Yen's stories

[Catteeclan]

6 hours ago, XTreme said:

FS1E in a Motoring School window!? 

DX.

[XTreme]

Just now, Catteeclan said:

DX.

[yen_powell]

I check the site Spitalfields Life out every day, there are some fascinating stories about local people, excellent old photographs, a real weird mix. He occasionally does a few stories about his poxy cat which I am not so keen on. Anyway, today's post was about Matchbox cars, which were made locally to the area I believe. Takes me back to see the catalogue.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/04/09/matchbox-models-by-lesney-company/

[yen_powell]

The link at the bottom of the link above.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2013/02/14/allen-hanburys-surgical-appliances/

[XTreme]

Masturbation Appliance?

Understandable I suppose.......the area you live is full of wankers! 

[yen_powell]

The River Brain

[yen_powell]

Just things found whilst backing up today.

 

[yen_powell]

 

[yen_powell]

 

[XTreme]

3 minutes ago, yen_powell said:

 

Riding through shit like that will get you killed Yen! 

[yen_powell]

 

[skyrider]

On 07/04/2021 at 19:45, Catteeclan said:

DX.

with speed blocks

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

Great pics Yen

Love the matchbox cars article. Used to have a quite a few but then my little brother had his pyromaniac phase and as the A team were always blowing up vehicles I was left with none Being an excellent example of a little brother it was never his cars that got ‘blown up’ and being an excellent older sister I had to hurt him when I found my favourite Batman matchbox car with a melted interior

They were excellent for launching off those tracks with a loop de loop in the middle but the wheels were not as robust as the rest of the car, wherever theres matchbox cars theres a pile with the wheels missing.

[yen_powell]

2 hours ago, Slowlycatchymonkey said:

Great pics Yen

Love the matchbox cars article. Used to have a quite a few but then my little brother had his pyromaniac phase and as the A team were always blowing up vehicles I was left with none Being an excellent example of a little brother it was never his cars that got ‘blown up’ and being an excellent older sister I had to hurt him when I found my favourite Batman matchbox car with a melted interior

They were excellent for launching off those tracks with a loop de loop in the middle but the wheels were not as robust as the rest of the car, wherever theres matchbox cars theres a pile with the wheels missing.

I think I had a matchbox car with a clip on wing and you used to let it fly off the loopy loopy track track and the thing would glide for quite a way.

[XTreme]

2 minutes ago, yen_powell said:

I think I had a matchbox car with a clip on wing and you used to let it fly off the loopy loopy track track and the thing would glide for quite a way.

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

3 minutes ago, yen_powell said:

I think I had a matchbox car with a clip on wing and you used to let it fly off the loopy loopy track track and the thing would glide for quite a way.

I had a winged car but I can’t remember it very well. It wouldnt have flown though, it was heavy and little plastic wings would pop out when you pressed a button. Going to have to look for a pic now!

[yen_powell]

In our scrap yard there were three of us who were Sorters.

There was Frank, known as Vandal or Little Frank, who was only in his early 20s but was a wizard on the Fuesse (the spectroscope) and was the man in charge of us and who had to try and teach me his trade. He was also the responsible adult who tried to stop us being stupid or injuring ourselves

There was also Mark, a tall teenager who had worked there since he left school, who's hobbies included making slingshots, spear and bows and arrows from the scrap.

To help us identify obscure stuff we had a large cabinet full of drawers containing metal samples which you could bung on the back burner of the spectroscope for comparison. I still remember being fascinated to see that Chrome looks the same in mineral form as it does when coating your motorcycle parts.

Whilst looking at some samples one day I noticed we had a drawer full of Magnesium swarf. I had a memory of a science teacher burning some during a lesson and it was pretty spectacular. Mark was in the lock up sorting through some tool steel bits, a proper cushy job because you could do it sitting down indoors, just pulling out any that had solder on them and he had a little gas fire with a large gas bottle attached.

I took a pinch of Magnesium swarf and walked into where he was working. 'Oi, Mark', says I, 'Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble', and then threw my swarf into the flames of his gas fire. There was a blinding flash, the fire fell backwards and went out, Mark fell off of his seat in the opposite direction. All I could see were blue spots in front of my eyes.

'What the fuck did you just do?' he asked. I told him, thinking he'd be angry, instead he demanded that we try again. After a few goes I said why don't we make something we could put in the fire at the end of the yard where a colleague was burning old pallets and the dead rats found on the traps. I cut out a cross shaped piece of cardboard (O level technical drawing don't ya know) and made a box which we filled with more Mg swarf. We casually walked up to the river end of the yard and I dropped it into the fire, we walked away just far enough to watch the effects. NOTHING, not a thing, 5 minutes later and we gave up.

Walking back we decided to have another go and set light to it ourselves. I made another cube and filled it. Indoors this time I placed it on a sheet of metal and set light to the sellotape and cardboard cube. It started slowly but soon it was fizzing away like a proper firework, flames bright white and about a foot high. Then I looked up the yard and saw the owner Reg walking our way. I panicked, ran into our little lab and filled a cup with water.

I don't think water is a good thing for a magnesium fire, I now suspect they use them in marine flares precisely because water does not put them out. If anything the flames got higher. Reg was now a few yards away and I had a flaring white flame in the middle of one of his buildings. In desperation I decided if I couldn't put it out with water, maybe I could starve it of oxygen. I shoved a very small metal drum over it and then sat down on top of it just as Reg walked through the plastic hangers that lined the opening to the yard. We greeted each other and I was frightened he would stop to chat, I was worried that my arse would catch fire, but luckily he carried on through to the offices. I lifted the drum and the fire had gone out, the metal it had been sitting on had gone a lovely blue colour.

[yen_powell]

I was lent to another scrap yard for a week as a favour to the owner. I was shown a large empty building which contained a big pile of assorted stainless steel items, a parked Rolls Royce and now my Yamaha XS250 which I parked indoors where I could keep an eye on it. It was a big building, mostly clean and empty and me and one of their staff, another young lad, were the only people in there.

Someone from my place had delivered my Feusse and I set it up. Me and the other lad started bringing pieces over. We would turn them until we could get a bit touching the carbon wheel, I would hit the single trigger whilst looking down the eyepiece and would tell him if it was 316, 304 or 321 stainless. He would then chuck the pieces into various labelled skips. I say single trigger because there should have been two, so you would use both hands and not touch the metal you were testing. One switch was bridged instead so we could do the job single handed with larger items despite the zillion volts flowing through the machine. Health and safety was not a big thing in those days.

Anyway, after the first few days I noticed that this Rolls never moved and no one ever came in apart from us two. Around that time there had been problems with people stealing the silver lady emblem from the bonnet/radiator. I had heard that Rolls Royce to combat this had made the newer models with a silver lady that retracted if you tried to steal it. All week, I kept looking at this silver lady and resisting the urge to see if it was true. Eventually I cracked and walking up to it, I grabbed hold of it and pulled gently. Sure enough, the base opened up and the thing pivoted down inside. Ahaaa thought I, how clever......But the poxy thing didn't spring back up like I thought it would. The bonnet, now missing its silver lady stared at me. Fuck I thought, I'm in trouble now.

10 minutes later just as I'm wondering if I can get another job easily there was a click and the bloody thing opened and up it came again. Some sort of time delay built in.

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

Id like to see the retracting silver lady. Gonna have a look for it. 

[yen_powell]

He reckons they only had this from 2004. My story happened in about 1984.

[Pedro]

1 hour ago, yen_powell said:

In our scrap yard there were three of us who were Sorters.

There was Frank, known as Vandal or Little Frank, who was only in his early 20s but was a wizard on the Fuesse (the spectroscope) and was the man in charge of us and who had to try and teach me his trade. He was also the responsible adult who tried to stop us being stupid or injuring ourselves

There was also Mark, a tall teenager who had worked there since he left school, who's hobbies included making slingshots, spear and bows and arrows from the scrap.

To help us identify obscure stuff we had a large cabinet full of drawers containing metal samples which you could bung on the back burner of the spectroscope for comparison. I still remember being fascinated to see that Chrome looks the same in mineral form as it does when coating your motorcycle parts.

Whilst looking at some samples one day I noticed we had a drawer full of Magnesium swarf. I had a memory of a science teacher burning some during a lesson and it was pretty spectacular. Mark was in the lock up sorting through some tool steel bits, a proper cushy job because you could do it sitting down indoors, just pulling out any that had solder on them and he had a little gas fire with a large gas bottle attached.

I took a pinch of Magnesium swarf and walked into where he was working. 'Oi, Mark', says I, 'Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble', and then threw my swarf into the flames of his gas fire. There was a blinding flash, the fire fell backwards and went out, Mark fell off of his seat in the opposite direction. All I could see were blue spots in front of my eyes.

'What the fuck did you just do?' he asked. I told him, thinking he'd be angry, instead he demanded that we try again. After a few goes I said why don't we make something we could put in the fire at the end of the yard where a colleague was burning old pallets and the dead rats found on the traps. I cut out a cross shaped piece of cardboard (O level technical drawing don't ya know) and made a box which we filled with more Mg swarf. We casually walked up to the river end of the yard and I dropped it into the fire, we walked away just far enough to watch the effects. NOTHING, not a thing, 5 minutes later and we gave up.

Walking back we decided to have another go and set light to it ourselves. I made another cube and filled it. Indoors this time I placed it on a sheet of metal and set light to the sellotape and cardboard cube. It started slowly but soon it was fizzing away like a proper firework, flames bright white and about a foot high. Then I looked up the yard and saw the owner Reg walking our way. I panicked, ran into our little lab and filled a cup with water.

I don't think water is a good thing for a magnesium fire, I now suspect they use them in marine flares precisely because water does not put them out. If anything the flames got higher. Reg was now a few yards away and I had a flaring white flame in the middle of one of his buildings. In desperation I decided if I couldn't put it out with water, maybe I could starve it of oxygen. I shoved a very small metal drum over it and then sat down on top of it just as Reg walked through the plastic hangers that lined the opening to the yard. We greeted each other and I was frightened he would stop to chat, I was worried that my arse would catch fire, but luckily he carried on through to the offices. I lifted the drum and the fire had gone out, the metal it had been sitting on had gone a lovely blue colour.

That's like a mix of a science TV show for kids and a Lock Stock movie!

 

[yen_powell]

22 minutes ago, Pedro said:

That's like a mix of a science TV show for kids and a Lock Stock movie!

 

We had

Big Bill, Little Bill, Big Frank, Little Frank (Vandal), Ted (Eddie), Wally, Tony and Mark.

Little Bill was a small Liverpudlian with a flat cap. he was a very proud man who left after his stepson, who came to work with us for a few weeks, was caught stealing when a trap was set. After trying to say I had been the thief he left rather than stay and have the police called. Little Bill was so ashamed he handed in his notice and avoided everyone if they saw him in the street.

Wally (actually his name was something else but his last name was Walpole) was the fitter/mechanic. One day he had to climb into the mechanical chipper to do some welding, a giant funnel like machine that chopped up metal. He came and got me, handed me a heavy steel bar and said if anyone came near the controls I was to bash their brains in with it.

Big Bill, was a wanker, a huge man, ex merchant navy, who drove the grab and did as little work as possible. He used to call me 'Fuck Features'. I didn't like him!

Big Frank was the Irish manager. He called me a 'noisy cant' most of the time. He suffered mockery on the day we discovered he didn't know how to start a JCB, we thought they taught that in Irish schools.

Ted (Eddie) was our lorry driver. His lorry was super slow, but when I saw him at lunchtime he had sometimes already been to Sheffield (our other yard) and back and was getting ready to go again the same day. Ted could not speak without swearing every second word. He had lots of advice on the subject of romance, like ' Take her to the pictures, and then slap it in her hand half way through the film, you'll soon find out if she likes you or not.' If anyone left their sandwiches on the table he liked to smash them flat when they weren't looking.

Tony was yard foreman and Wally's son. He was all muscles and good looks, very intelligent, but struggled with reading. He called his dad 'Bald Eagle' during casual conversation. He had a theory that if you said things in the right tone of voice you could say anything you wanted to people and they wouldn't notice. He once spent a lunch hour with a photograph of himself wandering up and down Barking town centre. He would go up to someone and say, 'Excuse me bald eagle, could you look at this picture, we're looking for this bloke, have you seen him?' Time after time they would look hard at it and say sorry, no not seen him. 

[Pedro]

15 minutes ago, yen_powell said:

We had

Big Bill, Little Bill, Big Frank, Little Frank (Vandal), Ted (Eddie), Wally, Tony and Mark.

Little Bill was a small Liverpudlian with a flat cap. he was a very proud man who left after his stepson, who came to work with us for a few weeks, was caught stealing when a trap was set. After trying to say I had been the thief he left rather than stay and have the police called. Little Bill was so ashamed he handed in his notice and avoided everyone if they saw him in the street.

Wally (actually his name was something else but his last name was Walpole) was the fitter/mechanic. One day he had to climb into the mechanical chipper to do some welding, a giant funnel like machine that chopped up metal. He came and got me, handed me a heavy steel bar and said if anyone came near the controls I was to bash their brains in with it.

Big Bill, was a wanker, a huge man, ex merchant navy, who drove the grab and did as little work as possible. He used to call me 'Fuck Features'. I didn't like him!

Big Frank was the Irish manager. He called me a 'noisy cant' most of the time. He suffered mockery on the day we discovered he didn't know how to start a JCB, we thought they taught that in Irish schools.

Ted (Eddie) was our lorry driver. His lorry was super slow, but when I saw him at lunchtime he had sometimes already been to Sheffield (our other yard) and back and was getting ready to go again the same day. Ted could not speak without swearing every second word. He had lots of advice on the subject of romance, like ' Take her to the pictures, and then slap it in her hand half way through the film, you'll soon find out if she likes you or not.' If anyone left their sandwiches on the table he liked to smash them flat when they weren't looking.

Tony was yard foreman and Wally's son. He was all muscles and good looks, very intelligent, but struggled with reading. He called his dad 'Bald Eagle' during casual conversation. He had a theory that if you said things in the right tone of voice you could say anything you wanted to people and they wouldn't notice. He once spent a lunch hour with a photograph of himself wandering up and down Barking town centre. He would go up to someone and say, 'Excuse me bald eagle, could you look at this picture, we're looking for this bloke, have you seen him?' Time after time they would look hard at it and say sorry, no not seen him. 

OK, more like a "lock stock" and less like a science show 

[Catteeclan]

 

That Lynmouth?

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

11 hours ago, yen_powell said:

He reckons they only had this from 2004. My story happened in about 1984.

 

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a27424/dissected-duck-and-cover/

Its a fairly large mechanism underneath to make that happen (see pic in above link) but impressive all the same. I always wonder if the people who work in the showroom can ever afford the cars they sell and what that must feel like to spend your days flogging stuff youre unlikely to ever afford.