I borrowed a copy of this years ago, when I was just a new arrivee on the London scene, and one of those twits who had no money, but a penchant for learning what it was all about...!
It's still a very special listen. I've still got a worn out copy in the roof, having paid a quid for it in a second-hand record shop in Canterbury. I reckon the bloke saw me coming...
This was an iconic album back then
...and I can still hear the tracks in this ol' head...
And my days definitely ain't numbered...!
27 comments:
Dear Mr. Scroblene,
Are you one of my creditors? Your name does ring a bell... Or were you that nice Sandy Gall? I did so like it when you read the news... there was none of that David Cameron's mug plastered all over the screen then.
Do you ever go back to Penang? Your father sold me my first pair of wellingtons, I think.
Well all my love to Carlotta and Eleanor.
Thomas
The boy cycled right past the house over an hour ago! I know it's raining and there's all those new builds up the road but where is my Telegraph?
Bad enough yesterday that you promised me a free paperback with the Sunday edition, only to find that I would have had to travel a considerable distance to a Waitrose store in order to attain my copy. Ever the fellow to take control of a situation I thought- no natter, simply cut out the coupon and send it to Vera in Hove... she'll get it and post it on (didn't even mind if she read it first) only to find that the offer was limited to that day! What a rotten con!
I'm tired of sitting here in my night shirt and dressing gown... I smell like broad beans. Where's Margaret?
Having made do with a passing dental amalgam polisher, life seems as close to abnormal as it has done for at least three hours Baron Fuller!
Howthedevilareyou this fine evening of heavy rain and an occluded west front, followed by cyclonic beverages of mammoth proportions?
Abject would be my apologies for your non-delivereance of the parish magazine. Miss Lump forgot to get a new ribbon for the typrewriter yet again, (that's twice since Churchill died), so we'll all wait with bated breath to learn if the Bosun has to have his leg off!
Please take what you need anyway, there are plenty to go round - especially since we cleaned out the pantry at the badminton club!
It is so nice to see old friends arriving, tripping over the doorstep, and breaking the hatstand in places where it has never broken before...
TPFuller? think that's a name from the past,is he one of the Fullers who runs that smelly pig farm not far from some end of the world, well end of the lane hell hole called pinky or perky, where even the new fangled things like the GPS and those phones with andyroyd refuse to work due to some wartime arms dump being in the area and taken over by some authority who play with herb bosuns or something, sorry Scrobs can't listen to your tunes as youngest son has nicked/borrowed/will return/just want to test it/etc my 7.1 sound system from my computer and removed it to some 10th floor flat in Manchester he knows I won't come to get it ,because I hate heights.
You too? I must say despite your suffering that I am pleased to hear that it’s not just my poor self suffering mammoth colonic troubles… nothing for weeks then BANG CRASH it’s everywhere before Margaret can pull off the counterpane. I almost began to suspect Mrs Keetley of putting something in my morning broth.
Tell Miss Lump that there is no need to gussey up my Telegraph with a ribbon… I know that I am a bachelor of longstanding but I would not like her to run away with the wrong idea, and tell her that if I did rebuff her advances at at the Biggin Hill Air Fair, and again the Jubilee celebrations in 1977, it was merely because my rash was really playing up no doubt due to the unusually hot summer that year.
Bosun? Is the Onedin Line still on the BBC? Is it still as popular as ever?
Hatstand? I tell you again it was all a misunderstanding; I was looking for my packet of Everton mints, and the Reverend’s overcoat was also a Gannex.
Albert? Did you have the green Hillman Avenger? Wife with a wall eye? You have me mistaken I’ve never had anything to do with pigs, I did have a cat if that’s any help.
I do apologise mr TPFuller, their must be another person with a name simliar to your goodself, must be awful when you get post and it's not for you and the mistake is made by the postman reading it wrong but with only one different digit on the postcode but 20 miles away.
My wife has decent vision, mr Thud who comes here to mr Scrobs blog can testify to that having had to listen to her forked tongue.
Green Hillman Avengere had a few mostly blue and a red one and a yukky yellow one, I thought the green was so Irish and as I wasn't doing any "hunting" at the time, I felt I had no need for that colour
Albert,
The old memory is not what it once was. Green, blue, red, even yellow; all become one over time. Still I score top marks for the Avenger. You seem to have rather enjoyed the mark judging by the quantity you seem to have owned. Had you not ever considered the Sunbeam Alpine?
Dear mr TPFuller or may I just call you mr T, the Avenger was a very good car the one's I had were company cars and because of my mileage each year were changed yearly and later every 6months,the only problems I ever had were blowing valves through the sides of the engines mostly at high speed, as you may remember speed cameras and PC policeman had yet to emerge from the technolagy and the womb but both were on the way one due to the Vietnam war and the other due to man's urges.
The Sunbeam Alpine although an excellent two seat sports car 1800cc ? didn't have the required space for the company rubbish I had to carry. the best car on 4 wheels I thought was the Vauxhall Belmont Astra, as a car to carry 4 people it was a pig, but just a driver it held the roads even better than any low slung sports car, the only fault was the gearbox which falls apart after 130,000 miles.
But the Avenger was only an Ital with cholera! The Ital could do ninety, well, that was the last count of pedestrians run over near here, when Wayne and Daniii decided to go for a spin on St Gummidges Day!
What a party that was too! You were right Thomas, about the Biggin Hill Air Fair, when the gents WC was in fact a bell tent designed for midgets! The several pints of Old Blasted went through one like a dose of aviation spirit, in fact, one of the pilots declared that it made him loop the loop even faster, but that is perhaps a misunderstanding about his sexual prowess with Dame Gloria Pudding, who was a well known vamp in those days!
Albert, were you there when Miss Cottle was taken from behind (not in the biblical sense you understand, when a Flying Flea went on the loose)!
And are those barge boards ready for nailing yet? I notice Mr Thudding went off on his spree, just leaving them to the elements without so much as a look at a tin of knotting!
As you don't like heights, I assume that he will be applying the nails himself!
The Gannex was a good coat by the way. It suffered minor burns on occasions, but this apparently was a style much beloved by Baron Harold Wislon of Wincarnis, and his love of the Cut Plug!
Dear mr Scrobs, the answer to your question is no, but was around when she took some used teabags to the garden compost bin and when she opened the top went into shock when 3 field mice just as shocked as her went scuttling around trying to find a hiding place,she still made lots of tea but refused to take the tea bags for compost but a higher authority made her as the binmen complained about her putting them in the brown bin instead of the green bin.
As I haven't been to see mr Thud as yet I have no idea if his barge boards are still ok but I suspect his guys being the experts will have kept a very good eye on them.
As far as nailing them himself, I would have thought the old saying why have a dog and bark yourself comes into play.
I always thought a Gannex was a bird or could be an aeroplane with two contra rotating propellors or am I thinking about something else?.
How many autumn mornings would I sit with uncle Ted, sheltering from the silvery drizzle under a Hawthorne while he reamed the bowl of his pipe for his cut plug. Put me off smoking for life.
Albert forgive me for being so woolly I was of course referring to the later ‘Fastbacks’… Rootes introduced the ‘Arrow’ range in ‘67, by ‘68 the saloons and estates (such as the Hillman Hunter) had been joined by a Sunbeam Rapier Fastback coupé model. In ‘69, a cheaper, slightly slower and more economical version of the Rapier (still sold as a sporty model) was badged as the new Sunbeam Alpine.
All models featured the group’s strong five-bearing 1725 cc engine, with the Alpine featuring a single Stromberg CD150 carburettor to the Rapier’s twins, and the Rapier H120’s twin 40DCOE Weber carburettors.
Although drawing many parts from the group’s ‘parts bin’, including the rear lights of the estate Arrow models, the fastbacks nevertheless offered a number of unique features, including their pillar-less doors and rear side windows which combined to open up the car much like a cabriolet with a hardtop fitted. Extensive wooden dashboards were fitted to some models, and sports seats were available for a time.
Mother’s brother Ted has white example with red vinyl seats, I remember him picking me up from a school sports day once, a Mrs Bartlett was his co-driver, a rather chesty lady with a wet cough.
There are some strange people around these here parts.
Dear mr T, I do hope you don't mind me shortenting your name a tad as it reminds not recieving some Fullers earth powder for the garden from a company on Ebay, Iam rather upset over that as the "person" swore at me in an email when I advised I had not recieved the powder.
The Hillman Hunter ah yes a cracking machine,I had a spare company one passed over to me after coming back from hot climes in 1980, this had a recon engine so the man at the garage said,I used it for a year and 7days a week in that year going from Birkenhead to Birmingham, in the morning and back in the evening, I was told it was possible to do 110 miles an hour all the way both ways but I never ever repeat never ever tested that theory, as far as things that make cars go and that thing they called the bonnet in the front of the windscreen in which under it the dark arts of magic seems to be practised by people who would say things like it'll be ready by tomorrow but it never was or the oil seal has gone seeya.
The colour of the Hillman if I remember was a sandy colour, it might have been a joke by the transport people in giving me that colour car but I really didn't get it.
Dear mr T and all
sorry about anonymouse but the word verification failed and I forget in my haste to put my name to the above,
Evening mr Thud has the jet lag or the over eating of your crop of fruits got to you.
Dear Albert and Thomas,
My old flatmate from 1969 had a Sunbeam Rapier as you described.
He once parked it on the front drive of the hose where we all lived, (79 of us sometimes), and went to be, leaving the door wide open, and the keys still in the ignition!
He was a high jumper, and narrowly miised being picked for the Olympic Games, but he did introduce me to David Hemery once. He was drinking water at the time...
Brave lad knowing where they had their well...
Dear Thomas,
Red vinyl seats could cause 3rd degree burns to any unsuspecting short-trousered sprog...
And when I was a lad, we would go to the August Bank Holiday car meeting at Brands Hatch, before the big international track was laid down.
The cars were so stout then, us boys would sit on the roof at the front, dangling our legs over the windscreen.
Watching Archie Scott-Brown, Graham Hill (in an Austin A35), and Stuart Lewis-Evans was a revelation then, and we were usually sick on the way home as we'd eaten too many paste sandwiches...
I recall my late father’s Series IV Humber snipe, a lovely dove grey… which was an ideal colour, for we would often mix cement in the commodious boot when out on pointing duty… we used a mustard coloured Vauxhall Velox PB for any lime pointing that we got up to.
Mother always drove a maroon Series V Morris Oxford, and used the backseat as a mobile hair salon. Parked up on the high street she plied her trade for over sixteen years, for in those days ladies were too modest to ask a third party to shave their whatnots.
Ahh paste sandwiches! Always a favourite.
Mother’s Recipe For Sandwich Paste
8oz plain white flour
8oz stork margarine
1/2oz salt
1/4 cup water
The paste was then put into individual jars- each jar had a spoonful of any type of flavouring added. Bovril/Pepper/Pork Fat/Chives or even sugar.
The sandwiches had to be eaten by lunchtime or the paste would harden and cause indegestion.
Excellent: http://youtu.be/vUCBArbKtMw
Thanks for this, Scrobs. Classic.
Aye.
Thank you Scrobs
Crab paste was a substance (may still be), to ensure that small boys grow up thinking that aged aunts hoard all sorts of unpleasant things in their pantries, and foist them on to said dirt-kneed persons.
If an aunt drove a Humber Snipe, you could be certain that she'd have several hundredweight of crab paste in her garage, all waiting for a steel knife to disgorge contents all over said small boy.
It was a post-war fantasy, and one which has unusual connotations, not unconnected with boarding schools, prep, and, after eight mints on a Sunday afternoon...
Pips I felt that this piece of music was a bit loud - perhaps I'll turn the speakers down a notch, but thank you anyway...
And thanks Elecs too, although of course, not for bursting my eardrums...
Dear Thomas,
The Vauxhall VX490 (1st version), was an elightened drive in which Scrobs was forced to practise reverse figures of eight on the forecourt of a hop drying oast in Bodiam, for several weeks.
It is even thus now, that I can reverse into a space one inch larger than the Wayfarer De Luxe, so the practice was well worth the blood sweat and tears...
And my days aren't numbered...
I was conceived, given birth to, and lost my virginity in the self same Hillman Husky series II... not bad going when taken into account that it in fact belonged to the local greengrocer.
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