blonde poker forum

just musing as i polished my  shoes prior to  a pre poker  supper with my partners folks, and wondered how many peeps in this throw away age still   buff up leather to a shine??  do trainers get polished nowadays, or do young uns just fork out another £100+ when they are dirty??


as   to eating, actually  sat  down at a table in a group       how often  i wonder??

i know we certainly dont utilize the 2x 8 seater dining tables   currently supporting pcs and   tax returns for their daily crust !!

If my Father caught me leaving the house without polishing my shoes, there was serious grief to be had!

In my youth (OK, OK), any day out or event meant a shave, suit & tie, & shiny shoes. So when the Stones & The Animals came along, & played gigs in jeans & whatnot - shock horror! A kid at our school, got expelled for wearng trainers, another for wearing bell-bottoms! (I'm not sure, but I think it may have been boltpp, he's well edgy that one).

I still find it strange to see the likes of, I dunno, Mourinho or whoever, on Cup Final Day, unshaved. I guess it's a cool thing.

When we started Poker Week, the Producer chappie suggested "casual" wear, & I tried it for 2 weeks, but it's just not me, & I was worried what Dad would think. So the jacket & tie came out. Interestingly, note the Golf experts, Football pundits & cricket Commentators, even Sir Ian - all dolled up in ties & jackets these days. Quite right, too.

As for Dinner round the table, living alone, I don't think I've ever done it. Three's a crowd, two's company, but one means you can do as you like. Decadence indeed, what would our fathers have said?

I believe some of these things are important

For example I always sit down to a proper meal, cooked by me, at least once a weekend with my kids...its all too easy to have them eat tea on their laps in front of Dr Who for example and you lose that sense of "occasion" and "family" from not making the effort sometimes.

In addition if they are ever out eating with me, I've got a headstart in the behaviour stakes compared to some families I see

we eat at the table every day,  if you dont you dont eat. simple really

My trainers go in the washing machine when they are dirty

I own about 8-10 pairs of trainers, several of which i havent worn...

I eat my domino's out of its box in my bedroom on my pc.

I still wash my hands after going to the loo (well usually).  A practice that's in decline I'm afraid to say.  Especially concerning in a card room, especially when the chips are all sticky and grubby...

my secret is not pishing on my hands

You might not - but others do (not pish on your hands - well I'd hope not).  They touch the same door handles, the same chips, etc...

i dont believe your kids can out eat you tighty

If you think about it, Cardrooms must be seriously high-ranked when it comes to the spread of disease. At any one table, at some stage, every player touches every card, & every chip, & by the time the Final has been reached, just imagine the multiplication process by then!

Greasing the car was a regular Sunday job. I used to grease my Dad's Bedford truck, it had 28 grease nipples, i had to count them to make sure I hadn't missed any.

When you did the ones on the Kingpins, you had to jack the truck up to release the pressure and allow the grease to get between the pin and the bush.

Nowadays it's all sealed bearings and greaseless nylon bushes. My old grease-gun is obsolete, but I just can't bring myself to throw it away.

Lend it to Tikay, for his knees and hips.

And his nipples if it takes his fancy!

Geo

 rotflmfao

It's amazing to think how cars & vehicles generally have changed.

At one time, the sunday job was to adjust the tappets, check the timing chain for slack, clean or replace the points, sandblast the spark plugs, swap the wheels round (to combat tracking errors), check the tyre pressures, adjust the tracking, check the brake pads, change the oil, top up the rad, & every 3 months, a decoke was needed. Piston rings wore out, replace them (don't forget the circlip pliers), take the head off & grind in new valves with that dreadful paste, & heaven knows what else. Yet my current car, well, I've not done a thing to it in 45,000 miles, ( I have no idea how, or even if, the Bonnet opens), & the one before had gone 2 years & 90,000 without so much as checking the tyre pressures. Road Vehicles have come a long way, though the same can't be said for Diesel Locomotives on the Railway - the most reliable currently in service were built in the seventies.

I still use a soft cloth and spit and polish for my shoes.

When I was younger, most Sundays, all sons and fathers who were able used to get together at the local footie field for a twenty-odd a side game of football that lasted about 4 hours.

meanwhile the wifes and daughters and those men who couldn't play football would play rounders

Geo

And you "dubbined" your footie boots?

AAAH - Dubbin, and those huge cotton laces that we spun around our boots about ten times before tying them, and newspaper for shin guards when they made them compulsory.

Geo

Sunday night was bath night for the kids (7 of us)

Then one by one, stuck between mums knees with your head over a newspaper on her knee while she scraped the skin of the heid with the bone comb looking for nits, then a head rub down with Lorexane (sp?)

Geo

Oh yes, those laces! Round the heel & sole about 6 times!

Yup, Sunday was a big day, Church, bath, clean underwear & socks.

And a dose of ex-lax - "keeps you moving", & some "cod liver oil & malt", which was like treacle but 10 times treaclier. NHS Orange Juice & Milk Powder in those lovely tall white tins. We never had "nits" down south - posh, see? - but at school, there was a "nit nurse". Wonder what the modern term for "nit nurse" is?

We used to cook outdoors (weather permitting) on an open fire.

The first job was to pick a good spot to light it. Not too close to where people were liable to walk (and knock the pot over) and downwind from the waggons so that the smoke didn't blow inside.

Next task was to make sure you had a good supply of firewood, you needed several different sorts. Kindling to get the fire started, and some of medium thickness to burn quickly so as to ignite the thicker logs and also producesome nice hot embers.

Once the fire was going nicely, you would need either a large iron frying pan with the handle over the top (like a basket) or a pot of similar design that would hold about two gallons. You would then suspend your pot or pan over the fire on a "kettleprop" a spike with a hook shape on the end that was driven into the ground beside the fire.

You would start with an empty pan and you would allow the heat of the fire to sterilise it before adding the food. Your only job then would be to tend the fire and regulate the speed at which the food cooked by raising and lowering the hight of the kettleprop.

Staring into an open fire, catching the occasional whiff of woodsmoke and the aroma of the meal that you are cooking is truly one of life's greatest pleasures, for me at least.

I don't cook like this very often nowadays, but every now and then, when the mood takes me, I break out the old iron pan. Then, for an hour or two, the rest of the world ceases to exist.

do you guys know oliver twist?? ;tk;

For lighting fires (indoors) we used newspaper, matches, & for wood, we used to have Railway Sleepers delivered, & they had to be cut up. They came in 10' lengths, so we cut them first with a saw, then used an axe or chopper to split them into graded firewood. They'd be soaked in oil & grease, so they smelt a treat when burning. In some ways, kids today have it better, but really, learning & doing these things was good for us.

We used to walk the railway lines looking for coal or those little chocks of wood that they used to drive between the rail and the chair (do you know the ones I mean?) When they changed them, the old ones were often thrown down the embankment.

Keys Tom i think..

we can tell

Yup, wedge shaped dark timber. Maureen is probably right, but I don't recognize the term "keys" in this respect. A man used to walk the line daily with a 14llb long-shafted hammer & tap each one home gently. A railway track takes an enormous pounding, so it was vital to check those "chocks" or "keys" daily..

Maureen was spot on.

In traditional British practice, cast metal chairs were screwed to the sleepers, which took a style of rail known as bullhead that was somewhat figure-8 in cross-section — wider at top and bottom (known as the head and foot respectively) and smaller in the middle (the web). Keys (wedges of wood or sprung steel) were then driven in between chair and rail to hold it in place. This was common practice on British railways until the 1950s, but is now largely obsolete.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_tracks

Whenever people mention real fires i'm always reminded of my grandad, he was a real miserable old sod who's only passion in life was his garden.
Get him in the garden and he was passionate, knowledgeable and hugely entertaining.
He had a huge "garden" though it was more a field with orchards, streams and about 7 greenhouses all back to back all with different plants growing in them.
There were goats too which i always thought odd.
Anyway the fire connection, he was a real skinflint or maybe just a tradtionalist, who knows what went on in his head.
Whenever he was in the house he would sit in front of a huge fireplace with a blanket on his knees, the fire was NEVER lit.
I always remember that old house because it was always cold, my nan would cater for his every whim, he just sat there.
She used to do all her washing by hand and put it through a mangle outside the kitchen door, the food was kept in a pantry and cooked on a range.
Whenever i think of her i feel deep sadness at first then great happiness as i remember when he died the first 2 things she bought were a washing machine and a fridge.
He was of course a very wealthy man, i say of course because many misers are, i guess that's the trick.

As for polishing yeah i used to do that for hours and hours every day in my bedroom when i was 13 or 14, all my mates did at that age.















Boy we loved our Doc Marten shoes, mine were oxeblood.

A mangle! Gosh, I remember my Nan having one of those, trying to wind a sheet through it was a nightmare. A "copper" was used for washing - like an open-topped 40 gallon oil-drum really, & a "penny blue bag" was always dropped in to whiten stuff, what nonsense!

And she had a "range" too, great for cooking, but always a kettle on the boil. For some reason I can't recall, we always placed orange peel on top of the range.

Toast made on a fork, by the range fire, with lashings of butter never tasted better.

iimpromptu picnic/ feeding of the ducks


mrs p cooked a chuck for tea last week,  so just packed some bread/sides  and hit the local park.

splendid.


unfortunately  the boating lake closed for a refurb courtesy of the lottery fund, but with some coercing and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, assorted waterfowl  worked out how to get their picnic too.



simple,yet delightfull.