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Undried Plum wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:56 pm

My bestest ever hoss was called Barley.






We were good mates.

Another great movie and performance by Lee Marvin.
I'm sure if Mel Brooks could have found a place for him in Blazing Saddles he would have been great there too.

PP

The Amorous Prawn on YT, runs 1:25:25, pleasantly amusing film with many well-known faces including Ian Carmichael, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Dennis Price, Liz Fraser, Derek Nimmo;
directed by Anthony Kimmins who also directed Mr. Denning Drives North, and Aunt Clara

Malta Story, 1953 - Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Steel, 1:40:10

He could be an understudy for the Pub Landlord.

As it’s Gene Hackman’s 92 nd birthday today

Happened to come across this, while researching current events:

ITN News at 10, Great Storm of 1987 (9:33)

Ahh!

Those were the days. Sigh.

What ever became of prison ships?

I was soundly asleep in a hotel near Gatwick that night - triple glazed and never heard a thing. Woke up to no radio and darkness and pulled back the curtains to see......................

Managed to have a line check in the October 2000 storms, Paris CDG to Gatwick. Nice one.

Despite the mythologizing, the story of the aerial defence of Malta is an extraordinary one that deserves to remembered...

Prompted by the excellent film posted by Karearea...

This animation/machinima takes some liberties with the facts but it is a good evocation nonetheless...

I had not realised that the film Whisky Galore was based upon a true tale that had an aviation dimension involving Scottish Aviation's last two Fokker F.XXII's when they were involved in a famous event in Scotland’s wartime history when, on 5 February 1941, the cargo ship SS Politician became stranded on a sandbank off Rosinish Point on the Isle of Eriskay. Part of its load comprised 264,000 bottles of Scotch whisky, some 24,000 of which were recovered and consumed.

The F.XXIIs were used to transport equipment and personnel to assist with the salvage effort, and to take items back to Prestwick. The incident was the inspiration for Scottish author Compton Mackenzie’s post-war novel Whisky Galore, later adapted into a film. Two of the bottles that were brought up by divers sold for £12,000 in 2013.


Whisky Galore - Full Film

How Scottish Aviation came to be flying Fokkers is another interesting story in itself.

British cars of the 1950s - 1960s | Original B&W photos of our transport history (21:49)

Although I'm a country 'boy', in my adulthood I'm originally from a village within a city.

When this one popped up on the YT menu of personalised unsolicited vids, I couldn't help having wee keek.

I'd like to pretend that there was dust in the air when I first watched it, but there wasn't. I know every square inch on the ground of every image in this wee video. It was my home base for the first two or three decades of my life. I could tell half a hundred stories for almost every second of this short and very beautiful video.






There, goddammit, I've gone and done it. I've cried for my own youth, ie for when I was young. I admit it.

I commend the loveliness of the place to this House. A quarter of an hour of your life will capture the environment of a couple of decades of mine.

Please keep your Kleenexes for other, more appropriate, occasions.

While respecting the fact that terrible things are going on right now in Europe, some of which sadly involve mobile and otherwise hospitals, I'd like to bring up the final episode of M*A*S*H.

Some of us of a certain age, who grew to love the characters in this Murricane sitcom, may shed a little salt.



Ffwd through the ads; and forget the follow-on crap after the ending.

Thank you for the Stockbridge video, UP.
Graceful architecture and statuary; place looks clean and fresh with the Spring flowers.
The trees on Kerr St. at ~5:35 have a striking lean - is it inclined to be breezy just there?
I agree with the sentiment of shopping locally and supporting independent businesses; they give each town its unique character.

To me: it's Saunders Street. Halfway along was the fire station. I remember it well. Before it burned down during a callout.

If you know where to look for it, there's the remains of a dam that they built in 1939 to create a reservoir in case of bombing.

Just up a wee bit up there is the wee 45° turnoff along the street whose name I've forgotten. It's the one which is atop the surviving Duncan's Land. There used to be an Italian chippie. I was sent there as a wee laddie every Friday. Lovely fush suppers, 'cept you had to be careful of fishbones. The guy had been thrown in prison for the duration of the war due to having been Italian. He was distantly related to another local Wop family, the De-Angelos, who are still around nearby.

The Polar Ices ghost sign, briefly shown in the filmlet, is where D'Angelo used to make his ice creams. Tuppence for a great big **** cone that dribbled down yer shirt and got you into trouble with yer grandmother.

Much more recently, circa 1980s, having worked a month or so in sweaty West Africa for a month, I went for a swim at sunrise in Libreville in shark and barracuda infested water. Then flew to Thiefrow and Embra; showered and changed clothes; and went to a Hogmanay party in the top flat of Duncan's Land that same evening. The culture shock was inexpressible.

I could tell a hundred stories for every minute of that video.

The reason why the new trees are leaning over, for example.