In spring when a developer's mind turns to demolition ........ down on Deansgate

When I passed the building a few weeks ago the scaffolding was up but I gave no more thought to it.

And now I wish I had.

Andy Robertson with that ever observant eye for a fresh development in the city centre captured the end of the building which was the one between John Dalton Street and Brazennose Street.

The rest as they say will be hard hats, bulldozers and a “grand plan.”

In time I will go looking for those plans on the Corporation’s Planning portal but for now I will leave with the state of play.

But for now I will leave you with a work in progress.

Location; Deansgate






Pictures; Deansgate, 2017, from the collection of Andy Robertson

The changing face of one shop in Chorlton

I am constantly surprised at how easy our most recent past is forgotten.

Yesterday I launched a new project on Chorlton’s cafes and restaurants.  

It will be both the story of the present clutch of eating places with a reflective look at the ones that have gone and it will be collaboration with local artist Peter Topping.

The first story featured Mabs which was on Wilbraham Road and is now occupied by Oxfam, and Peter followed up that picture with this painting of Tutku Cafe.

And that set me off because I had no idea what had been there.

It was of course Chorlton Discount Store which maintained that 1970s appearance with the pine cladding exterior and offered up a cornucopia of household goods many of which spilled out onto the street.

Before that it was Mrs Twyford’s fruit and veg shop whose family were trading apples, pears and potatoes from the beginning of the 20th century.

Painting; Tutku Cafe  © 2017 Peter Topping 
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Who remembers Mabs on Wilbraham Road? https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20cafes%20and%20restaurants

Who remembers Mabs on Wilbraham Road?

I won’t be alone in remembering a time when there were just a handful of restaurants in Chorlton.
In the late 1970s after you had visited the Mai Wah on Barlow Moor Road, and walked past Azad Manzil there was from memory just the Italian and another Asian restaurant on Wilbraham Road.

The Azad Manzil had opened in 1964 and the others in the decade afterwards and all are now gone, along with a string of cafes of which Mabs was one.

Now I never knew Mabs which was located in what is now the Oxfam shop but my friend Faith was only talking about it recently and Tony who contributes to the blog referred to it in one of his stories.

Of course there have been plenty more cafes over the last century and there will be many people with fond memories of the ones that have long since gone.

And so I think it is time to consider bringing them back out of the shadows in a project which combines both those that exist now and their predecessors.

The idea is Peter’s and as we move effortlessly to finishing the book on Chorlton Pubs and Bars I know there will be lots of people who will jump at the opportunity to share their own favourite cafe or restaurant, offer up a story and maybe even a picture or two.

So that is it, you can contact us by leaving a comment on the blog or by contacting either of us with a direct message via Facebook, Twitter not forgetting the old fashioned way of looking us up in the telephone book.

Location Chorlton

Picture; Mabs, Wilbraham Road, 1959, A E Landers, m18264, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

“Now I must make this a priority” ............. the end of the Odeon

And with these simple words I must make this a priority” Andy has launched a new project chronicling the demolition of one of my favourite cinemas.

I first saw West Side Story there, and later Woodstock, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and later still a shedload of films with our children.

So at least this way the end will be recorded.







Location; Manchester

Pictures; The Odeon, 2017 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Looking out at the allotments towards Sandy Lane sometime in the 1960s

Now here are two images of Chorlton which at first glance look familiar.  

We are on the allotments with the Park to our rear looking out towards Sandy Lane.

Back in 1903 my friend Ann’s grandfather lived at number 72 Sandy Lane.

She  grew up in Chorlton on Barlow Moor Road and has contributed a rich set of memories and pictures from the 1950s and 60s.

What I especially like about these two are the contrasts, one in full summer, the other deepest winter with snow still on the ground and of course the difference in colour.

It would be fun to find people who were working those allotments at the time and may have their own stories and pictures to add to the collection.

The painting and photograph will date from sometime in the 1960s and are a reminder that not all things change.

Pictures; of the allotments from the collection of Ann Love

Walking Woolwich on an April day

Now Woolwich is almost a lost place to me.

I left in the September of 1969 and do not go home regularly enough.

And so when I do it all looks very different, and some places so unrecognizable that I am hard pressed to find my around.

I miss the old street market and the chaos that was Powis Street and can’t quite get used to the new railway station or what they have done to the Royal Arsenal and spent a good ten minutes wondering why the Post Office was not where I left it.

But that is the price you pay for moving away and while I miss what I remember I suspect my Woolwich of the 1960s would be as equally bewildering to someone who grew up around Beresford Square in 1900.

They might well want to know why the “Smoke Hole” had gone, why anyone would want to destroy the old Garrison Church and would feel odd on a ferry with no paddle or funnel.

So there you are places change.

Location; Woolwich

Picture; Woolwich,, 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson

Down at Duffy's thinking about Audrey's and the man who sold a nit comb

Now Duffy’s has been serving up pints with football for almost as long as I can remember.

Duffy's in 2008

That said I did once have a meal in the place when it was an Italian restaurant and just about remember what was there before that.

But for those with longer memories and a greater claim to be from Chorlton  it will always be Audrey’s that rather elegant ladies clothes shop.

In the 1950s it was a double fronted premise taking in the next door shop and was pretty much all glass with impressive signage.

Audrey's in 1959

In time I will go looking for the story of Audrey’s and for the history of the chemists who occupied that corner shop at the very beginning of the 20th century.

Back then the parade of shops still known as Pemberton Arcade was relatively new and it may well be that Mr Walter Smith was the first tradesmen to occupy that shop on the corner with Needham Avenue.

In 1903 he was there dispensing his mix of prescription medicines, over the counter cough mixture and much else along with those huge glass jars of coloured liquid which were the hall mark of all chemist shops.

Window shopping for something nice at Audrey's

A full eight years later you could still call in and collect everything from a nit comb, surgical bandage to all a doctor might prescribe, although by then Mr Smith had moved on and sometime after that here will have been a stretch of business up to when Audrey’s opened.

All of which is for another time leaving me only to comment that Peter’s painting of Duffy’s is now itself a bit of history which I guess means he will back down there to paint it again now that it has adopted its bright new green sign and veranda.

Painting; Duffy’s Bar  © 2008 Peter Topping 

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Picture; Audrey’s 1959, m17591, A H Downes,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Watching the hail storm and much more in the Bay of Naples

The VIA R. REGINALDO GIULIANI  July 23rd

Never underestimate the surprises offered up in the Bay of Naples

We arrived in Sorrento in the blistering heat of late afternoon and that was how it was for two glorious days before the rain.

Now I am used to those Italian thunderstorms which come out of nowhere, rage with the full force that nature can devise and are over as suddenly as they came.

But in that brief few minutes the sky darkens and the low rumble of thunder becomes defeating as streaks of lightening flash and the rain just comes down like stir rods.

All that we had and hailstones too which even the locals claim were bigger than anything they had seen before.

Then in a matter of minutes the storm had passed leaving a carpet of fast melting hailstorms and a few broken leaves.

But as ever the storm had cooled the air and cleaned the streets, so that the evening stroll on Sorrento was a pleasant affair despite the crowds of tourists who were all intent on capturing that little bit of Italian life.

And Sorrento did not disappoint, all of which is why we returned the following day.

Eating in the VIA R. REGINALDO GIULIANI 

We took in the odd museum and a fair number of narrow streets each with a bewildering number of shops offering all manner of stuff to entice the tourist and which were pretty much replicated in the next half dozen streets.

All of which led us by degree to VIA R. REGINALDO GIULIANI and a meal at one of the many restaurants that spread out across the road from its beginning to the point when the it becomes too narrow.

The meal was good and of course the position offered up plenty of opportunities to sit and watch.

It cost just €70 which for four seemed acceptable until that is we sampled the delights of Naples a place I have fallen in love with.

Rome will always be my favourite city which has the power to draws us back but Naples is something else.

But that is for another time.

Pictures; Sorrento, July 2014, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A city landmark already fading from the memory ............ Elisabeth House

It is remarkable how quickly you can forget a building.

Not that I suspect many will mourn the passing of Elisabeth House which was all glass and concrete walls and which was so misunderstood and disliked that no one can quite agree on when it went up.

Various sources suggest a date in the 1960s which does not quite fit with my memories of gazing across at its Victorian predecessor in the 1970s.

But recollections of events, places and buildings can so easily be wrong and I was prepared to accept that this was just one of those times when I was mistaken.

But not so. According to A Manchester View run by David Boardman,* Elisabeth House was built in 1971, which I am pleased to say means that my long term memory is fine, even if I can forget to put the wash on, turn off the lights.

And emboldened by having my memories confirmed I am sure the Ceylon Tea Centre inhabited what became the Dutch Pancake House.

The Tea Centre was  a commercial showcase for Ceylon’s products and it was there that I first discovered a salad could be more than a soft tomato, some limp lettuce and a bit of curly cucumber smothered in salad cream.

Here were rice dishes, some of which were curried and others which contained fruit, nuts and other exotic things.

It was a place I took for granted and then suddenly it had gone and now has been joined by Elisabeth House and soon the cinema just a little down Oxford Road, where I saw West Side Story, Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid and revisited with our young children in the 1980s and early 90s.

I can’t say I miss Elisabeth House but when I ever I do feel a tad nostalgic for the place I turn to that excellent series Blue Murder with Caroline Quentin  which ran for five series from 2003 through to 2009.

Look carefully and there are plenty of shots of the building and as a bonus from inside outwards Central Ref and the Town Hall Extension.

And in time these may well be some of the only images of the building to survive.

Location; Elisabeth House, 2011

Pictures;  Elisabeth House, 2011, from the collection of Ian Robertson

* Elisabeth House - St. Peter's Square http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/tours/tour6/area6page61.html

The Lloyd’s ................... one I’ve never seen before

Now I never pass up the opportunity to preview a new picture of Chorlton.

This one is the Lloyd’s sometime in the 1940s.

And it is the small detail I like.

I doubt many will remember that wall to the left of the pub.

At some point a long time ago it was demolished and this became a car park.

Before that this will have been the site of the pub's tennis courts.

It comes from the site of Mark Fynn

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester
















Pictures; The Lloyd’s circa 1940s courtesy of Mark Fynn


*Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html

Naples ........ eating what the city does best

Now if you are in Naples the obvious choice of something to eat just has to be pizza.

We had ordered up some good ones in Sorrento but the Neapolitan ones were better and turned out to be cheaper at 3€.

And when our Saul was there last week he ended up with two fine pizzas.

Enough said.

Location; Naples

Picture; Naples in 2017 from the collection of Saul Simpson 

Looking for the changes on Manchester Road in just over half a century

Now I suppose I can see why this bit of Manchester Road tended to be ignored by those commercial photographers of the early 20th century.

They concentrated on those other bits of Chorlton usually fastening on the area around the four banks or off along Wilbraham Road.

But this row of shops regularly features in the collection of Andy Robertson* and here is his latest along with one taken by Mr Downes in 1958.

Pictures, Manchester Road, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1959 by A.H. Downes, m18033, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Looking for our lost launderettes, no 1 ........... Manchester Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/looking-for-our-lost-launderettes-no-1.html

Coming soon ........ Manchester Remembering 1914-18 ........... a second book signing

Now in one of the most outrageous bouts of self promotion here for all those that missed the first book signing event at Central Ref in February is news of a second opportunity to get a signed copy of Manchester Remembering 1914-18.

The first was attended by the Lord Mayor, some of the descendants of men and women who appear in the book along with a selection of Great War memorabilia from David Harrop.

So successful was the event that we have decided to repeat the day this time at the Imperial War Museum North at Salford Quays on Sunday June 4.

So as they say watch this spot for more details and as a trailer here picked from random is a page from the book.

Location; Imperial War Museum North









Pictures; page from Manchester Remembering 1914-18

*Manchester Remembering 1914-18, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

Pictures from an Eltham bus ........ nu 11 ....... three for one

The top deck of a London bus has to be a pretty neat way of seeing the world below.

"The new flats on the old Grove Market site in the distance"

And when it is the same bus at about the same time every day then you have got yourself a project.

All you need is a camera and the patience each week to record the same spot.

It helps if there is a major new development underway like the one in the High Street and the rest as they say is Larissa Hamment’s “Pictures from an Eltham bus.”*

And today Larissa sent me three ........ “the new flats on the old Grove Market site which you can see from the distance, a nice shot of the church in the window and the old Co-op site completely levelled” 

Now what I particularly like about Larissa's project is the way it captures month by month the changes to our High Street.

"A nice shot of the church in the window"

All too often we take those changes for granted, and within a few years only vaguely remember what had once been there.

So the beauty of the series is that you can look back and capture that past.

I can not remember the old Grove Market being built or for that matter what was there before and while there are some images of the properties that were demolished, I have yet to come across any of the precinct being built.

And I would love to see more photographs of the construction of the Progress Estate, the Well Hall Odeon and the former Burton's.

"the old Co-op site completely levelled"

But with the demise of the old Co-op we do have Larissa's pictures and that  has got to be good for all of us who like Eltham and its history.

Location, Eltham High Street, Eltham, London





Pictures;  2017, from the collection of Larissa Hamment

*Pictures from an Eltham bus, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Pictures%20from%20an%20Eltham%20Bus

“Cow muck,” “no more school” and “Cowboy Joe” ........ lost playground chants no 4

Now as you would expect memories of playground chants and songs have bubbled up in response to the first ones I posted, and here are some more.  

Andy Robertson reminded me of that old favourite,

“No more days of school
No more days of sorrow
No more days in this old dump
We'll be home tomorrow”

While Margaret chimed in with one about her rival primary school, “Christ church bulldogs sittin' on a wall, eatin' cowmuck penny a ball" adding “we used to sing a similar song about other rival primary schools.”

And from Judy Wilson came

“I remember skipping on the long rope, a kid turning at each end of the rope, to Cowboy Joe from Mexico, hands up, stick 'em up, drop your guns and pick them up, out you go. And in would go the next kid to skip.” And “some others that come to mind of group games in the playground. The wind, the wind blows high and In and out the Scottish bluebells.”

Location; the playground

Picture; Oswald Road School, 2014 from the collection of Andy Robertson

An eighteenth century house, a conversation in Italian and stunning Lakeland views

Now we got away from the city and went north to the Lakes and the break was everything we wanted.

Aynsome Manor Hotel, 2017

As you do we took the journey slowly, passing through small villages and even smaller hamlets and stopping as all good tourists do to admire the scenery and take the pictures.

And we also struck gold with the hotel which was just outside Cartmel.

The Aynsome Manor Hotel is a gem.  The house is late 18th century although there are bits dating back another century, and it commands magnificent views across the surrounding countryside.

The accommodation and the food are excellent and there was that interesting mix of guests which make breakfast just that bit more interesting.

Added to which Tina struck up a conversation with one of the staff in Italian who was from Romania and had spent some time in Italy.  I rather liked the idea of being in the middle of the Lakes, sitting in an 18th century house listening to the two of them talk about Padua in Italian.

It was one of those delightful evenings which were enhanced by conversations with the hotel manager and the owner who recounted the history of the property.

Views from Hill Top, 2017

The rest of the weekend was spent wandering the nearby town of Grange on the Sands more hamlets and that tourist trap which is Windermere, followed by a visit the home of Beatrix Potter.

Here I fully admit that her books did nothing for me when I was a child and still as an adult have little appeal.

But her commitment to the Lake District and her determination to save the surrounding farms from the developers and thereby preserve the way of life has to be admired.

Hill Top, 2017

And in turn The National Trust is to be praised for the way it has maintained her home of Hill Top and the cottage garden.

The Trust carefully manage the number of people who visit on any one day which given the size of the cottage makes sense both for the preservation of the building but also because it allows you to see the rooms better.

And above all it means the peace and the tranquilly of the place is not destroyed which I have to is always one of the real attractions of being in the Lakes.

So with that here ends the first of the Blog's travelogues.

Location; the Lakes

Pictures; the Lakes, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

We’re off, we’re off, we’re off in a motor car, ........ lost playground chants no 3

More playground chants and songs for long journeys.

I can't claim I collected any of them ....... they come from an LP by the Oldham Tinkers and if you go looking there are books  that record many more.

“We’re off, we’re off, we’re off in a motor car,
Sixty bobbies are after us an’ we don’t know where we are.”

“Th’night wer dark an’ stormy, t’ rain fell down in lumps,
Th’ tram wer on its journey from Hollinwood to Mumps,
A dog ran in the tram lines, the driver rang his bell,
T’ dog didn’t here the signal, now he’s on his way to Halifax.”

“Mi father wer an ‘ero, ‘is bravery made me blush,
They wer givin’ free beer up at t’ Roebuck, an’ mi dad got killed in t’ crush.”

More tomorrow

Picture; from the collection of Ron Stubley

*The Oldham Tinkers, Oldham’s Burning Sands   TOPIC TSDL206 STEREO, 1971

Charlie Chaplin in Oldham .......... playground chants and songs for long journeys no 2

Now I first heard this collection on an LP by the Oldham Tinkers.

"About 40 years ago the Oldham Tinkers strung together all the songs they could remember being sung about Charlie Chaplin and punctuated them with a chorus which in its present form has its roots buried in the trenches of the Great War."*

All of which makes it perfect for the series playground chants and songs for long journeys.

"The moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin
His boots are crackin’ for want of blackin‘
And his owd fusty coat is wanting mending
Until they send him to the Dardenelles

Charlie Chaplin had no sense.
He bought a fiddle for eighteen pence.
The only tune that he could play
Was tarara boomdiay.

Charlie Chaplin meek and mild,
Swiped a sausage from a child.
When the child began to cry
Charlie socked him in the eye.

Charlie Chaplin went to France
To teach the ladies how to dance;
'First you heel, then you toe;
Lift up your skirts and round you go'.

Charlie Charlie Chuck Chuck Chuck
Went to bed with three white ducks.
One died. Charlie cried.
Charlie Charlie Chuck Chuck Chuck.

One, two three, a lera,
I saw my auntie Sarah
Standing at the door, a lera
Kissing Charlie Chaplin.

The moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin    
His boots are crackin’ for want of blackin‘
And his owd fusty coat is wanting mending
Until they send him to the Dardenelles"

Location; the early 20th century

Picture; soldiers on Oldham, date unknown from the collection of David Harrop

*Charlie Chaplin, the Oldham Tinkers, http://www.oldhamtinkers.com/charlie-chaplin.html

The Green End ........ “drove past here today half expecting it to be gone and I was right”

 Now Andy Robertson is economical with his words leaving his superb set of pictures to tell a story.

April 10 2016

So here are another of his before and after photographs.

I never went in the Green Lane but there will be many around Burnage Lane and Mauldeth Road who did.

In time we may get some of their stories.

Location; Manchester

April 14, 2017

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson, 2016 8 2017

Beavers Bulldogs sittin’ on a wall, ........ lost playground chants no 1

“Beavers Bulldogs sittin’ on a wall,
Sellin’ ‘orsemuck penny a ball”

“A wer standin’ on the corner eatin’ apple pie,
A policeman asked for a skinny bit so I poked him in the eye.
He went an’ told mi mother, mi mother wouldn’t come,
So I went an’ got a lollypop an’ stuck it up his bum.”

Now when I was a kid one of the most popular playground chants revolved around  popular TV westerns, where Rawhide, Laramie and the Cisco Kid were thrown together and the story played out using their names set against impossible things they did.

I don’t remember any of them anymore, but still repeat for the amusement of our grown up lads some that date back into the early 20th century.

I would like to pretend I had collected them in the "field" but in fact I heard them on an LP by the Oldham Tinkers in the early 1970s.*

They made me laugh then and still do today.

For some the expressions may seem odd, and you will have to affect an Oldham accent to do justice to them and that I suppose is a bit of the challenge.

Stick with it and you are back in the early decades of the last century somewhere in the North.

That said I bet the same chants could be heard in the playgrounds of South east London, and as far away as Belfast and Devon.

More tomorrow

Pictures; from the collection of Ron Stubley

*The Oldham Tinkers, Oldham’s Burning Sands   TOPIC TSDL206 STEREO, 1971

Looking for the Urbis which became a museum

Now I have always been a fan of the Urbis Centre.

Its bold design and pleasing shape adds a lot to what was a dreary car park.

I maintain and maintain most strongly that it fits well with the open space it stands beside.

But here is one of those pictures from the 1980s taken by John Casey, and the Centre is no where to be seen.

Such is change.

Location; Manchester

Picture;  the car park, circa 1980s, from the c

ollection of John Casey

Toys from the Great War

By all accounts this cloth doll from the Great War is a rare piece.

It is of a French soldier and is in remarkably good condition for a toy which is over a century old.

Given its age and the handling it might have got as a toy I am surprised it has survived at all, and in such good condition.

Of course I doubt we will ever know much more about it and as I sit here looking at the figure, the questions bounce off the keyboard.

I assume it was made in France but how it got to this country will always be shrouded in mystery.

It could have been brought back by a British soldier or have been bought by a toy shop as a job lot.

On the other hand it might equally have been collected by a dealer and ended up in Britain long after the conflict.

So it is a toy with a story which as yet remains untold.

Location; Manchester and France















Pictures; French toy soldier, date and origin unknown from the collection of David Harrop

Naples in April

Now if you don't live in Naples the next best thing is that one of your sons is there and is happy to send back pictures of the place.

I fell in love with the city the first time we went there and continue to find it fascinating.

It is noisy, and chaotic and at times bewildering.

The voices you hear speak a language which is unique to the south and when Tina had her siblings washed up in the north of Italy how they spoke and what they said marked them out as from Naples.

The first time we went her parents who were both born there warned us to be careful but  the warning was unnecessary.

Like any city there is a lot to see, and you can fill your day wandering from former palaces to wonderful churches and taking in plenty of ancient ruins.

But for me it is the streets themselves which I adore.  They are narrow and give off onto even narrower streets and everywhere the buildings climb cliff like into the sky.

And from every available balcony the residents will hang out their washing.

We won’t be back for months and so I shall content myself with Saul’s pictures.

Location; Naples

Pictures; Naples, 2017 from the collection of Saul Simpson and Emilka Cholewicka

A little bit of Naples in Manchester ........... stories I like

Now what can be better than a pizza party?

And when the pizzas are home made and cooked on a wood burning oven in the garden in front of you it just doesn’t get any better.

Not that this was all fun, in fact there was a serious side to the evening which was to  test out a range of Italian made mozzarella cheese which our old friend Bob Amato who was thinking of marketing them in his business.*

Much of what passes for mozzarella is made in Britain or Denmark and so here was a chance to test out the real stuff.This was an experiment I have to say I was up for.

There were half a dozen of us, including Saro and Carlo who work with Bob, along with me and Tina and an old friend of Bob’s.

Helping Bob with the cooking was his daughter and the rest as they say was an evening of sheer pleasure.

I had thought that we might have a score card with directions on how to mark each one out of ten, but as it turned out the fun and pleasure side took over which is of course how it should be.

I did toy with telling our Saul who makes a mean pizza but as he is in Naples at the moment I rather think he can go and find his own pizza place.

What made the evening just that bit special was the mix of people, Sara is from Spain, and Carlo although he has lived in Darwen for a big chunk of his life is Italian.

And in the course of the evening Tina and Bob discovered that their parents were from the same part of Naples.

Which just left me whose only claim to fame is that I was born in south east London, spent my early years in Peckham before growing up in Eltham, which I am the first to concede is nowhere as romantic as either Spain or Naples.

Not that anyone was bothered about that, instead it was the pizzas which stole the night.

And I have to say my favourite turned out to be a slightly smoked cheese.

So there you have it, ......... a magic evening, some superb food and an experiment well done.





Location; Manchester

Pictures; a pizza evening from the collection of Sara Saro Lavilla

*Amato Food Products, http://amatoproducts.co.uk/

Flags of the World, a little bit of our history

Now you can be very stuffy about history.  

At least one of my history teachers dismissed everything that had happened after 1914 and more recently my use of online historical sources was ridiculed as not serious research.

So with that in mind here is a little bit of history delivered through a collection of bubble gum cards, issued in the 1950s which I collected avidly.

They were the Flags of the World and came in waxed envelopes with a thin sheet of pink bubble gum.

For weeks after you purchased the cards they retained that faint sweet smell.

Looking back I hate to think what the gum did to my teeth or my insides.

But the cards were one of those crazes which took over me and my friends.

You bought them from the local sweet shop for waht I guess as a penny a time.

There were the serious collectors who kept their collections in immaculate condition and then there were those who used them to play card games.

I hovered between the two.

The game was simple enough, two cards were rested against a wall and the idea was to flick cards to knock them down.

The one who was successful got to collect all those that had been flicked but which had failed to deliver the knock down blow.

You could use any picture cards.  Back before the way these would have been the cards given away with cigarettes, but by the time I was growing up the “fag card” had been superseded by those that came in packets of tea.

So the tobacco smelling cards and given way to those smelling of tea and with Flags of the World came that aroma of bubble gum.

Now the Flags of the World were much favoured for the game because they were bigger and easier to flick and easier to knock down.

For most of my friends that was about it.  The flag itself and the facts that were contained on the back about each country were pretty much ignored.

And that was a pity because contained on the back of each card were facts like the Capital city, the population. Type of government, money unit and language.

Nor was that all because assuming that one day you might visit the Soviet Union. Israel or Italy there was the section How They Say.

This gave you four words which were seldom the same from card to card and offered up the translation.

So card number 26 which was Great Britain had the words Policeman, Movies, Candy and Terrific for which the translations ran BOOBY, CINMEA, SWEETS, and TOP-HO.

All of which is odd enough but places when for Italy the words were Hello, BON-JAW-NAY, Friend, AH-ME-GO, Goodbye AREEV-VEH-DEH-CHAY, and Thanks, GRATS-SEE-AH.

The cards were produced in the USA and so distances were calculated in air miles from New York.

All of which gives the cards a wonderful entree into the world of the 1950s when ait r travel which was still a distance experience for most of us was never the less becoming a more common form of global transport than the oceans.

And then there are those simple history lessons which come from flags which have long since vanished as the governmental system they represented have passed into history.

The USSR and all those east European communist states have gone as has that imperialist concoction known as Indo China along with the old Republic of South Africa and many more.

But despite all the uncertainties of the period the manufactures concluded the series with the flag of the United Nations which I always thought a nice touch.

That said I never remember coming across the blue flag of the U.N, for some of the cards were always more difficult to collect than others.

So for every flag of France I bought that of the USA always proved elusive.

I have long lost all mine and was only reminded of them recently when I came across the site Flags of the World where for a modest and in some cases less than modest out lay I could recreate my collection and in doing so savour something of the 1950s.

Now I bought them from our corner newsagents, but now all of them are available for at a tad  more than I paid for them at Flags of the World, sadly without the bubblegum.

And in that post Brexit world I will leave you with that flag of the UN and reflect on international cooperation and greater understanding.

Pictures; Flags of the World, courtesy of 
Flags of the World, http://www.deanscards.com/c/716/1956-Topps-Flags-of-the-World