Compo

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Posts posted by Compo

  1.  

    I have been trying to identify the location of this photograph. Featured are myself in my mother's arms and my maternal grandparents. Can anyone identify the location, please?  The date is 1951 and in those days i don't think we travelled very far from Nottingham for our day-trip holidays. The trip would have been taken by train or coach.

     

    image.jpg

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  2. When I started senior school all the boys had a haversack, either Army or RAF government surplus. I haven't seen schoolkids with one of these for many years but I suppose that's because they were still offloading WWII surplus stock when I were nobbut a young'n.  They were almost exclusively covered with pop group names and other such stuff like their best girl or favourite motorbike name.

    sack.jpg

  3. Until recently, these people would kill you as soon as look at you. So what changed things? Simply, the Chinese. They have built dirt tracks into the far reaches of the Omo Valley in search of minerals. The deal was that the Chinese get the minerals at cut price and the Ethiopians get the tracks and other infrastructure that goes with the tracks.   The so called "Savages" quickly caught on to the fact that dirt roads bring vehicles that contain people with lots of money to give away, so they make sure that their villages are not too far from a track and the outsiders simply come and give them money for just being themselves. The money buys arms and ammunition to fight their rival tribes as they have always done but it also allows them to travel into the city to get supplies that would otherwise be out of reach to them.

  4. They were government aids for her bad leg, Beekay. the tribe lives in a protected national park zone in the Rift Valley and are entitled to aid as and when required.  Doesn't stop them being warlike though!  When we went into the national park we had to take an armed park guard to protect us against wild animals and possible attacks from tribal factions. The tribes visited had become used to occasional foreigners and had learnt that valuables such as fresh fruit and corn can be had in exchange for a warm welcome.  The odd thing about the facebook ban is that two of the photos in the album showed totally naked men wearing nothing but spots of white paint on their bodies. They went unnoticed!

  5. I have received a temporary ban from facebook for attempting to upload a pornographic image; an image that shows partially clad women.  So, according to facebook, I'm a pornographer. The photo was taken in 2010 in the Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia and depicts Mursi tribal women wearing their large lip-plates.  Here's a link to the image - please tell me how pornographic you find it and if I should also be barred from using this site for my porn. It is my view that the image may be a bit scary but that's how the tribe is.

     

    Mursi women in the Omo Valley, Southern Ethiopia

  6. 4 hours ago, nonnaB said:

    Wonder how the name Gollywog came to be. Not very nice today is it.

    From: http://www.historyofdolls.com/history-of-famous-dolls/history-of-golliwog/  "One theory of the origin of the name “Golliwogg” says that while British soldiers held Egypt in the second half of the 19th century they had Egyptian laborers that worked for them. Workers wore insignia W.O.G.S. on their armbands which meant “Working on Government Service”. British troops spoke of them as “ghouls” - which is an Arabic word for a desert ghost. Egyptian children played with black dolls which they would sometimes give to British soldiers or they would buy dolls from children. That dolls were later called “Ghuliwogs” and later “Golliwogg”. How much truth is in this theory - it is not known."

  7. 22 hours ago, MargieH said:

    Compo, were they very small long bones like hand and finger bones, or do you mean they were arm/leg bones from a baby or a small child.    Not that it really matters.... I"m just curious

     

    MargieH: They looked like a child's humerus, ulna and radius to me - all disarticulated. I did wonder if a child had been buried just beneath the surface in "Pauper" fashion.

  8. No coal fires on Xmas Day in Adelaide - far too warm!  I think Xmas Day and Boxing Day must have been the only two days of the year when we wee allowed a fire in the morning. at all other times it was four in the afternoon before it was lit. I suppose that was to warm the room up for when dad came home from work.

     

  9. I have to confess to getting much pleasure out of walking around old graveyards and reading the inscriptions on the stones. I look after the headstone of a family that used to be Station Master here at Watten Station, where I live. The graveyard has been levelled and many old stones placed around the perimeter walls, where the Station stone is now located. One day I was planting bulbs at the stone when I accidentally dug up small long-bones from about an inch below the surface! When they levelled the yard they must have bulldozed some bodies around whilst they were at it. I reburied the remains and didn't plant bulbs in that particular spot.

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  10. Many years ago I picked up a couple of good quality deck chairs for ten bob each. This morning I went online to order some new fabric for them - it's £14 per bloody metre length and you need 1.5 m per chair! So, to cover two chairs I had to spend £46 for two lengths of fabric and enough upholstery tacks to do the job. Anyone would think that I've spent time in Scotland, moaning about the cost of things like this....no wait...

  11. Here's summat as you don't see anymore. A 1lb jar of jam with a golly on the lid. I was digging out a hedge to extend my little orchard when my garden fork came up with it stuck on the prongs. I wonder...1. How long has it been there? (We've been here 26yrs and it's not ours); 2. When did they stop using imperial measures for jam jars? and 3. The hedge is mature so think of the quality of manufacture that has kept it so good for so long underground.

     

    golly-jam.jpg

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  12. 23 hours ago, Stuart.C said:

    Is that wings at the bottom right on the corner of Mansfield rd.

    Indeed it is, Stuart but sadly the photo I'm looking for was taken from across the other side of Mansfield Raod looking straight at Wings bike shop. So it was in the opposite direction from teis angle. I think it ws originally on Picture the Past but doesn't seem to be there now. my school fried lived in the house, fourth door down. I lived on the terrace to the left out of view.