Finger on the pulse...

Listen With Mother, pre-Thatcher British Steel and a call to return to the good old days of pounds, shillings and pence. Littlejohn used to be the clubhouse golf bore but now he is the senile old fart sitting in the corner burbling on about a ha'p'worth of gobstoppers and "when all this was fields".

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I'd rather shoot Paul Dacre than anyone else in the country- Colin Dexter. A direct quote from the Radio Times m'learned friends

What the hell was that all about? Seriously - that's not even dull by-the-numbers target stuff, just rambling.

Also, I suspect he wants to bring back shillings given he does most of his transactions in dollars so won't be affected. And a nice little aside that it used to help a mate of his avoid paying what he owed.

Really, let's not bring back Fahrenheit. On an everyday basis it doesn't really work apart from the press being able to use alarming numbers to describe high temperatures.

I liked this comment:



He missed out racism and racial violence, women being expected to know their place and the fear of nuclear war but apart from that he seems to have most of it (I wasn't around in the 50s but parents and their friends have moaned about much of the above)

The trouble is he has just described paradise for many Mail-ites.

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I'm a nasty, violent lefty. You cunt.

Oooh, I went all wistful and misty-eyed when I saw the pic of a ten bob note. It brought back memories of opening birthday cards from aunts and brown ten shilling notes dropping onto your lap. Such riches! And the choices available! What would it be? An Airfix kit or a pack of 20 No. 6 and enough change left over for a visit to the cinema?

Indeed, those long bus rides into town every day to buy perishables kept the little lady too busy to worry about how dull or pointless her life had become.

In the old shopping centre in the nearest large town to where I live, they used to have a Help For Heroes type store.
This has since moved to a bigger unit, where it has become a shop on one side, with a 1940's style tea shop on the other.

Well, I say 1940's style, it isn't really. All they've done is pasted a whole wall with sepia toned photocopies of photos and articles depicting lovely old forties things, hung up some bunting and made the poor serving girls wear headscarves like the spunky young land girls in the photos on the wall.

It's the 40's equivalent of the "Irish" theme pub, in that it's about as accurate a replica of a real 1940's cafe as my toilet is an accurate replica of Cleopatra's bath house - but it works.

I've never seen it really busy (I doubt I will), but for a few people living in the past this sort of thing is right up their street, and for people looking for something to do with their elderly parents on the pension day out it will certainly fill an hour or two.

It creeps me out whenever I see it. It just seems like such a cynical means of extracting money from the bewildered and vunerable, by hitting them over the head with the idea that your life was so much better back in the good old days.

Never mind the war, the poverty, the inequality and the mind numbing boredom - weren't the cinema usherettes nicely turned out? And wasn't it nice to lean over the garden fence and rip seven verbal bells out of the new couple down the road because they still haven't gotten round to putting up their nets yet?

All tying in nicely with the war shop on the other side of course, which in it's own way is quite interesting.
Been so closely connected now to the cafe, it's almost as if it is the image of the WW2 faithfull tommy they want to conjure up to encourage you to spend. There certainly is an emphasis on the nostalgic type of war stock that you'd see in stores like Past Times.

Perhaps some customers aren't as enamoured of the modern army as they are of the peerless image of the perfect pre-21st Century soldier.

Honestly this cafe/shop makes me annoyed. I'd like to know if anyone else has seen these around and what they think.

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"Now get those trousers off before someone dies!"

There was a "ye olde tea shop" down the road from me of that ilk. Thankfully, they thought - in a town brimming with lovely cafes and pubs - they could get away with selling shitty Mr. Kipling-grade naff cakes. So now they've closed down and in a few weeks a splendid new artisan bakery/cafe will open instead.

Particularly this bit

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS

Jim New, Lewisham is often very good.

Given that Littlejohn doesn't appear to have been to University his little jibe at the end of his column seems to be a bit of an own goal.

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www.newshuddlines.blogspot.com

Gold medal time to whoever sneaked in this gem:

blushes with girlish modesty.



Read it quickly!

Very cunning!

I'm tempted to see how Sean Domnhall Beck goes down.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS

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"Fanaticism is the only form of willpower to which the weak minded and irresolute can rise."