Out on the Fen again yesterday. Ended up photographing stuff I'd done before but with more clouds. However, a stop-off for a melting Kit Kat in a post office near Wisbech revealed two of these signs on the walls. Actually the Kit Kat was just so that I could go in and explain why I was lying on the pavement outside. I said "I remember Corona being delivered on a lorry to my house" and the bloke behind the bandit screen just rubber-stamped something loudly and sighed "So do I", without looking up. And indeed it did come on a lorry. Four or five bottles a week, each with that funny white ceramic and red rubber stopper that we now associate with Grolsch. Well, some do. But ooh the flavours. Ginger Beer, naturellement, but other favourites were Dandelion & Burdock and Clarade, a cherry-coloured liquid of indeterminate flavour. The drinks appeared to be restricted in our household to Sunday lunchtimes when my father stood with his back to the fire with a ginger wine and went on either about the sermon we'd all just suffered or the local butcher, who always incurred his wrath over the size and quality of the joint of beef appearing on the table. Since he probably only gave my mother sixpence to buy it he shouldn't have been surprised. Oh. Sorry. All that from just one rusty old sign. I do apologise.
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
4 days ago
12 comments:
Corona bottles had all those dimples around the top didn't they? Always a cut above other fizzy pop was Corona. The joy of finding a discarded bottle and winning the deposit. Free money! Dandelion and Burdock. Cor lummey.
I too enjoyed a Kit Kat earlier today. It's a small world, chocolately speaking.
Ah Corona. How much greener we were then with all those recycled bottles. Good kit Corona. And does anyone remember Creamol/Cremola Foam? A pinkish powder concoction in an Andrew's Liver Salts-type tin. One spoonful in a glass of water and it fizzed like billy-oh. Dentists loved it as it was about 98% sugar so gave them lots of business. Very popular in Scotland I understand and discontinued in about 1980. Nestle still own the brand apparently.
You can get Kit Kats in Italy now. That's Nestle for you.
Talking of Kit Kats, I urge everyone to go directly to YouTube and type in 'Merlin Powered 55 Chevy' and gaze in awe. More importantly, check out the 'video response' radial-engined car. This has left me speechless. I'm now off to dig out the keys to the Napier Hillman.
Ah dentists and sugar! I remember my uncle, a confectioner, joking that he had a deal with the local dentist: 'You rot 'em, mate, and I'll pull 'em out.' It wasn't that far from the truth, either. Now dentists rely on gum disease and expensive implants to fund the next Mercedes Benz.
The Alpine lemonade lorry was always welcome as it delivered on a saturday ...I really wanted a job on that lorry...the older lads lept on and off like pirates...well to a 8 year old me anyway.
Fred...the world gets smaller...I have somebody tracking down a merlin engine for me at the moment....and not to feel left out I will track down a kit kat.
And where, Thud, will you be bolting up the Merlin? On the roof, to blow away the fog? Can't wait to hear. PS very interesting house: really like wacky free-thinking US architecture.
Corona, Corona...wasn't that a Leadbelly song, or was it a case of vowel slip. Whilst working as a dustman in the late sixties Corona bottles and other 'returnables' were very much a part of our perks, sometimes producing up to £2 or £3 a week...the age of the affluent society was already upon us when people couldn't be arsed to take them back. I could never understand it with Corona, though - weren't they delivered and collected by a sort of fizzy milkman?
Nice fizzy sign too Mr.A with only minimal 'foxing' as the enamelists say (or would if they didn't use the more prosaic term rust).
And the Merlin, Fred? Does it need to be a Merlin or would a derivative do equally well...tractor puling? beer pumping? light aircraft use? or installation in a Morris Minor? - do tell!
Funny thing Corona Jon. Distributed by a lorry that also picked up the empties like a milkman, as you say. But we also got into terrible trouble for taking them down to the Worthington's shop at the bottom of our road and claiming the money back for ourselves. I'm trying to think who made it- the name Evans springs to mind. And wasn't there a song by The Beat called "My Corona"?
I was once nearly turned to roast pork whilst trying to change spark plugs on John Dodds' "The Beast"....so I'm a bit prejudiced about Merlin-engined cars! But if that kind off thing turns your wheels, Google up "JRL Radial Chopper" for serious lunacy!
Apart from which, I'm a secret lemonade drinker....R Whites!
Corona — sparkles up with joy,
Corona — for every girl and boy.
Come drink it up to the very last drop,
It’s got a sparkle in the middle
And a tingle at the top!
Blimey alo, I hadn't thought about John Dodd for years. His Merlin engined Capri-like 'Rolls Royce' got him into trouble with RR didn't it? First saw him at Penshurst Pageant of motoring belching black smoke as he had to parade it around the lawns. No wonder you were on plug changing duty. Later I saw him at Santa Pod...is he still around?
Fred...I havn't mentioned the Merlin to the wife yet...maybe a swop for the walk in whatever she is going on about.I'm valiantly trying to get my head around american architecture as I don't want a pseudo european house here.
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