Sooty denies Bill and Ben their place in history

Bill the Flowerpot Man is very upset.  Flobadob.  And he’s sure that Ben would be too: were he still alive.

Sooty - 'Izzy Wizzy, let's get Busy'.

The famous duo with the engaging flopadob way of talking have been left off the Royal Mail’s latest stamps, which feature favourite children’s TV characters of the past five decades, in favour of Sooty.  And Bill Wright, aged 78, a retired florist greengrocer who, with his brother Ben, inspired the characters, thinks it’s a ‘blooming disgrace’.

Ben Wright died in 1987, aged 62, but the Royal Mail’s decision has angered Little Weed, Bill’s younger sister, Phyllis, as well as the creator of the original stores, their elder sister, Hilda Brabbas, now 82 and living in Lewes, Sussex.  Mrs Brabbas wrote three stories about the childhood antics of her brothers and they were broadcast on the children’s radio programme, Listen with Mother, in 1951.  The TV version, adapted by Frieda Lingstrom, appeared a year later.

Muffin

Yesterday the Royal Mail said that the stamps, which also feature Muffin the Mule, the Clangers, Stingray and Dangermouse, represented five decades of children’s TV and Sooty was considered to be the more enduring character.  But Mr Wright said: ‘I think it’s shame.  People say: Who’s Muffin the Mule?  Just a tool.  And Sooty is a bit tooty.  But mention Bill and Ben and everyones’Flobadob’’.

Bill and Ben and Little Weed

He said that the origin of that was when he and his brother broke wind in the bath.  ‘The water made a sort of ‘flobadob’ noise.  That was also where the cry of: ‘Was it Bill or was it Ben?’ came from.  My mother would say it when either of us did anything naughty.

Article written by Robin Young, several years ago.

Episode of Bill and Ben from 1953: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6zNwBTLSWU

and while we're bathing in nostalgia here's my favourite The Wooden Tops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv_WJCv_Xyg

From Jan's Genealogy Links

UKPressOnline

This is your gateway to over TWO million pages of the 19th-21st Centuries’ newspapers, from 1835 to today, all as published on the day they were published and all searchable by name, word, phrase and date.

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With every page available in thumbnail, small preview, full-size view and ready-to-print PDF with live text, and page-by-page browse of editions, this is one of the easiest on-line newspaper archives to explore.

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Seems you can search free, just register with an e-mail address - think you may have to subscribe to read full pages - very varied subs charges but the South Eastern Gazette from 1852-1912 is freeL http://www.ukpressonline.co.uk

If you purchased the 1881 Census from the LDS and I have now upgraded to Windows 7 you won't be able to  access the information. 

The LDS says they no longer support the Reader and that whilst you can work around it to get 7 to emulate XP this won't work for Windows 7 Home or Home Premium. 

Apparently to get over this problem it's possible to install XP emulation mode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbEK0jD6GlE

My grandmother talked about George Egerton Claremont, killed in the War, mother Mrs Golding Bright last at 75 Ridgemont Gardens, Gower Street, London.

I could never work out who this was but today was fortunate to find the following information:

SECOND LIEUTENANT

GEORGE EGERTON CLAIRMONTE

GLOUCESTERSHIRE REGIMENT

DIED ON 25 SEPTEMBER 1915 AGE 19 at Bois Hugo

LOOS BRITISH CEMETERY

PAS DE CALAIS FRANCE

Son of Egerton Clairmonte and Mrs. M. C. Golding Bright (formerly Clairmonte), of 59, Ridgmount Gardens, London.

That doesn't quite tie in with 75 Ridgemont Gardens but perhaps it's near enough, going by the fact that my grandmother was in her mid 80s when she gave me the information.

As George Egerton Clairemont was killed in 1915, when my grandmother was 17, I wonder if he was a boyfriend - or perhaps a relative.   

Maybe the latter is more likely, given the following information: when my grandmother married she stated that her father was George Egerton Gasper (not on her birth certificate where the space for father was left blank).

However George Egerton Clairmonte's mother was a very interesting character who had an eventful, if unconventional, life.  Over the years she lived in New Zealand, Chile, Wales, Ireland, Norway, New York and Germany.  (See: http://www.1890s.ca/PDFs/egerton_bio.pdf and http://www.millstreet.ie/blog/2011/10/20/a-millstreet-love-story)

She was a writer whose fiction firmly opposed the conventional morality that she believed had been constructed by men to keep women in subordinate roles of limited agency.  She didn't believe in gender equality, believing women to be superior to men.


Here are a few links to information about her life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Egerton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Egerton#cite_note-6

http://www.thepeerage.com/p41595.htm

http://sources.nli.ie/Search/Results?lookfor=%22%20Golding-Bright,%20Mary%20Chavelita%22&type=subject

Obit: The Dublin magazine, Vol. XX, Ser. New, No. 4, pp. 67-68, October-December, 1945

Incidental information: Mrs Golding Bright was in the 1929 to 1941 telephone directories as residing at Ridgemount Gardens Museum (Enfield, World’s End) – found on internet. Local history people up there have no knowledge of this museum, unfortunately.

Hilda Mary Askham (nee Briggs),
taken about 1923

Some of my grandmother's recipes

Sorting through my mother's effects, I've come across several of her mother's recipe books.  Inside these, on tiny scraps of notebooks or bits of envelopes, are several fruit cake recipes.  

These mostly date from the early 1950s.  It's is surprising that she felt she needed to collect new recipes as, during the inter-war years, she was a farmer's wife.  Traditionally farmers' wives were excellent cooks who spent a great deal of time cooking for the family and any farm workers. 

Apparently, in those days, there were two live-in farm workers, plus a girl who helped my grandmother.*  Added to this there were seasonal works, such as travellers.  So there were always lots of people to cook for.  

Here are some of her fruit cake and other recipes from those small scraps of paper:

8 May 1953

• 2oz Self-raising Flour
• 16 oz Cake Mixture! (perhaps dried fruit?)
• 7 oz Margarine
• 6 oz Sugar
• 1 dssp Lemon Curd
• 2 beaten Eggs
• 4 tbsp Milk

Cook in papered tin for 1 - 1.5 hours in oven about 2 Regulo.

Recipe from another contributor

5 May 1952

• 1 oz Self-raising Flour
• 7 good weight mixture of fruit etc
• 3 oz Fat, creamed with 3 oz Sugar
• 1 beaten Egg
• 2 dssp Milk

Cook 50 mins in flat tin.


No date

• 2 oz Margarine
• 2 oz Caster Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 3 oz Self-raising Flour
• Jam (lemon or apricot)
• 2 tbsp Water
• 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

Bake in papered and greased tin for about 20 mins at Mark 5.

13 January 1961

• 2 oz Self-raising Flour
• 1/4 tsp Carb Soda
• 16 oz Cake Mixture (mixed fruit?)
• 3 oz Margarine
• 3 oz Sugar
• 1 dssp Lemon Curd
• 2 beaten Eggs
• 1 tbsp Milk

Bake in greased and papered loaf tin.

Reg 4 for 1 for 1.5 hours.

Leave to cool in tin.

Victoria Sandwich

• 2 Eggs
• Their weight (in the shells) in Butter and Sugar and Self-raising Flour

Beat butter and sugar

Add eggs one and a time.

Then add flour.

Put into 2 x 7" greased and floured sandwich tins.

Bake at Mark 5 for 20 - 25 minutes.

When cold sandwich together.

Plum Bread

• 1.5 lb Self-raising Flour
• 12 oz Sugar
• 2 oz Yeast
• 6 oz Sultanas
• 8 oz Margarine
• 40 Cherries
• 6 oz Raisins
• 4 oz Mixed Peel
• 12 oz Currants
• 1 pint warm Milk

Rub fat into dry ingredients.
Blend 1 tsp sugar with yeast and warm milk.
Divide into two loaf tins.
Bake at Mar 2 for 2.5 - 3 hours.

Ginger Apple Preserve

• 4 lbs Apple
• 1 pint Water
• i oz Preserved Ginger
• 3 Lemons (rind and juice)
• 3 lbs Sugar (white)

Boil till soft, stirring constantly.

22 May 1959
Yorkshire Parkin

• 4 oz medium Oatmeal
• 4 oz plain Flour
• 1/4 oz ground Ginger
• 1 dssp Milk
• 1 oz Lard
• 1 oz Margarine
• 1/2 tsp Sugar
• 1/4 tsp Carbonate Soda
• 1/2 lb Treacle (8oz)

Mix flour, oatmeal, sugar and ginger.
Put treacle, lard, margarine, carbonate soda in pan with milk and warm.
Add to dry ingredients and beat well until smooth.
Put into greased lined tn and bake in slow oven for about 1 hour: Reg 3 for 30 minutes, then Reg 2 for 30 minutes.

Sandwich Cake

• 4 level tbsp Sugar (kitchen)
• 10 tbsp SR flour
• 2 oz Margarine
• 1 Egg
• 4 tbsp cold Milk
• FIR BONS THE SAME? I haven't worked this out yet
• 3 oz dried Fruit

Chidren rushing to buy sweets once they came off rationing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/5/newsid_2737000/2737731.stm

6 December 1956
Plum Cake

• 8 oz castor Sugar
• 8 oz Butter
• 8 oz plain Flour
• 4 large Eggs
• 8 oz Currants
• 8 oz Sun Maid Raisins
• (2 oz Lemon or Orange Peel)
• (3 oz Holly Brand Raisins (minced))
• 1 oz ground Almonds
• 1 tsp Lemon Curd
• 2 tsp Run Essence (she was teetotal, so you could perhaps use rum itself)

Bake in papered and greased tin
Reg 2 for 1.5 hours
Reg 1 for 1.5 hours

November 1953

Xmas Cake

• 8 oz Butter
• 8 oz Sugar
• 8 oz plain Flour
• 3 oz ground Almonds
• 5 well beaten Eggs
• 1 lb Currants
• 12 oz Sun Maid raisins
• 2 oz minced mixed Peel
• Flavouring if liked

Bake in well greased papered tin for 2 hours at Reg 2, then 1 hr Reg 5.
Leave in tin until next day.

Raspberry (fruit any) Round

• 3.5 oz SR Flour
• 1/2 oz Cornflour
• 4 oz Margarine
• 4 oz Sugar
• 2 Eggs

Great and line two 7" sandwich tins.
Bake at Mark 5 Reg for 25 minutes.
(does this mean the two cakes are sandwiched together with raspberry jam?)

Carnation Milk Jelly Sponge

• 1 small tin Fruit
• 1 pint Jelly
• 1 small tin Carnation Milk

Dissolve jelly in a little hot water.
Make up to 3/4 of a pint with fruit juice.
Pour about 2" jelly in mold.
Cool rest of jelly.
Whisk Carnation  to twice its bulk.
Whisk together cold jelly and cream.
Put in some fruit on jelly in mold.
Then add whisked cream and jelly to mold and cool til set.


Rationing for fruit ended 19 May 1950 - nearly five years after the end of the war.  It was not until 1954 that all rationing instigated during the war was finally abolished. See: http://www.cooksinfo.com/british-wartime-food

Part of my father's ration book for 1942
unused as he was very ill that week

* It was interesting because the farmhouse had two staircases.  The two live-in farm workers used the back stairs and the family, and the girl helper, used the front stairs.  Segregation of the sexes for safety, I presume.