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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Pic 1. I saw ET at a drive in near Toronto in 1982. It was all a bit dark but the beer was good. Pic 2. I don’t know where that sign was but all I could hear in my head when reading it was my rabidly anti smoking pal who used to quote it word for word as soon as anyone was brave enough to light up. Pic 5. Why don’t they have these things for bairns in planes any more? Maybe the parents would get a wee break and the rest of us would get some peace. Poor wee buggers don’t know to pop their ears, it must be agony. Pic 8. Terry and June. With different actors, script and concept, who knows it might’ve been funny. Pic 9 Heroin Cough Syrup. They knew how to make proper medicine back then, not like our namby pamby modern shit. I wonder what the recommended dose for kids was? Pic 11. The Torrens, a clipper that hit an iceberg. Pic 12. The ‘Love Goddess’ Rita Hayworth. Pic 14. Weekly old picture of some city or other. Pic 15 Hyacinth Bucket. More middle class English pish. (See pic 8 for further info.) Pic 16. From Space Oddity to Diamond Dogs, irreplaceable genius then sporadic brilliance up till about 3 iffy albums toward the end. Pic 18. American Gin. I just don’t get the gin thing currently sweeping the nation but each to their own I say. Who cares if our unhealthy recreational activities are intellectualised,packaged and sold to us by companies to make us feel exclusive. As long as we’re enjoying ourselves that’s the main thing. Pic 19. Weekly auld photie of other city so readers dinnae feel left oot by pic 14. Where can it be I wonder?? Last pic. Could be Count Basie but I can’t be sure.
I found myself up late at night through no fault of my own and because I like the weekly All our Yesterdays I whiled away a portion of the long hours doing this. Phew! Format shamelessly nicked from Andimac. Accuracy or lack of is down to me. Never again I say and from now on I’ll leave it to the experts.
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Ellington not Basie.
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Ellington was a Duke. Basie was a Count.
Count Basie:
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Aristocrats, huh? Who understands them?
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Yep, Gus. I got them mixed up yesterday.
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Actually Gordon’s is made at Cameron Bridge in Fife. I’ve shut up more than one English nationalist who have said they prefer gin to whisky, so I’m alright Jock, by telling them that most London gin is distilled in Scotland…
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Yes, Conan. That’s true.
There’s a new gin place in the old paper works at Guardbridge in Fife. I’ve been meaning to try it out.
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> Pic 15 Hyacinth Bucket. More middle class English pish. (See pic 8 for further info.)
Hyacinth Bucket is one of the best renditions of an abusive, narcissistic housewife I have ever seen.
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Keeping up with the Armstrong-Jones.
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LOL LOL LOL @ Greig12
Yesterday I got my jazz aristocracy wrong… today it was your turn. It’s Duke Ellington.
Anyway, I’m glad that AOY filled in some time in teh middle of the night… 🙂
And very good it was too, if I may say so!
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You’re not alone. In my South African days, a radio news bulletin informed us that Queen Elizabeth Eleven had arrived in Johannesburg, accompanied by her husband, the Duke of Ellington. Did the announcer get it wrong or did I have a subversive lookalike who wrote the script? Just wish I could claim the credit!
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It sounds rather like you!
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I have no proof, and I was still half asleep at the time, but when I heard the Radio 4 news reader announce the death of Joy Adamson I am sure she was described as the ‘famous naturist’.
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Ew er…
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I watched Out of Africa at the Drive In, in Nairobi. It was raining and we had to have the wipers on!
The Drive In in Dar as Salaam always attracted a large crowd of Tanzanians who’d not pay but sit out on the grass and watch, but obviously couldn’t hear the movies.
My mum travelled 60 odd years ago to Ghana with my eldest sister and from her description I reckon my sister slept in one of those hanging cribs.
When I flew back to Tanzania after having each of my babies in Scotland, the planes provided a crib which slotted into the wall in front of the first row of seats.
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Ha ha… windscreen wipers,,, brilliant.
I was wondering about these cribs… you know, if you hot an air pocket, didn’t the bairn get bounced out onto the floor.
The idea of a crib in front of the front seats seems more sensible.
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LOVED picture two! I’ve a bit of a cough at the moment but I’ll pass on the heroin syrup. I’ve no desire to appear in Trainspotting 3 – I’m in the wrong city for a start.
I’m not sure a 17inch cathode ray tv is particularly life like though the family seem delighted by it…
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Pic 14 is, of course, the Castlegate in Aiberdeen. The trams were withdrawn in 1958 but judging by the few cars in the photo it would appear to be early fifties? The crowd waiting to board the bus at the merkat cross suggest some kind of tour. I seem to remember the long running ‘Tour of city and suburbs’ left from the Castlegate.
I’m guessing at where the photographer was. At the top of the Athenaeum building with a telephoto lens?
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Castlegate indeed. I guess, as the trams are still there, it must have been before 1958, Dave and the cars do look like they are from late 40s early 50s (to my uneducated eye).
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Nice Castlegait photo, I can remember it as a thriving hub rather than the windblown empty space it is now.
The photo’s not clear enough to make out the bus/tram fleet numbers but it features one of the 1949 Streamliner bogie car and 2 older cars, probably examples of 1929 Brush bodied ‘English’ cars dating from 1929.
The batch ran from 126-137 and several survived until the final day of tram operation in May 1958.
(I was there!)
The bus is a 1938 Weymann bodied Daimler COG5 in original Brunswick Green livery, which dates the photo to early fifties (the Lincoln green livery started to appear c. 1953). It’s probably on route 21 (Golf Links-Broomhill).
Clearer photos please!!!!
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I wiz there as well, Roddy. I remember standing by the Monkey Hoose as the trams went by. Sadly, I didn’t get to the beach for the bonfire. Wonder what the environmentalists would say about that.
I only discovered recently that an odd shaped hoose by the Loch of Loirston which was covered in wooden shingles from ground up to roof, was actually one of the trams converted to residential use. With the current redevelopment of the area it went to a tram museum in the north of England for restoration.
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Probably this one (tram 15) which was retrieved from near Loch of Loirston…and is now at Alford. I saw it there this summer
http://www.tram.rhrp.org.uk/tms/tramInfo.asp?Ref=424
(I think there’s a youtube video showing it being lifted out from it’s long-term home onto a low-loader..)
I remember taking up station on Holburn Street near Gt Southern Road to watch the final tram procession.
It didn’t register to a schoolboy at the time but looking back the full horror of the civic vandalism involved sinks in. The streamliners were only 9 years old, cost £9,000 each (quite a sum in 1949), & were reduced to scrap realising the princely sum of £90 each ..
Still makes me want to weep.
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Awesome. I’d love to live in a tram,
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Wow, Dave. Amazing…
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LOL…
Complaints in writing to Munguin at Munguin Towers.
Here’s a wee pic to apologise for bad camera work before Munguin or I was born!!!
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That is the biggest “No Smoking” sign I have ever seen. Actually agree with the sentiments as regards to health. Thankfully I never did smoke.
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Yes, I agree too. I used to smoke and now hate the smell with passion.
Typical ex-smoker! LOL
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From way way back whenever.
” Tobacco is a filthy weed
Which from the Devil doth proceed;
It stains your fingers;
Burns your clothes,
and makes a chimbly of your nose.”
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Regarding how to speak on the telephone. There is a documentary to get people used to using a telephone dial telephone. It seems a bit techy but it gives an insight to a now defunct technology. The best GPO film “Fairy on the Phone” from 1936 doesn’t appear to be on Youtube.
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Fascinating… when you consider what phones do now.
I didn’t much care for that scaffolding, but the rows of incredibly neatly written figures were fascinating.
And all the blokes in suits and shirts and ties lol…
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These electro-mechanical devices were known as Strowger switches. You could hear the low-level clattering they made during quiet periods when you were on the line. In the film, the instruction on the dial in an emergency was to dial “0” which got you in the queue to the operator. You still had to wait your turn! It was 1937 before the 999 system was introduced. The director of this film was John Grierson, who went on to produce “This Wonderful World” in the early days of Scottish Television in the late 1950s. As ever, his credits used only surnames, in his typically abrupt style.
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It never occurred to me, but what did you do in an emergency before 999?
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Something sticks in my mind that in the early days of telephones, when people were still learning how to use them, the inventor’s recommendation was “Ahoy!” – whether calling or answering. No idea if Alexander Graham Bell was of seafaring stock, or if the story is genuine, but I’m still tempted to use it. My own preference in landline days was to pick up a ringing phone and command: “Speak!” Quickly got rid f nuisance callers.
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Interesting.
I don’t think he was naval.
Bell did suggest “Ahoy”, Edison recommended “Hello”, which really hadn’t been used as a greeting before.
Hello and Ahoy were ways of attracting attention… as, indeed they still are today to a limited extent.
If I think I have a sales call, I say WHAT? very loudly.
If I’ve misjudged … I get a very red face.
Incidentally, it was recommended back then to end calls with “That’s all”.
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Pic 3 is a Rolls Royce, the second oldest in the world – 1905. I think it’s still in the Riverside Museum, Glasgow. Pic 13 is a Stanley, possibly a Raceabout, early 1900s. They were American and had steam engines instead of internal combustion ones, hence often referred to as Stanley Steamers. I can’t see Pic 19 but, to be fair, my PC is badly needing new pistons. And, “Well done, Greig!” – you didn’t leave many to us latecomers.
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You can’t see EDINBURGH?
WHAT????????????
Apart from that, well done. You’ll need tos tart getting up earlier!
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Not long back from a wee culture and cuisine jaunt to The Great Wen – put it down to train lag 🙂
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LOL 🙂 🙂 🙂
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