A little bit of Manchester in Deptford …….. football …… VHS …… and a charity shop

Deptford in south east London was almost where I grew up.

Au Revoir Cantona, date unknown

As a kid it was just a short bus ride from Peckham, and when we moved to Eltham was still a place I went back to.

But long ago I moved to Manchester, and never thought I could make a link between the two, but my new Facebook friend Paula, managed to find the link. 

And of course, I am the first to admit it will not appeal to everyone …… as the comments to the post will no doubt reflect.

That said it is a neat piece of history, being not only a record of Eric Cantona’s time with Manchester United, but one of those bits of lost technology.

VHS tape with time scale

Au Revoir Cantona is a VHS tape, which is now another example of a technological back alley.

Video Home System was briefly in the 1970s and 80s, the go to way of recording stuff to watch on the telly.  It saw off the Betamax rival but in turn was sent off the scene by the DVD.

For perhaps a decade and a bit more they were an essential addition to the television, allowing you to both buy or rent commercial films to watch at home, and to record stuff to watch at a later time.

It’s downfall was that often the tapes became slack or just got jammed, and for those with a hectic social life, recording something to watch later, didn’t always work given that the hectic social life left little time to watch even the recorded shows.

I bet most of us will still have the odd VHS tape knocking around, which can never be played given that the accompanying VHS recorder has long since been skipped.  So they sit in a corner of the cellar or attic waiting the time  they will be transferred to a DVD, which is a time that never comes.

My kids are of an age which means that they remember them, but not so the next generation.  To them these clunky rather unsophisticated looking bits of technology are as remote as the cassette, the 78 record, and telegrams.

We will have had a few Man United VHS tapes given that three of our four lads are fans, and deep in the cellar at least one may have escaped the cull of all things obsolete.

And there they will stay, for without the recorder they are lost to us.  And I doubt any of the three will be beating their way to a shop to have them transferred to a DVD.

Deptford Town Hall

Leaving me just to ponder again on my time wandering the streets of Deptford, playing out one of many adventures, now over 60 years in the past.

Still it has rekindled an interest in the place, and I have asked Paula if she has pictures of Deptford, which in turn I suspect will lead to a series of stories.

We shall see.

Pictures; Au Revoir Cantona, 2021, from the collection of Paula Griffin,VHS tape with time scale, May 20, 2020, Tobias ToMar Maier, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license  and Deptford Town Hall, SE14, Philip Talmage / Deptford Town Hall, SE14 / CC BY-SA 2.0, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.