@jayceedee
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
I reckon someone needs to start searching Whitehall for a bungalow, so we can bring Bob down into the thick of it!! ?? Not many beach walks, but nice riverside views!!
Best jacket potatoes ever – done in the embers of a bonfire, wrapped in tinfoil, butter melted in and baked beans on top/inside. Sometimes we cooked the beans in their tin in the same fire.
The wife uses “live” yoghurts for various problems – dietary and feminine-specific – I just find it boring and adds little. The only time it works for me is with honey, over fresh raspberries. Having said that, my cholesterol is slightly high, (5.9 ) and the good/bad ratio is also slightly high (4.8 ) so I can see some pro-biotic yoghurt drinks in my not too distant future!! With slightly higher blood pressure 132/98 there’s gonna be some other changes too – dietary and exercise!!
Well it may keep “Brain Rot” at bay, but “Gut Rot” takes its place, in my case.
In my youth I used to have curries, chili con carnes, ask for extra onions on cheese and onion rolls and have garlic bread like toast. If I made myself an omelette I’d have mixed herbs and worcester sauce in with it. The wife makes casseroles and stews, but if she adds too much herbs, I don’t like them now.
Over the years I have stopped eating curries first, then chili con carne, cheese has lost its appeal now and I don’t often bother with garlic bread.
All of the above now give me wind, indigestion and occasional reflux. Turmeric I can spot a mile off – even if it’s a tiny amount and the taste starts off “chemical-like”, then just turns nasty. I guess there’s no hope for me here……….. sorry who am I again???!!
We have a slightly different system:-
Blue bins for recycling, fortnightly collection, they are usually full up after the fortnight.
Black bins for general rubbish, alternate fortnightly collection.
Green bins for garden waste – just gone up to £47.50, but this is essential for us with a 5000 sq ft garden – fortnightly collection.
Kitchen/food waste – brown kerbside caddy ( 30 litre ) and grey kitchen caddy ( 9 litre ) – weekly collection.
Red sack for paper and card, fortnightly collection with blue recycle bins.
Like most here, our black bins are normally only half full. No plans to change as yet.
He took pride in showing me around some of the East End pubs and hang-outs of the Kray twins etc. Funnily enough as long as you were not ‘involved’ in any way and minded your Ps & Qs it was perfectly safe and rather like being in the middle of a detective story.
Bit different now, the area around Stratford can be positively dangerous with some of the spaced-out characters that inhabit it..
Perversely, at that time, the whole areas were generally safer for those not in that scene, as the would-be-troublemakers went elsewhere, instead of running the risk of lifting a handbag from, or assaulting, someone with “local” connections. As you say, the modern spaced out brigade don’t put a sensible thought together while in pursuit of the next fix.
You’re not wrong about the East End back then. I spent 10 years working in Shoreditch Telephone Exchange building on the High Street there from 1970 to 1980. We had some great times in the pubs around there.
One of the “characters” we met was Harry Burns. We first came across him when we were having a lunchtime pint one Saturday. It was in the Ship and Blue Ball, just round behind the Exchange, the pub where the Great Train Robbery was partly put together. The Olympics was on the TV in the corner and an English boxer was fighting a Russian. We weren’t really watching it, but were quite loud, being “mid-session” if you know what I mean!!:):) Next minute this old chap comes over and starts slating us for being un-patriotic f’ers, it turned out the Russian had cut the English boxer above the eye and he thought we were cheering him on!!
Next thing, Mac, the publican, comes over and tells Harry it wouldn’t have been anything of the sort. Bearing in mind we were 8 – 10 handed we couldn’t believe someone would have come across and fronted us all the way he did. Once Mac had explained, Harry couldn’t have been more apologetic – in true East End fashion!! He then bought us all a round or two and the rest gets hazy. Well, when we went back to the pub on Monday, we found a bunch of tickets to the next fight at York Hall, another couple of rounds in the pump and an offer of tickets to future fights, if we wanted. It turned out he ran the Repton Boxing Club with his elder brother Charlie, both deeply rooted in the East End “culture”.
When I first started drinking there, you could get a pint of Double Diamond for one shilling and eight pence – about 8p in modern terms.
Before we moved to Potters Bar we were thinking of moving to Milton Keynes, but that never came to anything. It nearly did, and I chuckle at the details even now. We liked a 3-bed semi just outside MK that was being sold for £33k by probate. Stamp duty came on at £30k. We offered £29,950 but they held out for full asking price. With all the work that needed doing it wasn’t worth it. It had been used by one of the sons selling it and was in a right state. Oil stains on the living room carpet, banisters broken, doors broken off the bedroom furniture, garden overgrown and wrecked too. We blew it out. Shortly after that Anne was offered the business we took over, so there is a certain feeling of “grateful to fate/destiny”, as if we had moved, we couldn’t have taken it over.
The only part of London I like, is in the Northern suburbs – High Barnet, where our friends live. A really friendly town, good shops and restaurants. Not at all like a part of London, very friendly people.
I spent the…………..I was about to say the best part of my adult life there, or thereabouts, but actually I spent the first 57 years of my life there.
I was born in Hornsey Rise, round the back of the Archway, not far from the infamous “Suicide Bridge”. After 3 years – of which I remember very little – we moved to Muswell Hill. It was after this point that my memories start. At the age of 5 I was prescribed my first pair of glasses, whereupon the world came into focus and my memories start.
It turns out I was an awkward sod from the word go. I was very comfortable where I was and I didn’t care who was waiting for me to arrive. The doctors gave Mum an epidural that had no effect, so some idiot gave her another. This went through the bloodstream and I arrived not really breathing too well ‘cos I was very relaxed. The treatment for that in those days was to put the baby in an incubator and deliver 100% oxygen for a few days. The side effect they found later, was it damaged the newly borns’ eyes. This became known as Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) – although I wasn’t prem, I was treated the same, but for a much shorter duration – lucky really, because a lot of prem babies that were treated the same ended up blind!!.
I lived there until I was 18 and working, at which point, we moved to Hornsey. I stayed there until 1972 when I moved into my own flat in East Finchley. I was actually sharing a 2-bed flat with my sister, but she was at uni in Bangor and when she came back home she moved in with her uni mates. I stayed there for 10 party filled years until I met the missus and we moved into our first home together in New Barnet. That lasted five years where our son was born and when we needed more space, we moved to Potters Bar.
I have to say the people I met growing up, with the odd exception, were all really lovely people, not like the reputation London has for the most part. So you’ve got that bit right, Bob.?
My biggest problem with crutches was not the use or reliability of them, but their invisibility to others. When I returned to work after breaking both legs, I lived outside London, but worked in Central London. I got more injuries off briefcases than anything else. People were in such a hurry, in their own little bubble, that all else around them was irrelevant.
If I could have caught them I’d have killed ’em!!
All the best, Bob. Here’s hoping the discovery itself is fortuitous, even if the outcome is less so.
Well done.?
Where are you seeing that measure of SRT? I’ve looked in Task Manager and there’s no sight of it there. I’m using Chrome on W10.
Showing currently unavailable.
Ed – haven’t stopped there, but been very close on numerous occasions. Parents lived in Carmarthen, so driving there took us down the M4 and I recall seeing the signs to Pontardawe. Glad we missed it now!! The otehr sign that I’ll always remember was when we took the A48 to Carmarthen, a couple of miles in there was a sign to 2 places – Cross Hands” and “Tumble” – it always made me chuckle that.
Richard – it was in the early nineties that happened. We were working when she got stung – I closed down while she got some steroids and anti-histamines, raw onion to rub on and take the worst out of the sting, got to the hospital and she was inside and on a trolley with an adrenaline drip and fluids in her arm, before I could get the van parked. They referred her to St Mary’s Paddington where they took blood samples and worked their magic for a week, after which time they gave details of levels of vulnerability to various things. Well worth the visit and trouble, so if she is similarly dodgy with allergies, push for it hard.
Bob – She tells me she’s 5′ 1 1/2″ but I swear that 1 1/2″ is the one thing in this life she exaggerates. The one disadvantage of crutches that I found when using them was I could – and insisted on – make a cup of tea, but there was no way I could carry it in from the kitchen to the lounge, so you’re going to be tea boy for a while yet.
Good to hear she’s on the mend.
More likely genetic design!!?
That’s interesting Ed – she shows skin reactions to all sorts of things from dust, where she hasn’t worn an outfit for some time, or it’s changing wardrobes/seasons with the wardrobes in the loft, to a new cleaning product. After her wasp sting reaction, she went into St. Mary’s allergy clinic and indicated mild positives for a whole variety of things.
John I reckon they are twins separated at birth! My SWMBO hates spending, especially upon herself. She has boxes of jewellery from me that rarely get worn, long ago she issued the Do Not Buy More proclamation. All gold and diamond, hates silver. Price of Gold atm, means that the insurance has to be enough to cover.
The more I hear the more I think we’re right. She’s actually ” allergic ” to silver – brings her out in a rash. If she wanted something shiny that wasn’t yellow, she’d go for white gold/platinum.
She also shares some of your missus’s ancestry, descending from mixed Romany/barge folk.
My Gert’s problem is a lack of patience, always has been. She wants to be better NOW. John (JayCeeDee) will recognise this as he is apparently married to my SWMBO’s twin!
Ooohhh yes – ain’t that the truth. The only thing she took a long term view on was saving. She hated HP with a vengeance. Growing up, if she knew she wanted something then she’d put money to one side until she could walk into the shop, pay for it, then take it home.
When it was just her running the business, she would go into the local jewellers in London and put a deposit on something, pay him so much a week until it was paid off, then she would collect it. When it was both of us, because we don’t really worry about Birthday/Christmas/Anniversary cards or presents, when she saw something that she liked she would put a deposit on it and tell me to go collect!!! At least that way I knew what they really cost. Before then, I would only ever get the sanitised version!!
It’s a good job we love ’em!!
Yes – the same sort of thing with me. When I first got the Merc, the wife didn’t want to drive what she called either “My pride and joy” or “My toy” depending on her mood.
When I didn’t know how my treatment would affect me, I added her to the insurance and got it £30 cheaper, ( not a full year ) which I took off the next year’s policy. Probably something to do with a lack of testosterone!!?
-
AuthorPosts