And I remember a white cat with no tail
Aug. 5th, 2005 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaI am invariably annoyed when people write articles about things remembered from childhood which "you don't get nowadays". For a start, they always seem to include things like "milk arriving on the doorstep" which you do get nowadays (or I do, anyway). Or "children playing in the road"; if you believe doesn't happen these days, drive down Swinburne Rd at teatime. Ask ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zandev for details.
These lists often seem to be pointless nostalgia-fests - wasn't the world great when you could buy ten rhubarb-and-custard chews for ten pence and play out til teatime? Well, yes, it was; but surely that's the cry of each succeeding generation since Cane first wailed to Abel that chocolate fruit-of-the-tree-of-knowledge wasn't a patch on the stuff you could get when they were kiddies.
Now, maybe it's just one of those things that one person's harmless nostalgia is another's sentimental wallowing. I do find myself fascinated, though, by the everyday things which just silently drop out of life - and which you don't notice at the time, until suddenly you hear a phrase which catapults you back twenty years.
The phrase "dial 01 if you're outside London". Going out for a country walk and finding rabbits dying of myxomatosis. Hearing news reports attributed to "the Soviet news agency, TASS". The little square plastic tags which held bags of sliced bread closed.
Unlike long-forgotten things like adverts and one-hit-wonders, they're things which seemed incredibly permanent at the time. By definition, they're hard things to think of, because they're exactly the things you don't think of from day to day, and which are rarely marked in museums in the way that other obsolete things might be. They're not missed, or necessarily remembered with any great fondness. I suppose their seeming permanence might just have been an artefact of me being little - TASS probably didn't seem so inevitable to someone who remembered the forming of the Sovet Union.
Some things, like the mentions of TASS, disappeared as the result of momentous events. Others, like the bread tags, were just replaced by a technological development which rocked nobody's life (and you just try putting those little bits of tape round the spokes of your bike wheels). I'll happily consider submissions for other examples.
Some things which I thought had quietly shuffled out of existence seem just to have retreated further north with time. A year or so ago I was at home in Darlington and was delighted to hear a strangely, unearthly shout from the far end of the road:
"Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag-bn Nyag-bn"
These days it's a pick-up truck, of course, with a second guy walking along side it. When I was little it was a man in a horse and cart. But my parents' road still occasionally gets visits from the rag-and-bone man. Given the number of old fridges, microwaves, sofas etc which haunt the side roads of Cowley, we could do with one down here. Whether they would still make the same unintelligble noise is an interesting question.
zandev for details.These lists often seem to be pointless nostalgia-fests - wasn't the world great when you could buy ten rhubarb-and-custard chews for ten pence and play out til teatime? Well, yes, it was; but surely that's the cry of each succeeding generation since Cane first wailed to Abel that chocolate fruit-of-the-tree-of-knowledge wasn't a patch on the stuff you could get when they were kiddies.
Now, maybe it's just one of those things that one person's harmless nostalgia is another's sentimental wallowing. I do find myself fascinated, though, by the everyday things which just silently drop out of life - and which you don't notice at the time, until suddenly you hear a phrase which catapults you back twenty years.
The phrase "dial 01 if you're outside London". Going out for a country walk and finding rabbits dying of myxomatosis. Hearing news reports attributed to "the Soviet news agency, TASS". The little square plastic tags which held bags of sliced bread closed.
Unlike long-forgotten things like adverts and one-hit-wonders, they're things which seemed incredibly permanent at the time. By definition, they're hard things to think of, because they're exactly the things you don't think of from day to day, and which are rarely marked in museums in the way that other obsolete things might be. They're not missed, or necessarily remembered with any great fondness. I suppose their seeming permanence might just have been an artefact of me being little - TASS probably didn't seem so inevitable to someone who remembered the forming of the Sovet Union.
Some things, like the mentions of TASS, disappeared as the result of momentous events. Others, like the bread tags, were just replaced by a technological development which rocked nobody's life (and you just try putting those little bits of tape round the spokes of your bike wheels). I'll happily consider submissions for other examples.
Some things which I thought had quietly shuffled out of existence seem just to have retreated further north with time. A year or so ago I was at home in Darlington and was delighted to hear a strangely, unearthly shout from the far end of the road:
"Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag-bn Nyag-bn"
These days it's a pick-up truck, of course, with a second guy walking along side it. When I was little it was a man in a horse and cart. But my parents' road still occasionally gets visits from the rag-and-bone man. Given the number of old fridges, microwaves, sofas etc which haunt the side roads of Cowley, we could do with one down here. Whether they would still make the same unintelligble noise is an interesting question.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 07:51 am (UTC)The more specific "do you remember Z twiddly flange thing" can be more enjoyable. I'd forgotten all about the bread tage until you mentioned them here, and now I find myself wondering when they disappeared, and whether there are still any out there. TASS on the other hand went over my head - I must have been old enough to hear about them but not to clock their existence in my long term memory.
Anyway, I should return the favour, so (without knowing whether it still exists - probably it does) I shall remind you of the existence of banana-flavoured cough(?) medicine. Ahhh, them were the days.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 07:54 am (UTC)Antibiotics ? That's Amoxil (active ingredient Amoxicilin) (why do I remember such useless trivia?) and unless any of the medically qualified types round here want to correct me, it's still the generic catch-all antibiotic of choice. No idea if it's still 'nana-flavoured, though, they give boring old capsules to so-called adults.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 08:03 am (UTC)Spike Milligan on myxomatosis
Date: 2005-08-05 08:05 am (UTC)With eyes full of pus.
This is the work,
Of scientific us.
I never saw any, but I do remember TASS.
It was odd the first time I walked through the Hay Street mall without being assaulted by the Daily News seller's nasal cry of Darelynuus. (Western Australia dropped down to one daily newspaper for the state about fifteen years ago)
Re: Spike Milligan on myxomatosis
Date: 2005-08-05 08:06 am (UTC)What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-05 08:09 am (UTC)I was wondering the other day whether one could buy those, because the little bits of tape are so un-re-sticky that you can only re-stick them once or twice, and the long-life bread lasts longer than one or two bread-openings.
Then I googled for them, and found someone who collects them, a lovely article about them by an artist, and -- lest we forget their hidden dangers -- a warning that bread tags are potential killers. This last, I suspect, might go some way to explaining why they disappeared (along with biro-lids that you could stick to the end of your tongue by sucking them to create a vacuum, or-was-that-just-me).
I remember the days before Google. You won't catch me nostalging for them though.
biro-lids
Date: 2005-08-05 08:18 am (UTC)I didn't realise that bread tags went the same way.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 08:26 am (UTC)And now I find myself asking the question (which you predicted would be difficult), what things used to be ubiquitous that I barely noticed them, that are now no longer there?
Ooh, Tonka toys really were all that, but don't seem to be any more. Maybe their perceived durability lead to them being left lying around everywhere, but WIWAL, every garden that had kids had a Tonka toy discarded and not rusting somewhere. Though I do tend to mix with a different social set these days, so I suppose it's possible that there's still a healthy Tonka scene going on that I'm no longer hip to. Or something.
Tobacco tins that were actually tins that came with tobacco in, rather than tins with pictures of foliage, SCHWA alien's or implausible rural montages which are used for keeping a different kind of tobacco in.
These aren't things that have gone so much as things that have receded, I suppose.
Re: biro-lids
Date: 2005-08-05 08:40 am (UTC)They didn't - at least, not if you buy Buckingham Sliced Rye bread from Waitrose ;-) (I've not examined any other loaves particularly closely)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:04 am (UTC)Bread tags are still the standard way to seal bags-with-bread-in in Japan. (they don't deserve to be called loaves, I suspect they extrude great big long loaves and then put six slices in every bag.)
As for rag-and-bone-man noises, the Japanese equivalent had a tape recording on continuous loop. (Less annoying than the baked-potato-analogue man, whose recording was of a sort of sung-chant...)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:06 am (UTC)For obvious reasons, they don't sell kaolin and morphine anymore, though you can still find some if you rummage through an elderly relative's medicine cabinet. I've been told it is an excellent source for reasonable quality morphine, as the ingredients settle out after a while...
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:13 am (UTC)Like an ice-cream van.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:16 am (UTC)Oo, never seen that before and still able to work out what it means. Cool.
Tobacco tins that were actually tins that came with tobacco in,
I last bought one of those about ten years ago, so they're not that old. Demonstrating
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:22 am (UTC)I just coined it, so you're one of the first users. In the future, when people can't live without it, you'll be able to proudly state: "Oh yes, I was one of the alpha testers, back in '05."1
and still able to work out what it means.
Would it still have worked with the optional 'E' at the beginning?
[1] '05." looks so wrong, and yet is so right.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:40 am (UTC)Re: What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-05 09:50 am (UTC)Jelly shoes.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:51 am (UTC)Apparently, it really doesn't take very long at all, to settle out.
Re: What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-05 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 09:59 am (UTC)Re: What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-05 10:11 am (UTC)Okay, how about Punch & Judy strawberry/orange toothpaste. That seems still to exist as well. Oh well.
Re: What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-05 10:45 am (UTC)Re: What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-05 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 02:30 pm (UTC)Mentions the Itar-Tass news agency.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 06:39 pm (UTC)Re: biro-lids
Date: 2005-08-06 12:54 am (UTC)Why are you looking at me like that?
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 04:09 am (UTC)"The python painted packets that the whole caboodle landed in". I think that there's another line in there too.
Oh dear, my brain really is full of crap.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 04:09 am (UTC)Re: biro-lids
Date: 2005-08-06 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 07:42 pm (UTC)Some of the Red Bull cocktails which Wetherspoons do (did?) taste exactly like Calpol. Sadly, what was nice on a 5ml teaspoon wasn't nice (in my opinion) when it arrived in half pints!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 07:43 pm (UTC)It does separate out extremely quickly.
Re: What was the nostalgia like when you were young?
Date: 2005-08-11 07:44 pm (UTC)Judging by the comments, only weirdos and misfits didn't do it :)