Sugar sandwiches …. fruit salad ….. and carnation ……. food for the Gods

Well, while the young me thought I was in very heaven with sugar sandwiches I have to admit I never served them to my three when they were growing up.

The National Loaf, 1944

Nor do I think a bowl of tinned fruit with the obligatory splash of carnation milk would have been appreciated by any of them, but they were the backdrop to living in southeast London in the early 1950s.

To be fair I have yet to come across anyone else who ate sugar sandwiches.  The most common alternative I am told by friends was apple or banana sandwiches and I must admit apple did feature as alternative to sugar for me and my sisters.

They were quick to make, offered up that mix of sweetness and energy but even then, there was the drawback that the sugar granules crunched against your teeth and got lodged in the gaps created by the dentist.  I have still got those gaps from being an adolescent when Mr Guppy judged that as a boy, I would never be bothered about the appearance of my mouth.

But mercifully for my teeth there were also the savoury sandwiches, made with Pecks fish and meat paste and those magnificent dripping sandwiches.

In retrospect dripping sandwiches must have been a heart attack in waiting.  As veggie for over 40 years I shudder, but there was something magic on that mix of fat and salt and if you were lucky the dark brown liquid which lurked at the bottom of the pot.

But this is not a cry against what some would see as poor parenting or an attempt to outdo Eric down the road for the most deprived up bringing it was just part of our diet, and vied with healthy and nourishing soups, roasts and stews. 

I guess it was a throw back to mum’s childhood in the early 1930s when with granddad part of the millions of unemployed they were forced to apply for the Means Test which judged an application for help against what in the house could be sold to raise funds.

Fruit cocktail, 2025

The post war prosperity made that dark time a distant memory, but which always sat just below the surface and would occasionally surface.

Leaving aside the poverty aspect it was also a matter of “we did things differently back then”.

I never thought it odd that we would be served a pudding of spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar or that a delicacy in our house was chunks of corned beef dipped in batter and deep fried.

They were just what we ate and even now when me and my sisters get together we smile at the deep-fried corned beef which we nicknamed Dr Who’s because of the outlandish shapes the batter formed which reminded us of the monsters he confronted.

And then there was olive oil, bought in small bottles from the chemist and used on ear wax, or rubbing into the hair when mum had to use the knit comb.

Carnation, 2025

That said in the early 1950s the solution for me and my friends was that brutal haircut which left you looking like a recruit in a boot camp.

I must have other food memories but they as yet haven't tumbled out.

Against this since my mid 20s I have embraced cooking, leaving the procesed stuff behind and mastering a heap of dishes including the humble pasty.

But what is fascinating is just how quickly, the sugar and apple sandwiches and the medicinal application of olive oil vanished under the growing prosperity and commercialism of the late 1950s.  

So, in a few short years traditional puddings were replaced by such offerings as Angel Delight, and Arctic Roll, and baked fish by fish fingers and that staple which was Birds Eye burgers. And coming up fast there were those boil in the bag Vesta curries and Chow Mien.

And somewhere along the way we lost the Sunday treat of tinned fruit and carnation.

Me own efforts, 2026

Location; somewhere in the 1950s

Pictures, The Co-op National Loaf, 1944, Manchester & Salford Co-operative Herald, 1944, the alternative, the home made pasty, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and fruit salad and carantion courtesy of Morrisons

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 3........ the tithe map 1845

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

The tithe map perfectly captures a moment in our history.  Here were recorded the fields, buildings and roads in 1845.  But there is much more because the map and its accompanying schedule lists who owned the land, who they rented it to, the size of each field, its value and above all its use. It will also tell you who lived in the houses.

Now  we live facing the Recreation Ground and beside us was the Bowling Green Field, farmed by Samuel Gratrix, and owned by the Egerton’s.  It was an acre of arable farm land and its value was 3s 10d and directly opposite us was Row Acre which is now the Rec

Picture; by courtesy of Philip Lloyd

Looking for Dad at Eltham Fire Station in 1908

We will never know whether Lizzie’s aunt appreciated this picture postcard of our Fire Station.

But as she had been receiving regular such pictures of Eltham, I rather hope she did.

The added bonus was that there in the photograph was Lizzie’s Dad, which prompted Lizzie to ask “Do you recognise dad?

There is lots more detail but I rather think I will leave that up to you to search out.

Location; Eltham Fire Station











Picture; Eltham Fire Station,1908, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

Silly stories from a tram seat …… and other things wot I was taught

So yesterday afternoon I gave up my seat on the tram to an elderly woman, which prompted the man in front to offer his seat to me.

I declined, we all smiled at the sequence of events and then we got on with the journey.

But not for the first time it made me think of that old practice of giving up your seat to a woman or opening a door for people and taking the kerb side of the pavement when out with my wife.

Old fashioned, sexist or just downright stupid?

All are habits that are deeply ingrained in me, and I suspect are no longer common practice, judging by the number of elderly people I see standing on moving trams while people half their age sit comfortably, gazing out of the window tuned into their phones.

It may even be deemed by some as an insult, suggesting that there is something delicate about the woman and reinforcing my own stereotypical male assumptions about gender.

What of course makes it even a bit more absurd is that at 76 I may have just been older than the woman who graciously accepted the offer of my seat.

But there you are such things run deep in me and were acquired sometime in the 1950s.

Along with that equally powerful taboo of not spitting in the street.

Of course, in that pre antibiotic age when many diseases were far more prevalent and dangerous than today the notion of not spitting in public was both sensible from a hygienic standpoint and just good manners.

It was a custom underlined by those signs on public transport calling on people to refrain from spitting, which long ago were consigned to museums secreted away in the section titled “curious practices from the past”.

To which perhaps I am equally a “curious leftover from the past”.

One of those leftovers who can’t quite get used to total strangers at call centres addressing me by my first name, as if we were long standing intimate friends and not just conducting a conversation about a lost shopping order.

But I should stop before I wax lyrical about queues, waiting your turn at the bus stop or saying thankyou to the bus driver.

Location; the past

Picture; crowded tram bound for town from Cornbrook, 2024, at Market Street, 2018, and standing room only from St Peter's Square, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When the larder is your history book ……..

History comes in many shapes and sizes, and I have been thinking of many of those recipes I have picked up over the years which offer stories from the past.

Italian pie, 2025

And here I don’t mean those elegant, sophisticated offerings from swish, shiny and very expensive cookbooks, but the simple ones which are best just described as “leftovers”.

A device for mincing, 2020

We all have them, passed down from parents and grandparents when prosperity was what someone else enjoyed

They were the leftovers made from the Sunday roast and repurposed for another day.  Or bits left in the larder which got overlooked but were perfectly OK to eat.

If you are of a certain age, you will remember the metal mincer which attached to the kitchen table and was used to grind remanets of the meat joint to make mince, rissoles or the forerunner of the burger.

In our house could be added “the soup”.  

It had no other name, was always just the soup and might on any occasion consist of cooked or raw vegetables mixed with pearl barley or lentils and flavoured with whatever stock was to hand with the option of a dollop of some kind of meat.  It was the dustbin meal and on occasion was even bulked out with the odd few Yorkshire puddings.

"The soup", 2024

Today many of these meals have had a makeover and in the hands of distinguished and not so distinguished chefs have become elaborate presentations.  

So, that humble dish of cooked cabbage and potato fried in the pan gains a posh name and a heap of posh ingredients, but for me will always just be bubble and squeak. 

What most of the original dishes have in common is their simplicity, and of course the leftovers.  

One of my favourites is what we call Italian pie. 

I guess because two of the ingredients are home made tomato sauce and mozzarella to which you add potatoes. 

The potatoes don’t have to be leftovers but will usually be the few that are have been overlooked in the larder.  

And all you do is cook, slice and layer the potatoes with the cheese, and top with the sauce and leave in the oven till it looks golden and the inside is a gooey mass of flavour.

The curry that began as something else, 2026

Most of these leftover dishes are impromptu and because you may never have the exact same bunch of combined ingredients, the offering is unique and more so because if you are like me, may well have forgotten what you added to it.

Mushroom creamed curry, 2026

In our house we often had mince with onions, potaoes and peas.  

But the final dish depended on which of our parents made it.  

So, in the hands of dad the meat was cooked in a thck cornflour sauce, which sat on the plate almost challenging you to cut into it, while mum's was lighter and came with gravy sauce.

Many of them will date back deep into the past and reflect what most of us would have eaten, long before processed food, the freezer, or the fridge and long before the use of canned food.

Now I fully accept that none of this is much of an original idea, but I think it still stands and might encourage people to look at what they been handed down and just how far back into the past those dishes go and indeed how far they have crossed frontiers.

For now, I will close with that Sunday meal of curry which began life as mushrooms gently cooked with cream and served with pasta.

Or the last of the green beans, a handful of tomatoes and some linguine which became a shared meal on Tuesday night.

Beans, tomatos, linguine,and fetta cheese

Location; our house

Pictures, left overs I have known, 2026,from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Chris Payne’s mincer, 2020

Elm Terrace ......... the picture and the story ...... Eltham High Street in 1905

Now, I have to say that this row of terraced houses is not what you expect to see off the High Street.

And I had to think for a few minutes just where Elm Terrace is, because I don’t remember the houses and I doubt few people today will either.

Elm Terrace is of course one of those narrow little streets off the High Street, opposite the Rising Sun.

As a kid I had no reason to go down there, and the last time I ventured down it was an unremarkable place with a Chinese restaurant and not much else, although there was a bit of a ghost sign which had been exposed after a sign board had been taken down.

It is on the side of the wall of number 23 which was once Four Paws Grooming Saloon, but has been empty for a few years.

Now as everyone knows I am attracted to ghost signs and this one intrigues me because all we have left picked out in giant red lettering is ASTEL, leaving me to wait for someone with a longer memory to tell me what it referred to.

So with that cleared up, I am back to the picture, which is dated around 1905.

I say 1905, but that was when the picture postcard was sent and so the actual date it was taken maybe earlier, but not much because, Margaret writes to her aunt “that I have put a cross by our house. Mrs Smith used to live by the lamp post - the house you see at the bottom is Mrs Masson”.

These were four roomed houses and there were 23 of them in the terrace.

Our own historian Mr Gregory writing in1909 said nothing about the properties and limited himself to a speculation on the origins of the name which he thought “in all probability is derived from two old elm trees which at one time stood at the end of the road remote from the High Street.”*

Now I don’t blame him for passing over a description of the houses, at the time they would have been familiar to everyone.

As it was nine years later they do not even warrant a reference in the 1918 street directory, which confined itself to listing just William Ryde & Son, farriers, and The Eltham Public Hall which was owned by R. Smith & Company.

The line of the roof of the hall is just visible at the end of the terrace. It dated from the 1870s and was the British School but with the opening of the school at Pope Street the building was “used for meetings, concerts and similar purposes”.

As for our houses, those “on left were demolished for the Arcade development in 1930 which was only half completed when the developer went bankrupt.  The Elm Terrace Fitness Centred (opened in 1931 as an indoor market) covers the site of most of the cottages on the right except the last three, which are now used for commercial purposes”. ***

I have to say I do like the picture and more because we can identify pretty much everyone who lived here during the early 20th century using electoral registers and the census returns.

And here I must pay tribute to Tricia, who sent over the picture and did much of the research on Margaret Pocknall from which I know she was a dress maker, born in Eltham in 1877, and her family moved around Eltham and settled just round the corner in Southend Road in Elm Villas.

But I will close with one simple observation and that  even back then, a gable end invited the idle to chalk on the wall.

To which Matt K Minch went one better and posted this picture with the comment, "'Astel' I think is the remnants of the sign that said Hardcastles, this being what became of the 3 houses that survived there."

And that really is it, with thanks to Matt and Tricia who did all the research.
Location; Eltham

Picture; Elm Terrace, courtesy of Tricia Leslie, and Elm Terrace from the collection of Matt K Minch, date unknown

*Gregory, R.R.C. The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909, page 286

**ibid, Gregory, R.R.C., page 287

***Kennet, John, Eltham a Pictorial History, 1995 image 84

There is always another on the way …… travelling by bus to Chorlton Station

I have Kevin Barker to thank for this picture.

I am looking at two employees of Manchester Corporation posing for their photograph on route number 9.

It’s a perfect example of how there is always another on the way, which might be a bus or a new picture I haven't seen before.

I think we will be on Edge Lane sometime in the early 20th century.

A quick search of The Manchester Bus by Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps reveals that this is “Daimler NA2687 at Longford Park on the service from Chorlton to the Stretford boundary at that point; it has the first of many bus bodies that would be built by the Car Works. Note the taller bonnet line of the Y type chassis”. 

They date the picture to 1914 and tell me that the bus could seat 38 but in 1923 was rebuilt to increase the number of seats to 44 by extending the upper deck over the driver’s cab.

And that is about it.

Other than to say I have no idea that there was once a bus to and from Chorlton railway station to Longford Park.

The fun will be to identify the back drop and leaving me to thank Kevin for whizzing the picture over today and to Andy Robertson for his indulgence in letting me continue to borrow his bus and tram books on an extended loan which will soon be a decade.

Location; Edge Lane?

Picture; Daimler NA2687 at Longford Park, 1914, courtesy of Kevin Barker

* The Manchester Bus by Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, 1989