I agree that it was quite a change, but I don't miss seeing discarded tabs lying on the ground.
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Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now
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I still see them, very occasionally! Which suggests they have been lying around for 4 decades..
Killingworth
Established Member
Replaced by huge numbers of cans, plastic bottles and coffee beakers chucked wherever you look alongside roads and many stations.
Indeed. The cans appear ot be almost exclusibely Red Bull, Coke, Fosters and Stella.
GusB
Established Member
Nice to see that people are enjoying the finer things in life...
On the subject of discarded drinks cans, and perhaps only applicable north of the border, I'm reminded of the Tennent's Lager cans adorned with pictures of ladies; that certainly wouldn't go down well these days.
As an aside, when new heating was being installed in my house a few years back, when they lifted the upstairs floorboards the installers found an empty McEwans Export can, one of the old type that didn't taper in at the top, along with an empty half bottle of Vodka!
Killingworth
Established Member
I've noted a great range of regional tastes, including wine and gin bottles + the inevitable McDonald's detritus, not forgetting KFC and Costa Coffee debris.
Indigo Soup
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Come to think of it, it must be a couple of decades since I've heard the word 'beaker'!
Could just be a regional thing of course.
In certain parts of the UK - shops who acted as "parcel agents" for the local bus company enabling folk for a fee to deposit a parcel for onward transmission by a bus or sequence of buses to a parcel agent elsewhere for uplift by the recipient of the parcel.
Killingworth
Established Member
There you are, bang on topic!
I onky ever saw parcels carried by Crossville in Wales. On holiday before we owned a car we did a journey involving two changes in the company of several boxes of day old chick's.
Or people who wouldn't respond to you unless you enclosed a stamped self-addressed envelope.
styles
Member
Semi-related, but travelling on 'post buses' - buses primarily aimed at moving mail, but which passengers could hop on also. A short history: https://www.postalmuseum.org/blog/the-story-of-the-postbus/
They aren't assigned to the historybooks worldwide, but certainly in the UK those postbus trips to get to the start of your ramble are a thing of the past. I'm surprised the last postbox in the UK was as recent as 2017. Recently I tried to board a school bus which was one of the scheduled 4-hourly services on a route I wanted and I was refused boarding because it was designated for school use (despite being publicly-timetabled with no notice that it was a school bus).
Interesting. The rules may well have changed but I seem to recall that at one time operators were only allowed to reclaim fuel tax duty on journeys which were available to all regardless of whether the carriage of school pupils was the principal purpose of the journey.
Journeys can be designated for the conveyance of school children only. That is any school child, irrespective of school attended. In which case I believe, Bus Service Operator Grant can be claimed.
DelW
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People referring to the accelerator pedal in cars as the "throttle". I don't think new cars have had throttles since the early 1990s, when stricter emissions regulations meant an end to carburettors, throttles and chokes. I presume these days the pedal simply operates a potentiometer which tells the electronic control unit logic to squirt more or less fuel through the injectors. (Subject to correction by those more knowledgeable than me!)
The terminology seems to be well embedded to still be common thirty-plus years later.
The terminology seems to be well embedded to still be common thirty-plus years later.
Indigo Soup
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When I was in high school, two double-decker buses ran between my village and the school, and a third single-decker which primarily served a village further out but incidentally served my end of my village.
Opinion differed on whether it was best to get the bus direct to Village A, the bus to Village B by way of Village A, or the bus to Village A by way of the town centre which carried paying passengers...
Much the same even on aircraft nowadays: instead of a flight engineer whose job was to manage all the variables on all the engines, the pilot now just has a 'more power/less power' lever and a computer figures out the rest.
Ringing up a business/council/utility or any large organisation and actually getting a real person on the other end rather than a call centre. Apols if this has already been mentioned.
mm333
Member
Lever arch files. Every office used to be full of them.
Anonymous10
Established Member
My museum office still is
I've never known anything else.My driving instructor late 1970s always termed it the "gas pedal". I recollect him exclaiming "Gas! Gas!" when he felt I should have been proceeding with a bit more alacrity, causing me to think that we were featuring in some kind of war film.
Available from Sainsbury's (and others).
styles
Member
One Americanism I can tolerate. When teaching people to drive, "Add some gas.", "Set the gas.", "You stalled because you needed more gas.", etc roll off the tongue quite nicely. "Depress the accelerator.", not so much. Arguably could go with, "Add some fuel.", but it sounds a bit.. odd? Makes me think of refueling.
Yesterday, I had cause to ring a utility company, and to do so went to one of my lever arch files to dig out the details. As it happens I was directed to a website, but once I had registered my issue I was called back by a real person within 10 minutes. And they helped. And sorted my problem very promptly!
dangie
Established Member
'Give it some oomph....'
styles
Member
Maybe, but then when talking about preparing to set off, "Set the oomph.", I'm not so sure.
Maybe, "Set your revs."? But then it's just more terminology.
Hmmm ... "Set your revs" sounds to me a bit like the dialogue from Zero Wing. Or vaguely naval as in "Make revs for thirty knots". What about just "accelerate" or "decelerate".
"Gas" is one syllable and has a hard consonant at the beginning. "Less gas" has two. Accelerate and decelerate have four syllables.
When vast quantities of teenagers participated in locally organised activities such as Boys Brigade, Scouts, Guides etc. or well-supervised local Youth Clubs, teenage discos etc. as opposed to current preoccupations of "staying in" glued to electronic devices or roaming around outside in reasonable sized packs often involving some combination of getting intoxicated, smashing things up and screaming abuse at interventionist or non-interventionist adult passers-by.
Anonymous10
Established Member
I must disagree on this the smashing is done by a loud minority.
Scouting actually had a demand so high that we can't recruit enough leaders to meet it.