h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been thinking about this for a while and was finally triggered by Gerrydb's thread: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=7035514 What have you done or been part of or 'been there' for? I'm thinking of things that are part of you of course, but are likely to have wider interest, particularly for younger members. Perhaps you'd put a date or decade first? I have one, maybe two but I'll start here with a couple of more mudane ones to get started. - - - - Early 1940s: Wailing sirens, (rare) bomber scare... under the stairs. Dog first then me... Early 1940's: Adopting an extra surname, Rodney __ __ Warden, 'cos "Warden" was what it said on the gate. Early/mid 1940s: (home was also a home-from-home for american aircrew - and mother's sisters from Liverpool!) . Items of female under-attire from the washing, hung out of reach on the lampshade, by those huge americans. . Bedtime, being taught to read (well before 5 years old) by one of those huge americans ('Says Alice', 'Lines and Squares' ...) Mid 1940s: My primary school headmaster was one Ronald Hadlington (how come that's stayed with me?), who wrote a children's play and I was the first, the very first, the truly original "Hare with the red tail".

Interesting, very very interesting...my mum, who is 75 as of last week, still has memories of WW II - but how many real life memories are lost, and how little time to record them. Have a go, and I´ll be among the first to order the book.

I'll be back.
Need to consider this further.
Rod's reminiscences have made a great impression.
I wonder how many of those huge Americans made it through.

~jwf~

>I wonder how many of those huge Americans made it through<

Those "huge" Americans who had hubbies and sons over here and could but wait for any news...

Thanks for your kind comments. It's Gerrydb, (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=7035514 ) not me, who's writing a book. This may turn into an entry for PR, if it turns out right. - - >>I wonder how many of those huge Americans made it through<< One of those sisters married a fighter pilot (not sure if it was one of those huge americans, probably not) who didn't. Some years later she remarried - a civil engineer involved in Mulberry who continued a quite fulfilling life.

Hmm, I don't think my last was too clear -

It's Gerrydb, not me, who is doing the main job (8000 words so far) ref hseir Ask thread 'publishing on the web/WWII biography"

This thread was just triggered by his, and my hope is that we will collect enough interesting anecdotes here to make into a guide entry. There must be a whole big cornucopia of such stuff stored by you lot, occasionally coming to the front of your minds.

Don't, please, get caught up in WW2 only.

I'm looking for experiences of things past, passed and gone, that will be of wider interest, to any & all who pass this way. No boundaries, either cultural or political - just tell it as it was for you.

RtB

>>I'm looking for experiences of things past, passed and gone, that will be of wider interest, to any & all who pass this way. No boundaries, <<

I was at The Plymouth Hoe for the 1999 Solar Eclipse - the next total eclipse wont be here for almost another 100 years. (2090)

Seeing the shawdow come across the sea at you and swoop overhead and the light just evaporate and you were in darkness (and bizarrely, flashbulbs) - it was terrific. and I choose my adjective advisedly.

Watching TV with my sister and a family friend on a Friday evening. The programme was 'Take your Pick' hosted by Micheal Miles. Catch phrases were 'open the box' and 'take the money'.
The programme was interrupted to say the President JFKennedy had been shot.
I remember the shooting being on a Friday because of the TV programme but had to look up the actual date (22 Nov 1963)

Nov 22 1963 was the only time my mother ever woke me up late at night. She suddenly stood in my room, in tears: "They have shot Kennedy."

My parents' first date was that day.

I remember me, my big sister and brothers and brothers watching Sherlock Holmes films after tea on a Friday on BBC2. Also the whole family watching TOTP.

Before the 1978 World Cup, I got a Scotland t-shirt with Kenny Dalglish and Gordon McQueen on the front; it was white with gold sleeves. I was outside playing football and fell into an oily puddle. I cried and cried when my mum told me she couldn't get the stain out.

One of my first memories is of being held in my father's arms watching the men take the ware out of a red hot bottle oven. The men were stripped to their waists and were running in and out of the glowing furnace, returning with boards on their heads where the china ware was balanced. This would be a Monday morning, as the kilns were fired on Friday afternoon ( the whole town would be black with smoke ) the kilns would reach the correct temperature over the weekend and be cool enough to empty come Monday.

The whole industry is finished now, and very few factories still produce china in the Staffordshire Potteries.

One of my earliest memories is of Halloween at the tender age of four.
I didn't dress up or go out, but was frightened to death by those who came to our door.
Who were these people? Why would people dress like this? Why are they scaring people?

My parents of course were quite amused by and mildly embarrassed for my childish over-reaction.
I was totally unprepared for any of it. Their lack if support did nothing for my fear and lack of confidence.
It was a most traumatic experience and I still vividly recall the horror masks that leaned down into my tearful
face and cried 'Boo!'. I had nightmares for weeks, sometimes recurring for years. Why, just last night...

~jwf~

Thanks folks - keep 'em coming.

Lucky you, Clive.
Yes of course, JFK ...
Lanzababy: that must have been super, even for a toddler. (we lived in Kidsgrove for three years - son went to the RJ Mitchell school).
Sqiggles: a real-life horror story

- -

1950: Age 11, after one term at secondary school, flying to East Africa on a double-decker seaplane piloted by one 'Cat's Eyes' Kelly. Overnight stops at Ghent (should have been somewhere in south Italy), Alexandria, Khartoum and finally Entebbe on Lake Victoria. Father waiting for us ... with a CAR of his own!


I used to think the 'plane was a Princess flying boat but after a thread here, seems more likely to have been a converted Sunderland bomber.
Cat's Eyes Kelly was apparently credited with finally sighting the Bismarck.

How many of you remember the days when travel bags were handed out FREE with the company's logo on them?

- -

Early 1950s:
. Back to primary school in Kampala while waiting for a place at Prince of Wales school in Nairobi.
. On at least one of the going-to-school train journeys (overnight of course), climbing down while stopped on the rim of the Great Rift Valley, putting a penny on the rail. Waiting for the train to restart and run several wheels over it before scrambling back aboard with a Big Penny.
. On one such occasion, looking down on a pink lake (Naivasha?) which suddenly lifted off as a pink cloud - flamingos.
. Flying on a Comet of the Queen's flight (it said so on a plaque), one of the last flights before they were all grounded because of potential metal fatigue.
. Being sent back to UK to live with an Aunt & Uncle ... due to the Mau-Mau.

- -

I was going to get all nostalgic for the freebies airlines used to pass out - maps, toy planes, plastic 'wings', souvenir booklets, etc. - until I saw the reference to the Mau-Mau.

Put me in mind of that wonderful skit by 'Beyond the Fringe' doing a send-up of a Beeb interview with Prince Phillip to determine from his experiences in Africa the subtler differences between a 'freedom fighter' and a Mau-Mau terrorist. (Yes the word terrorist was big even back in the 60's. )

The 'Prince' suggested that it was often difficult to know the differences when one was being disemboweled by one. And the ersatz Beeb reporter shot back quickly, "So the confusion is really on the part of the disembowelee?"

Not that terrorism, or disembowelling of even freedom fighting is a laughing matter, but y'hadda laugh at a word like 'disembowelee'.

<
~jwf~

BTW Rod, You keep 'em coming too!
Sounds like you've got a bookload of great memories.

Free bags containing colouring books and associated paraphernalia the first time I went to the States (I was twelve; my brother and sister were younger). We got to visit the cockpit!

My mother had been out with a friend. When the friend dropped her off, I ran out to tell them, "Two planes have flown into the World Trade Centre; the Pentagon's on fire and they've evacuated the White House." There'll be no more trips to the cockpit.



Working the bog: rearing turf sods into footings to dry, bringing them home to store: fuel for the winter. I've done that every year, but I don't think it'll be happening for much longer. We'd often listen to the radio out there. RTE Radio 1. The only programmes that stay on my mind from the summer days on the bog are the long aftermath of the Omagh bombings.

Years earlier, my first time to Northern Ireland: a family camping holiday. We camped on a beach. A woman reversing her car ran over our kettle. It was a special camping kettle with no lid: you filled it through the spout. She went home and brought us one of her kettles. On our way up to the North we were again listening to RTE Radio 1. It was announced that the first IRA ceasefire would take effect from that midnight. I wanted us to wait south of the border till midnight, but our parents overruled me.

TRiG.

Good ones, Trig. Thanks.

~ jwf ~ :
<the subtler differences between a 'freedom fighter' and a [Mau-Mau} terrorist<
In some cases, just time.
Jomo Kenyatta, he of Mau-Mau notoriety became arguably the best Kenyan leader ( it was said at the time, by some who could have known, that he'd been taken out and been given a little wider education).
Then there's Nelson Mandela, who some called a terrorist at the time.

>>Sounds like you've got a bookload of great memories<<
Not really, most of 'em wouldn't fit even here... Anyway, I'm well past the halfway mark.
An ill favoured thing, but mine own.

Hi there Rod:
Thanks for capturing memories. To add:
My Dad(born 1914) served in WW II, He did not share many memories of his time spent away from home(Ca.)His memories did include:
Cooking a dinner for General Patton (a goose) in Italy.
Sending home earnings from card games to my Mom.
But not so unusually , he would not talk about that War.
My father, died in 1995, I, at now 55 years old, regret that I can no longer ask the historical questions pertaining to that era, that would be..of interest. By the way I as many miss this connection to the/our history of the past.

Ah yes, visiting the cockpit....
especially on long flights. Most kids and many 1st time fliers did in the 1960s. Soon, no one will be even able to believe that one.

I remember luggage being kept under a net at the back of the plane (propellers of course) during flights between Paris and the UK. As late as the early seventies if memory serves me correctly. (Was it Dan Air?)

>>>subtle differences between terrorists and freedom fighters

If you win, you were a freedom fighter (winners write 'recent' history, although long-term views can change)