152 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. Thought I would have a peek before going to bed. Re the hairdryer – an item from the 1980’s that could be made for today’s hair lockdown.

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    1. First of all apologies to everyone. Munguin assigned me to other duties today and said that he’d keep an eye on things here, but I can see by the empty champagne bottles that that was an exaggeration…

      I wondering about getting one of these Flowbee things. I look like an abominable snowman.

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      1. You do so not look like an abominable snowman, Tris! Much more like a Sasquatch.

        I hope Mr. M. has not been concealing a serious substance abuse problem from us all. Do we need to stage an intervention to dry at least his flippers out?

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          1. I see. Well, as long as he remains high-functioning, there’s nothing to be said about it. For his sake, though, in the cause of dryness he should switch to champagne that’s brut nature / zéro dosage, if he’s not on it already.

            Entre parenthèses, “dégorgement” is not one of my favourite words in French, I have to say, because it always looks to me as if it should have something to do with boking rather than bottling.

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            1. Well, in a way, it kind of is a bit of both… taking all the yukky stuff out of the neck (throat) so that it’s the beautiful clear liquid that we all love so much.

              I’d never really have called Munguin high functioning … wine or no wine.

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  2. No.4 P.S. Caledonia. Built 1934 by Dennys of Dumbarton, therefore a quality job, withdrawn 1969 and later became a floating pub in London where she unfortunately was destroyed by fire in 1980.

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        1. I think I read somewhere that when people were saying that Ringo was the best drummer in the world, John said, “What? He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles!”

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  5. Pic 2 – Bus tae Hawkhead – gottae be Paisley – 1960s? Pic 5 – the ill-fated British airship R101 which crashed in France on her maiden overseas flight with large loss of life – the end of UK airship development. Pic 6 – Keith Richards (of the Rolling Stones) while still young and not raddled by drug addiction? Mind you, he’s still around. Pic 9 – wild guess – Troon – looking like the Côte d’Azur – 1920s? Pic 14 – Gretna, 1950s?

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    1. Pic 2 is a Graham’s bus on the service between Hawkhead (in Paisley) and Linwood. It looks like it’s stopped opposite the long-gone Rootes car factory between Linwood and Paisley.

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      1. It is indeed, a special works service outside the Pressed Steel Factory at the Rootes plant in Linwood, taken on 13 May 1970.
        The bus is a 1955 Guy Arab V with Northern Counties bodywork. Arab d/deckers were mainstays of the Graham fleet throughout the ’50s and ’60s.

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    2. Bang on as always, Andi, and verging on the telepathic this week. My caption kicks off :”1929 – Britain ends airship development,” almost your own words. It goes on with: “The R101 and her sister ship R100 marked the end of British efforts to produce large airships. These two huge vessels were designed to carry 100 passengers at a speed of 70mph. The passengers were accommodated within the hull and were provided with cabins, a dining saloon, and other comforts hitherto associated only with ocean liners.

      “The two vessels were completed in 1929 and the next year the R101 began her maiden voyage to India. Disaster soon overtook her. In the early hours of 5 October 1930, the great airship crashed and caught fire on a hillside near Beauvais in northern France, killing 48 people including Lord Thomson, the Air Minister.

      “The R100 crossed the Atlantic and back but was dismantled after the R101 disaster. “

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      1. Plenty of history and people associated with the airships.
        The R101 was the government built aircraft,too heavy had to be extended to increase the number of bays for hydrogen gas bags.
        The R100 did the Atlantic crossing and back, had Barnes Wallis as part of the design team.
        It left from East Fortune on the Atlantic crossing but was diverted back to englandland on it’s return, politics.
        Nevil Shute was a stress calculator on one of the aircraft, R101. Cardington
        All hands were lost on the R101 crash as it was on an Empire flight to India. It had government ministers on board. Lord Thomson and Sefton Brancker alnog with the designer ,Richmond.
        There was a airship hangar at Glasgow from memory and a memorial at East Fortune.

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      2. John……Interesting info about R101. I found this article about the planned R-38 class of British airships of which one was actually built and sold to the United States Navy in 1919. It crashed during trials in England and killed 44 of the 49 member crew. It was the biggest airship of its time, and (Wiki says) : “Its destruction was the first of the great airship disasters, followed by the Italian-built US semi-rigid airship Roma in 1922 (34 dead), the French Dixmude in 1923 (52 dead), the British R101 in 1930 (48 dead), the USS Akron in 1933 (73 dead), the USS Macon in 1935 (2 dead), and the German Hindenburg in 1937 (36 dead).

        The American-built airships used helium lift gas, but seems to have been as accident-prone as the others. USS Shenandoah was the world’s first helium filled airship, but crashed in a storm in Ohio in 1925. Macon and Akron were helium-filled sister ships. Wiki: “Akron and her sister ship Macon were among the largest flying objects ever built. Although LZ 129 Hindenburg and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II were some 18 ft (5.5 m) longer and slightly more voluminous, the two German airships were filled with hydrogen, so the US Navy craft still hold the world record for helium-filled airships.”

        The 1933 crash of the Akron in a thunderstorm over the Atlantic off the coast of New Jersey killed 73 of the 76 crewmen and passengers, and was the greatest loss of life in the string of airship disasters. The Macon was lost off the coast of southern California in 1935 and ended the American airship program. Due to good weather and flotation safety gear for the crew, the crash of the Macon resulted in only two fatalities.

        The airship in American naval service that didn’t end crashing was the USS Los Angeles, which (of course) was made by the Zeppelin company in Germany in 1923-24. After it’s flight across the Atlantic from Germany, its lifting gas was switched from hydrogen to helium, which reduced payload. It served as a commissioned ship in the US Navy for eight years before it was decommissioned and broken up for scrap.

        It must have been awesome to see one of the huge airships.

        The story of the US Navy’s ZR-1, USS Shenandoah, and its crash in Ohio:

        https://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-shenandoah/

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  6. Pic 7 is interesting. Google search comes up with:
    “Woman at BASF gas engine power house in 1917”.

    That’ll be in Ludwigshafen, just across the water from where I am sitting.

    Last week, or the week before, we had several photos of female munitions workers.
    I had intended to comment that in wartime the Brits employed many more women than the Germans, but this photo obviously suggests otherwise.

    In 1921, there was a huge explosion at the ammonia plant at nearby Oppau. Over 500 killed, thousands injured.

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    1. The NAZI party’s doctrine was that women should stay in the home bearing children who would grow up to serve in the armed forces. Desperate to build up the workforce they resorted to forced/slave labour.

      I imagine the lady in the photo was unmarried.

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    2. I suppose that both countries would have had to employ a lot of women in both wars doing jobs that would normally have been done in these days (both wars) by men. In both cases (wars and countries), I suspect some steps forward towards women’s lib. Far too slow, of course, but women had to do things that previously would have been thought out of the question.

      It must have been a shock to men to come home from war to find that their jobs had been done just as efficiently by their wives.

      I have to say that the German factory looks rather clean

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  7. OT, people: here’s an article entitled “Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford accuse Boris Johnson of ‘utterly shambolic’ plan to lift travel quarantine” from Politics Home: https://is.gd/qekZnr.

    I was particularly tickled by the following passage: “… Boris Johnson insisted there had been ‘very good conversations with all the devolved administrations’”. Just another of the PM’s little jokes, obviously.

    It continues to amaze me just how offensive the Johnson-Cummingses of Westminster and their acolytes (“acolytes” is so much kinder a term than “toadies”, “lickspittles”, “hangers-on”, “lackeys”, “boot-lickers” and “arse-kissers” for BorDom and their nasty little sleazeball friends, I always say) can be, and without the slightest sign of strain or exertion on their part either. Quite astounding, really, if you like that sort of thing.

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      1. Hm… Something like a salamander… a frog? A toad? A Gove? Ah – “never grows up”, is always new – a newt! Still, in context I’d say that they’re not so much amphibious as bottom-feeders, and that their connections with herpetology are more to do with the pathogenic viruses and the snakes, given that they make us sick, talk with forked tongues, and are mostly venomous…

        Come to think of it, though, the Patel woman does make me think of aconite, aka queen of poisons.

        Munguinites will be astonished to learn that I don’t like them very much.

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        2. Hmm … must have been thinking of the axolotl, this strange creature, I’ve just discovered, can regenerate entire limbs … so it will probably be the envy of all those Tories and Britnats who find themselves legless tonight at closing time …

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        3. Ed… Munguin himself is flabbergasted to put it mildly. He has had to lie down in a darkened room… although that may have more to do with empty bottles than with you dislike of the Tories.

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    2. Does anyone know the number of the bus that will get me to the Pitcairn Islands,it’s on the list you see and Nicola is a bit underwhelmed by the cooperation on the list.
      St Helena is on the list BUTT the aircraft leaves from Africa which is not on the list,suppose a cruise ship might get brought out of furlough to get me there.
      Greece is on the listafter shapps said it wasn’t, wonder why?
      Sorry OT.
      Happy Fourth of July to Danny.
      Keep safe

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      1. Thanks for the Fourth of July wishes Dave! It’s interesting I think that Americans say “Fourth of July” much more than they say “Independence Day.” I was calling the summer picnic and fireworks day the Fourth of July before I learned anything about Independence Day. 🙂

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      2. Just imagine… Greece suddenly appearing like that… Probably some sort of miracle involving ancient gods, upon whom Boris can count, given that he speaks their language.

        I kinda wish he’d learn ours.

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      3. Ditto that, Dave. So they added Greece to the list at the last minute so that Johnson Senior’s trip to his Greek villa would no longer be such an embarrassment? I think that’s what we have to assume, going by Their past record.

        Helluva way to run a country. Or countries.

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    3. Thanks, Ed.

      You should never underestimate the level of offensiveness that can be reached by a certain type of Tory.

      I’m glad that Mark (and largely Arlene) have been treading a more sensible path.

      It does knock the feet from under the likes of that Murdo bloke who seems to think it’s all about “separation”. Mark is a unionist and Arlene and arch unionist.

      They all think the Westminster government is loco!

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  8. Yogi was also smarter than the average Ranger hence the nickname bestowed on John Hughes of Celtic, inherited by John Hughes of Hibs etc. Will be interesting to see if the nickname leaps to other generations, like Dixie Deans of Celtic (but Dixie Ingram of Ayr got his moniker from the dancer.) Doubt also if Roger will transfer beyond the Hearts full back Brian Whittaker. Suspect also that the Yogi nickname will now transfer without people knowing the original derivation – one of my colleague asked me once why Hibs Hughes was nicknamed Yogi.

    An Edinburgh rugby player walked into his new club, and being called Gillespie, was instantly nicknamed Dizzy, after the trumpeter. His successor in his position was called Reece – but no one had heard of the 1950’s jazz trumpeter Dizzy Reece. But if you have a Dizzy Gillespie LP, probably worth peanuts. If you have the Dizzy Reece LP, valued at anything between £400 and £800. Bet none of you imagined that not being famous had certain advantages, at least to possessors of your sole LP.

    Is pic 6 the Cisco Kid ? Never saw any of his films but the character in the mixture looks a bit Mexican.

    Pic 8, Perth High St, looking towards St Paul’s church in distance. Dull Gothic-y of 1807, now I believe up for some resuscitation after years of neglect.

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    1. Cairnallochy……..Fun to think about the possibility that the Yogi nickname might be transferred without knowledge of the original derivation. 🙂

      I wonder if Europeans who watch the Yogi cartoons all know the joke about where the “Jellystone Park” name comes from.

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            1. Tris…….Yogi is himself very famous no doubt…..LOL.

              Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, is famous as the oldest national park in the country AND the world I’ve heard.

              Maybe it’s also the biggest US National Park? It is after all a big chunk of Wyoming with a little bit of Idaho and Montana thrown in, but nah……..Yellowstone’s 2.2 million acres ranks down around 9th in size in the country. The seven largest are in Alaska, the biggest being Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve. “At 13.2 million acres, Wrangell-St. Elias is larger than Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Switzerland combined.” 😉

              Yellowstone is not even the largest in the lower 48. The largest down here is Death Valley National Park at 3.4 million acres on the California/Nevada border. Yellowstone (2.2 million acres) is second, and the Everglades NP in Florida is third at 1.5 million acres. Grand Canyon NP in Arizona rounds out the top four in the lower 48 at 1.2 million acres.

              https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/size-largest-national-parks-will-blow-your-mind

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              1. I can see Alaska… I mean there’s not much else you can do with it…

                There’s a load of polar bears, a fair number of moose, some wolves and Sarah Palin… and that’s about it.

                Anyway, I think Yellowstone is pretty much known here, along with Yosemite. and of course, Grand Canyon.

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                1. Yep…..not too much residential or commercial development vying for space in Alaska. Just the wildlife, and Sarah and her house with a view of Russia is about it. 😉

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  9. Andi…..John…..Dave…..

    Sounds like the R101 crash had more to do with political meddling than with engineering deficiencies that could have been corrected. It may have been a rush to duplicate the German success with Graf Zeppelin, which ultimately flew successfully for nine years before being withdrawn from service following the Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey. The crash of R101 is said to have been “gentle and survivable,” but the resulting hydrogen fire caused the fatalities.

    https://www.airships.net/blog/british-airship-r101-crashes-killing-48-day-1930/

    The structural, propulsion, and maneuvering problems that plagued airships, and contributed to the string of international disasters, might have been resolved in time, except for the hydrogen problem. The Germans certainly got it right with Graf Zeppelin, until the hydrogen disaster with Hindenburg.

    America then had a monopoly on the world’s helium supply (a rare strategic material at the time.) While rare on earth, helium is the second-most-abundant element in the universe after hydrogen, and accounts for about a quarter of all the “normal” (non-dark-matter) mass in the universe. Almost all of the helium in the universe is primordial matter that was created in the big bang (but some is made by hydrogen fusion in stars.) It was discovered spectroscopically on the sun (and named for Helios), before it was found on earth by Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay, who found traces of helium in uranium-bearing rock. The first commercially usable deposits on earth were found in natural gas deposits under the American Great Plains. (A gas well at Dexter, Kansas, in 1903 was found to produce some annoying gas that wouldn’t burn.) Wiki : “Most geologists believe that the majority of helium in natural gas derives from radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, either from radioactive black shales, or granitoid basement rock. Granite and related rocks tend to contain more uranium and thorium than other rock types. However, some believe that the helium [from gas wells] is largely primordial in origin [created in the big bang.]”

    Created on earth by radioactive decay in shale rock, or a primordial relic from the big bang? Hollywood should make a movie! 😉

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    1. Yes Both airships used hydrogen.
      The R100 had petrol engines and the R101 had diesels.
      The R100 was 709 feet long and 130 feet in diameter,almost as long as a transatlantic liner.
      The Vickers company was ,I think, the company building the R100,the Air Ministry in charge of the R101.
      The strange contract was that the Air Ministry had the responsibility to issue the certificate of air worthiness of the aircraft they designed and built and the R100,the competition.
      As you say it was the hydrogen that was the danger.
      In ‘Slide Rule’, the autobiography of Shute, he says the problem was taking on too much developement at once for the available technical and economic resources.
      Interesting description of the R100 test flight, 52 parachutes on board, 54 crew and passengers.
      No change there then.

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      1. Dave……Interesting comment about available technical and economic resources! I’ve read that the technology of the time was simply inadequate for the demands of the airships. The crash of the USS Shenandoah is described: “the airship was caught in a violent updraft that carried it beyond the pressure limits of its gas bags. It was torn apart in the turbulence and crashed in several pieces near Caldwell, Ohio. Fourteen crew members, including Commander Zachary Lansdowne, were killed.”

        The Shenandoah was the first of the American-built airships and used helium lift gas, but it was not built for an Ohio thunderstorm.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shenandoah_(ZR-1)

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        1. I’ve read the description of the splitting into Two parts in an article published by the American Society of Engineers in August 1926.
          The captain wasn’t happy with the route and delayed the departure until overruled.
          The report on the R100’s first flight was it took 2 hours to fly from Howden to Cardington then took Three hours to connect it to the Mast.
          500 soldiers were used to walk it out of its hangar at Howden in a flat calm as there was so little clearance,they waited 3 weeks for the weather.

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          1. Dave……..I see pictures of those things docked to a tall mooring mast and wonder how on earth that can possibly work in strong shifting winds. (I suppose that the crew exits at the nose of the ship by interior passageways.)

            The Shenandoah (US Navy ZR-1) docked at Lakehurst, New Jersey:

            I thought I posted a reply to your earlier message about R100 and R101 and the political issues that were at play. But I don’t find my message now so maybe I didn’t post it. Anyway, I included a link to this article I found about the British imperial airship scheme.

            The R100:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Airship_Scheme

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    3. Thanks, Danny, for adding to our store of erudition yet again – another schoolday with MNR. Primordial gas? From now on, I’ll probably bore people senseless with that (to me) fascinating bit of information every time a helium balloon comes into sight.

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      1. Thanks John…….you’ve found me out! My childhood interest in astronomy followed by the 2011 Nobel prizes in physics, have made me a crashing bore on the subject of big bang cosmology, including the creation of the primordial helium nuclei in the universe by the process of big bang nucleosynthesis (AKA “primordial nucleosynthesis,”) in the first 20 minutes or so of the big bang. You can work that into all sorts of conversations, such as discussions about airships, by way of the discovery of helium in the sun. Getting there by starting with helium balloons should be a piece of cake. 😉

        There’s a great Hollywood blockbuster waiting to be made about the story of primordial helium and its appearance in natural gas wells on the American Great Plains I tell you! 😉

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    4. Primordial helium, Danny? Hmph. One might think that there wasn’t all that much helium left lying around after the sun ignited and blew almost all remaining molecules of gas out of circumsolar space with its solar wind. After that, the first place to look for it would be in the gas giant planets with strong enough gravities and magnetic fields to hold on to their atmospheres. Further in, most of the hydrogen (yes, I said hydrogen and meant hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe) on Earth is sequestered as solid oxygen compounds in rock and as liquid water. In nature, helium, the second most abundant form of nuclear matter (25%) in the universe, notoriously doesn’t form compounds with anything so it can’t be chemically sequestered, unlike hydrogen, so it can drift off into the Earth’s atmosphere and be blown away because, as I discovered, the average velocity of a helium atom up there in the thermosphere is well above escape velocity.

      The total number of alpha particles emitted by radionuclides since a solid crust first formed on planet Earth would be more than a few dozen, I think, and that translates into rather a lot of helium atoms – and before the crust formed they’d have been boiled off even more easily, wouldn’t they? Even solid rock isn’t that much of an obstacle to a helium atom. Helium has a number of interesting properties, as most people know, including making us sound like Minnie Mouse when we try to speak after inhaling it. For example, because it’s so unreactive, normal matter helium atoms are the same as helium molecules, unlike hydrogen and oxygen, say, which normally go around in pairs, and therefore it’s not bound up with any other element, which makes it lighter. It’s a slippery customer, really!

      It just occurred to me to check on ³He, and discovered that the ³He/⁴He ratio tells us that only about 7% of the He on Earth is primordial. So says Wikipedia, so it must be true: https://is.gd/svNXXW.

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      1. Ed…….You are clearly a man who knows his helium…….a surprisingly exciting element when you consider that it’s odorless, colorless, and doesn’t react with anything. You would also think that the primordial helium might be past its shelf life, but it remains the second most abundant element in the universe, and proud of its ancient heritage from big bang nucleosynthesis.

        It’s not surprising that most of the economically recoverable helium on earth from gas wells are not the primordial variety. Yes , helium is a very slippery character and difficult to contain. So when it seeps out of your latex balloon or is expelled when it makes you talk funny, it floats off into space and is gone forever from the earth. Unlike a gas giant like Jupiter which has enough gravity to hold onto its helium.

        You might wish to peruse the Wikipedia article on big bang nucleosynthesis. On of my favorite things! Neutral helium atoms came about roughly 380,000 years LATER at “recombination”, when the nuclei produced in nucleosynthesis were able to combine with free electrons and the first neutral atoms of hydrogen and helium….and a little primordial lithium……came into being. Then everything was set for the first stars and galaxies to form a couple of hundred million years or so after that.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis

        You might also enjoy this video about helium. While it doesn’t really give nucleosynthesis and primordial helium its due, it does describe the trail of Nobel Prizes that led to the discovery and characterization of helium.

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                1. But Tris – this blog is far from scurrilous, prurient or prone to praising blackshirts, unlike so much of the Great British Meeja Machine! No, no, Tris, you malign and impugn the MNR blog put out by squeaky clean media giant Munguin Multimedia Megacorp Inc., headed by the great Mr. Munguin himself!

                  P.S. Can it be true that Mr. Munguin can expect a peerage in Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s resignation honours? At the very least he deserves an MBE – Munguin of the British Empire. Boris would have to be insane to refuse Munguin a gong! Oh… wait…

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                  1. Ah… therein lies the problem, Ed.

                    Still, I imagine that great day is probably a year or so away yet.

                    I know that there are ratehr a lot of Tories that want rid of him, but given that there is a S**t storm coming, I suspect they will let him take that on the chin before they try to find someone in that party with some leadership skills.

                    Munguin will, of course, refuse any bauble from the British state. In any case he thinks the queen is too old to have to curtsey to him when she pins the medal on his chest.

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                    1. Silly me, Tris! Of course Mr. M. would not be impressed by glass beads from a thuggish devotee of Empire. I shall just go and flagellate myself for a bit in a corner.

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  11. Photo 1: The Bilsland’s Bakery Building is still standing. It has had several owners and businesses in part of it in the 30 or more years since Bilsland’s closed down. If you are crossing the Kingston Bridge from south to north it is a big red brick building on the left hand side about 200 metres up from the Clyde. Until a few years ago, the Bilsland’s name was still visible on the tallest part of the building.
    Bilsland’s was one of several local bakeries in Anderston. Although it and others were fairly substantial plants, they were essentially, for the Glasgow area. Most districts of Glasgow had bakeries, including many ‘home bakeries’ which were small family run businesses on the ground floor of tenements at the back of shops.

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    1. Glasgow centred or not, Bilsland loaves still reached Skye and the Uists when I was a wee boy. Tall plain loaf (unsliced) with a thick black crust. The slogan sticks in my mind: ‘Bilsland bread beats ordinary bread.’

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      1. Bilsland plain loaves were far superior to Mother’s Pride for making toast. I got some Mother’s Pride not all that long ago because I had a nostalgic yen for a staple of my childhood, but it was seriously disappointing.

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          1. It was actually better when toasted – it absorbed a lot of butter! The favourite parts were what posh people called ‘the heel’, but which we coorse Glaswegians called ‘the arse’. If your mother was angry with you, she would give the arse to a sibling or one of your pals! Mammies can be fierce creatures.

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            1. I wouldn’t eat it any other way but toasted! Well no, I may have had a jeely piece or two. My mother called it the heelie, God knows why. Maybe it was because she came from Renfrew, and was a raging snob.

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              2. I worked in Renfrewshire for around 16 years and on the whole is was a bit ‘above’ places like Glasgow, Clydebank, north Lanarkshire. Of course, there were bits of Paisley, Renfrew and Inverclyde that we’re similar.

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              1. No, pure scum. I was born just a few blocks from Billy Connolly and his tales about life in Anderson are only slightly tweaked.

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  12. Here’s a bit of the old history of Bilslands in this reproduced article.
    The style, language and tone of the 1901 article is quite as interesting as the factual detail.

    My grandfather was a baker at Bilsland. He had a life-long aversion to pan breid which he asserted wasn’t real bread.

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    1. Sounds like a good read, Jake, but where’s the link? Oh, aye. This is breid, nae bangers.

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  13. No. 12 is a MacBraynes bus, which must be the best bus livery ever?
    This is a side-on view of a Willowbrook bodied AEC Reliance, vehicles which were mainstays of the long-haul services between Glasgow and Campbeltown / Inverness during the 1960’s.
    The photo doesn’t feel ‘historic’ so this might be preserved vehicle 198 CUS, dating from 1961.

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    1. Roddy, I took the photo on 18 October 2019 at the junction of Argyle and Glassford Streets in Glasgow. I was just waiting to cross the road as she came along. She is indeed 198CUS as you say. The other, head-on, shot I managed to get would have shown her reg.no. I agree about the livery – splendid. I sent the pic to Tris because I was sure you’d know what it was.

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      1. As a youngster going on holiday in the Highlands I loved the quaint little mail buses going to the most remote locations (like Glenelg) over single-track roads. In particular loved the silhouette highlander on the side, so evocative of a particular period.
        198CUS is currently resident at the GVVT museum at Bridgeton. [the GVVT website says it has a Duple (Midland) Donington 41 seat body, not Willowbrook].
        I was at the October 2019 open day when a number of the vehicles are used on tours! If I’d spotted an opportunity for a run on 198CUS i would have been in like a flash. It is a beautifully restored bus, although my favourite MacBrayne would be GUS926. Ye cannae beat a half-cab!!!

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    1. The Grace article has a small error from the original.
      Dalmonach School was in Bonhill, locals call it Bonill, across the river Leven from Alexandria via the bawbee!!! bridge.
      Dalmonach Road still exists.

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      1. “The braes o’ Bon’ill are a’ covered wi’ weans…” as my da would say. He was a Bon’ill man. Ah, Bon’ill men, Vale-men and Jeely eaters.

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    2. You did not exaggerate, Jake. That is quite a tale, and I urge all Munguinites to click on the link and enjoy it as much as I did. Other than advocacy for temperance reform, there’s little I can find to disagree with Mr Bilsland’s principles and practices, in his business and his commitment to health and welfare generally.

      At the time of what we now call Dickensian labour conditions, he must have been a very notable exception. Either that or one of the brothers was given responsibility for corporate PR – and was an excellent early exponent. I doubt it, though. Such an interesting read on all aspects of Bilsland operations, and the writer was clearly impressed by what he saw. And I say ‘he’ on the almost certain premise that industry journalists of the time were all male.

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    3. Fascinating article Jake. Thanks.

      I love that last bit:

      The bakers employed by Messrs. Bilsland enjoy the much-desired eight hours’ day, under the best conditions, with the highest standard rate of wages, and have also, in common with all their fellow employees, the inexpressible comfort of serving kindly and considerate employers.

      That was probably why their bread was so good!

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  15. 11 Couldn’t find a Maltesers ad from the 1950’s but here are some of other products including the last one with Nicholas Parsons.

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      1. Thanks, Marcia. Best fun I’ve had for ages. Laughing at the outrageously plummy voice-over accents – even for Butlin’s (!), hardly the holiday choice for plummy people, remembering models who got my hormones in a froth half a century and more ago, great advertising lines (‘sixpence worth of heaven’) and others that just bring shudders (All Bran for regularity, and the corsets that keep going for wash after wash). More please!

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  16. Interesting that Charlie Chaplin’s name appears at the top in this French film poster for “A Countess from Hong Kong,” even though I think he only had a brief on-screen appearance.

    This American poster shows him farther down, under “written, directed, and music by” and just above the “also starring” credits.

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    1. Yes, Danny. It was his last big film, and it was a total flop, despite the stars.

      Apparently, Brando and Loren agreed to do it without reading the script because of the Chaplin name.

      By the time they saw the dreadful parts, it was too late.

      Despite the names, the film was a total flop.

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        1. She HATED it, although she accepted that it could be a success in Italy and France.

          “I care not what the world may say; without your love there is no day”? Ye gads.

          To be fair it is a bit less sickly in French and Italian, although not much!

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          1. LOL Tris……The song itself was very familiar to me, but I’d not connected it up with that movie that I knew had been a flop.

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            1. LOL Pet jokingly brags about it in concert. How the movie was not…erm… a great success (“despite Sophia’s obvious charms, it seems she doesn’t sing too good!”), but her record was. But she sings it largely in French to avoid the awful English lyric.

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          2. Missed opportunity for McGonagall there:

            ”… like the tragic railway bridge that once spanned the silvery Tay
            whose absence meant that for getting to Dundee, folk had to go far out of their way.”

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  17. No 13 is an Australian Leyland Titan half-cab (formerly Sydney DGT No.1785) with a Commonwealth Engineering body. This angular body style is singular to Australia.
    It’s located at the Anna Bay area of NSW but not ageing well …sadly.

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  19. Regarding Pic. 6, Keith Richards AKA the Cisco Kid.
    A few weeks ago, we discussed how I. personally, became associated with the Milky Bar Kid.
    Can anybody tell me how rock musician Keith Richards came to be associated with the Cisco Kid?
    Or, indeed, how Ringo Starr got his western-style nickname? West Lancashire, maybe?

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    2. I think Ringo’s own name was Richard Starkey.

      I also think he got the name Ringo because he wore rings on every finger. Not something men usually did, or indeed do, even today. Starr, maybe short for Starkey?

      As far as I know, all the other Beatles just used their own names. Why he didn’t, I dunno. It’s not as if he had an odd name like Cedric Postlethwaite or Septimus Rees Mogg.

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      2. It is a little-known fact that Septimus Rees-Mogg has an older brother, Sextus. The reason little is know about him is that he fell prey to nominative determinism and was incarcerated for it, and now the family won’t even say his name out loud.

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      1. Since no-one else has come to your assistance perhaps I can try?
        There are 2 Keith Richards.
        No.6 is a picture of Keith Richards (Rolling Stones guitarist) on a “cowboy adventure” taken by rock photographer Gered Mankowitz. The two men celebrated the end of the Stones’ second US tour of 1965 by donning 10-gallon hats and chaps and riding into the Arizona desert.
        Mankowitz said: “The rest of the guys had gone to Las Vegas to relax before going into the studio to record but Keith just didn’t like the idea. “We had done a bit of riding during the tour when we had a couple of other breaks and we both had a big thing for horses and cowboys. We decided to go off and camp overnight and have this fantastic cowboy adventure.”
        The other Keith Richards was a Western actor born on 1915 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He appeared in a number of Westerns according to IMDb including The Ten Commandments (1956), Street of Chance (1942) and The Black Widow (1947). He did appear in 14 episodes of the TV series ‘The Cisco Kid’ in the early ’50s, but not as the lead character & never played the role of the kid.. He died in 1987.
        So the only connection between a fifties western actor and guitarist in ‘World’s greatest Rock’n’Roll band’ is a shared name.
        It’s not clear how anyone could conflate the two. Possibly the comment was tongue in cheek?

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      1. It is indeed a Sentinel. I was prompted to look further into this, being born in Sheffield and of a certain age, and remembering seeing these at Brown Bayley Steels with my father. Interestingly, this same example is reported (in 2016) as being fully restored, and displayed in Glasgow’s Riverside Museum.

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  22. Thanks to my vast erudition and peerless googling skills, I can tell you all that Scotland is 19,827,840 acres in size. The closest US state in size to Scotland is South Carolina, which measures 20,492,800 acres. In comparison, Switzerland, which Danny mentioned, is 10,201,600 acres in extent. In world terms, we rank between the United Arab Emirates and the Czech Republic, at 20,672,000 and 19,488,000 acres respectively. That puts us at 115th out of 195 in a notional global ranking.

    In Europe, the next largest country is no. 113, Austria, at 20,725,120 acres.

    In 2018, Austria’s GDP was calculated at $455.5 billion, whereas Scotland (as always, our figures are dodgy) was approx. $212.5 billion. With 2018 populations of 8,891,383 and 5.44 million, GDPs per capita (PPP) were about $55,000 and $39,370 respectively. Dodgy figures, of course, but another example of just how badly one of the most resource-rich countries in the world is being run by our imperial masters in the Westminster regime.

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    1. Peerless indeed… possible even pierless, Ed.

      Interesting figures, though, as you say, dodgy because of having been provided by the British government. Thank you.

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      1. Not so much dodgy because they may have been pauchled by the Westminster regime, but because they are carefully and deliberately not collected in the first place. The Office for National Statistics is good at its job, and is supposedly independent, but they’re not going to deliberately set out to collect data that may embarrass the regime – or if they do, they won’t necessarily publish them. So the GERS figures, for example, are correct as far as they go – but they don’t go very far, are mainly based on estimates because the actual data is not collected or known, and of course they say nothing useful about the fiscal position of an independent Scotland that isn’t paying through the nose for services billed for at arbitrary rates and not necessarily delivered in any way that suits us, including services we don’t want, don’t need, and don’t use, such as Trident, Hinkley Point and the Thames Tideway megasewer.

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        1. You are being a bit unfair on Switzerland and Austria, there, eddjasfreeman, as they both largely exist in the vertical plane.
          Flatten the Alps, and they would be huge!
          Of course, flattening the Grampians would also increase Scotland’s land area, but not to the same extent.

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    1. Flattening the Grampians?

      I wish you’d flattened some of the damned Sidlaws I was walking in this afternoon.

      Jeez, it was hard work!

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      1. The reason the Sidlaws are becoming more and more difficult to climb, Tris, is that the Earth’s gravity is increasing with every passing year. All those egghead brainiac boffins should be investigating that, not wasting their time on astrology, astronomy and unclear physics!

        I seem to hear snorts of disbelief and a rolling of eyes from the peanut gallery. Just for that, I won’t tell you any of my quark jokes. I’ll tell Tris by PM, though, if he wants, as he’s far too mature, polite and respectful to engage in such jejune barracking and Tory backbench howler monkey behaviour.

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        1. I’m glad that you recognise my ‘manières de grande classe’, Ed.

          I thought it might though, have been because I was getting older with every passing year…

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          1. Pish and tush, Tris, pish and tush! Pshaw, even! It’s the steadily increasing force of gravity. It is not unrelated to the phenomenon whereby wardrobes shrink the clothes stored in them.

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          1. Well, there’s this strange quark walks into a quark bar, sits on a bar stool, turns to the quark on the next bar stool and says “Hello, I’m strange”. To which the other quark replies “Charmed, I’m sure”.

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