founded in Southend, Essex, in 1937, closed in 2006. Many of its High Street branches were rebranded Currys. digital. Dixons remained as an online brand, but later this also came under Currys. But the Dixons name lives on through the Dixons Carphone brand and Dixons Travel, which operates at several UK airports.The Dixons name came when founder Charles Kalms flicked through a telephone directory, looking for inspiration. C&A. One would have thought that this store was a permanent fixture in all High Streets. The stores announced its withdrawal from the UK in 2000, with the loss of 4,800 jobs. Its 109 shops had come under increasing competition from other mid-market clothing retailers, such as Gap and Next, the company said. The last UK stores, in Hounslow, west London, and Bradford, closed in May 2001. Founded in the 1920s by the Dutch brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, C&A, at least in the UK, was accused of failing to move with fashion and recorded several losses in the late 1990s. Radio Rentals. Even with the help of Dusty Springfield at the Ideal Home Exhibition, Olympia the brand eventually failed when folk strted to buy TV sets and not rent them. Set up in a back street in Brighton in the 1930s, Radio Rentals catered for a growing demand for radios. The rental model continued through the introduction of television and, later, video cassette recorders - about to take off in 1976. During the late 1970s a newspaper advert for a long-play video recorder mocked a national obsession with the ITV soap opera Crossroads, known for its wobbly sets and criticised for the standard of its acting, stating: "It can take 16 episodes of Crossroads (if you can)." Radio Rentals gradually became amalgamated into the TV and domestic appliance rental firm BoxClever. The Radio Rentals brand continues in Australia. Freeman, Hardy and Willis another high steet name now gone. The shoe manufacturer, with beginnings in Leicester in the 1870s, became a familiar presences in hundreds of High Streets. A series of adverts in the 1950s referred to it as "our happy family shoe shop". Freeman, Hardy and Willis) became part of the British Shoe Corporation and ceased trading in the mid-1990s. Comet. Founded in 1933 as a business charging radio batteries, Comet opened its first store in Hull in 1968, expanding rapidly after that. There were 236 stores when it went into administration in November 2012, reduced to 49 by the time the final closures happened a month later. Comet ran up losses of £95m in the year to April 2012. Dewhurst The chain of butchers shops, founded on Merseyside in the late 19th Century, had 1,400 outlets by 1997 but went into administration in 2006. Its traditional model faced increasing competition the supermarkets started packaging meat in plastic containers . Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com

WEB PAGE NO. 2882 13th February 2022 BIGGLES First Picture: Biggles Book

Second Picture: Sopworth Camel

Third Picture: Biggles the flying ace

Forth Picture: Capt. Johns

I have to admit that as a youngster I could never get on with the Biggles stories James Bigglesworth, nicknamed "Biggles", is a fictional , adventurer and hero of the Biggles series of adventure books by W. E. Johns (1893–1968). Biggles made his first appearance in the story The White Fokker, published in the first issue of Popular Flying magazine and again as part of the first collection of Biggles stories, The Camels Are Coming (both 1932). Johns continued to write "Biggles books" until his death in 1968. The series eventually included nearly a hundred volumes. Biggles first appears as a teenaged "scout" (fighter) pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during WW1. He joined the RFC in 1916 at the age of 17, having conveniently "lost" his birth certificate. Biggles represents a British hero, combining professionalism with a gentlemanly air. Under the stress he develops from a hysterical youth prone to practical jokes to a calm, confident, competent leader. He is occasionally given "special" missions by the Colonel Raymond who is involved with the intelligence side of operations. Biggles is accompanied by his cousin Algernon ('Algy') Lacey and his mechanic Flight Sergeant Smyth, who accompany Biggles on his adventures after the war. Added to the team in 1935 is the teenager Ginger Hebblethwaite. W. E. Johns was himself a WW1 pilot, although his own career did not parallel that of Biggles He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in September 1917, seconded to the Royal Flying Corps and posted for flight training: he served as a flying instructor until August 1918, when he transferred to the Western Front. On 16 September 1918 his De Havilland DH4 was shot down on a bombing raid. His observer, Lieutenant Amey, was killed but he survived to be taken as a POW. He remained with the RAF until 1927: his final rank was Flying Officer rather than the "Capt." that formed part of his pen name. The bulk of the Biggles books are set after the First World War. Biggles has an unusually lengthy career, flying a number of aircraft from Sopwith Camels, Hurricanes and Spitfires in WW2 right up to the Hunter jet fighter. The books were popular and were eventually translated into Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.[1] According to stories in The Boy Biggles and Biggles Goes to School, James Bigglesworth was born in India in May 1899, the son of an administrator in the Indian Civil Service and his wife (née Lacey - hence his relation to the Hon. Algernon Montgomery Lacey - his flying companion, cousin and friend in a large proportion of his adventures). James was the younger of two sons, Charles being the elder by five years. The young James had little contact with European culture and commenced a lifelong affection for India, befriending the local Indian boys, exploring the countryside and learning to speak fluent Hindi. He retained a lifetime gift for languages and as an adult spoke French and German fluently, with a "fair command" of various other languages. He spent holidays in England, under the custody of an eccentric uncle and inventor who lived in rural Norfolk. Biggles then attended Malton Hall School in Hertbury. His first encounter with an aircraft was with a Blériot that landed on the school cricket ground. Characters Algernon Montgomery Lacey The Honourable Algernon Montgomery Lacey or "Algy" is a cousin who is posted to Biggles' flight in 266 Squadron by the influence of his aunt and eventually Algy adopts the role of Biggles' second in command. Ginger Hebblethwaite Ginger (his first name is never revealed) first appears in The Black Peril (1935) as a teenage runaway found hiding in a railway shed. Ginger left his father, a mineworker in Smettleworth, after an argument about Ginger's determination to become a pilot. When he first meets Biggles, he tells him he is on his way to London to join the RAF. Biggles immediately calls him Ginger because of his red hair.. He becomes one of the regular team and is often Biggles's chosen companion. He is a talented mechanic and his speech is peppered with youthful American slang learned from the cinema. Female characters In the Biggles stories, female characters appear infrequently. Despite brief affairs, Biggles and his chums remain steadfastly single. The settings of the Biggles books are spread over more than 50 years; this produces a number of credibility difficulties, especially for older readers. Though Biggles and his friends age in the books, they do so much more slowly than is historically credible. For instance, who by now should be well into their forties, is still a relatively junior squadron officer flying Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. In the stories set after the end of the Second World War, Biggles and Algy, in particular, are, by the rules of arithmetic, passing into their fifties and early sixties, while retaining levels of activity and lifestyle more typical of people at least thirty years younger. Since the Biggles books were first published, attitudes to race and ethnicity have changed. During the 1960s and 1970s a perception of Biggles as unacceptably racially prejudiced, especially considered as children's literature, drove Biggles from many public and school libraries. Capt. Johns himself said he was "completely non-political and non-racial" in his books. Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com

WEB PAGE NO. 2880 6th February 2022 Mr Cube First Picture: Mr Cube

Second Picture: Sugar Packet with Mr C

Third Picture: Golden Syrup

Forth Picture: Mr C with weights

Mr Cube', an animated cartoon character born in July 1949 during rationing and nationalisation proposals. Mr Cube became sugar's brand image, the company logo of Tate & Lyle and a symbol of political embarrassment and electoral setback for the Labour government in the February 1950 General Election. The company's campaign strategist recalls how `they were strongly advised to have a cartoon character who, if he caught the public's imagination, could say the most outrageous things and get away with it, and who could act as a buffer between the public and Tate & Lyle'. Brandishing his sword of free enterprise and protected by his T&L shield, Mr Cube would `say sensible or outrageous things' allowing Tates to `concentrate on attacking the Socialist policy in a more dignified manner'. A brand-image was not just a mascot'; it actively shapd`corporate consciousness' of Tate & Lyle in 1949-50 and was heightened by Labour's nationalisation threats. Tate & Lyle were aware of American advertising and public relations methods and Mr Cube spearheaded the campaignon more than two million sugar packages, on 100,000 ration book holders distributed free to housewives by Tate & Lyle, and on all Tate & Lyle delivery trucks. The two main sources of `raw sugar' are tropical sugar-cane and temperate sugar-beet, alternative sources of supply which had produced `wars' between rival companies in the nineteenth century. After the two families of Tate and Lyle had merged in 1921, cane dominated their refining processes. The new company's nineteenth-century founding fathers, Henry Tate and Abraham Lyle, responded to competition from heavily subsidised Continental producers of sugar beet by `product differentiating' into cubes and syrup. The threat to Tates in 1949 did not come out of the blue. Two pre-Second World War books had flagged up many of the general arguments that would be directed against the company. In 1936 the government amalgamated eighteen sugar-beet factories into the British Sugar Corporation (BSC), forcing Tate & Lyle to divest itself of its sugar beet interests and change into an imperial sugar company with supplies secured from acquisition of sugar cane plantations in Jamaica and Trinidad. This provoked the impressive Mr Cube campaign. It even had its own Mr Cube dance tunes and poker dice game and from the end of July 1949, the comic hero, found his way on to millions of sugar packets. Mr Cube's catchy slogans featured `Take the S out of State', urged Mr Cube; `state control will make a hole in your pocket and my packet'. The simplest and most effective message was `Tate not State!' Shopkeepers passed on millions of leaflets, and `over-the-counter chit-chat informed harassed housewives that all the inconveniences of rationing and shortages stemmed from Labour Government bungling'. A sugar-sponsored film, called `All in Favour', was shown throughout the country in factories, workshops, men's clubs and women's institutes. Richard Dimbleby visited the refineries at Thames and Plaistow `with an open mind and an open mike' to search out the views of Tates' workers. A feature at the Schoolboy's Exhibition at the Horticultural Hall in January 1950 was `dialing Mr Cube and questioning him about sugar'. He figured prominently at the Ideal Home Exhibition as `the first mechanical man who has been made to speak correctly'. A six-foot Mr Cube was constructed and company president Lord Lyle, known to journalists as Lord Cubevisited. With a crowd of schoolboys around him, `he picked up the receiver and asked Mr Cube what he thought about nationalisation'. The answer from a very animated sugar lump was `the same as you do'! The King's speech after the 1950 election made no reference to Tates, and in 1951 Labour's new manifesto made no mention of the sugar refining industry. The strongest weapon in the campaign to reduce the Labour majority had turned out to be Mr Cube'. Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com