Affleck's to Cross Lane Salford ..... more from a unique collection of family history

Now as ever it is always the detail that fascinates me about other people’s family’s pictures.

At Mr Affleck's studion, date unknown

Recently my friend Suzanne passed over a collection of photographs and letters dating back into the 1890s and spanning roughly 70 years of her family’s past.

Aunt Mary, aged 18, 1943

There are also a large number of newspapers and magazines covering the death of the old King which today are in themselves an interesting comment on how the media covered the event.

Added to which there are all those adverts which I was going to say have period charm but won’t because most of them I not only recognise but were remember with great familiarity.

But for today it is just two pictures, which invite you to dig deep into their history.

The first is of Suzanne’s grandmother, which was taken in the studio of Affleck’s on 121 Oldham Street.

I will have been in a similar photographic studio when I was very young and while I have no memory of the event we do still have the pictures and in the background there are those studio props, be they the plant, the backdrop of some faraway place or in the cae of Suzanne’s grandmother, a balcony.

And that just leaves one of favourite’s which is of her aunt Mary aged 18 outside the family shop on Cross lane in Salford.

Location; Manchester & Salford


Pictures; from the collection of Suzanne Moorehead

In Didsbury with lots of your stories ………..

It’s been a slow day at the office and stories of Didsbury have gone quiet.

The Didsbury two

Added to which adventures in the rain with the camera have been postponed.

So that just leaves me a bit of outrageous self-promotion.

Didsbury through Time was the first joint venture I undertook with Mr. Topping, and our Didsbury pubs book published last year was the latest.

In between there have been five others, with another four in the research stage, along with three I have published, and one Peter is working on.

And one of the four ... to come

Vainful boasting ……….. well yes, but all are a jolly good read.

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester Remembering 1914-18, Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples A Synagogue and a Mosque, Manchester Pubs, Hough End Hall, The Story Didsbury Through Time, The Pubs and Bars of Chorlton, The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Didsbury Pubs and Bars ........Coming soon ...... The Lost Stories

Location; Didsbury ,with a sideways trip to “everywhere and back”

Pictures; Covers to Didsbury through Time, 2014, and Manchester Pubs - The Stories Behind the Doors- Didsbury, 2019

* You can  buy all three books from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

Leon's ..........

The building was home to a laundry which failed during the Great War, and is pretty much a Chorlton institution.*


Location; Barlow Moor Road,

Picture; Leon's, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mrs Keal and the mystery of 419 Barlow Moor Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/02/mrs-keal-and-mystery-of-419-barlow-moor.html

The answer is 42 ……………… tonight on the wireless

For those who know the significance of 42, it may come as a bitter sweet surprise that The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is 42 years old.

And to mark that event the BBC is broadcasting on Radio 4, “a brand new full-cast series based on And Another Thing...,the sixth book in the famous Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy.………. Arthur Dent and friends return to be thrown back into the Whole General Mish Mash, in a rattling adventure involving Viking Gods and Irish Confidence Tricksters, with our first glimpse of Eccentrica Gallumbits and a brief but memorable moment with The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal.

Starring John Lloyd as The Book, with Simon Jones as Arthur, Geoff McGivern as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Sandra Dickinson and Susan Sheridan as Trillian, Jim Broadbent as Marvin the Paranoid Android and Jane Horrocks as Fenchurch. The cast also includes Samantha Béart, Toby Longworth, Andy Secombe, Ed Byrne, Lenny Henry, Philip Pope, Mitch Benn, Jon Culshaw and Professor Stephen Hawking.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2018, the series is written and directed by Dirk Maggs and based on And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, with additional unpublished material by Douglas Adams.

Music by Philip Pope
Production research by Kevin Jon Davies
Written and directed by Dirk Maggs
Based on the novel And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, with additional material by Douglas Adams
Recorded at The Soundhouse Ltd by Gerry O'Riordan
Sound Design by Dirk Maggs

Produced by Dirk Maggs, Helen Chattwell and David Morley
A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4.”

Those of us who devoured the books will each have their own favourite character,  event and saying.  Mine were Marvin the Paranoid Android, the spaceship carrying only hairdressers and estate agents, and the final words of the Dolphins when they left earth forever uttering the words, “So long and thanks for all the fish”.

But it will always be Marvin who would mutter "the brain the size of a planet and you ask me to make a cup of tea”, and his personal take on existence “I didn't ask to be made: no one consulted me or considered my feelings in the matter. 

I don't think it even occurred to them that I might have feelings. 

After I was made, I was left in a dark room for six months... and me with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side. I called for succour in my loneliness, but did anyone come? Did they hell. 

My first and only true friend was a small rat. One day it crawled into a cavity in my right ankle and died. I have a horrible feeling it's still there”.**

Location; Space

Picture; from The Pictorial History Book, & Co, Ltd Sampson Low, Marston & Co, Ltd, 1955 and the front of the Eagle February 11 1952

*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xnnjl

**Douglas Adams, from Fit the Twelfth (radio series)

A bit of new street furniture ……… coming to somewhere near you

The onward march of Amazon and how we use this shopping experience continues apace.

Those familiar with Morrisons in Chorlton will know the yellow machine just outside the entrance.

And then there is this one on Barlow Moor Road.

Both have been a permanent features of the landscape for a while.

The challenge and indeed the offer if you so choose, is to post your own ones, and building on that theme, share other different street vending machines, be they the old milk ones, Wrigley’s chewing gum, Five Boy’s Chocolate or Pink Paraffin dispensers.

There is of course no reward, just the pleasure in knowing you have added to the collection of street furniture, past and present.

Added to which there is a serious side to this, which is the ever-onward search for more about how we lived through the bits we used and continue to use.

So, the dispenser for Senior Service cigarettes, reminds us of both a time when this brand was available and popular, as could be bought from machines across the country.

While of course online shopping took a new turn with Amazon.

Pictures; Amazon street furniture, Chorlton, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and cigarette vending machine, 2016, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick

“A whole country in quarantine. Besieged by an invisible enemy. To be defeated by any means, before it's too late”.*

There are many stories of the events in this country, where, “All of Italy is a protected area”.

Viraggio, 2017

And sometimes it is the one you overlook which make for that story.

So, reading la Repubblica today I came across a report that Italia 1, which is a TV channel aimed at children and young people has “revolutionized programming with tailor-made proposals for the younger audience, forced to stay at home due to the coronavirus emergency .

It starts early in the morning with the best cartoons dedicated to the little ones. 

From 8.30 the BBC documentary series Planet Earth 2 - Wonders of nature begins : an exciting journey through the most beautiful panoramas of planet Earth made with the highest cinematic quality. 

From about 9.30 The Flash, the series dedicated to the fastest superhero in the world, restarts : three episodes of the first season every morning.

Alghero, 2017

In the afternoon, at 2 pm the usual appointments with the cult series The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory are confirmed . 

From 16 a sequence of films suitable for the whole family, timeless stories for those who have more time to spend at home in this period. 

Among the titles on the program Snow White and the Hunter , Beauty and the Beast , Paddington , Puss in Boots , The Little Prince , Tarzan , all the films in the Shrek saga and many others.

 From around 6pm normal programming of Italia 1 resumes”.

Location; Italy

Pictures, Viareggio railway station. 2027, and Alghero, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* la Repubblica, March 10, 2020

Down on Regent Road in 1876

Now one day I will go and research W.H. Bailey & Co the Albion Works Regent Road but not today.

The sun is out and the grass needs cutting, so you’ve had it.

Other than to say it is another of those fine adverts from Slater’s Directory of Manchester and Salford.

Brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of old Victorian Adverts [Salford Branch] Membership 1, but open to applications from Neil Simpson, Alan Jennings, Bill Sumner and anyone else with an interest in silly things.

And for those who have looked out of the window and seen the rain coming down like stair rods yesterday the sun shone as I wrote the story!

Picture; advert, from Slater’s Directory of Manchester and Salford, 1876