Stories about our kids (& our relatives’ kids)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

My wife told me an amazing story this evening. She’d been talking to her first husband, Geoff, on the blower. His family still lives in Sussex, by the Sea. In the early eighties, Geoff’s brother, Denis, was a university lecturer in Paris, who lived in the little town of Villeneuve St Georges, about 10 miles south of Paris.

When Damien, Geoff’s son, was eight, Denis, visiting Geoff during the summer holidays, took Damien back to France with him for an extended stay. It was only later that Geoff and his Missus wondered how the hell Damien was going to get back home!!!

Apparently, Damien was a nut about railways – he’s station-master of Crewe station, one of the most important junctions in Britain. He came back by himself! (One has to assume Denis bought his tickets and gave him some money for food and public toilets.)

To make the journey, Damien had to: 

get a commuter train to Gare de Lyon;

either get a taxi across Paris to Gare du Nord, or go by Metro – you have to change at Chatelet;

get a train to Dieppe,

get a cross-Channel ferry to Newhaven, where Geoff lived. Geoff and his wife met him off the ferry.

Can an eight year old speak French? Well, probably a bit, but not much. It sure as hell isn’t in the normal primary school curriculum.

I was just knocked out by this and thought I’d share it.

MG

[Rooster_Ties]

Sounds like a real tall tale to me.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Not that tall, I think. It fits in with the general character and attitude of Geoff and his wife (which you wouldn't know about and I'm not going to explain. And - OK, it was 1954 which is a LONG time - but when I moved from Brighton, where I was at boarding school, while my Mum found a place to live, I pretty well did the journey by myself. I think my Stepfather's mother got me and my suitcase onto the train in Brighton, on the south cost. My Dad, who lived in London, met me at Victoria Station. He probably took me to a posh restaurant in the West End, then put me on the train to Leeds, where my Mum met me and took me to our new home.

Kids CAN do that sort of thing at a young age. But I was helped across London.

MG

PS I was ten then.

[JSngry]

Who/what is "the blower" and how does one go about talking to somebody on it?

Or are some questions best left unasked?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

3 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Who/what is "the blower" and how does one go about talking to somebody on it?

Or are some questions best left unasked?

A blower is a phone.

MG

[JSngry]

How did that happen?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MG

[JSngry]

I don't get it?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

And you're an effin' sax player!

It looks like something you blow into.

Well, it WAS.

This from Wiki

"

• the telephone, for which the blower is a slang term, especially in the United Kingdom. The slang came from the Royal Naval ships prior to telephones. Communication was direct, through a voice pipe. The pipe had a whistle inserted at each end. When a message was to be passed, the caller would remove the whistle at his end, place his mouth into the cavity, sealing it. He would then blow hard. The whistle at the other end would attract the man on watch. He would remove his whistle and call into the pipe. Conversations over, both whistles were replaced."
• MG

This pic should sort it out.

Where do these pictures keep going?

 

[JSngry]

I'm taking your word for that, but that doesn't look like anything I would blow into, ever. Not even.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

3 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I'm taking your word for that, but that doesn't look like anything I would blow into, ever. Not even.

Soldiers and sailors have to do what they're told and if they're told, when you want to talk to the man in the engine room, blow down this thing to mke the whistle at the other end go, they bloody well blow down this thing. Because it MUST have worked.

MG

[JSngry]

You mean it still works like that?

I'm averse to water to begin with. This just reinforces that.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

10 minutes ago, JSngry said:

You mean it still works like that?

I'm averse to water to begin with. This just reinforces that.

I suspect they use mobile phones or something like it now.

Yeah, I don't get seasick, but the Navy!!!!????

The army was bad enough, but the navy - groooogh!

MG

[JSngry]

Yeah, blowing a whistle and being in the navy...you don't know where that thing's been.

[Brad]

A blower has always been the phone. When we were negotiating a deal and we kept trading drafts back and forth to no avail, someone would say “let’s get him on the blower!”

How it came about, who knows? but so what. 

Edited September 6, 2018 by Brad

[JSngry]

Seriously, never heard that expression before. Heard it called "the horn", but never the blower.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The English language is the most important in the world because it's the most flexxible and useful. And that's because you lot won the War of Independence. As a result, when France and Spain founded Academies to control the French and Spanish languages, England couldn't because the USA would have taken not a blind bit of notice. English is, therefore out of control and ANYONE can add to the language.

I dunno about the USA, but we've even got bits of Arabic recently imported into the language - my father-in-law was in Egypt in the second world war and said that's where words like bint and shufti came from. Bint is Arabic for girl, shufti for look (v). In common (ie not among toffs) use in English.

MG

[Rooster_Ties]

2 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Sounds like a real tall tale to me.

OK, I'm seeing now on my PC at work, that anyone looking on a PC has no idea what I was referring to.  When MG's original post rendered/formatted *on my phone* (the mobile version of the Organissimo site), it was SUPER tall and skinny, like 2-4 words per line at most.  (Imagine formatting a document in Word that was only 1.5 inches wide.)  Barely covered 1/5th of the width of my phone screen.

So, yes, while this sounded like a Tall Tail.  It literally *LOOKED* like the tallest tail evar!!

PS:  Oh, and somehow I've also heard of the term "blower" meaning a phone (though it's been 30 years since I've last heard anyone ever say that).  No idea at all where I've heard that from, but somewhere.  Maybe it was slightly a regional slang thing?  Or from my hepcat uncle, more than likely (the one I inherited 25 years of Downbeats from, circa 1965-90, a complete set).  He always LOVED wordplay.

[Brad]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Seriously, never heard that expression before. Heard it called "the horn", but never the blower.

Heard that one too. 

[JSngry]

This is a blower:

[catesta]

[BillF]

10 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

The English language is the most important in the world because it's the most flexxible and useful. And that's because you lot won the War of Independence. As a result, when France and Spain founded Academies to control the French and Spanish languages, England couldn't because the USA would have taken not a blind bit of notice. English is, therefore out of control and ANYONE can add to the language.

I dunno about the USA, but we've even got bits of Arabic recently imported into the language - my father-in-law was in Egypt in the second world war and said that's where words like bint and shufti came from. Bint is Arabic for girl, shufti for look (v). In common (ie not among toffs) use in English.

MG

Not to mention "khazi"  (= lavatory.)

(Or should I say "rest room"?) 

[Brad]

In some places if you say bathroom, they think you want to take a bath. To Americans lavatory sounds too British so we say rest room.  Similarly, in Spanish, if you say baño, people think you want to take a bath. Instead you have to use the term servicios. 

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

If it's got a bath in it, it's a bathroom. If it's only got a shower, it's a shower room. If it's only got a toilet, it's a toilet.

What could be simpler? It's so logical, it's almost French

(Except in France, they call a toilet a WC - in French - double  vé cé).

MG

[JSngry]

It's called the can.

As in "I don't know if I can. Sure you can. Ok, I think I can."