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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
C’mon. You and I are hurting equally badly. .This is not a great day to be a Scottish Natonalist in the modern era.
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How did you manage to get a picture of me in my parents house?
Wow, that takes me back, the fireplace, the wee TV.
Still have the TV, works really well but the picture is a bit snowy, still they tell me all I would pick up is the same programmes I watched then, endlessly repeated on a weekly basis.
I am still an optomistic Nationalist, we are bigger than this.
We have other people in the wings to take the lead.
Sorry for the politics on our weekend off.
As the monarchist say, ‘the king is dead, long live the king’.
Onwards to freedom
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Is it not the case that a TV of that age would be a 405 Lines Analogue set which would be incompatible with our current all digital broadcasts?
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Yes, but didn’t some people have conversions done? TVs were very expensive in these days and it was cheaper to get some work done on the old set.
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To turn to the elephant in the room, let’s see what the result of the case is. People are found not guilty sometimes – and we have to remember that the Opposition play dirty. Suspend judgement – because it’s not up to us to judge – and it’s got nothing to do with the movement, the cause, whatever we want to call it. If Alex has feet of clay, that’s a shame, but the fate of our country is much more important than any of us.
Now, those photos really take me back… the second one, the newspaper kiosk, they still look like that in Casablanca. You could get fags there too. I remember chokes on cars, and remember what used to happen when you pushed it in too soon and tried to accelerate briskly from cold. And how much fuel you could burn through if your automatic choke got stuck closed.
My care assistant has just arrived to minister to me. I must go and have cream applied.
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Gena Autry and Beetle Bailey places the news stand right in the fifties.
Donald Sinden starred in The Cruel Sea, one of the best British war films ever.
Fifties living room and they had a fitted carpet? Posh indeed. The Magic Robot game was all done with magnets if I remember.
Frankie Howerd, titter ye not.
As for the dreaded elephant, the independence movement has always been that, a real grass roots movement. Only the unionists seem to treat it like it is a one man band, and constantly attack the leader hoping the rest of us will go away if they are pilloried enough.
We won’t.
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I’ve never seen one of these newstands in Scotland. I remember there used to be a lot of them in Paris, but I can’t recall seeing them the last time I was there.
My pal was talking about Donald Sinden the other day, because of some show he’d seen on telly with Windsor Davis, where they both played antique dealers. He said is was pretty grim.
Frankie Howerd was one of these comedians who seemed to have no script , but I’m told it was all very much practised.
I never thought about the carpet though. There used to be lino round the edges, didn’t there?
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Yes – lino, and then a large rug in the middle. Probably something in front of the fireplace too, to get burned if any cinders popped out of the fire … I remember that just occasionally people used to find bits of dynamite in their coal that had somehow survived a blasting operation. That could be exciting, as could lum fires. A unique smell: once smelled, never forgotten. Greasy.
TVs took a long time to warm up… I’m old enough to remember that there used to be a card / cartoon on ITV showing a technical guy holding up broken telephone lines and promising that normal service would be resumed as soon as possible. I guess it was the landlines from London that had broken down – it was quite a while before we got microwave towers and electronic telephone exchanges. Rotary phones – Strowger exchanges – museum pieces now, of course.
I love elephants too. I once bathed one in Sri Lanka, just a young one. It seemed to like me. Sprayed me thoroughly from its trunk, and I swear it was laughing its socks off at me. Those beasts are intelligent.
I think I may be wandering off topic… or rather, on safari off topic.
I used to go as often as I could to a very small national park called Amboseli – right in the south of Kenya along the border with TZ; fantastic views of Kilimanjaro too. So incredibly beautiful… And elephants. The park isn’t really big enough for them. Another sad thing is that the Maasai who lived around there were kicked out of the park, and they are really impoverished and see practically none of the tourist revenue. I had a season ticket for Kenyan residents – much cheaper. I used to teach my guys (and Lekishon!) to drive on the bed of Lake Amboseli – it’s seasonal, very shallow anyway, and there are no rocks, just fine silt. Flat as a pancake, no trees to climb up, no rocks to break the suspension, no acacia thorns to puncture the tyres.
There was a great commotion one night I was there when an elephant decided to insist on his right of way through the fenced-off area in the middle of the park where the safari lodges are. I can’t really report on it because I was the only one in the place who slept through it, apparently. I blame that Tusker beer (http://t1p.de/avma), slogan “Bia yangu, nchi yangu”, which means “My beer, my country”.
There’s a similar beer – or maybe the same? Can’t remember – in TZ called Ndovu. That’s because in TZ they did full-on Down With Colonialism and booted English hors de combat on independence, leaving Swahili as the only lingua franca. Where was I? Oh yes, ndovu is Swahili for elephant. Here’s a nice photie from Wikidata; I expect PP will like it a lot: http://t1p.de/6ylz.
And here’s a not-very-interesting Wikipedia article about a settlement with one of my favourite place-names in Kenya (in Maa): Oloitokitok, which lies to the east of the park. The road to it is (used to be?) absolutely bloody dreadful; memorably dreadful, even for Kenya. I wish I could remember what it means, if anything; I’ve asked and been told, but it’s gone. I read just now as I was looking for something about the place that one of their young women recently got into Harvard with funding from one of the banks there. Well done her!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitokitok
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I seem to remember that the lino was universally brown.
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Strangely enough, it was probably made in Kirkaldy, famous for another broon export.
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Didn’t they also make it in Newburgh?
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As usual, fascinating, Ed.
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The « edicola » is still a feature of Italian streets although a lot close around lunchtime. Not a lot of scope for browsing to choose a paper although easier for magazines.
I used to order my Edinburgh edition of L’Equipe on Boulevard Strasbourg every morning in Paris. There are some in Spain as well and I remember getting a very funny look because of asking for Marca AND Mundo Deportivo at the newsstand near the royal palace in Madrid. (Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively).
Oh – and the man at the station in Porto didn’t see the point of buying both O Jogo and A Bola to read 2 reports of the same game and would obviously have preferred to sell me one paper rather than two.
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LOL You got about a bit!!!
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50s living room and the flue is blocked off, electric heater instead by the looks of things?
Super-posh or marketing photo?
Oh and yes the wall to wall fitted carpet was a giveaway, likewise the carpet right up to the fireplace. Never a good plan for a real fire.
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No, I suppose you used to get coals falling out of the fire.
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Yes, Tris, and sparks from “slatey” coal but most people had a mesh fireguard which let the heat out but kept the sparks and embers from burning your rug or lino and often the cat.
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Ha ha…. poor cat.
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Is that a wee stuffed penguin on the drop-front desk?
From what I can see the carpet is protected from fallout by a hearth rug. Can’t figure out why that pot plant is sitting where it is.
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Ah, maybe another of Munguin’s ancestors…
I think the pot plant is sitting on another oval coffee table (why are they called coffee tables?) in front of the chair that matches the settee.
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They’re called coffee tables because you were supposed to serve your visitors their coffee at them as they were at a convenient height for someone sitting in an armchair/sofa. It was all about being “posh”. Of course, back then coffee was almost exclusively Nescafé made with boiling water straight out of the kettle. Mind you, most ordinary folks preferred tea, so I suppose those tables should really be called tea tables. By the way the boy lying on the carpet is clearly a dummy as is the adult on the sofa with the obviously plaster/plastic hand.
I’m guessing that the transparent rectangular object in front of the TV table is one of those strange devices you could buy back then to place in front of the TV screen to make the picture look bigger – I don’t think they were a success.
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Andi…..In America, a “coffee table” was and I suppose still is an indispensable low table which sits in front of a sofa. It didn’t occur to me to wonder if they would be called a “tea table” in Scotland and England.
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Maybe a whisky table in Scotland. LOL
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🙂
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Ah, I see. I too wondered why they weren’t called tea tables. Of course they may have originated in a place where they drank coffee.
I’ve never heard of those devices you describe, Do you know what they were called?
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I never saw one of those either.
On the subject of tables… my pet hate is occasional tables (they sometimes occur in nests). They are called “occasional” tables because everyone occasionally barks their shins on them.
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LOL. True.
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In the bungalow where I grew up, we had fitted carpet up to the fire surround, but also a rug in front of it – black – to prevent embers getting to the carpet underneath. There was also a fireguard to put on once the room had warmed up enough. Also a set of fireside tools a bit like the ones in the picture, but brass.
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Ed, the set of fireside tools was called a companion set if I recall correctly and I remember the brass fireside stools you mention. I think with many of them the leather(ette) cushion on top hinged back and the inside could be used for storing sticks, small coals, etc. Of course we never had such snazzy items as brass fireside stools but then I didn’t grow up in a bungalow 😦 I also recall that in some houses there was a brass fender in front of the fireplace. I also remember all that shiny brass required frequent application of Brasso polish.
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That’s right: companion set. I was trying to remember.
I seem to remember going smokeless. Shows how long ago it was now.
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Oh, I remember hearing my granny talk about a companion set, and thinking it was something to do with clothes… you know a twin set and pearls… a companion set and… well a fireguard I suppose.
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Conan……what a sharp eye you have to spot Beetle Bailey!
Munguin’s readers will surely wish to know the State of Missouri connections with Beetle and the long-running comic strip. Mort Walker was an alumnus of the University of Missouri (at Columbia,) and many of Walker’s characters in the comic strip were said to be styled after his fraternity brothers at Mizzou. Camp Swampy itself was inspired by the US Army’s Camp Crowder (later Fort Crowder,) a WWII Signal Corps base near Neosho and Joplin in southwest Missouri, where Walker was stationed. Army entertainers were stationed there, and many who later became prominent included Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Louis Nye, and many others. In Dick Van Dyke’s early 1960’s TV series “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) meets and later marries Laura ( Mary Tyler Moore) at Camp Crowder.
Cary Grant showed up there once.
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I’d never hear of them, Danny.
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Tris….You’re probably referring to never having heard of Beetle Bailey and Mort Walker rather than Cary Grant and Dick Van Dyke? 😉
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Oh yes, Danny, sorry; that wan’t clear, I’d heard of Dick Van Dyke and Cary Grant.
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😉
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BTW, The Beetle Bailey comic book that Conan spotted is on a horizontal line directly to the left of the newsstand attendant. Gene Autry (one of Hollywood’s singing cowboys) is at top left.
Roy Rogers came along a little after Gene. In 1944, he made a movie called “San Fernando Valley”……then a rural agricultural area outside of Los Angeles. Soldiers in WWII saw the San Fernando Valley on their way to the Pacific war, and when they returned, tens of thousand of them never went farther than the Valley. The great post-war migration to California was underway.
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OK. Let’s start with the political situation.
I’m absolutely at one with Ed and Dave on this.
The legal process will take its course. We shouldn’t prejudge.
In the meantime, we have all been warned by legal people to take very great care over what is said on social media.
Needless to say, my desire for an independent Scotland is a very great deal bigger than one person.
So let’s not risk prejudicing any trial there may be (or getting ourselves done). Remember, even the Presiding Officer warned MSPs that there was to be no discussion in parliament of sub-judice matters. We are not the Daily Record and we can’t afford the fines!!
And that goes for everyone from any party.
I ‘m glad you liked the 50s living room. The wee black and white telly, the laddie in grey school shorts reading something about magic, the standard lamp and that mirror above the fireplace, oh and the car, which must surely be his wee brother’s. Superb.
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well said Tris. Can I prevail on you to have any actual elephant for Soppy Sunday as I’m quite fond of them and Conan and Ed have put me in the mood for one…
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How could I refuse? 🙂
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I keep wondering about the Daily Record. If the allegations they reported bear any resemblance to the actual complaints then are they not a risk of a massive fine if the case is comes to court? Why did they take the risk? Or do they already know that the charges will eventually be dropped after Alex Salmond’s character has been assassinated?
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Oh please… oh please… let the court put them through the wringer… http://t1p.de/ar28
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I really don;t know what motivates them, except selling a lot of papers and unionism.
But as I say, I think we should play safe and not discuss anything about the case here.
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I’m surprised by the scale of the charges, nothing else. I’ll be interested as to the “when & where” simply to see where this originates.
Alex is not the SNP, although I understand why MSM hacks think he is as he “resurrected” it twice.
Welcome to the first skimishes of the wars to come 😦
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Here is an advert of one of the chocolates in that montage from about 1972:
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Just noticed that that chocolate is not in the montage. However here is one that is. I see Dave Prowse is this one from 1969:
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Is the sailor Brian Glover?
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It looks like him.
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How very 1970s LOL
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Thought you would be interested in the picture of the chocolate bars G!
Xxx
Sent from my iPod
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Always interested in chocolate bars …
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When I saw the electric heater in the fireplace, I assumed the 1950’s room might be at Balmoral.
Interesting old gas (petrol) pumps! I like the old pre-electric models where you manually pumped the gasoline up into an elevated, graduated glass cylinder, and then when you got what you wanted in the glass, you opened a valve and it flowed into your tank by gravity feed.
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Presumably there was someone there to do it for you. Now it’s self service, of course.
I imagine that the living rooms at Balmoral, look exactly as they did in the days when Queen Victoria sat in them, cold and miserable in the middle of summer.
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Yes, the old manual pump gravity feed models were used back when an attendant did it for you. Important to be sure you didn’t take more than you paid for of course. Seems like reading the lines in the glass wouldn’t be a really accurate way to measure the volume of the petrol either.
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I’m glad you don’t have to do that now
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A bit late, I know, but the snowy pic6 is of Bothwell Street, Glasgow at its junction with Hope Street and not so long ago judging by the bus livery. By the way, in the first pic there’s a small model of a dinosaur between the petrol pumps – is that because petrol is fossil fuel?
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Boom Boum!
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