Memories - early or general

Hello, I'm a pears baby! Green or amber.

We never had a shower, just a bath, like most English people of that era. I remember on one occasion, after a bar of soap had been carelessly left on the lino flooring, I didn't spot it, and trod on it. I lost my balance and fell, hurting my back. When I told my mum, she just said "well, that's life boy!".

Groan! We used to have the cheapest soap Dad could bulk buy from Macro, the wholesalers. A friend had Imperial Leather but also magnetic tags on the soap so that it could be attached to a special sink fitting to keep it up off the wet sink. I thought that was very posh.

Our soap always came from Boots - pretty colours and lovely smells. My mum swore that soap that had been stored for a while lasted longer but she had many strange ideas. We sometimes got those birthday/Christmas gift boxes with soap and bath cubes which lay untouched for months. Lavender was a favourite scent.

True story. Years ago, my parents had an old-fashioned hardware shop where they sold just about everything, including several brands of soap. Most customers were like me, i.e. not fussy; I mean. soap is soap - I've never given a hoot what make the soap is, or what colour. Well, I'm a bloke. One day, a rather posh lady, who wore expensive clothes, came in. (I won't say what her husband did for a job, lest her identity leaks out, but hubs had a "professional", well paid job; to do with OPM [other people's money!]; nuff said.) Any road up, she asked what makes of soap were stocked. Answer: "Camay, Lifebuoy, Palmolive, Cold tar.." The lady then wanted to see the pink soaps. One by one, she picked each bar of soap up, took it over to the window, so she could see it in sunlight, and eventually said "Thank you, but I'll leave it". My mum just had to ask what was wrong. The lady said: "None of them are the correct shade of pink to match my bathroom suite." You get all sorts of customer in a shop.

Slightly off topic. In the 1950's my dad had a launderette. One day a customer brought in her washing and brought out her beautiful new coloured silk sheets for others to see. A luxurious novelty in those days. She completed her washing and removed the sheets.from the machine to find that she now had a number of Japanese rising sun flags. The dye had washed away to expose the original design.

I have been using Palmolive Gold since Adam & Eve. Old habits die hard. Economical too, 4 in a pack.

Although my father was paid the 'Coventry tool workers allowance' we would not have had the resources to pay for the alterations in 1960 from savings. A legacy from a bachelor uncle of my father allowed us to obtain a mortgage to buy the house from the landlord and pay for the alterations. I had never met this great-uncle or knew of his existence until the windfall.

I know exactly what you mean, a friend has that very same magnet arrangement. I think it makes a lot of sense, there's not much point putting bars of soap in a dish where the bottom side just dissolves into mush in the inevitable pool of water, very wasteful. Come to think of it I seem to recall another friend who had another gadget, a sort of miniature bed of nails to rest soap on but I thought it looked rather dangerous. An upturned nail brush would have done just as good a job

Hello, Our answer to soggy soap. Have a lovely day, all. Keep cool.

That's a very nifty device, with Wright's Coal Tar? Do they still make carbolic soap, I've always loved that word. I believe there was also one called Pinkabolic which sounds like a character from a pantomime. You too have a great day, maybe stay in the shade at midday.

At uni I wangled my way into a recruitment soiree for business studies students to cadge free food and part of the evening was by an advertising company looking for future employees. One of their clients was a soap company and they showed us a rather great advert about some lady in the bath scuppering a villain creeping up on her by having him slip on the soap. I ended up in the dog house by asking if anyone remembered what the name of the soap was, which none of the other students could answer. Great advert for soap but not necessarily the one being promoted. They should have offered me a job, even though I was a cheeky engineering student.

Hello, Memories, gosh. I'm just home, much earlier than it looked originally. Schools out! Wind the clock back 68 years, I could have come in home as I have just done, thrown my satchel out of sight as far as I could swing it & slumped into a chair. Well, that's not really how it was, I'm sure most of you know that. What are your memories of the last day of a school year!

Because I hated school I think I have blotted out most of these memories. There were those who cut their school ties in half and others who burnt their uniforms just outside the school gate. I think my reaction was one of relief that I could get on with my hobbies without the distractions of homework or compulsory out of school time sports, without fear of being bullied or misunderstood by teachers. My feelings on comprehensive schooling is that it did not cater well for the odd-balls but coercively forced a reversion to the mean.

I didn't have much time to think about it as I had to start work at Alfred Herberts two weeks later. Otherwise, I can't grumble with school. I had some good mates who I missed.