The Virtual Pub
Come Inside... => Saloon Bar => Topic started by: Pastis on May 25, 2007, 04:49:35 PM
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I know I'm getting older but are tramps getting younger? I recall that they used to be old, wizened and weather beaten, and often quite courteous. Schooled in the university of life and a life on the road. Today, as I traversed the metropolis on the top deck of the bus I saw several at intervals but were they of the type I remember? No. They were flat out on their backs, slumped on steps or in doorways, oblivious to the world and none of them over thirty, I'd guess.
Arthur Haynes used to have a character called 'College', if I remember. I know he was fictional but he spoke, he conversed. Seems that today's tramp is comatose and barely breathing.
Sad, very sad. cry:
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There is a difference between the "Gentleman of the Road" and the drugged up idiots you see sprawled in doorways.
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You know? I think you're right.
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According to the BBC web site and other sources the character was known as Hobo Haynes. As ever Nicholas Parsons was the foil for many of Arthur's "Hobo" rants The character, played by Arthur Haynes depended very much on Johnny Speight who wrote the sketches. A forerunner of Alf Garnet in many ways.
"College" was of course the tramp creation of Dick Emery
(https://www.virtual-pub.com/SMF/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.teletronic.co.uk%2Femery9.jpg&hash=aaad9367cd375b7237645a890b641a705dfb8153)
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Bugger. Memory malfunction too cry:
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It's the drink that does it! lol:
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It's the drink that does it! lol:
Pickles them to make them look younger you mean?
lol:
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Watched a programme the other day called filthy rich and homeless or some such dirge where a group of millionairres lived on the street for a couple of days.
Before going on the street one ethnic gentleman claimed they were all just lazy. Most seem to forget that many of these people have a mental illness and there is a great many ex-soldiers out there (apparently).
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Watched a programme the other day called filthy rich and homeless or some such dirge where a group of millionairres lived on the street for a couple of days.
Before going on the street one ethnic gentleman claimed they were all just lazy. Most seem to forget that many of these people have a mental illness and there is a great many ex-soldiers out there (apparently).
I saw that programe about the forgotten about soldiers too, it's really bad they way they're left to rot on the streets like that.
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I read recently that after the Second World War the Soviet authories rounded up their limbless war veterans (known as samovars eeek:) and sent them to towns in the Arctic Circle so that the Moscow streets wouldn't have suffer such unsighty scenes.
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Much of what we see today is a direct result of "Care in the Community" ~ a far cry from Old Soldiers, out of work and with little option but to travel the byways seeking work where they could find it.
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Much of what we see today is a direct result of "Care in the Community" ~ a far cry from Old Soldiers, out of work and with little option but to travel the byways seeking work where they could find it.
The navy terminology was beached. That was thrown onto the beach with nothing to their name, often disabled but usually too old to work and simply discarded.
The tramp got the name for all the 'tramping' around the countryside looking for work.
As we became a mechanised nation losing thousands of farm labourers, all these people found themselves driven into town, including the 'tramps' that denied work were now reduced to begging.
Their state led to various seaman's missions caring and the notorious Chelsea pensioners establishing an afterlife for some eventually led to people actually thinking about the welfare of all those that served us.
A lot of the ex-servicemen considered any kind of welfare to be charity and would have none of it, preferring to be 'gentlemen of the roads' but eventually the numbers dwindled as military institutions became established and they became replaced by ordinary folk that had been down on their luck and penniless.
It would be fair to say, that there is scant reason to be a tramp today unless one finds it an agreeable lifestyle, and there are some that do. Mostly, there are the workshy, antisocial and misfits on the streets today. But drugs are establishing a new order of destitute and these are a wholly different bunch to their predecessors.
These days they are desperate to raise money to feed habits that would be financially out of reach of most ordinary folk, so have become past masters in separating people from their money in an ever increasing range of imaginative ways from begging to murder.
It is no fun to be on the streets today and there is certainly no comradeship to be found any more.
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But only us old'uns remember sad24:
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Times have changed. The Jocks used to have the lucrative begging franchise in our shopping malls and town centre precincts, but that?s now been taken over by Eastern Europeans and the Jocks can?t get a look-in. And let?s face it, a wild-eyed, drunken Glaswegian clutching a can of Special Brew while wobbling about as if he?d got one foot nailed to the floor is always going to lose out to a pitiful young Romanian mother with six children and one leg
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a pitiful young Romanian mother with six children and one leg between 'em.
Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
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a pitiful young Romanian mother with six children and one leg between 'em.
Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
Usually by conning some other idiot into paying for it and scarpering before it's their round again.
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a pitiful young Romanian mother with six children and one leg between 'em.
Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
On one shoe... ::)
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Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
On one shoe... ::)
[/quote]
You can't get just one shoe any more... There's no call for it them whatever.
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Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
On one shoe... ::)
You can't get just one shoe any more... There's no call for it them whatever.
[/quote]
Presumably you could just steal them from shoe shops that have displays outside? whistle:
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That would have to be the left foot then as, by tradition, shoe shops only ever display the left shoe.
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That would have to be the left foot then as, by tradition, shoe shops only ever display the left shoe.
Really?
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Aye ~ Me dad used to work for Barretts (the Shoe people not the builders!)
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. . .used to work for Barretts (not the builders!). . .
Me too! evil:
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lol: lol: lol:
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Well I immediately thought of Freddie Barret? and his Liquor Mart for some reason with the stupid theme tune thing. cussing:
Are we allowed to mention liquor today Wenchy?
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I have to admit sharing a thought and maybe a wistful yearning with DS on this one.
Ammo is expensive but, Oh, so worth it! cloud9:
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a pitiful young Romanian mother with six children and one leg between 'em.
Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
On one shoe... ::)
Didn't someon do a song about that?.. I am sure it's on the juke box.. I will go and have a shufti.
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a pitiful young Romanian mother with six children and one leg between 'em.
Fair breaks yer heart, doesn't it. How do they get around?
On one shoe... ::)
Didn't someon do a song about that?.. I am sure it's on the juke box.. I will go and have a shufti.
Don?t use that 6d stuck to string with gum again ? buggered the mechanism up last time. cussing:
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Ah right! A lot of the records on there are really wobbly, a bit like the Bar Wench's bust, and isn't it time we got rid of the Lonnie Donegan Cumberland Gap record?
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Ah right! A lot of the records on there are really wobbly, a bit like the Bar Wench's bust, and isn't it time we got rid of the Lonnie Donegan Cumberland Gap record?
That?s our biggest earner! eeek:
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Ah right! A lot of the records on there are really wobbly, a bit like the Bar Wench's bust, and isn't it time we got rid of the Lonnie Donegan Cumberland Gap record?
That’s our biggest earner! eeek:
Lonnie Donegan or Wench's Cumberland Gap?
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Well there is certainly room for the washboard and tea chest bass in there. In a moment of madness I did consider asking her for permisiion to abseil across, but I thought better of it, I have seen her look.. the one that would stop a charging wounded premenstrual water buffalo dead in its tracks.
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Well there is certainly room for the washboard and tea chest bass in there. In a moment of madness I did consider asking her for permisiion to abseil across, but I thought better of it, I have seen her look.. the one that would stop a charging wounded premenstrual water buffalo dead in its tracks.
You know that thing about "Old soldiers never die"? ~ You may be about to become the exception that proves the rule.
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Ah right! A lot of the records on there are really wobbly, a bit like the Bar Wench's bust, and isn't it time we got rid of the Lonnie Donegan Cumberland Gap record?
That?s our biggest earner! eeek:
Lonnie Donegan or Wench's Cumberland Gap?
Bar Wench's bust (https://www.virtual-pub.com/SMF/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femo%2Fad%2Fyikes.gif&hash=d3c427e718f85a1d623ae4d935899370958c18e8) (http://www.freesmileys.org)
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eeek:
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eeek:
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Very wise decision.
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Very wise decision.
(https://www.virtual-pub.com/SMF/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freesmileys.org%2Femo%2Fad%2Fec.gif&hash=b499ffdee30d15186546236f771b7a7b938f4fb2) (http://www.freesmileys.org)
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Ohhhhh like that! I'm adding it!
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Ohhhhh like that! I'm adding it!
In the wrong place! point:
ec;
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Maybe that is where I wanted it. evil:
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Wench's Cumberland Gap?
Is this another sausage surprise thing?
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(https://www.virtual-pub.com/SMF/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fellsanddales.org.uk%2Fimages%2Fsausage%2Fcumberland-sausage.jpg&hash=f4b38cc0559c5c3f4a8b224fa88b125de9419eed)
Do I detect a recurrent theme this week?
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Maybe that is where I wanted it. evil:
I've fixed it for you... point:
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Well there is certainly room for the washboard and tea chest bass in there. In a moment of madness I did consider asking her for permisiion to abseil across, but I thought better of it, I have seen her look.. the one that would stop a charging wounded premenstrual water buffalo dead in its tracks.
You know that thing about "Old soldiers never die"? ~ You may be about to become the exception that proves the rule.
lol:
The phrase has been updated to "Old soldiers never die.. we just smell that way"