Pascal! Whatever next?

A visit to Scarborough in the 60s on cine film. Everything looks so orderly.

That locomotive wasn't emitting any smoke. And the track had a third rail. I wonder if it was an electric one styled like a steam one?

Also the 60s blackbird looked and behaved exactly like a modern one.

I wonder how many generations ago that blackbird was.

Fangirl Three wrote:

Pascal! Whatever next?

Should Blaze through this one.


(a very clever computer joke there)

I thought it was a French polymath of the pre-Enlightenment joke.

I'll wager I'm right.

I mean, why wouldn't I?


GEDDIT!?

Butterfield wrote:

I wonder how many generations ago that blackbird was.

Well, apparently garden birds live 2-5 years, so let's say they live 3 years and a generation is 2 years. If it's 1964 in that film then 30 generations of blackbirds have come and gone since that patriarchal ancestor walked (and flew) the earth.

Like given.

Quote :

15 Jul 1948

This amphibious plane, owned and designed by Robert Fulton, was transporting a vital drug to treat Audrey Tames for tubercular meningitis, and upon landing at the airport, it was turned into a car to continue its journey to Stafford Infirmary.

https://photo-archive.expressandstar.co.uk/collections/getrecord/GB149_D-EXP_P_A86_16

It flew from London to Wolverhampton airport (now a giant housing estate) then "within three minutes its wings were removed...and the front part rolled away as a motor car" and continued its more than 15 miles on roads to Stafford hospital.

I bet they thought that by the year 2000 everyone would be driving boat-plane-cars.

'Everyone'll have little baby helicopters,' says Arthur in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Fangirl Three wrote:

I bet they thought that by the year 2000 everyone would be driving boat-plane-cars.

'Everyone'll have little baby helicopters,' says Arthur in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

I remember being singled out and screamed at by a supply teacher who asked us to draw ‘life in the year 2000’ or whatever the exact wording was, and she objected to my drawing depicting people in normal clothes standing round a car. On Earth. Not good enough, no imagination, a waste of paper, look at how wonderful everyone else’s ideas have been in comparison.

Worthing (in that there impoverished South), 1974.

Are you sure that’s Worthing? It’s quite a genteel sort of place, safe lower middle to middle class suburbia and old ladies in nice but unflashy blocks of flats. Not kids diving onto mattresses.

It seems more likely it’s something like ‘Worthing House’ on an estate somewhere much more grittily urban. Neighbouring blocks are probably ‘Brighton House’ and ‘Hove House’.

There is a dark side to it - I once found myself in an antiques shop there face to face with original Nazi memorabilia, including a mannequin in an SS uniform. All very standard, for Worthing.

I normally know where most sizable towns are but I couldn't think where Worthing was. At first I thought it was in rural Surrey, then had a brief thought it was somewhere within the M25.

I was then surprised to find it on the south coast right next to Brighton and/or Hove. It just doesn't sound very coastal and should have an "-on-Sea" attached to its name.

Butterfield wrote:

I normally know where most sizable towns are but I couldn't think where Worthing was. At first I thought it was in rural Surrey, then had a brief thought it was somewhere within the M25.

I was then surprised to find it on the south coast right next to Brighton and/or Hove. It just doesn't sound very coastal and should have an "-on-Sea" attached to its name.

It’s quite nice but staid. It’s very safe and relaxed. I think over the last few years it’s changed a lot and is now basically Greater Brighton suburbia rather than it’s own place. I had a great aunt in Broadwater, and used to enjoy getting stoned on the Green with local boys.

Angmering next door is very posh, lots of private roads, and has the ‘on-sea’ designation you’re looking for. Quite Famous Five. There’s a copy of the Sistine Chapel in a local church in Goring. If you’ve never been, you should consider it for your coastal holiday.

You can have an afternoon in Arundel, that’s lovely.

Worthing was one place where Oscar Wilde holidayed in the company of rough young men. That's why Jack Worthing is so called in Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde used lots of his holiday destinations as character names.

Lord Goring too, but I think he's named after Goring-on-Thames, where Wilde spent the modern equivalent of 200 grand entertaining his real boyfriend for 3 months one summer.

There you go Butterfield - cultural literary references. Walk on the Wilde side in Worthing.