Things you never see nowadays

There was a mangle on one of those antique challenge shows the other week. It sold for peanuts. I wonder how many children were hurt by them? We always had one in the brewhouse. I used to go to the corner shop and buy a few woodbines for my mum; they would put them in a paper bag for me.

I have twice seen people demonstrating a mangle on TV and both times they were turning the handle backwards with the wrong hand!

We still have a mangle in our back garden!!!! It was Mother in Laws and well used by her!!! My hub rescued it from her garage many years ago and it stood in our shed looking very sad!!!He eventually took it apart, painted it dark green and now it stands resplendent in all its glory and reminds me of what 'wash day' really used to be like.
I worked with a country lady, many years ago, whose favourite saying was 'I never laughed so much since granny caught her t..s in the mangle' Painful or what
p.s. it has been disabled so that inquisitive grandchildren cannot mangle each other.

I had a mangle when I was first married, wish I still had it now my hands can`t wring things out very well anymore.
When I was a child, we had batteries delivered and changed every week, for the radio, but they were kept in the pantry. We were always warned not to touch them, under pain of death, but I never even wanted to, they were large containers, open, and full of gooey looking black stuff, acid maybe?

One of the most useful things when my children were small (in the 1960s) was the Wright's vapouriser. Whenever they had a cold or a cough, these little nightlights heating the block infused with the special fluid kept their airways clear and so they were able to sleep. I suppose they were discontinued because of the flame, but they really were safe in their saucers of water. Have they been replaced with anything so effective?

Hairdressing salons with a long row of hair dryers and we were sitting under them with big rollers in our hair. When your hair was dry, out came the rollers and you were back-combed and lacquered ready for Saturday night on the town..

Daisy - couple of drops of Olbas Oil on the pillow at bedtime is very effective.

I was an 11year old 'milk girl' on a horse and cart during the summer holidays. Was 'paid' a pint of milk and a pint of orange juice daily, but made lots of money on a Saturday when we collected the money and got a threepenny bit tip at most houses. I learned how to carry twelve empty milk bottles at a time - 2 tucked under your arms and 10 fingers in the others and sometimes got to drive the horse and cart but not on the main road.

A few years later, when hurrying home for lunch, I inadvertantly said 'cluck, cluck' to the fruit & veg cart horse, who was waiting patiently while his master delivered a sack of tatties. Well of course he set off up the road with me in hot pursuit, desperately trying to remember the word for stop. He had made it to the grass at the pond before I shouted Whoa! He stopped and I sauntered casually back down the street to tell a bemused man where he might find his missing horse.

daisy you must be younger than me, our Wright's Coal Tar vaporizer was a metal lamp into which liquid coal tar was poured. I agree it did a great job.

My mother used to deliver milk from a horse and cart, whilst in the Land Army, which is how she met my father. He made her a milking stool (3-legged of course) and, as thay say, the rest is history.

When my mum was a little girl, two older brothers made a "swing" by tying one end of a rope to the fence and the other to the mangle. They sat her on the rope, whereupon the mangle fell over and broke her leg. My grandfather then carried her, stretched out in his arms, a couple of miles to hospital.

My Sunday best coat always had a velvet collar and sort of bonnet thing to match. We used to wear liberty bodices and wooly vests in the winter. Long socks with nicker elastic garters that made marks on our legs. Ribbon bows in our hair all different colours to match our clothes presumably.

What a wonderful flood of memories. I remember all of those in Lancashire especially donkey stones,rag and bone men and knocker-up
.
Some other things.
Mum had a small iron which was hollow and heated by inserting a small shaped brick made red hot by heating in coal fire.
'Walking days' -church events with banners,ribbons and flowers
Clog irons and sound of miners coming home in early morning.

Anyone remember Allen Hanbury's Glycerin and blackcurrant pastilles in the lovely blue and yellow tins. still have one of the tins in my garage.

Those capsules that the shop assistant would put your money in and it would whizz along a wire to the office and then whizz back with your change and receipt.

Oh yes, Maniac - I'd almost forgotten Walking Days... my granny used to take me to watch the parades.

Washing Blues (small muslin packets of blue powder which dissolved in water (a lovely deep blue) and then white clothes were dipped into it after the final rinse to intensify the whiteness.

White doggy doo!

granny23 I love that!

The bread man used to deliver my nans bread, and cakes at the weekend, and the fish man, came round on Fridays as well, and the grocery van, you knowm those big vans you could walk on to
happy memories

Those flimsy airmail letters that you wrote on, then folded along the right lines and licked the flap to close them. Thank goodness for email now!

Maniac yes! My granny always kept a tin of Allen and Hanbury's glycerin and blackcurrant pastilles in her bag. I sat next to her in church and she'd get the tin out some time during the service. The pastilles were delicious but did rather stick to the teeth. I've still got a couple of the tins. I remember the whizzing capsules in the grocers' shop too.

Do you ever see a shop these days that's called a drapers? (And they were the ones with the whizzy metallic capsule that carried the money to and from the cash desk.)

Fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper!

I'm reminded of being taken to see 'mummy' by Nan, in Sainsburys, 1952ish. As a divorcee, mum worked full-time & Nan brought me up. Sainsbury then was a narrow, long shop; Mum worked on the butter counter, & I can still recall the tight, white turban the girls had to wear. Using two wooden paddles, the butter would be speedily patted into an oblong, some kind of picture would be impressed on the half-pound slab, then wrapped in grease-proof paper. The walls of the shop were tiled, large colourful farmyard scenes incorporated in the design. A long-forgotten motto of some kind was prominently displayed; it always felt cool in there & fresh-smelling. I was about 4 years old. Mum never stayed long in each job - her next one was as a 'nippy' in Lyons Corner House. I thought she looked like a film-star in* that* uniform; a smart black dress, white frilly apron & a very fetching cap. Mum had very black, shiny curly hair to shoulder-level; people said she looked very like Ava Gardiner, & she really did. I don't take after her!

absent, the money 'whizzer' I remember best was in the huge Coop butchers in the middle of Derby.

Roscoff onions delivered by the "Onion Johnnies! from Brittany - would appear here (well up the West Coast of Scotland!) every year. Great onions and lovely (I thought Old then, but maybe not?) man. Do any still come across to this country?