Age Test

M...eldy

I remember my mum asking for 'a pounds worth' of petrol at the garage and a little man coming out to fill it up for her .... I suspect that wasn't far off a full tank either!

RicF

I can remember where I was standing when someone told my mother Sir Winston Churchill had died.

[Deleted User]

RicF wrote (see)

I can remember where I was standing when someone told my mother Sir Winston Churchill had died.

I thought Winston Churchill was some character like from History? You were around for that? I bet you tell that story to all the other folk at the old peoples home.

 

SideBurn

I remember sending an important message, cost me a fortune and the f***er died! At least he managed to pass on the message first (phew). It was only 26.2 miles!

I told him not to run in armour, but he would not listen! He said, "Chicks dig armour". That is Greeks for you....

[Deleted User]

Boom Boom ....... you'd never believe that comedy isnt even what you do for a living there Sideburn.

 

 

RicF

The real Mr I wrote (see)

RicF wrote (see)

I can remember where I was standing when someone told my mother Sir Winston Churchill had died.

I thought Winston Churchill was some character like from History? You were around for that? I bet you tell that story to all the other folk at the old peoples home.

 

It was only 1965, practically last week.

[Deleted User]

Did you know that in 1965 it would be another 10 years before I was even thought of??

Of course many people on this forum would have wished my Dad had used a condom that night.

SideBurn

The real Mr I wrote (see)

Boom Boom ....... you'd never believe that comedy isnt even what you do for a living there Sideburn.

 

 

I retired...... obviously.....in 449BC and I always win my age group!

 

RicF

The real Mr I wrote (see)

Did you know that in 1965 it would be another 10 years before I was even thought of??

Of course many people on this forum would have wished my Dad had used a condom that night.

Still, at least that's one race you won. You would have been up against millions that night. Michael Phelps, eat your heart out.

Nessie

Surrey Runner wrote (see)

re postmen at Christmas, was that in Scotland?  on remember being told that they have only been celebrating Christmas in Scotland since the war.

Dunno - my Mum talked about getting Christmas presents when she was little, and she was born in 1925, so not WW2.  Don't know about pre WW1.

The real Mr I wrote (see)

I have a better 'old telephone' story.

In Australia, the emergency number is 000.

Now think about the old phones, the ones that you had to wind around the dial and wait for it to go back to its original position before doing the next number ..... where were the zeros? They were at the very end .....

So imagine an emergency, you would have to put your finger on the zero, then wind it all the way around, wait for it to go back, then repeat twice more to get connected.

If you were in a burning building you would be dead by the time you could even dial the emergency number.

There was a very good reason for that (and for 999 being the UK one).  In the olden days (sound of violins in the background), before digital communications, numbers were registered by a series of taps on the line.  If you watch some old B&W movies, someone will pick up the receiver and click the base several times to be connected to an operator - it was the sound that alerted the operator that someone wanted to make a call, and it was connected by the operator physically putting a plug into a socket.  This developed into an automated system, and the clicks were generated by the dial on the phone - if you are old enough to remember the dial phones, you will remember the distictive sound of the dial turning and then returning to it's starting point.

Suppose the emergency number were 111 (which makes sense for "speed dialling" on an old style phone as you say).  Now, if a crow (other birds are available) were to be sitting on the overground telephone wire, and pecked the wire 3 times, this would be picked up as an emergency call, using up one of the (pretty limited) number of lines available.  By the time the emergency services had established that it wasn't a real emergency call, someone else could be sizzling.

I have no experience, but I'd imagine it would be difficult to train a bird to tap 3 x 9 times on a telephone wire, therefore making 999 an unambiguous number to be the emergency call out.

In saying that, once you were used to them, dialling numbers didn't take all that long.  Not sure I'd fancy dialling a mobile on one, but when I was very young local numbers were only 3 digits, and area codes only 4.

 

[Deleted User]

My y11 students were shocked to discover that not only did mobile phones not exist when I was a teenager but that my family didn't have a phone in the house when I was little. Just too much for them to comprehend.

Doubly Bionic Ironwolf

Did you tell them we didn't have computers, laptops, Ipads, Ipods, the Internet, Xbox, or any of those things? I bet they would never believe you!

[Deleted User]

Their poor little heads were already strained by the phone idea. Idea that you walked down  road to a phone box totally mind blowing.