120 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. Difficult. I’m not sure about any of them, hence the question marks.

    Pic 1: Dukes of Hazzard ???

    Pic 8: Choppers ???

    Pic 9: Lots of Sam Brownes. Somebody’s funeral. De Valera ???

    Pic 12: Victoria and Albert. But who are the actors ???

    Honest, I didn’t check on Google.

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    2. Wonder how long it took them to work through all these cars on the Dukes of Hazzard – and why they didn’t appear to need as many “stunt doubles” for the police cars since it was Boss Hogg’s poodle policeman who came to grief most often. (I only saw it because my children loved it, honest………)

      Take it no 20 is Paisley. Is that a young Judi Dench ? And a young Bowie ?

      Was at a funeral few years back when the eulogy touched on the deceased’s well known caution in financial matters and exemplified it by claiming that Mrs X was the last woman in the city to have a twin tub washing machine.

      All I have time for before turning in – will be back on the job tomorrow !

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      1. Cairnallochy, we must be generations apart.
        I only saw Dukes of Hazzard because my father watched it.
        Judi Dench. That was the name I was looking for.
        I thought Pic 20 was Paisley, too.
        No doubt, somebody will tell us the street name and year.
        Obviously, before the Erskine Bridge was built.

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        1. “. . . last woman . . . to have a twin tub washing machine.”

          We were the last house in our street to get colour television.

          It made watching Pot Black quite a challenge.

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          1. Remember the commentator who told viewers, “He’s snookered on the brown, and for those of you watching in black and white, that’s the one behind the blue.” Not as daft as it sounds, if you know where snooker balls are placed. The blue was where it should be on the centre spot.

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              1. I’ll bow to your superior knowledge, Alex. I was long gone from Scotland and the UK by the time of Pot Black and no telly to be had in darkest Africa. Obviously never heard the comment in person, but I’ve come across it often in collections of Private Eye’s regular ‘Coleman Balls’ feature on commentator slip-ups. Named after David Coleman who was famous for such things, as well as his 1966 “They think it’s all over… well, it’s all over now.”

                Private Eye has now changed the title to ‘Commentator Balls’, probably because Coleman would no longer mean anything to modern readers. Either that or as a mark of respect after his death.

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      2. I also think that is a young David Bowie. It looks like a photo that was used in the BBC documentary about pre-fame David Bowie.

        Everything started going wrong after David Bowie died.

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    1. Marcia……How did the twin tubs work? I thought that British machines were combination washer-dryers, which does both operations in a single tub in a single machine.

      Unlike most American laundry arrangements which use two separate appliances (an automatic washing machine and a separate dryer which usually sit side by side.)

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      1. Danny. I had a twin tub back in the day. The dirty clothes went in one side with water and powder and it washed the clothes. You then had to move the wet soapy clothes over to the other side for rinsing and spinning. They weren’t plumbed in, they came with rubber hoses, one which attached to the kitchen taps and you filled the machine from there, and another which was used to empty the water to go down the kitchen sink drain. You then hung the washing on a line outside or a pulley inside to dry.
        I ended up taking mine to Tanzania. My first “housegirl” – Dolis (not sure of spelling as I never saw her name written down) – was a lovely woman who was maybe in her 40s, loved that machine.

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        1. Tatu…..That’s interesting! So I guess that the combination washer-dryers do the spin cycle in the wash tub, and then switch to the dry function, also in the same tub. I have friends who live in a small New York City apartment who have a single-unit combination washer-dryer.

          Before the advent of individual automatic washers and dryers here, people commonly had a single tub electric washer that used a mechanical ringer to squeeze out the suds and the rinse water. Then they would dry the clothes outside on a clothesline as you described.

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        2. I remember twin-tub washing machines very well. Pretty effective, and you had a lot more control over the process than with an automatic, naturally enough. And one load could be washing while you were spinning and rinsing the rest.

          Tatu, your house girl would almost certainly been Doris. In many of the languages around there, L and R are variants of the same phoneme, and which one you use depends on the sounds which surround it. Another one of those would be Japanese.

          It’s not that bizarre: in English, the P sounds in pot and spot are different: try saying them in front of a candle flame. However, we don’t hear them as such, though the difference is significant in some languages, though I can’t think of one offhand – I used to know that sort of thing. Actually, Scottish English and RP English are rather full of examples where the one makes differences that the other doesn’t hear (e.g., the vowels / vowels + R in full and fool, earth and bird).

          One of my guys in Kenya was a Kikuyu who hailed from Mwea district below Mount Kenya, where they grow rice using irrigation water from the mountain – the glaciers on it may be gone soon, which will be seriously bad in all sorts of ways. I used to pass by there quite regularly and always took the opportunity to buy rice for the whole household.

          Anyway, Fred first introduced himself to me as follows: “My name is Fledelick and I glow Basmat lice”. He had a brother, a large fellow who wore capacious suits in whose many inside pockets he stored remarkable numbers of individual plastic bottles of Konyagi (for those as don’t know already, Konyagi is a local spirituous liquor; here’s an article on it with a lovely picture of a European person performing a taste test: https://archive.vn/XxtjG). Said brother’s name was Roland, pronounced Lorand. Their parents must have been either mad, or had a seriously weird sense of humour.

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        3. That is how they worked. The machine we had used to shake quite a bit during the initial rinsing stage until all the clothes were in the right place. You had to keep an eye on the water coming out from the rinsing and when no more water came out you stopped the machine..

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    2. Correct, Marcia. Gandhi was shot by a political assassin in New Delhi on 30 January, 1948. My caption reads: “He died within half an hour, causing grief and consternation among his followers and admirers across the world. Millions lined the five-mile funeral route. His body, draped with the Indian flag, was drawn by an Army truck, by detachments of the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force. Circling planes dropped flowers. The picture shows mourners round the funeral pyre beside the Jumna.”

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    3. Seems a plummy accent was mandatory for voice-overs in these days, much like Beeb news readers. Did advertisers think that such ‘superior’ accents added the same an air of superiority to their products? Surely there were enough actors around with accents more familiar to their target customers? Still, listening to them now makes great entertainment. Note the constant repetition of Persil so the brand name gets stuck in the listener’s memory, helping them to ask for it when next out to get the messages.

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      1. I think the BBC had the idea that with so many accents from Kernow to Newcastle passing Birmingham, not to mention the Celtic ones, the only thing that could be properly understood all across the islands, on the radio, was what became known as BBC English. That is to say RP… or posh!

        I used to enjoy watching old British films and by and large they had two accents in them.

        For anyone who was anyone, they spoke with a posh southern English accent. And servants, gardeners and train drivers spoke with a sort of cockney accent.

        I don’t think there were many exceptions in the days of radio and into the early days of tv. Everyone spoke with what my gran would have called “bulls in their mooth”… whatever that was.

        Rank actually had a place where people learned the right way to behave and to talk if they wanted to work in films.

        https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p059083r/tuesday-documentary-the-rank-charm-school

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        1. Actually ‘Bools in the mooth’ as in balls, gobstoppers that made enunciation limited. Try talking with stiff upper lip and restricted mouth movement and you’ll soon get the idea.

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    4. Was it good for your hands?

      Did it get stuff whiter?

      Well, Munguin put you on a diet this week, but as he is presently partaking of elevenses, here you are:

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  4. Pic 1 – Yes, lots of General Lee ‘doubles’ from the Dukes of Hazzard, but more importantly they’re 1969 Dodge Chargers, to my mind the best of the American muscle cars.
    Pic 3 – Craigellachie Bridge on Speyside by Thomas Telford – seen it often, never crossed it – I must remedy that.
    Pic 5 – Presumably meant to show the relative sizes of RMS Titanic and one of today’s totally forgettable cruise ships.
    Pic 7 – Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece, Glasgow School of Art, a building of world architectural importance. As I said once, “Glasgow loved it so much they burned it down twice.”
    Pic 18 – Old 60103, Flying Scotsman – “a thing of beauty and a joy forever.”
    Pic 20 Is indeed Paisley, the lantern tower that of the Thomas Coats Memorial Church, so likely High Street in the 1950s, going by the cars and clobber.

    I hope someone can say where Pic 19 is because I should know and it’s annoying me that I can’t place it.

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    1. Well done Andi for getting Craigellachie Bridge. I think most of us are more familiar with this photo

      I’d never seen it until a few months back when I stopped for a look.

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        1. Yes. Ruabon is a long way from the sea. It must have been a major logistics problem to get the ironwork to the sea then around the coast (the Caledonian Canal wasn’t finished) and then presumably by barge up the Spey. You have to hand to Telford he was a heroic engineer.

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    2. No 19.
      Don’t know for sure but looks a lot like Ayr , with the tide in.
      Answers on a post card.
      Danny, the washer/dryers are not as useful as the separate machines, I have one and the combined cycle time of wash then dry can take a couple of hours for a normal wash/dry. You can’t use the machine to wash the next load until the dry has finished.
      For me though it’s fine, a single wash/dry of a small load is what I use it for, family wash would be best done with all washed and dry outside if the weather is fine.
      Downside is the method of drying, condensing drying isn’t very energy efficient as you dump heat into the waste water and down the drain. The dryer heating elements are a suspect in fires when covered with fibres from the clothes.

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      1. Dave, I thought Ayr too but I was there for a holiday as a wee fella and changed my mind. I thought Largs but there’s no steeple in the background. I know it isn’t Prestwick or Troon, so it may just be Saltcoats and at the Glesca Ferr judging by the crowds.

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        1. Andi,
          Likely to be Ardrossan with the church tower on the left. The South Beach.
          Lots of lovely sandy bays all the way up the coast, Ayr to Largs.

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      2. Dave,

        That agrees with what my friends tell me who have a washer-dryer combo in their small NY City apartment. Namely, that it takes a really long time to do a load of clothes, compared with separate washer and dryer appliances.

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  6. Andi……The story of The Flying Scotsman. (Number 60103 after 1948)

    Built in 1923 at Doncaster Works, costing £7,944
    Weight: 97 tonnes
    Length: 70ft
    Officially the first locomotive to reach 100mph, and the first to circumnavigate the globe
    Holds the world record for a non-stop run in a steam locomotive, set in 1989 with a 442-mile trip

    http://historyasm.blogspot.com/2016/01/why-is-flying-scotsman-so-famous.html

    https://www.railwaymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/history-flying-scotsman

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A3_4472_Flying_Scotsman

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    1. Danny, I’ve been lucky enough over the years to have seen Flying Scotsman in steam, purely by chance, but never running which I’d love to have done. Pic 18 shows her in her double chimney and smoke deflectors mode in BR green and with BR number. She looks impressive like that but not as fine as she did with single chimney and no deflectors, preferably in LNER green and bearing her old number 4472.
      Thanks for the stuff about the UP Big Boys. I knew of them but only from some books I had when I was young. I’d love to have seen one for real. Certainly not elegant but as an expression of sheer power absolutely superb.
      I’d never heard the Great Big Rollin’ Railroad song before and I like it. It sits well with lots of the great American railroad songs – The Wabash Cannonball, City of New Orleans, The Orange Blossom Special, and so many others. It’s hard not to love a steam train – unless, I guess, if you had to hang out your laundry near the tracks 🙂

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      1. A story. It’s 1979, possibly 1980, ’81, perhaps.
        “The Flying Scotsman is cummin ower the brig,” says mate.
        “Let’s go tae the Hawes’n’watch it” says I.
        Bikes parked in the Hawes we wait… We wait.
        “Fancy a pint? ” Says I.
        “Aye”
        “Yeah”
        “Okay”
        Waiting on three pints of Norseman lager and a pint of Guinness later.
        “Ye missed it.”

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      2. Andi……Enjoyed your account of seeing Flying Scotsman in steam. Interesting about the color changes over the years. As for the UP ad song, I agree! What’s not to like about another great railroad song? 😉

        Yes, the Union Pacific Big Boys were not glamorous and not really built for speed. They were built to haul long heavy freight trains up the steep grades and high altitudes of the Rocky Mountains……notably, across the Wasatch range between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyoming, and across Sherman Hill west of Cheyenne. There’s a UP video on YouTube that features Big Boy.

        This article lists the 7 Big Boys that are still in existence and now on static display. No. 4014 had been on static display in California, when Union Pacific bought it and brought it back to Cheyenne to be rebuilt and returned to operation in 2019, for the 150th anniversary year of the transcontinental railroad. It traveled all around the country in 2019, but was taken out of operation for the 2020 season due to the pandemic. UP promises that 4014 will be back in its promotional steam program in 2021.

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

        In 1939, there was a film titled “Union Pacific.” It’s a fictionalized account of the building of the transcontinental railroad. I’ve never seen it, but it MUST be good since it was directed by Ceceil B. DeMille. 😉

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_(film)

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  7. On the steam locomotive theme, I encountered information on America’s Union Pacific Railroad and the UP 4014 Big Boy, one of the 4-8-8-4 steam locomotives built in the 1940’s to haul UP freight trains over the grades and high altitudes of the Wasatch Range between Ogden,Utah, and Green River, Wyoming, and across Sherman Hill between Cheyenne and Laramie. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 2019, Union Pacific, which built the tracks west of Council Bluffs/Omaha to Promontory Summit, Utah, UP 4014 was rebuilt by the Union Pacific Steam Shop & Roundhouse at Cheyenne, where UP’s fleet of historic steam locomotives is headquartered and maintained.

    The test train for the run over Sherman Hill included another historic UP steam locomotive and a diesel electric.

    The Union Pacific was created as the Union Pacific Rail Road on July 1, 1862, when Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. The track was constructed westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa (across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska,) to meet the Central Pacific Railroad line, which was constructed eastward from Sacramento, California. The combined Union Pacific–Central Pacific line became known as the First Transcontinental Railroad and later the Overland Route.

    Today, Interstate Highway I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie largely follows the original grade of the Overland Route of the Union Pacific across Sherman Hill through Cheyenne Pass. The original altitude of the Overland Route across the summit of Sherman Hill was over 8200 ft, but today I-80 climbs even higher, to 8,640 ft…….the highest elevation on all of I-80 between New York City and San Francisco. Driving west into Cheyenne Pass on I-80 to Laramie, you come to a tree that appears to grow out of a rock. The story is that the Union Pacific surveyors diverted the tracks slightly to bypass the Tree in the Rock, and that the firemen on the trains would stop to water it when they went by. The old tracks are long gone for WWII scrap metal, but I-80 now runs right by the tree along the grade of the Overland Route. Been by there a couple of times, but the tree, a species which may live 2,000 years, didn’t seem to need water.

    https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/03/tree-in-rock-in-wyoming.html

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    1. PS……The centennial of the transcontinental railroad was observed in 1969, and in the early 1970’s, the Union Pacific launched an ad campaign to celebrate the rich history of the company in a song and a series of TV commercials.

      Here’s one of the TV commercials and the lyrics to the song. The guy who wrote it worked for an ad agency in Omaha. It launched a show biz career.

      https://utahrails.net/up/rollin-rr.php

      GREAT BIG ROLLIN’ RAILROAD
      Lyrics: Bill Fries
      Music: Richard Proulx
      Arrangement: Bob Jenkins & Associates

      We’re a great big rollin’ railroad
      One that everybody knows
      We were born of gold and silver spikes
      A hundred years ago

      We’re a million miles of history
      A-shinin’ in the sun
      We’re the Union Pacific
      And our story’s just begun

      From the Great Plains of Nebraska
      To the California seas
      From the summits of the Rockies
      To the mighty redwood trees

      We’re a thousand wheels of freight train
      Hear the diesel engines power
      We’re the Union Pacific
      Doin’ ninety miles an hour

      Bound from Omaha to Portland
      Through Cheyenne and Laramie
      We’re a-headin’ west for Boise
      On the mainline to the sea

      ‘cross the flats at Salt Lake City
      On to Vegas and L.A.
      We’re the Union Pacific
      And we’ve got the right of way

      From the green fields of the prairies
      To the blue Pacific shores
      We deliver your great cargo
      And come rollin’ home for more

      On the backbone of our nation
      You can see us make the climb
      We’re the Union Pacific
      And we’re gonna be on time

      From the green fields of the prairies
      To the blue Pacific shores
      We deliver your great cargo
      And come rollin’ home for more

      On the backbone of our nation
      You can see us make the climb
      We’re the Union Pacific
      And we’re gonna be on time

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      1. That’s a good tune and it’s stuck in my head… exactly what a ad tune should do!

        I love how it says:

        We’re the Union Pacific
        And we’re gonna be on time

        A lesson trains in Britain could learn.

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        2. Tris…..And most importantly, “time” rhymed with “climb” in the last stanza. 😉

          Yes, it’ s catchy tune. By all accounts, when Bill Fries, the ad director of the Omaha advertising agency (who went on to Nashville and became C.W. McCall,) sang the song for the president of Union Pacific, he loved it, and asked Fries to sing it for him again and again.

          https://www.up.com/heritage/history/stories/historical/history-greatbig-rollin-rr-fries/index.htm

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._W._McCall

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                2. Don Don, Tris……..Here is Rubber Duck (C.W. McCall) lip syncing “Convoy” on a TV talk show in 1976. I guess the CB radio craze didn’t last long, but apparently it was a big deal among the cross-country truckers driving the Interstate highway system. “Shakey Town” might be San Francisco, but since he’s on “I One O”, that would be Interstate Highway I-10 out of Los Angeles and across Arizona (“Flag Town” would be Flagstaff,) then up I-44 through Tulsa, Oklahoma, to “Chi Town” Chicago…..and then on to the Jersey Shore (New Jersey and the NY City metro area.)

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                    1. Tris……Yes, “Shakey Town” would refer to any city in California……an entire state where the ground famously shakes….LOL. Highway I-10 places it in Los Angeles. I-80 would have placed it in San Francisco.

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  9. I should explain the dominoes. They’re hand-carved from whalebone or narwhal tusk, maybe walrus teeth. The box is made from the same materials, bound with engraved brass straps, hinges, and clasp, and inlaid on the top with brass ‘leaves’. The dominoes are of slightly varying thickness and sizes, with the spots counter-sunk inlays, most likely punched out of a thin sheet of the same metal.

    Serrated inserts form the centre-lines, slightly raised so that the pieces can spin when shuffling for the next ‘down’. The colours of the pieces vary from jet black to ivory white, some with brown or yellow streaks and discolouration, either through age or the shade of the original material. That’s what made me think of walrus teeth, as the box is fashioned from sections that are all a regular off-white, corresponding with bone or tusk. The inside and lid are lined with blue baize.

    All in all, a fine example of ‘scrimshaw’, the old-time sailors’ art and hobby of carving and engraving whalebone. No idea of age but most likely 19th century when sailing ships were in their hey-day. Possibly a valuable antique, but picked up a couple of weeks at the monthly market in a neighbouring village. Price? All of five leva – about £2.50! As a collector of maritime books and artefacts, a rare and delightful find.

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    2. Hi, John. Thanks for explaining “scrimshaw”.
      I have just read a paperback where one of the characters was called Scrimshaw.
      I knew it meant something, but was too lazy to look it up.
      Serendipitous.
      Now, how about Pic 9? Is it Eamon de Valera atop the 25-pounder?

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  10. Ma had a twin tub like the picture.

    Before that there was a machine washtub only – no spin cycle. There was a wringer which I vaguely remember as being attached. The clothes were lifted out with a pair of wooden tongs, held up until the water stopped dripping, then arranged/folded before being maneuvered into the wringer. Items with buttons required particular care. The buttons could jam the wringer, be broken by it or worst of all torn off.

    We thought it was a great step up when we were able to just transfer the clothes from the washtub to the spin-dryer using the wooden tongs.

    I do remember we sometimes used the water twice. Really grimy items were sort-of pre-washed in the dirty water of a previous load.

    In both cases they were then hung out to dry or put on the pulley a bit like this one
    https://lakelandcamel.scene7.com/is/image/LakelandCamel/8849_1?$325$

    The good old days!!!

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      1. My gran had a pulley like that as well. It hung in the scullery.

        How unhealthy was that?

        And John, come on, tell us all about Pic 9.

        Was it Eamon de Valera on top of the 25-pounder?

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        2. DonDon, we had a pulley in the kitchen of our flat too. I guess the heat from the cooker helped dry the clothes but I sometimes thought I could detect a faint odour of mince and onions from some items 🙂

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        3. I well remember the pulley in the kitchen. My favourite trick as a kid was to lower the pulley, put the cat on it, and haul it back to the ceiling. Felix never seemed to mind, but I was always risking a clout in the lug if still around when Ma came to the rescue.

          The other funeral is of Field-Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts in Pretoria, 1950. Smuts died at the age of 80. The caption describes him as: “A great South African and Empire statesman, he had been twice prime minister of South Africa – from 1919 to1924 and from 1939 to 1948.

          “He was given a state funeral with full military honours. The picture shows the cortege passing through the streets of Pretoria. As a statesman, soldier, and philosopher he enjoyed a unique reputation throughout the entire English-speaking world.”

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    2. I had a pulley when I lived in Stirling.
      I remember I used to go swimming with my dad and sisters back in the late 60s to Dunblane Hydro and there was a mangle in the corner to put your swimming costume through before going home

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        3. Never managed Dunblane but I do have Peebles Hydro on my record sheet. When I joined the Daily Express in Glasgow in the 60s I could not start on the nominated date as I had a series of bassist gigs lined up. That was like telling the Pope that you were unable to take up the cardinalship till you were done playing for Rangers.

          I’m surprised I wasn’t told to bugger off there and then. Instead I got a severe bollocking and was told that I’d be out on my ear if I was ever found to be playing in a band. Was I journalist or a musician? I got paid enough not to need the money, and if I worked as hard as expected, I’d be too knackered to even think about a double-bass.

          The story got around the newsroom and I got a call from a guy called George Crockett who was a sub-editor on the sister paper, the Evening Citizen. He was also a drummer and had a band called the Swing Wing. He had a gig at Peebles on Friday and needed a bassist. Could I fill in? I was convinced this was a set-up by the Express news editor, and told him to bugger off, I’m not that daft to fall for it.

          George said, “No. This is genuine. Let’s go for a pint and I’ll you more.”
          George convinced me he was on the level and so it came to pass. He even changed my name to Iain Donaldson in his weekly music column in the Citizen. No one knew any better and Iain Donaldson became my alter ego musician during my years on the Express, adding a nice wee supplement to my wages.

          I doubt if many – or any – of the heid yins on the news desk are still still alive, so it’s now safe to tell the story. And we shared the same surname for a bit, DonDon, even if they mean the same thing.

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            1. Not quite. Only where they’d be playing and what the lineup would be. Part of the ‘what’s on’ guide for readers listing venues and bands for readers looking for somewhere to go at the weekend. No punting. Same treatment for all.

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          3. John, I don’t want to open any wounds here, but… does your gut wrench when you see the propaganda shite that the DE churns out now?
            In the Eighties I had mates (and a brother in law) that worked for the Scotsman; I used to read it then…

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            1. No comparison. Then Beaverbrook Newspapers and a respectable broadsheet. Tory yes, but never forced down your throat. Biggest selling daily in Scotland – and in numbers that have never been matched since. I was also editing the Highland Nationalist at the time and that was never an issue. Unlike music! Hard-arsed reporting was all that mattered and if you could do that there were never any problems. No editorial direction or influence. Just file god stories and clean copy and you’ll be fine.

              I did have the distinction of earning a D-Notice before I joined the Express. I was planning to run a front page in the Nationalist about nuclear subs – ‘Death on your doorstep’ – but the printer got scared and tipped off the local Tory MP. I ran the front page half blank with ÇENSORED! across it and a bland para about the ban.

              Of course the silly buggers didn’t realise it would make a far bigger splash once the national dailies saw that – and I made sure they did – instead of appearing in the barely noticeable 5,00 a month HN circulation. Didn’t do me any harm at all in joining the Express. If anything, stood me in good stead as an enterprising young hack.

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            2. The Express has changed a lot, I reckon. It’s become a joke now. I mean even if you were staunchly unionist you’d still think the Express was a complete joke.

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              1. Very true, Tris, and I didn’t really answer Conan’s point correctly. Yes, it is gut-wrenching – and embarrassing. These days I tend to avoid admitting to having been an Express staffer as the current generation have no idea what a great newspaper it used to be. At the time it was a badge of honour that I was very proud to claim. Now if I say I was on the Express, people react with scorn and disbelief, giving the impression that they’d thought I was semi-intelligent and beyond that kind of thing. At least admitting to having been editor of Men’s Style (very briefly) gets a laugh.

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    3. Brenda…….I’ve never seen that indoor drying arrangement, or of it being called a “pulley.” My family were farm people who strung clotheslines outdoors between trees or outbuildings, like barns and brooder houses (where chickens lived.) My great-grandmother had an electric agitator washer with a wringer that could pivot around between the washer and adjacent rinse tubs. You also had to watch your fingers when working with the wringer I was told.

      When I saw the word “pulley”, it made me think of the outdoor clotheslines that were strung over pulleys that were mounted between neighboring tenements in big cities. New York City’s pulley mounted clotheslines became iconic in tenement neighborhoods, and were a prominent subject in New York City’s “Ashcan School” of art in the early 20th century.

      https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2019/11/18/what-tenement-clotheslines-said-about-new-york/

      Ashcan School Art:

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      1. They used to have that kind of thing in Scotland’s tenements too, Danny. A circle of rope on runners. You leant out a window and pegged something on the bottom rope then pulled the line and the item you had pegged moved out leaving a space for something else… and so on. I think they were called “lines” here.

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        1. Tris…….Seems like a very sensible clothes drying arrangement for people who live in flats in closely situated tenement buildings. I’d never seen drying racks that hang down from the ceiling.

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          1. It seems that they’re enjoying a revival among the ecosensitive. Here’s one called “Hanging Drying Rack: Economical and eco-friendly way of drying laundry”:

            I expect you have to pay quite a lot extra for the decorative young gentleman to raise it for you, though.

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            1. Ed…..I’ve never seen anything like that. I have talked to people who used clotheslines, but the lines were outdoors. Not much fun in the winter I would think.

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  15. I’ve just remembered that I used to visit an eco-style house with a pulley in the south facing glass porch outside the living room. The porch went all the way to the eaves of the upper floor. There was a pulley that lowered all the way down on a very long rope.
    Guests could sit underneath and be unaware of the laundry overhead unless they looked up. I wonder if it is still there. Must make a point of checking when Covid19 restrictions allow me to travel more.

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    1. My granny would have been lost without here, but I reckon its one thing to ahve them in a porch, and another in a kitchen.

      In fairness, I don;t think my gran ever fired anything and she didn’t smoke… nor did my grandad when he was alive, but I can imagine her next door neighbour who liked fry-ups and smoked like a lum.

      Ewwww.

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  17. Late to the party, again, but AOY enjoyable and entertaining as usual though.
    Not surprised at the interest in twin tubs or pulleys, a mildly intriguing and quickly superseded episode in the development of our household laundry systems.
    I liked the twintub’s simplicity, some had a timer, some had a built in heater. The heater was possibly Mogabee’s bathtime solution. The timer? clockwork that switched the thing off when the time was up. No annoying beeping.
    Never worked out the peripheral speed of the drum of a twintub compared to the modern front loader, with the bigger diameter drum. Some of the twintubs spin at 10 to 12k rpm.
    I found out quite a bit about twintubs during a period of marital dispute. She left, probably not entirely to do with a “smart” washmachine taking the hump when I tried to outsmart it, spiders and sparrows shitting on the washing on the pulley, in the byre, but possibly a deciding factor.
    There are twintub forums online. All membership appeared to be male and me not being very streetwise was wondering if twintub was code for something other than laundry.
    Life reaffirmed and it is not yet SS.

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    1. LOL Alan.

      What an interesting notion that “twintub” means something other than…erm twintub. However, a quick reference to Mr Google suggested that there was no connection with anything that didn’t involve laundry. Sorry to disappoint.

      I did notice that someone was selling on for £30 on Ebay.
      https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/323792776661?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=323792776661&targetid=938148485256&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9046870&poi=&campaignid=10199634949&mkgroupid=101938390717&rlsatarget=pla-938148485256&abcId=1145987&merchantid=9513514&gclid=CjwKCAjw-5v7BRAmEiwAJ3DpuG5gHhNnPcgnmGjjLKBzjVjvYnoZXyJhXkGRvh8cdvy5VHdGtWT8bBoCtuUQAvD_BwE

      Nice condition, eh?

      Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed it… but SS has been and gone and now we’re on Laughs…

      Keep up, Alan!

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