I liked the old B/W beer adverts, anyone remember Owen Brannigan singing about Newcastle Brown Ale, or Mackeson Stout using a horse race with different beer bottles as Jockies with Mackeson winning the race.
One of my most vivid memories of early infant school was receiving fruit on Empire Day. Usually an apple or orange but sometimes both, they were gifts from other countries of the British Empire ( now the Commonwealth). You've no idea how that fruit was protected all the way home on the tram to show my parents where it was delicately shared amongst the family. That was in 1949 at Thomas Street School in Monkwearmouth and it was the very first time I'd seen an orange.
I remember in school you had to go the teachers desk if you needed the pencil sharpened. There was a thing clamped to the edge of the desk and you cranked a handle and out came something sharper than a bloody sword. Lethal, but you still sat down and stabbed your mate in the leg with it.
Another favourite of mine was Tenderfoot. Loved it when everyone mocked him - until they saw him draw! Good escapist payback.
Empire day! Stand up and be proud! When I was in the infants on Empire Day the headmaster had us kids march around the school yard and when we got to where he and the teachers were standing, holding a Union Jack, we had to salute the flag. The memory makes me cringe a bit now, but in those days everyone took it seriously.
Cheyenne was another with Clint Walker, quietly spoken shoulders like Frank Bruno, thought it was great.
Memories mate. Once, when in senior school the teacher handed me a bundle of new pencils - they were blunt at both ends. The only sharpener - the same type you describe - was in an unused classroom. I stood for ages trying to get a point on those bloody pencils. Everytime I got them near to a point they broke. When I got back to the classroom the teacher started to blast me for taking such a long time, but he became speechless when I handed him a bundle of pencil Stubbs!
Sorry, with that orange my mother made jam, a cake, some fancy dessert and the remains were eaten for our tea. But you can have the apple, I've still got it.
thought i was the only one that could never sharpen a pencil, every sodding time the end would snap...i used to have to try and 'half sharpen' them, just enough to get a bit of a point but not enough to snap it. you not left handed are you sandy?
Sometimes you were on a hiding to nothing with the pencils though. If the box had been dropped (anywhere from manufacture to end user) there was a good chance the "lead" was shattered all the way through.
It’ll be all wizened and crinkly now (same as me), but at the time I’d have been “on ya gowck”. Not sure about the spelling.
