A nice trip to Chapeltown just a few miles from Sheffield today. The Chapeltown 50+ Club at the Newton Chambers Memorial Hall. It was estimated there was an audience of 120, and they were given my Superstitions, Resolutions and who was St Valentine and then being early in the New Year I told them about the origins of Auld Lang Syne as, all illustrated as a powerpoint and with segments of music in there as well.
It was very well received with many of the audience coming up to tell me about their superstitions - they would not buy a house that was number 13 and would not lay a table over night with a white table cloth and but would watch out for the single magpie and make efforts to find its partner, this is not a good sign.
Lots of laughs on the way.
A busy week already and it is only Wednesday - Tuesday morning a visit to the members at Calder and Savile Probus Club in Halifax. It was nice to be back after a few years absence. I can still remember speaking to this group for the first time 40 years ago.
No Console Games, No PC and hardly any TV either
Take away computers, consol gaming, DVD's and 100 channel TV which is available 24 hours a day and you have the 1950s! We had toys, but ours would fit under the bed and not need a separate room to put them in. Our biggest toys were of a natural kind, trees, woods, and our own imagination. Then we had dreams of being a Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett, or Robin Hood, now it's all about celebrity!
Old Trades and Jobs are gradually being taken over by modern technology or they are just simply disappearing altogether. Here are some of the old jobs with strange sounding names that you may or may be not remember. This image shows the Night Soil Tub men at work during the 1950s a vital job for centuries. Night Soil Men would discreetly remove human waste to be used in fertiliser. They would use long-handled shovels to dig out the waste from the makeshift bathrooms, pile it in carts, and haul it away, all in the dead of night. Each 'toilet' needed to be cleaned out about two or three times a year.
Now what about these jobs
1. ARMOURER - made suits of armour or plates of armour for buildings or ships etc.
2. BAGMAN - travelling salesman
3. BARD - poet or minstrel
4. BEAMER - winds the warp on the roller before putting it on the loom in the textile industry
5. CHAIR BODGER - travelling chair repairman
6. CHIFFONIER - wig maker or rag picker
7. CONEY CATCHER - rabbit catcher
8. DOG-WHIPPER - drove dogs away in a village
9. FAGETTER - made up faggots into bundles, seller of firewood
10. GIMLER - machinist involved in making a gimp, a kind of card
