Christmas presents !! What did you get ?🙂

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The sweater reminded me, I have a younger sister, born in 1947. When she was four, our father won a large teddy bear in a firm's raffle.

She called him Brumas, after the popular polar bear cub born at London Zoo a few years earlier.

She's still got him! She did not pass him on to her daughter.

He's been restored a bit, i.e paw pads. Here's a recent photo, he's wearing one of her husband's shirts and full size, Wimbledon FC football shorts.

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Zigs just had a look before he went out. He said that Brumas is the spitting image of a bear he and his brother ''shared'' which, evidently, was born in the 1950's. He will dig out a photo later on.
My job was to dress Grump bear up to be the nursery manager in the cactus house :LOL: By the looks of it, Brumas could have been Grump's dad 🤭
 
I found some pics of our old Teddy (my brother and I used to share him)

This is me taking him on holiday to Hastings in the same year as The Italian Job came out in the cinema (I took him to see it)

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He lives with my brother now, this is him with my brother's cactus

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Jersey Devil said:
Don't go FISHING anymore ??? Thats like giving up on LIFE !!! Go drown some worms my friend.
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When I go fishing that's all I do is drown worms, catch stuff that's no good to eat or stuff with big, sharp teeth that I can't get off the hook !! 😂😂😂 Last time I went fishing I was fishing in Pensacola bay and caught nothing but big eels that I had to ask the guys to get off my hook for me. Those suckers are nasty and try to wrap around your feet !!.

Yet, I love going fishing !!😄
 
I wouldn't want to eat fish caught in our water around the shoreline of Britain. There is too much sewage which is now deliberately pumped out over our beaches. Far too contaminated for health. Best to stay away. The rivers are also polluted. :sick: Pity because Zigs is an accomplished fisherman.
Fings aint what they used to be.
 
Anniekay said:
When I go fishing that's all I do is drown worms, catch stuff that's no good to eat or stuff with big, sharp teeth that I can't get off the hook !! 😂😂😂 Last time I went fishing I was fishing in Pensacola bay and caught nothing but big eels that I had to ask the guys to get off my hook for me. Those suckers are nasty and try to wrap around your feet !!.

Yet, I love going fishing !!😄
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Annie, we will go fishing when I come and put a spigot on your barrel. We can put some fish IN the barrel, then maybe you'll get something :cool:
 
We don't give each other Christmas presents although, I did get some Decleor shaving gel and after shave a month ago. My wife buys it for me when the last lot is running out. Our attitude is "if you want something, get it now, you might not be here by Christmas." I spent a couple of hundred pounds on craft stuff she said she "needed." in December.
But I did indulge myself, I ordered some new underwear earlier in the month, not that I needed any, I've a drawer full of the stuff. But I fancied some of those "Step one" briefs, advertised on TV, they looked really comfortable, though £170 for nine pairs was a bit steep.
 
Zigs said:
I found some pics of our old Teddy (my brother and I used to share him)

This is me taking him on holiday to Hastings in the same year as The Italian Job came out in the cinema (I took him to see it)

View attachment 2445

He lives with my brother now, this is him with my brother's cactus
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I have fond memories of Hastings.
When I was just eighteen, in the late fifties, I took my sister and our parents down from our home in south London, to Hastings in my 1937 Austin Seven Ruby convertible, on holiday.
Whilst down there. I met a girl and took her to a concert at the White Rock Pavilion, to see Mick Mulligan's jazz band, a band I'd seen before several times over the past couple of years, at the various jazz clubs in south London.
His vocalist at that time, was, of course, George Melly.
 
Sean Regan said:
I have fond memories of Hastings.
When I was just eighteen, in the late fifties, I took my sister and our parents down from our home in south London, to Hastings in my 1937 Austin Seven Ruby convertible, on holiday.
Whilst down there. I met a girl and took her to a concert at the White Rock Pavilion, to see Mick Mulligan's jazz band, a band I'd seen before several times over the past couple of years, at the various jazz clubs in south London.
His vocalist at that time, was, of course, George Melly.
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Me too, spent quite a few family hols there in the 60's 🙂 I've searched street view for the pub my Dad used to take me to, and the guest house but I think they've been demolished.

I had a copy of The Stranglers & George Melly 😎
 
Zigs said:
Me too, spent quite a few family hols there in the 60's 🙂 I've searched street view for the pub my Dad used to take me to, and the guest house but I think they've been demolished.

I had a copy of The Stranglers & George Melly 😎
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Zigs said:
I just looked up an Austin 7 to make sure you weren't in the car park behind me in that pic of Hastings 😁
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I lost all my old photos in a house move.

But here's an exact copy of it , even the same colour I found on the internet.
My reg was DPA 227. Funny how you can remember these things.

Austin seven ruby.webp

It had a 747cc side valve engine. There was no oil or water pump. The engine was splash lubricated by rods on the crankshaft. The cooling was by convection through large diameter hoses, but there was a fan behind the radiator.

The single windscreen wiper was worked by a vacuum tube connected to the manifold. If you had your foot down going up hill in the rain, the wipers would stop until you momentarily took your foot off the brake. These were Bendix cable brakes. The stopping power was directly proportional to how much pressure you could put on the brakes.

There were no windows as such just, two side screens each side that had pegs that slotted into the top of the doors, the front ones could be folded in half. In the photo, the rear side ones which didn't open are in.

I bought it when I was seventeen for £35, from the garage where a cousin worked. An architect bought it for his wife and got the garage to overhaul the engine, fit new seat covers and a new hood and side screens. But his wife couldn't manage the brakes, so he told the garage to just get rid of it.
So it came to me. It amused me that it cost the same as the set of naff looking tartan plastic seat covers, a friend's father had bought for his new Morris Oxford.

I drove it around with no L plates for three months until I took my test, which I passed, first time. I had bags of confidence as I'd done a lot of driving and if I failed I would have just carried on driving without L plates.

I fitted those new flashing indicators and scrapped the semaphore ones. When I took my test, the examiner wouldn't let me use them and made me use hand signals. I think my confidence impressed him, as did my hill start in a car where the clutch pedal travel was about three inches, so mostly "in or out". These cars had no synchromesh, so it was double de-clutching, when changing down. It had an electric starter, but it would always start with one swing of the handle.
I kept it for a year, the only expenses were for a set of remould tyres and a shilling, for a new bearing for the dynamo, which my uncle, an engineer, changed for me.
My first job on leaving school was at an office at the top end of Regent Street. I often used it to drive up from South London to work. I'd park it in front of All Souls Church near the BBC, neither of the car's doors locked. I'd often leave stuff in it when I was at work, but nothing ever got stolen.
 
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Zigs said:
Excellent Mr Regan 😎

I helped my brother bury his one in the garden, I was digging bits of it up for years later 😬
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Another old favourite was our Austin A30.

Like this one.

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This would be mid sixties. By then I was married with two kids. We were living near where we live now in south Manchester.
I can remember for several Christmases, we'd travel down Christmas Eve to my mother-in-law's after I'd finished work, with a cot on a roof-rack. It was M6 then across Birmingham to the M1 then drive back Boxing Day afternoon, as I had to be at work the following day.
But it got too much.

In the early seventies, being a little more prosperous, I bought my "Life on Mars." Ford Cortina 2lt GXL. The kids loved that one.

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That got traded in for a 2lt Alfa-Romeo Giulietta.

For the last twenty-seven years I've driven more sedate Honda CRVs.
 

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