When I were a lad

[brightspark]

Just an addition to 8obs mention of shillings in the meter, Around sixty five years back, we lived next door to my grand parents and I vividly remember the electric meter took Pennies,The meter was quite low in a little cupboard, and standing on top of the meter they had a jam jar half full of pennies ready for incertion, Don't even get me started on the wireless, that was i the living room and ran on glass cased batteries that I believe had to be charged, don't know where but I don't think that people had their own chargers,

they wernt batteries they were accumulators. when I started work they still had the charger for them in the workshop

 

[Robotstar5]

Does anybody remember Redifusion cable tv back in the sixties? Cable strung from house to house with a junction box dropping the cable down to your living room etc, I was an apprentice then and worked with a chap that had been a debt collector for Redifusion, He knocked on doors, but said often the people were at home but wouldn't answer the door, The high tech method of cutting off the tele was no more than while pretending to look around for the occupants he would push a dress making pin through the cable to short the screening wires to the core where the cable ran down the wall and in through, usually the corner of the living room window, they soon paid up thinking they had been cut off back at some control centre,
And on a security note, how many people had the door key dangling on a string behind the letterbox!!

It was British Relay round here

 

[ronan]

Sixties! Dublin had a similar cable network in 2012 as it used to interfere with some of our customers radio systems. It was almost impossible to tame due to the install quality. I haven't worked there in the last five years but it was extensive network and I'd expect its still there.

Cablelink ? A nightmare to use and deal with, now happily defunct.

 

[brightspark]

I have a redifusion cat ladder I swapped of a guy that worked for them

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Don't even get me started on the wireless, that was i the living room and ran on glass cased batteries that I believe had to be charged, don't know where but I don't think that people had their own chargers,

I remember that too - my Dad used to take it to the local electrician's shop where they did a swop-over for a fully charged one - don't know how much it cost for the service 'though.

 

[GW8IZR]

Cablelink ? A nightmare to use and deal with, now happily defunct.

That will have made my old customers happy, when did it go and what replaced it? ISTR the terrestrial coverage was pretty much rubbish. Quite a lot had fairly big antennas beaming to the north for UK tv.

 

[magnet]

Anyway one thing i notice about times gone past, there was a sense of community. Everybody knew everybody else, people were always in and out of each others houses, went to the same dance halls and cinemas. Even in a city like Dublin, it seemed like a large town back then, if you were talking to someone you didn't know, chances are they knew someone you knew or visa-versa. That was certainly better than today.

The older buildings had a bit of character and you had a fondness for them. During the boom over here, lovely building were mysteriously catching fire and collapsing, where there were hideous cheap apartments and ugly steel and glass building chucked up.

....Just for you ronan

 

[-Matt-]

Flogging Molly doe a rather excellent cover of that song, which I didn't realise was a cover until seeing that post

 

[gordon stephenson]

I have some good memories of the mid sixties, I briefly went out with a nice accommodating young lady,Who at he time worked at a local small petrol station.I had an XK120 at the time, The good memory was her petrol station had the contract to fill up the Redifusion vans and charge to the next full gallon, She kept a log, and when I picked her up from work she would give me the extra petrol that had already been paid for, Great result, at times even had to syphon from my tank and store in cans to make room for the next fill up, Cant remember why the relationship ended but I was heart broken!!!

 

[Wedg1e]

Gordon, I used to live in a terraced area of Thornaby that still had the (by then defunct) Rediffusion wiring up along the fascia boards.
A crafty Scots radio ham in the next street had repurposed the wiring as a 'long-wire' receiving aerial - it ran the length of the street and there wasn't much he couldn't pick up!

 

[gordon stephenson]

Cant beat thinking outside the box, long aerial wire sound like a good idea to me,

 

[CompoSimmonite]

A friend of mine moved into a new house about 15 years ago, fitted with one of the then new fangled wireless door bells. The onle thing was the whole estate seemed to be on the same frequency, ring one & you rang the lot. All the garages in the row could be opened with each other's keys.

We had an early type of baby intercom that plugged into a mains socket. We used to receive transmissions from another house a hundred or so yards away.

 

[8ob]

Wireless intercom The first house dad bought in 1965 had a wireless intercom, there were pull cables rigged up to every room that worked their way back to the kitchen via loads of pulleys, a bell clanged and a red gadget flipped up to show which room had called, also still had all the pipework in place for the original gas lamps

Bob

 

[arther dailey]

I bet that was a nice gaff

 

[daleyd]

Wireless intercom The first house dad bought in 1965 had a wireless intercom, there were pull cables rigged up to every room that worked their way back to the kitchen via loads of pulleys, a bell clanged and a red gadget flipped up to show which room had called, also still had all the pipework in place for the original gas lamps

Bob

Did you live in Downton Abbey?

 

[cumbriasteve]

I remember my first Betamax video recorder probably close to 1988, what a massive thing it was but it was jaw dropping to think we could tape a film off the telly, had loads of tapes with contents on the label but spent most of the time trying to find the start and arguing who never rewound it last time.

I can remember saying you could make a fortune driving around the estates hiring films when VHS first became popular, a year later someone did, £3 a film for 3 nights (a fortune then), he made enough money to buy a large garage become Nissan and Citroen franchise and now retired to Ireland with race horses... oh well...he who dares

 

[gordon stephenson]

The house that my sister lived in for years had the same system as you describe 8ob, she doesn't live there now but still owns the house, In the kitchen above the door is the nice hardwood box with four or five little red flags that wiggle to let you know which room pulled the cord, Plus a little bell rang at the same time,

 

[GW8IZR]

(snip) when VHS first became popular, a year later someone did, £3 a film for 3 nights (a fortune then), he made enough money to buy a large garage become Nissan and Citroen franchise and now retired to Ireland with race horses... oh well...he who dares

Hmm.. I recall a certain conversation with the person who started up one of the highstreet mobile phone warehouse's .. he was always coming to me to sort the old analogue celphones - why don't you leave and join me 'cos this mobile business is really going to take off in a few years.

Nah.. never be as lucrative as what I'm doing now!

Ah well.....

 

[Ton-up]

And the first 'remote control' Vhs I had in the mid 80's, dont know what make, but it was the colour of a rose gold iphone! The remote control was on a 8ft wire!

 

[Robotstar5]

....I can remember saying you could make a fortune driving around the estates hiring films when VHS first became popular, a year later someone did, £3 a film for 3 nights (a fortune then), he made enough money to buy a large garage become Nissan and Citroen franchise and now retired to Ireland with race horses... oh well...he who dares

We had an enterprising lad at Longbridge who would hire the latest film release over a weekend, run off a few copies then hire them out at work, unfortunately he was too greedy and had his finger in many pies, eventually went down for handling stolen property.