[Adrian Fry]

Jayne, I too love your mangle poem - my now elderly mother is always talking about the 'joys' of bygone washday. And I have just read, in a book by Dr Michael O'Donnell - about a company that commercially produces evocative nostalgic aromas which apparently help stimulate the memories of dementia patients. The washday smell is their top seller.

[David Anthony]

Interesting--as an aside--how changing technology changes the language. When I was young there was a saying, "I haven't laughed so much since Mother caught her titties in the mangle", but you never hear it nowadays.

[Brian Allgar]

Nowadays, you'd have to say "I haven't laughed so much since Mother put her dachshund in the washing machine."

[John Whitworth]

Never let your braces dangle. dingle, dingle, dangle
Poor old sport, he got caught, and dragged right through the mangle
Over the roller then he went, by gum
Flat as the lin-o-le-um
Now you've wiped your feet on his rum-tum-tum
So never let your braces dangle

Sung by Harry Champion in the days of my old Granny

[John Whitworth]

And now, to make yer flesh creep.

Mother's Washing Copper

What's that cooking in the copper?
What's that bubbling in the broth?
Who's that chopping with a chopper
Something cooking in the copper?
Someone's come an awful cropper
Knotted in a bloody cloth,
Steaming, smoking in the copper,
Bobbing, broiling in the broth.

Bloody murder slowly stewing.
Never. Nohow. Mum's the word.
Nothing done and nothing doing,
Nothing in the copper stewing,
Hubble-bubble, trouble brewing,
Whispers scarcely overheard.
Bloody murder slowly stewing.
Deaf and dumb now Mum's the word.

[Brian Allgar]

I think that could be Jayne's Squirrel Casserole.

[Jayne Osborn]

Today's the day for Squirrel Eviction. The roofer chappie, Keith, is going to block the chimney with chicken wire. We should have bought a trap, I suppose, if we're ever to try squirrel stew. (But there's always my husband's air rifle.)

We could do with Tim Murphy being here.

Adrian,
I'm glad you like my mangle poem, and that's very interesting about the dementia treatment. There really is no smell quite like that of a soapy boil wash (no one boils whites any more. Stuff would fall to pieces or shrink beyond recognition.) My mum always boiled cotton sheets, towels, tea towels, handkerchiefs etc, to keep them snowy white.

Ah, nostalgia is a nice feeling! (Sigh)

[Adrian Fry]

I was drinking with some buddies – we all work in Social Studies –
Reminiscing about better times we’d seen
When there’d been amazing theories, trenchant essays, urgent queries
Every week in New Society magazine.

Dewy eyed, we listed writers who would week by week excite us –
Eric Hobsbawm, Laurie Taylor, Asa Briggs –
All their intellects were hefty and their leanings, like ours, Lefty
As they socked it to the Londoncentric prigs.

Articles on social housing and how dockers went carousing
Or Ray Gosling on the Rockers and the Mods;
We learned society was riven by those ologies and isms
That would soon become our livings and our gods.

New Society’s abatement, swallowed up by the New Statesman
Robbed us of a much loved strain of thinking.
Now we get maudlin or aggressive when we start waxing progressive
Which is why we only do so when we’re drinking.

[Rob Stuart]

When the coconut snout we rejoiced in went out
Of production three decades ago,
Could the PC brigade really claim their crusade
Against smoking had worked? Frankly no.

Oh they highlighted threats in the sweet cigarettes
We enjoyed in the playground all right,
And made serious gripes about liquorice pipes,
Which they sought to abolish outright,

But the craze simply died. Though the do-gooders tried
To take credit we’d just had enough.
Childish appetites jade; kids’ affections were swayed
By the coming of much harder stuff.

Now its marzipan smack, rocks of butterscotch crack
And amphetamine toffees in bags.
I’m not saying a bong made of chocolate is wrong,
But I do find I miss candy fags.

[Graham King]

Most amusing, Rob.
(I went for the sweet cigarettes and liquorice pipes too, and they haven't made me a smoker).


Bombay Duck! oh fish, not fowl,
My past repasts adorning!
For you I pine, and long I howl
Since that benighted morning

When EC jobsworths’ rule forbade
Your continued importing
Since ‘in no factory’ you’re made,
But dried, in sun disporting,

As fish-catch of small village trade!
Why penalise the humble? Oh,
Odour, taste, lost! I, dismayed,
Wept for my vanished Bummalo.

Permitted though at last, you’re still
Not sold where once I found you;
I’ll sing your praise and count the days
Till hindrance no more hound you.