I’ve been waiting for you. Coffee’s on and I got French FanciesArctic FoxBertie the BlackbirdAre these bananas?Blaze’s new wee brother… Laoch.Big SurThe best bridge in the world.Where are we and when…?They say if you catch a falling leaf it means happiness…Pine MartenTasmanian Devil.From Dave…any car experts know?What a job… cuddling elephants.Skye.Venice.Cute and they know it…The Walk of the Penguins.Rannoch Moor, this week!So we can guess where it is, but when?Grandad Dog.And so say all of us Little One.
OK, see you call next week, same time, same place.
Lovely photos, lovely elephants, life-affirming orangutans, our own gorgeous, wonderful country… yes, and I’ve found the Station Bar: it’s at 55 Port Dundas Road in Glasgow, on the corner of McPhater Street, and it’s still there. Date? That white van thing looks like a Mini to me, so that dates it after 1959, so I’m betting the photo was taken in the first half of the ’60s.
I wonder if its’s the only place where all these old bars still exist. You know, the ones with the non matching furniture, and cracked lino on the floor, and old men nursing a pint all afternoon.
There are a few in Dundee, I guess, but not many, as they must make next to no money.
Ed, you beat me to this one. I know the Station Bar because I’ve been in it. It’s not a bad wee howff. You’re also good on the date – apart from the Mini van, the other car looks to me to be an Austin Cambridge Countryman estate from around 1963. Well done!
Thanks, people! I must have passed the place myself – it’s just round from the Passport Office, among other things, and I’m sure it was on one of my father’s rat runs for escaping from his work at Strathclyde Uni, and I used to go with him sometimes. The photo must be from before I used to go into the City for school, because that would have been 1967, I think. I left Glasgow over 40 years ago now – where did all the time go?
One of my dad’s routes home passed a health centre / medical practice sort of place. It was on the ground floor of a tenement, and for some reason had windows a bit like an undertaker’s – blacked out to about two thirds of the way up, with shiny trim and letters. Among the other services advertised in those shiny letter , it proudly boasted an “anti-natal” clinic. My dad and I could only imagine what went on in there.
Aye, Ed – “where did all the time go?” My first job on leaving school – just walked out, rebel without a clue – was in Kennedy Street, not far from the Station Bar. That was in the heyday of the Glasgow gangs. Probably not the best time from a teenager from outside the city to take a job in the Toonheid – still, I did get plenty of cardio-vascular exercise – running for my life. I often think those days were really the start of my education.
Aye. You wonder what folks’ lungs were like back then, even if they never touched a cigarette/pipe.
I’m looking forward to the days of electric motoring. I walked downtown the other day and, presumably because there was no wind, the stench of diesel fumes was almost unbearable.
My mate who lives in Scandinavia visited Oslo recently and said that they are more of less there with electric.
Well spotted, Cassandra. I also noticed there’s only one TV aerial and it’s the old H-shaped one which was used to get BBC programmes. ITV was launched in 1955 and STV started broadcasting in 1957, I think, and then, if I remember rightly, you needed a different type of aerial for their programme reception. So, your date seems good to me.
Even if there’s no smoke only because it was a hot day, the BBC didn’t start broadcasting in Scotland until late 1952, so that puts a definite limit on the date too.
Ah but it wasn’t summer in Glasgow, David – it was summer in Edinburgh and there can be a chilly breeze off the Firth of Forth, even in summer. And it was summer – 25th August 1953, in fact – a Tuesday. I noticed that the man in the coat and hat was using a walking stick and holding the arm of his companion with the bunnet, so maybe he was ill or infirm and felt the cold more. The other fellow striding towards the statue has his jacket wide open and his collar undone – typical summer wear for the time although he’s canny enough to have kept his waistcoat on, I see.
Tris, the two wee cars are Austin Sevens but which particular models I don’t know. I’m sure, however, that someone else will provide that info and probably chassis numbers and lists of previous owners 🙂
That sent me on a wee Austin 7 internet hunt. Both Chummy’s I believe but different dates. Thanks Dave, need to get out in the cars soon badged up for Indyref.
Dave’s email said: They are both Austin seven tourers, commonly called chummy, They’re only about 4 feet wide so not a lot of shoulder room, built around
1928/29, still a lot exist, a greater survival rate than RR. The ruby
is roughly the same chassis and running gear but steel body instead of
aluminium.
Have a look at the Austin seven association site.
According to the Austin seven register
PP7831 is a blue Austin Seven AD Tourer first registered 26/3/1927
SL9478 is a green Austin Seven AD Tourer first registered probably in 1929
The older one has the shorter radiator and scuttle-mounted rather than front’mounted headlights. There’s another, later, re-style for the Ruby/Pearl/Opal and so on.
Have done a couple of long-distance Austin 7 motorsport shenanigans!
Greyfriars Bobby – there are still setts (granite cobbles) there, and there is a woman with a “New Look” coat on and an “H” TV aerial. Mid to late fifties.
As a student, I saw an altercation there between a couple who probably lodged in one of the many homeless hostels around that part of Edinburgh in the seventies. The female had been drinking spirits with a Sweetheart Stout chaser. The guy was obstreperous for some reason. She cracked open the bottle on the table and laid open his jaw to the teeth.
Aye, Conan, I was through in Edinburgh often back in the 70s and I remember some of the pubs (and dossers) around the Grassmarket. It wasn’t quite the Festival City image: you could say, I suppose, that it was a kind of Edinburgh Fringe 🙂 I believe there were also bars (like the Burke and Hare) which had scantily-clad go-go dancers, even at lunchtime. Well, so some of my colleagues told me.
Erm, yes. I daresay, Andi, that while they were regarding scantily clad maidens, you were off enriching yourself in the cultural aspects of the capital…
what superb pictures. And now I know why they are called devils – ewwww! However plenty of cute animals there – aren’t pine martens adorable. As are arctic foxes -so fluffy and not in a Mundell way 🙂 Have been keeping up with Laoch’s progress on twittter. They do seem to be in the pub a lot though!
I never get the where and when pictures – good job the rest of the readership are so informed then.
Anyway I can’t go without thanking you for the elephants and the orangs.
Tris, pine martens not so cute if you happen to be a small mammal or bird but you’re right, they’re good-looking wee craturs. They’re also a great help in controlling grey squirrel populations and that helps the red squirrels, so they’re goodies really.
That’s nature Dave. A blackbird is as cute as can be, but maybe not so much if you are a worm going about your wormy business when suddenly you are plucked from the earth and swallowed!
I can handle that animals kill to eat. After all, I’m not a vegetarian, so I do it too, albeit at a distance.
What I loath is animal that kill for the fun of it. Cats to an extent. But of course, mainly man:
I can’t decide if Pine Martens beat otters in the cool animal stakes. I once worked near a river and there was a sign up with a list of local wildlife, which included otters. They are elusive wee buggers. Never seen a Pine Marten, either.
Well, I’ve never seen either…. either… and I spend a lot of time in the country. I wonder if they are all that cute. That one you’d take home with you!
For some reason I remember Eddy Foley’s and never realised it was called the Station. Why do orangutans have such sad eyes. I didn’t realise that Taz was a devil – I thought that was his master (?). Great photos again.
Some pubs were always called by the licencees name.
And although the name was in big letters over the shop (were they called shops in other places too?) you always knew them by the proprietors’ name. Willie Frew’s at the top of the Hilltown in Dundee, was one such place. I drive past it most days and I’ve still no idea what its real name is.
I think they have sad eyes because their human cousins’ greed is destroying their habitat. They have nowhere to go. And it’s all for greed.
The next pub up from Bobby’s is a case in point, it was called the Forrest Hill Bar, but everybody knew it as Sandy Bell’s.
Everyone I know looks terribly young in this…
Stick? We didn’t even have a tree to Jackie Bailey on!
Willie Frew’s original bar was in the Hawkhill, Tris. It was demolished in the late 70s as part of the remodelling for the university. The “new” Willie Frews was called the Plough back then. I used to meet my wife there after her work at Safeways supermarket across the road.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Thanks to Iain for sending the Tasmanian Devil for Panda Paws.
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Beautiful. Just amazing stuff. You leave me gobsmacked about the beauty of our planet.
Thanks.
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Glad you liked it.
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Lovely photos, lovely elephants, life-affirming orangutans, our own gorgeous, wonderful country… yes, and I’ve found the Station Bar: it’s at 55 Port Dundas Road in Glasgow, on the corner of McPhater Street, and it’s still there. Date? That white van thing looks like a Mini to me, so that dates it after 1959, so I’m betting the photo was taken in the first half of the ’60s.
Here is how it looks today on Google maps – my URL-shortening thingmie doesn’t work any more, so this will have to do: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.8670888,-4.2544152,3a,75y,284.65h,98.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sI15HFVqtZeXLFBG640FAvQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
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Bravo Ed.
Good old Glasgow.
I wonder if its’s the only place where all these old bars still exist. You know, the ones with the non matching furniture, and cracked lino on the floor, and old men nursing a pint all afternoon.
There are a few in Dundee, I guess, but not many, as they must make next to no money.
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The Oxford Bar is much the same; Rebus fans come in, look around in puzzlement and ask if *he* is in. Occasionally asking *him* :)*
To be fair, I haven’t had a pint there since I retired.
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LOL. Big Rebus fan here, but I didn’t know the Oxford actually existed. Maybe next time I’m in Edinburgh…
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Blink and you’ll miss it; for God’s sake don’t get it confused with the Cambridge bar which is just along the road.
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He he…
It sounds intriguing.
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Ed, you beat me to this one. I know the Station Bar because I’ve been in it. It’s not a bad wee howff. You’re also good on the date – apart from the Mini van, the other car looks to me to be an Austin Cambridge Countryman estate from around 1963. Well done!
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Thanks, people! I must have passed the place myself – it’s just round from the Passport Office, among other things, and I’m sure it was on one of my father’s rat runs for escaping from his work at Strathclyde Uni, and I used to go with him sometimes. The photo must be from before I used to go into the City for school, because that would have been 1967, I think. I left Glasgow over 40 years ago now – where did all the time go?
One of my dad’s routes home passed a health centre / medical practice sort of place. It was on the ground floor of a tenement, and for some reason had windows a bit like an undertaker’s – blacked out to about two thirds of the way up, with shiny trim and letters. Among the other services advertised in those shiny letter , it proudly boasted an “anti-natal” clinic. My dad and I could only imagine what went on in there.
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Maybe the reason the windows were backed was what went on in there…
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Aye, Ed – “where did all the time go?” My first job on leaving school – just walked out, rebel without a clue – was in Kennedy Street, not far from the Station Bar. That was in the heyday of the Glasgow gangs. Probably not the best time from a teenager from outside the city to take a job in the Toonheid – still, I did get plenty of cardio-vascular exercise – running for my life. I often think those days were really the start of my education.
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The Greyfriars Bobby one – there’s no smoke from the chimneys so probably after the Clean Air Act in 1956.
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Ewwww… clever. You’re not a detective by any chance?
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Not at far as I know! I just remember seeing old pictures of Edinburgh and all the chimneys are belching smoke.
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I it was called “Auld Reekie” for guid reason.
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Did I just write “I” for f%^4s sake it should be “aye”. Been away too lang.
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LOL!
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Yeah, I guess.
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Aye. You wonder what folks’ lungs were like back then, even if they never touched a cigarette/pipe.
I’m looking forward to the days of electric motoring. I walked downtown the other day and, presumably because there was no wind, the stench of diesel fumes was almost unbearable.
My mate who lives in Scandinavia visited Oslo recently and said that they are more of less there with electric.
How nice to be THAT advanced.
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Well spotted, Cassandra. I also noticed there’s only one TV aerial and it’s the old H-shaped one which was used to get BBC programmes. ITV was launched in 1955 and STV started broadcasting in 1957, I think, and then, if I remember rightly, you needed a different type of aerial for their programme reception. So, your date seems good to me.
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Does MI5 know about you guys and your detection skills…
Well, after today they will…
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Even if there’s no smoke only because it was a hot day, the BBC didn’t start broadcasting in Scotland until late 1952, so that puts a definite limit on the date too.
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Didn’t they start broadcasting for the queen’s crowning thing?
If it was a hot day why does the bloke have a coat on?
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Summer in Glasgow and you ask why a man needs a coat on?
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LOL
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Ah but it wasn’t summer in Glasgow, David – it was summer in Edinburgh and there can be a chilly breeze off the Firth of Forth, even in summer. And it was summer – 25th August 1953, in fact – a Tuesday. I noticed that the man in the coat and hat was using a walking stick and holding the arm of his companion with the bunnet, so maybe he was ill or infirm and felt the cold more. The other fellow striding towards the statue has his jacket wide open and his collar undone – typical summer wear for the time although he’s canny enough to have kept his waistcoat on, I see.
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LOL
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Tris, the two wee cars are Austin Sevens but which particular models I don’t know. I’m sure, however, that someone else will provide that info and probably chassis numbers and lists of previous owners 🙂
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Dave, who sent them to me, knows all about them. I’m hoping maybe he will comment.
He sent me a few more great pics but they seem to be in a format that I’m having difficulty loading on the computer.
I’ll get there though.
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That sent me on a wee Austin 7 internet hunt. Both Chummy’s I believe but different dates. Thanks Dave, need to get out in the cars soon badged up for Indyref.
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Dave’s email said: They are both Austin seven tourers, commonly called chummy, They’re only about 4 feet wide so not a lot of shoulder room, built around
1928/29, still a lot exist, a greater survival rate than RR. The ruby
is roughly the same chassis and running gear but steel body instead of
aluminium.
Have a look at the Austin seven association site.
LikeLiked by 1 person
According to the Austin seven register
PP7831 is a blue Austin Seven AD Tourer first registered 26/3/1927
SL9478 is a green Austin Seven AD Tourer first registered probably in 1929
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brilliant Peter… Amazing research!
🙂
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The older one has the shorter radiator and scuttle-mounted rather than front’mounted headlights. There’s another, later, re-style for the Ruby/Pearl/Opal and so on.
Have done a couple of long-distance Austin 7 motorsport shenanigans!
Derek.
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Greyfriars Bobby – there are still setts (granite cobbles) there, and there is a woman with a “New Look” coat on and an “H” TV aerial. Mid to late fifties.
As a student, I saw an altercation there between a couple who probably lodged in one of the many homeless hostels around that part of Edinburgh in the seventies. The female had been drinking spirits with a Sweetheart Stout chaser. The guy was obstreperous for some reason. She cracked open the bottle on the table and laid open his jaw to the teeth.
Ah, the memories of youth.
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Hardly the gentile Edinburgh of Morning Side… and the Marcia Blain School for Little Girls.
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Aye, Conan, I was through in Edinburgh often back in the 70s and I remember some of the pubs (and dossers) around the Grassmarket. It wasn’t quite the Festival City image: you could say, I suppose, that it was a kind of Edinburgh Fringe 🙂 I believe there were also bars (like the Burke and Hare) which had scantily-clad go-go dancers, even at lunchtime. Well, so some of my colleagues told me.
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There was the Lord Darnley, now gone, the Burke and Hare and the Western bar, collectively known as the Hairy triangle for some reason…
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I can only say Sophie Buchan-Watt……
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Erm, yes. I daresay, Andi, that while they were regarding scantily clad maidens, you were off enriching yourself in the cultural aspects of the capital…
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The Canny Man’s had go-go dancers for a while. Morningside, eh? Derek.
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what superb pictures. And now I know why they are called devils – ewwww! However plenty of cute animals there – aren’t pine martens adorable. As are arctic foxes -so fluffy and not in a Mundell way 🙂 Have been keeping up with Laoch’s progress on twittter. They do seem to be in the pub a lot though!
I never get the where and when pictures – good job the rest of the readership are so informed then.
Anyway I can’t go without thanking you for the elephants and the orangs.
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I was really surprised at how cute Pine Martens are. Laoch is absolutely adorable, but yeah, it’s true, he is fond of his pint, already.
Glad you enjoyed. Hope it’s set you up for the week. 🙂
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Tris, pine martens not so cute if you happen to be a small mammal or bird but you’re right, they’re good-looking wee craturs. They’re also a great help in controlling grey squirrel populations and that helps the red squirrels, so they’re goodies really.
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That’s nature Dave. A blackbird is as cute as can be, but maybe not so much if you are a worm going about your wormy business when suddenly you are plucked from the earth and swallowed!
I can handle that animals kill to eat. After all, I’m not a vegetarian, so I do it too, albeit at a distance.
What I loath is animal that kill for the fun of it. Cats to an extent. But of course, mainly man:
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Great photos, as always.
I can’t decide if Pine Martens beat otters in the cool animal stakes. I once worked near a river and there was a sign up with a list of local wildlife, which included otters. They are elusive wee buggers. Never seen a Pine Marten, either.
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Cheers Terry.
Well, I’ve never seen either…. either… and I spend a lot of time in the country. I wonder if they are all that cute. That one you’d take home with you!
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For some reason I remember Eddy Foley’s and never realised it was called the Station. Why do orangutans have such sad eyes. I didn’t realise that Taz was a devil – I thought that was his master (?). Great photos again.
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Some pubs were always called by the licencees name.
And although the name was in big letters over the shop (were they called shops in other places too?) you always knew them by the proprietors’ name. Willie Frew’s at the top of the Hilltown in Dundee, was one such place. I drive past it most days and I’ve still no idea what its real name is.
I think they have sad eyes because their human cousins’ greed is destroying their habitat. They have nowhere to go. And it’s all for greed.
LOL. Where is the old devil himself this morning?
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The next pub up from Bobby’s is a case in point, it was called the Forrest Hill Bar, but everybody knew it as Sandy Bell’s.
Everyone I know looks terribly young in this…
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I think that must be the first time I ever heard anyone say “foregather”.
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Hamish Henderson did have a way wi words…
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Ha ha… The Scots rarely travel abroad!!!!!
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Thanks very much for that.
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Interesting about the good old BBC…
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The Greyfriars Bobby photo. I’d say it is 3 years after Brexit if Scotland doesn’t dump the UK.
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LOL!!!!
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We may have the DUP running us if we don;t get out of here. It seems that they think God had something to do with their rise to power!
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dup-conference-ukip-arlene-foster-theresa-may-brexit-nigel-dodds-a8076256.html
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Back in the day Bobby’s had a great jukebox.
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Lovely. Can’t imagine anyone doing a song like that any more… You know, a girl sitting at home every night waiting for a call from a bloke. LOL.
Very melodic though, lovely guitar and nice strings.
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Can you imagine anyone singing a song like Living Doll these days?
“I’m gonna lock her up in a trunk
So no big hunk can steal her away from me”.
Bloody heck!
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He he he… Cliff Richard… ewwww
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He’s still a Bachelor Boy…
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LOL… Yes, well that’s true. No wonder if his girl is locked up in a trunk!
I’m watching that documentary just now. Very interesting. Thanks
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Is the singer, Marcie Blaine, a descendant of Marcia Blaine whose School for Girls was the setting for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? 🙂
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🙂
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Stick? We didn’t even have a tree to Jackie Bailey on!
Willie Frew’s original bar was in the Hawkhill, Tris. It was demolished in the late 70s as part of the remodelling for the university. The “new” Willie Frews was called the Plough back then. I used to meet my wife there after her work at Safeways supermarket across the road.
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LOL!
Nice bit of Dundee history there, Alex. I guess the Hawkhill is unrecognisable now compared with how it was before the expansion of Dundee Uni.
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It’s certainly more hygenic now, if less organic!
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Ha ha ha ha…
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Venice seems to have had bad weather. The place looks flooded.
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LOL… Italian drains, you see. They just can’t cope with rain.
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