31-05-2018, 09:19 PM
7041
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
I’m wrong of course Sweetie, I was only guessing about the electric meter, based on a block of old flats near me where all the electric meters were outside and a couple of feet off the ground, they were locked in a sort of wooden closet, the company reader had his own keys to access them. All knocked down now.Back in the 50’s when I was growing up we had a epidemic of gas meter robberies all over Dublin, a lot of people wanted to change back to the penny meters when all the shilling meters became favourites for the thieves, but the gas company was having none of it, progress was progress and that was it, eventually they became like the electric board and cut out the coin meters altogether.
The brother and me used to love watching the gas man emptying the meter, counting all the pennies and stacking them up, then he’d’ put them in little green or brown bags, he always left a few coppers rebate and we were sure to get one or two for ourselves.
31-05-2018, 09:23 PM
7042
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
Originally Posted by Jem
->
I’m wrong of course Sweetie, I was only guessing about the electric meter, based on a block of old flats near me where all the electric meters were outside and a couple of feet off the ground, they were locked in a sort of wooden closet, the company reader had his own keys to access them. All knocked down now.Back in the 50’s when I was growing up we had a epidemic of gas meter robberies all over Dublin, a lot of people wanted to change back to the penny meters when all the shilling meters became favourites for the thieves, but the gas company was having none of it, progress was progress and that was it, eventually they became like the electric board and cut out the coin meters altogether.
The brother and me used to love watching the gas man emptying the meter, counting all the pennies and stacking them up, then he’d’ put them in little green or brown bags, he always left a few coppers rebate and we were sure to get one or two for ourselves.
01-06-2018, 12:54 PM
7047
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
WAAAAY too late answering the question re the 'door in the wall' question,but soddit...t'was for coal deliveries,chaps/chappettes. Cart pulls up alongside wall,sack emptied into chute,coalman doesn't have to tread muck through the house,nor stagger along under low ceilings with a cwt of coal on his shoulder.[one's Auntie Ella had the same thing in her house in North Shields,]
Oh...and this is the front of my tee-shirt,as designed by MOI.
01-06-2018, 01:17 PM
7048
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
Originally Posted by gumbud
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another quiz and a memorythis pic takes me back many moons to my childhood in the 'pool - what would your observations about the bricks be?
but even more curious - what about that external door in the upper left of the pic - what might its function be - [see spittie for prizes for this one!]
It's obvious what's going on by here. The door is for the owner's pet giraffe, and the girls are using two different methods of getting up high enough to stroke said giraffe.
One is learning to jump up high for intermittent giraffe stroking whilst the other is learning how to stand on wobbly bricks to enable sustained stroking at height.
The little door actually looks ferzackerly like a small door I sometimes pass in an alleyway near here. It contains a gas meter and valve, but is set at ground level.
I suspect there is a gas valve for the houses, or possibly for the street lights.
The door is obviously too high for a coal chute, or larder delivery door or ice cupboard, and anyway the house isn't posh enough for the latter two.
Some houses wuld have groceries delivered through a purpose buils door about that size and could then be accessed from the inside of the house through a similar internal door in the larder.
Ice cupboards were blind cupboards from the outside. They would be filled with ice in summer, and food would be stored in a cupboard on the inside which was kept cool by the ice just the other side of a partition.
It was meat for posh people so deliveries were all done from the outside without the need for trades-persons to enter said house.
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