75 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. Pic 2 is repeated as Pic 10. I think it is a Stearman biplane. No idea what the oversize parrot means.

    Pic 8 looks like a Hillman Imp, but I may be wrong.
    Pic 9: Mmm! I can relate to sweets in bottles!
    Pic 11: Terry Thomas
    Pic 12: Debbie Harry ??? No idea who the blokes are.
    Pic 13: A Lycoming radial. My first flight was in a Piper Super Cub, probably powered by a Lycoming.

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  3. Pic 1 – it’s a moped! Mobylette? –
    Pic 3 – Ray Davies of the Kinks.
    Pic 7 – Hillman Imp Californian? Britain’s duffest motors.
    Pic 10 – The execrable Terry Thomas.
    Pic 12 – Blondie with lead singer, the lovely Deborah Harry.
    Pic 15 – King Faroukh I of Egypt – a joke in his own lifetime.
    Pic 16 – Centres for record Turntables.

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    1. Re Ray Davies and the Kinks: there is a permanent exhibition about them in the Clissold Arms pub in Muswell Hill. It is where they played their early gigs. They were Muswell Hill lads and other local lads like, Rod Stewart, did occasional sessions with them. One of their first albums or EPs was called Muswell Hillbillies. Ray Davies still lives near Muswell Hill in Highgate.

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      1. They wrote some good stuff. Waterloo Sunset, Tired of Waiting, All day and all of the Night.

        Petula had some of the songs translated into French. I recall that “Well Respected Man” became “Un Jeune Homme Bien” with rather amusing lyrics if an utterly ridiculous video.

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  4. I don’t know about the bus in pic 17, but that looks like St. Enoch Square in Glasgow. It’s changed a lot. I’m not sure I’ve got it the right way round, but here’s what it looks like today from Google Street Maps: https://is.gd/VAiQ5e.

    I forget what that ugly great building in the background on the right of the original pic was but I never liked it: it made the streets surrounding it feel very claustrophobic.

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    1. The bus is another Lowland Motorways vehicle!
      I think (based on the identical looking sister vehicle JJF 605) that it is a rebodied 1935 (!) AEC Regal, new to Smith of Wigan and rebodied in 1953 by Plaxton. It would have passed to SMT in 1958 with the rest of the Lowland fleet.

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    3. Ed, I remember (just) the ugly building. It was a very dark sandstone and was likely offices but the shop on the ground floor was Timothy White’s the Chemist, on Argyle Street. Arnott & Simpson’s was on the left-hand side just behind the subway building.

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      1. Definitely St Enoch Square. The ugly building I thought was Boots, but, I had forgotten Timothy White’s had a lot of branches in Glasgow at one time. Boots was maybe at the corner of Renfield St and Argyle St. You are right about Arnott’s, but did the building not go on fire in the late 50’s. It was rebuilt as an Arnott’s.

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  5. That knitted waistcoat! Brilliant.
    No15, Putin’s granddad? Vlad somebody.
    no8, Special edition, Hillman Imp?
    no7, Carstairs?
    Great pic of Debbie Harry and her band.
    No20, that sky looks ominous, still the car looks sturdy! Sturdy doesn’t come cheap, even these days, can hardly move for those massive, and getting bigger, SUV’s in Edinburgh right now. Dangerous buggers, biggest polluters as well into the bargain.
    Anyway, bet the guy was glad of a day off!

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    1. LOL. King Farouk of Egypt.

      Not Carstairs. A good deal farther north.

      The trouble with the SUVs are that most of the people driving them, really can’t. And when they park carparks they invariable leave not enough room in adjacent bays.

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      1. My father was in Egypt for most of the Second World War and the soldiers used to sing, “King Faroukh, King Faroukh hang your knackers on a hook!”

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  6. Is that an Imp or a Singer Chamois ,badge engineered and slightly more luxurious variant ? Great hope of Scottish car industry, part of McMillan govt’s attempt to compensate for the run down of heavy industry. Had shots of them as a learner driver. Went OK for a time but rapidly developed problems. One which I experienced came from the convoluted gearchange linkage, which sometimes lost all coordination so one sat in traffic stirring metal porridge. But brings back pleasant memories, though not entirely for the driving.

    Ah, Debbie – started out as a raven haired folkie with Wind in the Willows. I may not have known Doris Day before she was a virgin, but I knew Debbie Harty before she was a blonde.

    The Cadillac ad reminds me of the story of how Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, on his first day in ministerial office allegedy held the driver’s door for his chauffeur.

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    3. Yes, I think it is a Chamois… leather seats!!!

      I don’t think any of the variants of that car were much use.

      James Douglas-Hamilton… Another Eton and Oxford Tory.

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    4. Ah Lord James. a friend who was a Principal Officer at St Andrews house told us stories of Lord James, He had minder whose sole job was to get him to where he should be, he (the minder) was was seen crying and downing a large dram and saying “i’m going nuts”, it was agreed that he had the hardest job in the Scottish Office.

      On one occasion lord James was missing, he should have been at a meeting with COSLA or something but wasn’t, It turned out that he had asked a councillor if he would like a cup of tea, Lord James being a gentleman then went to make him one.

      At that time we lived in his constituency my wife was proud that that was the only time she ever put a mark on a ballot next to a Tory . It was a “Hangman”.

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      1. Ha ha ha ha ha.

        I presume this was a constituency where they’d have voted Tory even if the Tories had put up a lump of lard…

        Like they do in Rayleigh and Wickford!

        His Lordiness sounds like a typical aristo.

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        1. We were living in Rose Street which then was part of West Edinburgh. Constituency.

          On another occasion he was in a car with the PM , when he asked the driver to stop at a shop to pick up his wife’s dress as he’d forgotten to do it earlier.

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  7. #4 “A bleak and desolate place”. With industrial buildings so I’ll discount Cpl Fraser’s Barra. Could it be South Georgia?

    #5 Tower of London? But I’m not sure how they could have got planning permission for that warehouse in the background.

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    1. ArtyHetty: ” . . . no.7, Carstairs?”
      Funnily enough, the first thing that came to my mind was Larbert.
      And the second, Cultibraggan.
      No doubt some muinginite will put us right.

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        1. Got it, Andi. Would you believe that I found a book at a junk market in a neighbouring Bulgarian village – Lord of the Isles, that tells the whole sad sorry of Leverhulme’s doomed attempts to revitalise the Lewis economy. It was published in 1960 and written by Nigel Nicolson. It was among a job lot of books and totally unrelated to the rest. Must have come from another expat at some time, so I can’t be the first teuchter to live here.

          The pictures show the village of Leverburgh in 1934, with the new piers to land fish, canning and curing sheds, and new housing. The close-up shot shows the barracks built in 1925 for workers on the project. Leverlhulme spent millions on his vision for the island its people, but the caption to the 1934 picture says that “Even by then, many of the structures ha disappeared.”

          Today, I think the name Levernurgh is about all that remains as a reminder of LordLeverhulm’ efforts to make Lewis the capital of the world’s fishing industry. He set up a huge vertically-integrated business, owning and managing every link in the supply chain from catching the fish to the High Street retailers that sold them.

          I remember the MacFisheries shops from my own time, but until now had not realised they were survivors of Leverhulme’s Lewis enterprise. In two years in the early 1920s, the chain had from scratch become Britain’s biggest fishmonger, with 800 shops supplying virtually every corner of the country! Lord of the Isles is a totally engrossing story of courage and vision, petty politics, uncompromising hard-headedness, and wasted wealth and opportunity. At least the book has again found a good – and appreciative – home.

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          1. I dimly recall reading also that Leverburgh was a difficult harbour and unsuitable for major development. On my one trip over from Berneray, got impression that ferry having to counter fierce sideways thrust on berthing and had to hold motor bike against it. Don’t think problem was purely a particular state of the tide. But I only have superficial knowledge of such matters.

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          2. MacFisheries had a shop in Howard St, quite close to where the Lowland bus in pic 16 is parked. My mother was the cook (women weren’t allowed to be called chefs) in MacSorley’s restaurant in Jamaica St and she got the seafood from MacFisheries.

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    3. Nope. John will tell you where is is…

      Ah yes. It does look like the Tower of London. Truth is, I put the picture up for the pram.

      You don’t see many like that!

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  8. No 6 is the junction of Skene Street and Rosemount Viaduct. Central Library would be behind the photographer.
    The tram lines have gone and the road looks recently resurfaced – so probably late 1950’s?

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    1. Would have been improved by inclusion of a bus – perhaps a 23 on its way o Mastrick? – but some nice vehicle history nevertheless. Notably the Shelvoke-Drewry ‘ash cart’ heading into Skene Street.
      Also the ‘dinky-like’ cars, a nice selection of different generations of Ford Popular’s all heading east-bound and a new-ish Austin Cambridge exiting Skene Street.

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          1. I should bloomin’ well think so!

            However the better view looks in the opposite direction, towards “Education, Salvation and Damnation”

            i.e. the Central Library, St Mark’s Church and His Majesty’s Theatre on Rosemount Viaduct.

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      3. Yes Roddy, looks like an A55 Farina Cambridge, which came out in 1959. This is the newest vehicle in the shot, which helps with dating. An old Mk VII Minx on the left next to the Bedford S-type lorry. A sit-up-and-beg Anglia, Ford Squire and what looks like a Standard 10 in convoy on the near side. The star of the scene is the round-top midden motor, from the time that bins were lifted and dumped directly into the back. No wheely-bins in those days… hard to see from the rear, but the commonest I remember were Karrier Gamecocks. Note the opening back doors, to allow the tipping body to empty the contents at the dump.

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        1. “The star of the scene is the round-top midden motor..”
          Agreed, pity not a better view; usually referred to locally as ash-carts
          Aberdeen at the time had a fleet of these, identifiable by the distinctive cab.

          and

          coloured a sort of deep red and cream.

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          1. Those bring back memories, Roddy.

            I have to confess that I only found out in the last few years that “scaffies” was derived from “scavengers”. It’s obvious when you know it but I just grew up thinking scaffies was Doric for dustmen. Just like loons and quines for boys and girls. They were the words and were not derived from anything.

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            1. Funny you should say that!
              As I posted the above I was reminded of the 2-wheeled barrows the ‘street sweepers’ (i.e. scaffies) used to walk the streets with, armed with a brush and pan, and I wondered about the origin of the word, was it Doric slang???
              Obvious once it’s explained.👍

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          2. Thanks for the photos Roddy. Yes, the ash-cart in the street scene is an S&D as you say. The square cab is quite distinctive. The ones in my neck of the woods were Karriers but never looked like these. We called them midden-motors and the operatives midden-men – a term of endearment in our own way…

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  10. Why were Blondie called Blondie? In the pursuit of truth, I have studied many, many photos of Debbie Harry and I still have no answer. I fear I shall be looking at many more photos of Debbie Harry purely to solve this damned puzzle.

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      1. Hi… tell me about it. LOl

        No, I best refer you to the answer John (whose pic it is) gave.

        “The pictures show the village of Leverburgh in 1934, with the new piers to land fish, canning and curing sheds, and new housing. The close-up shot shows the barracks built in 1925 for workers on the project. Leverlhulme spent millions on his vision for the island its people, but the caption to the 1934 picture says that “Even by then, many of the structures ha disappeared.”

        “Today, I think the name Levernurgh is about all that remains as a reminder of LordLeverhulm’ efforts to make Lewis the capital of the world’s fishing industry. He set up a huge vertically-integrated business, owning and managing every link in the supply chain from catching the fish to the High Street retailers that sold them.”

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  13. Pic 14 – it’s been annoying me all day. I thought – Dundee? No. Aberdeen? No. Perth? No. I knew it wasn’t Glesca or Embra, so where else? Stirling? No. Inverness – YES! I can relax now and wait for Soppy Sunday🤪

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    1. That must be one of the smallest cinemas in the world. How big was the screen? Some people will have bigger TVs now. Or was it just a front where you bought the tickets and the actual cinema was up a nearby back street?

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  14. OT. This should be of deep concern.

    Remembering that Rees Mogg is no longer some right-wing fringe loonie from the 18th century.

    He’s a bloody cabinet minister.

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