72 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. Hi, tris. Lots of techie stuff this week. Not my forte. But:

    Pic 7: Mountbatten and Philip. What a lot of gongs.

    Pic 11: Laurel and Hardy. The regimental badge appears to be Black Watch.

    Pic 13: Flowerpot Men and Weed.

    Pic 16: Fry’s Turkish Delight. Still a favourite of mine to this day.

    Pic 20: Post Beeching. But where exactly?

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  2. Pic 6 – The Lighthouse, Glasgow, originally the Glasgow Herald Building by Charles Rennie Mackintosh – well worth a visit if ye’re in Glesca. Pic 7 – L – Lord Louis Mountbatten, R – Chookie Embra – nuff said. Pic 10 – Emergency Ward 10?- ITV medical soap. Pic 13 – Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men, BBC ‘Watch with Mother’ regulars, along with andy Pandy, Rag, Tag & Bobtail, The Woodentops and Muffin the Mule. We didn’t have a telly but I saw them when I was in hospital as a kid with Scarlet Fever. All Our Yesterdays, indeed!

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      1. Pic10 Emergency Ward 10 with Jill Browne as the nurse and Charles Tingwell at the back. He was in every other thing you saw on TV or film from the 50s onwards, including the detective in the Miss Marple films and the farmer father of Carrot, the boy in Catweazle, to Neighbours.
        He was even in Homicide, described as the worst detective show on TV – worse even than the Jessica Fletcher vehicle, Murder To Watch.
        It was that bad…

        Pic18 looks like the interior of what could be a Mk2 Ford Zodiac. Note the column change and the chrome T-handle pull-lever sticking out from the dashboard. This is the handbrake, to allow the fitting of the bench seat in the unencumbered front of the car.
        Some makes used the conventional floor-mounted lever for the brake but fitted it to the right of the driver next to the door to clear the space in the centre.
        No clutch pedal, so it looks like an automatic, suggesting it could just be a right-hand drive Yank tank.
        Lovely machine, with the long strip speedo and…chrome horn ring.
        When Autocar magazine tested the first Toyota Corolla imported into the UK in the late 1960s, the testers found it strange that the car didn’t have indicators and reverted to using hand-signals.
        It was only when the car was handed back to the importers that they discovered that they were operated by holding the steering wheel steady and turning the horn ring either clockwise or anticlockwise by 15 degrees to engage indicators to the right or left respectively.
        Sadly, the last Toyota I drove seemed to be missing this feature…

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        1. Just looked up Jill Browne. She died on 5th Dec, 1991 at the age of 54. She must have been young when she was in that show.

          That was a novel way of indicating.

          I remember my dad, who liked old cars, particularly old Jaguars and had quite a collection of them, had a few that had old fashioned trafficators (is that the right word)

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          1. My Riley 2.6, a BMC derivative of the old Pathfinder, had the RH gear shift but also retained the “memory” of the trafficators, in the bodywork. Was tempted at the end of the car’s working life to force the things out to see if they retained the rest of the trafficator arms in the housing.

            Two of the lads who shared a room in my Uni residence in 60’s St A just happened to be called Bill and Ben, thereby being christened the “honkbin men”. (Waste bins being known by that term due to their not uncommon use as receptacles for the consequences of student excess). Oh for the days when such cultural references resonated in student life…..

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          2. I remember Jill Browne as she was always on the chat shows of the time, like the Eamonn Andrews Show or Dee Time and she was still very young then.
            Trafficators is correct.
            We called them idiot arms for good reason.
            They stuck out about a hands width and had a non-blinking light inside so were easy to miss compared to indicators.
            Some the older cars had either no brake lights or just a single light in the centre of the boot – like something off a Xmas tree – and, combined with trafficators, when they braked to turn right it was a job not to run into the back of them.

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            1. Didn’t people also do hand signals back then?

              Hand out for right turn. Hand out and rotate for left turn and hand waving up and down for breaking?

              Must have been a nighmare!

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              1. Aye, that’s it!
                It used to be in the Highway Code once upon a time and I remember having to use hand signals for my motorbike test in 1967, most bikes still not having indicators at that time.
                Fortunately I missed having to do them in the car but they were still required for the test well into the mid-1960s.
                I never saw anyone using them otherwise, to my recollection…

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                1. It occurred to me that the ones for people in front would be hard to see on a sunny day, or at night… And if it was raining, or snowing, your hand would get cold putting them outside the window for the people behind.

                  And what if you ha d to signal both to people behind and in front. Argh!!

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        2. I once had a Riley 2.6, which had the gear lever in a cutaway of the front bench seat at the driver’s right. A few of my friends thought I had an automatic. Bench seat great for snogging – what do they do nowadays ?
          BTW, I thought the car pictured here looked like a Vauxhall Cresta.

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          1. Dave… can you come to the rescue and tell us what the car is…

            LOL. I dunno what they do when there’s a gear stick and brake in the way.

            Anyone?

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            1. Brings back happy memories !
              There is a removable panel lower left to give space for a radio – which had been removed from both my 2.6’s.
              The overdrive push/ pull lever was low down to the left – to disengage required a kick down of the accelerator on to a floor switch while pulling out the lever. On one occasion the accelerator jammed in the carpet at c 70, leaving a very nervous bend down to release the accelerator – fortunately on a straight stretch of dual carrageway. And fortunately it hadn’t hit the kick down switch… perhaps not the happiest memory.🤔

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          3. My first thought was of the Cresta but there’s no wrap-round windscreen of the classic PA model with the cutaway in the front door.
            No Vauxhall wyvern on the steering wheel boss either…
            The Ford pull-out brake handle had a square section tube and this one’s round.
            Can’t make out the badge on the wheel but I suspect it’s American.

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              1. So my first guess about the Zodiac was right after all…
                My thanks to Dave for that. 🙂
                His post wasn’t showing when I posted my piece.
                I should have been more certain as a Mk2 Consul was the first car I ever drove!

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    3. If you head north on Mitchell St from the Lighthouse, cross Gordon St and take the lane on the left a little way up West Nile St. the former Daily Record Building is still there. It was designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh. Because the lane is so narrow, it is difficult to get a full impression of its architectural splendour. It is worth a look. There is/used to be a cafe on the ground floor.

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    1. Don’t forget the little weed, who lived behind the flowerpot.
      We never saw the man who worked in the garden but Bill and Ben had to get back into hiding in their pots when he came back from his dinner…
      Ah…Watch with Mother, from back in my pre-school days in the mid-1950s.
      Picture Book was on Monday with Patricia Driscoll (who played Maid Marion in The Adventures of Robin Hood), a sort of Jackanory of its day: Andy Pandy was on Tuesday: Bill and Ben on Wednesday: Rag, Tag and Bobtail on Thursday and The Woodentops on Friday.
      I can’t listen to Sanny de Pfeffel Johnston speaking without thinking that he sounds just like Ben… or maybe Bill. Makes even less sense…
      Imagine sending your child to a private school @40+ grand P.A. and he comes out speaking like a string puppet…
      Apologies to string puppets everywhere.

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        1. He’d have been perfect in one of the flower pots, although clearly it would have to be the size of a skip and he would need to have smartened himself up a bit.

          Not to mention that he would have scared the petals off Little Weed!

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        1. I wonder where he got his money. He had three sons and they all went to Eton, I think. Presumably his daughter went somewhere expensive too…

          Then there was the Bullingdon, and heaven knows that’s not cheap.

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  4. 9 – must be Sarah Vaughan
    12 – Bedford K type panel van c.1952
    15 – Oh c’mon!!! I give up (but I could swear that’s the Bosphorus in the background 😉)
    20 – Comrie

    not normally my thing, but undisputably class!

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    2. Roddy, I can make out the name Büssing on the front of the front bus. A quick search tells that Büssing was a German firm of bus makers; they folded in 1971. They supplied buses to Turkey. Your guess at the Bosphorus seems spot on, so probably Istanbul?

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    3. Geee… I found a bus Roddy didn’t recognise. Munguin has just promoted me to …erm head factotum, which would be grand if only there were any junior factotums (or is it factota?) around the place.

      Istanbul.

      Sarah Vaughn, even with a cold is pretty formidable.

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      1. Yes, well I was homing in on Turkey when I got distracted listening to Sarah Vaughan tracks until it was way past my usual bedtime and at my time of life I tell you need every minute of beauty sleep (😂) so all things considered I thought “best let him win just this once so he can feel clever about it” BUT DON’T COUNT ON IT HAPPENING AGAIN!

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    4. Sarah (Sassy) Vaughan was noted for her very wide vibrato, matched only by that of Billy Eckstein. Their duet on “Passing Strangers” is famed as the meeting of the two “greatest wobbles” in music.

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  5. Pic 2:
    “Sarsaparilla, Nettles, Dandelion &c” seems problematic for a soft drink concoction.

    Sarsaparilla was available in the old west, and cowboy heroes in western movies (the good guys) are sometimes depicted ordering sarsaparilla at the bar in saloons. The bad guys would drink rot gut whiskey.

    I was thinking that Bob Hope ordered sarsaparilla in the Klondike saloon in “Road to Utopia.” Turns out it was lemonade.

    Wiki: “Classic U.S. sarsaparilla was not made from the extract of the sarsaparilla plant, a tropical vine distantly related to the lily. [American sarsaparilla] was originally made from a blend of birch oil and sassafras, the dried root bark of the sassafras tree.”
    “Safrole, a key component of sassafras, was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960.”

    Sassafras was once the “root” in root beer.

    https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/root-root-beer-sassafras

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    1. I’ve seen root beer here, but never tried it.

      I’m sure my gran told me about a shop in Dundee’s Hilltown that sold sarsaparilla, which was apparently very very popular.

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      1. The buildings and street layout don’t match Whitehall. My first thought was Trafalgar Square but that doesn’t match either. I lived in London for 10 years but I’m stumped.

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        1. It is Whitehall in 1919 but only a segment of the very large crowd that turned up. A lot of central London was redeveloped in the inter-war years and also by the German Airforce. I too lived in London also, but not then. It is from the first Armistice anniversary commemoration.

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          1. Whitehall in 1920 from 5:45 onwards.:

            “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giJlKBKzy-8”

            Still struggling to match the street layout with pic 19.

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  7. Number 8 – you would need an extension to fit the machine into your house. I assume this was for use by TV companies. Video of an ancient VCR,

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        1. Marcia……Very interesting videos! The early professional video recorders used 2 inch “quadruplex” open reel tape, which were used in television broadcasting into the 1970’s. Wiki: “The Ampex VRX-1000 became the world’s first commercially successful videotape recorder in 1956. It uses the 2″ quadruplex format, using two-inch (5.1 cm) tape. Because of its US$50,000 price (over $500,000 in 2021 dollars,) the Ampex VRX-1000 could be afforded only by the television networks and the largest individual stations.” The open reel quadruplex format was replaced for professional use in the 1970’s by the Type C VTR cassette format which uses one inch wide tape. (The “VHS” format for home use was a cassette that used 1/2 inch tape.)

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  8. Coming back to that Laurel & Hardy film, I remember one funny sequence when the kilties were marching in step along a road.

    All was going well until Stan got onto the wrong foot. Gradually, by sheer willpower he persuaded the soldiers around him that he was right and they were wrong, until the whole column were in step again — but all on the wrong foot.

    The colonel, or maybe sergeant-major, was played by James Finlayson.

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      1. Thanks marcia, that was the one.

        It is actually quite hard to march on the wrong foot, especially if there is music.

        Even if the music is just playing in my head, I sometimes have to do a little skip to get back on the right (left!) foot.

        I once watched an Austrian band counter-marching to lambada. That took some doing — proper lambada has five beats in the bar.

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        1. Actually, that is something to watch out for in films. Very often, the music is not synchronized properly with the film of soldiers marching — they are literally wrong-footed in the editing suite.

          First beat — left foot.

          Second beat — right foot.

          What could be easier?

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    2. Gawd. That both frightening and disgusting, Tris. Let me see – dunno how old the kids are, but perhaps we should be reassured that you have to be 21 before you can drink legally (in most of the US at least – Danny will know).

      The Republicans have gone insane. Cuckoo. Completely off the wall.

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