Tuesday 5 November 2013

Whatever Happened To....? 26

amusing suggestions for what to do with a used CD (frisbee, bra, bird scarer)
autograph books
Berlei bras
boxrooms
breadsticks
Bremner, Bird and Fortune

calling everybody “love”
(It was so patronising.)
calling people “unreconstructed”
cereal box toys
chinos
(Suddenly appeared in the 80s and vanished again.)
Christadelphians
clip-on sunglasses
cocktail parties
coconut kirsch roulade
Colette
(the French writer)

drinking brandy out of balloon glasses
(as a Sign of sophistication)
fagging system at public schools
football hooligans
giblets

grown-up nightclubs with jazz bands and food and a tiny dance floor
having people in for drinks before lunch or dinner

hitchhikinghouses called Mon Repos
jasmine tea

lampshades based on fish-traps
licking envelopes and stamps
lolly stick jokes
Look and Say
reading method, aka the "whole language" method (Shown up as ineffective, losing out to synthetic phonics or "D says duh". See the New Maths and the Initial Teaching Alphabet.)

machismo and people who pronounced it makismo
yashmak jokes
macrobiotic diets
Michael Moorcock
Michelene Wandor


painting a decent Edwardian pub exterior in orange/cobalt, orange/jade or lilac/violet (So ghastly that they were quickly repainted – but in charcoal or dark brown.)

Palitoys
paperless office

playing the National Anthem at the end of plays or films
pouring tea into your saucer to cool it
ringing up for a chat
screen-in-screen TV
shops dealing in old vinyl
sick building syndrome
(perhaps they fixed the problems)

teaching Irish children in Irish
teacups and saucers
tealeaf reading (teabags happened)
the county, county families (what was it, and who were they?)
the Green Party being so high-minded it didn’t have a leader

The Oxford Group
(and their theatre which was always showing the same play called something like Bishop’s Move) Now called Initiatives of Change.

the trickle-down effect
Theodor Adorno
tinned tongue
trad jazz
unicyclists
WEETPU, AEWU
etc (The AUEW merged with the ASTMS to form the MSF, which then merged with several other unions to form Unison – I think. Michael Savage ‏/@Softspoken_One)

More here, and links to the rest.

1 comment:

  1. sick buildings - my other half had a tasteless joke about all those people who were 'allergic to the 20th century', that they'd all be fine on 1st Jan 2000....

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