Hello,

This tale has been hanging around for months, so to provide more space on my hard drive for something worth while, I decided to dump it here

Regards

Recollections of the Wicker (http://sheffieldwriters.ath.cx/SFStoryArchive/1260153950.doc )

Fascinating memories, "Falls".

Worthy of a place in one of the Sheffield Library Archives, methinks. :)

I enjoyed reading that, some marvellous recollections there Falls, I particularly liked the bit about the kids playing in the factories and your wry observation about the ladies of the night 'discharging their contractual obligations.' - very funny, It sounds like something Kenneth Williams would say and certainly made me snigger.

I was left wanting more by this paragraph:

They were also notorious for having bizarre accidents when applying condiment to their purchases. This was usually with the vinegar, for the shop was one of the very early users of the squeeze-type bottles. At times like this, we really needed another Hogarth to capture the scene.

It would have been great if you could have described one of the bizarre accidents in your inimitable fashion, perhaps introducing a few of the local characters to boost the human angle.

It reads a little bit like a documentary in parts, this is not a bad thing, maybe a few extra details about the characters or some of their dialogue would have added that elusive bit of spice to the story. I think that putting the reader directly into the chip shop would have added a lot of colour to the story.

Very interesting about the net curtains too, makes you wonder about the atmosphere you were breathing down there!

Talking of curtains, I'll tell you a story about my grandmother that you may find amusing; I think this happened before I was born so I'm recounting a tale told by my elder sister who probably aged six or seven at the time.

One day Gran decided she was going to have all new curtains on the front of the house, this was no small undertaking as the windows were very tall. She measured them and calculated that she needed 96 feet of material (this figure was emblazoned into my sister's brain)

So, one sunny day they toddled up to 'Blanchards' near the old infirmary, this was an old family business department store very similar to 'Grace Brothers' from 'Are you been served', complete with the local versions of Mrs Slokum and Captain Peacock.

Alas, it was Captain Peacock that had the pleasure of serving my gran that day, after asking to see every bail of material in the store she finally settled on a magnificent heavy weave scarlet material that was the thickness of cardboard.

"I'll take this one," she declared, "96 feet please!" - Captain Peacock's eyes lit up with joy, by all accounts it was the most expensive material in the store and the commission would have been considerable.

He organised a small army of young assistants to unravel the roll and measure it. Did I mention it was the thickness of cardboard? Well it handled like it too and before long the entire ground floor was disrupted by a conga of sweating shop assistants, cursing and slipping beneath the swathes of material. It must have looked like a Chinese dragon had decided to visit.

Finally the last of the material slipped off the cardboard roll and the final figure was ninety five and a half feet…just six inches short.

Gran said "Oh that's a shame, I really liked that material, never mind, I'll not bother!" and walked out of the shop, followed by her gobsmacked granddaughter

For the next five years every time my sister passed Blanchards she used to pull her hat down over her face :hihi:

Hi Mantaspook,

I enjoyed you comments about Blanchards, I had totally forgotten about them. They were one of the "Go-to" shops for fabrics, particularly if you didn't want to "traips" (another good old English word) all the way into town.

I realize my piece sounded a bit like a documentary but it wasn't altogether an accident. I thought I could 'mine' the topic for individual stories at a later date.

As for the situation at the chip shop, there were one or two incidents with the drunks and the condiment worth recalling:

The salt on the counter was'nt in the regular potts you might use at the table but in those large metal containers with multiple holes, like flour dredgers, . Often the drunks would be shaking these so violently that the top would come off and all the salt would go on the floor. If the floor was dry, then one or more of these characters would spread it around with their feet and then try to do a sand-dance. Remember, these were people who could hardly stand unaided, let alone dance.

Another incident was with the vinegar. One night, a drunk grabbed the squeeze bottle on the counter so tightly a jet of vinegar shot up into a fluoresent light. This caused a shortcircuit, blew a fuse and plunged the place in darkness.

Regards

Do you remember the Lamson Pneumatic tube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube) system they had there?

When the customer paid the assistant wrote a chitty and took your cash, they'd seal it in a sort of metal cylinder about the size of a jam jar and then open a small cover on a 3" diameter pipe, pop the tube in andoff it went to accounts! clattering through the pipes like a drunk, rocket powered hamster.

A few moments later you'd hear the clunking approach of the return cylinder with your change & the receipt. The stores ceiling was criss-crossed with these clattering pipes and I always wondered how the cylinders "knew" where to go. It wasn't until I saw a schematic in an old engineering book that I saw how it worked.

That was a cracking book, I think it was called "Engineering of the future" and was published in the 1930s; it was full of superb diagrams and cutaway drawings like the old "Eagle" comics

Some of the predictions were accurate - I remember the 'cross section of a road in a planned town' where all the pipes & cables were routed under the 40 foot wide grassy verges that nestled between the road and the 'travelator' moving pavement. I thought this was outstandingly logical as any maintenance work wouldn't disrupt the traffic or destroy the fabric of the roads.

As an 8 year old I did have a lot of difficulty reconciling this vision of the future, particularly after undertaking a bus journey from hell around all the road works to Castle Square ('The hole in the road') ( http://www.pulppeople.plus.com/Sheffield/holeinthe_road.htm ) and being struck by the realisation that to get all four escalators working on the same day seemed to be beyond the technological capability of Sheffield…

And we're so off topic now that this thread will probably end up in the history & ex pats section :D

Ladies of the night "Discharging their contractual obligations" ? ( Must look for my writers section password):suspect:

This is good stuff Falls, I can’t think for one minute why you thought it may not be worth submitting, you greatly underestimate yourself mate. I agree with Shoeshine on this one.