It was a pleasure to be at a long function with 60 people and not one looked at a little screen for many hours - not in sight, anyway. Yet travelling to and from it,  streets, trains,and yes, cars revealed just how widespread non-stop use is. I recall a time when people were wire linked to their Walkman so perhaps the current fad will fade into something else. A fortune could be made if one could guess what that will be. Taxi drivers said phone-blind pedestrians were a nightmare.

There have been many such crazes - I can hardly believe it but my father told of a time when no one went anywhere without their yo yo. I have read that Etruscans had a time of wearing such long pointed shoes that they had to be chained to hold up. Films depict painted white faced aristocrats being trundled for their head chop.... was it only paint? And what of those wigs?

I remember a craze from junior school for a toy called Clackers.  They were eventually banned from the playground but not before I had some horrendous bruising on my wrists due to my inept skills.  I don't suppose they would pass Health & Safety regulations now to be on the market in the first place.

iPhones are not so much a craze, as the enabler of crazes, these days.

As even the Norwegian prime minister has today been forced to admit ...


Erna plays Pokemon-Go in parliament.

Whereas over here a minister playing Catch 'Em All has an altogether more sinister implication.


http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2016/10/british-economic-policy


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/05/amber-rudd-defends-proposal-to-make-firms-reveal-foreign-staff-numbers

I think they have misunderstood the term "aliens".

The Value of a 'Knowledge of History' in Post-Brexit Britain


Sorry, P, I'm off at a tangent again.

I fixed your link for you, ferv.

What a tangent, though. Worth a thread in its own right, I'd say. What an irony it would be that seventy years after taking the credit for banishing fascism from Europe (prematurely, but the claim was made), and seventy years after Churchill himself warned "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber", the jabberers are ushering in a whole new fascist era whether they know it or not and Britain will be at its vanguard. Spooky times ...

The yo-yo goes back quite a way. This image is from 440 BC;



and this from 1791;

I'd swear those two lassies are related, Trike!

Clackers had one huge drawback, MadNan. After they were banned in the vicinity of the school (for insurance liability reasons) they acquired an even greater appeal of course to all us clackerists. However they were very difficult to use surreptitiously.

Didn't stop us trying though.


Clackerists captured in action approximately half an hour before admittance to A&E

I'm not convinced by the "Filipinos used yoyos as weapons" bit, though.

I had a friend who kept a journal - that used to be a fad for many - which he kept in a small room with a desk and chair. He retired there most evenings for a while and wore the smoking jacket kept there. He did not smoke but I suspect the desk housed a bottle of something rather expensive. I have never seen the point of a smoking jacket apart from being a whimsical statement - of what, I am uncertain.

Smoking caps - one of my samba band wears a very decorative one - are supposed to stop one's hair smelling of smoke. Perhaps the jackets are intended as similar anti-pong devices (or perhaps to keep the ash off one's evening wear)

ps - IIRC Fred Astaire was buried in one. Perhaps being cremated in one would be some kind of statement?

Mention of journals reminds me of autograph books - everyone had one in my youth.  Well, young people at least. And stamp albums - I learnt all the geography I know (still not much) from these.  Well, the capital cities and the currency at least. And quite a bit of my language.  Magyar in anything denotes Hungary, for example.  Not so much where countries and cities and provinces are - that has to wait till I visit, which probably explains my ignorance of anything Canadian or South American.

I suppose it's sort of in the nature of fads and crazes that they often suddenly become popular again, sometimes years after they'd first died away. The diabolo, nowadays again common with jugglers and street performers, was a craze in 1906 from when this picture first appeared, to be reproduced in the 'The Pageant of the Century' (published in 1933):



The 1933 caption reads:

"DIABOLO - a craze that swept the world. Never was a game more fitly named than this, a demonstration of which is seen here, for it was diabolically difficult to gain proficiency at it and it had a diabolical fascination. The actual "diabolo" was spun on the string between two sticks. Then it was thrown into the air by pulling taught the string and caught on the string - or dropped! Champions executed 1,000 or more coups without once dropping it, but the average player - who ranged in age from seven to seventy - was lucky to succeed thrice."

And it was not even a new craze in 1906. Here's a diabolo player from 1812:

As for the future I reckon spying drones will become a huge nuisance with shutters and curtains never opened again. Drones with recorders - OMG...... now drones with speakers have possibility....mmmm.

The current clown nonsense is causing a lot of real terror, especially among young people - and is also wasting police time.

One redoubtable granny, incensed that her little grandson had been badly upset, chased one of these tiresome mummers down the road (I think it was in Birkenhead) shouting at the masked idiot to "P*ss off!". He did.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37605841

I could be persuaded to welcome wearing such a costume to greet the unspeakable "trickletreaters" at the end of the month.

How many millions of racoons died to make these:



Next time The Alamo is on, I'll be cheering for the Mexicans.

Strangely, a contemporary portrait of Crockett, shows him with a felt hat;

Forget iPhones - get a Galaxy Note 7 - and always have that lovely, toasty-warm feeling in your pocket!

I've just been rumaging around in the attic and in a box of stuff that came from my parents' house - old board games, dice, chess pieces, and a rather nice inlaid cribbage board - I found this curious object:



It's about an inch long and a bit like a small spinning top, but hexagonal and divided into two parts which are able to rotate separately. The larger has on each face the words: SIGYON; SCAMP; HARRIER; ENVOY; YUTOI; GOLDEN CORN ... while the smaller hexagon is marked: 10-1; 2-1; 4;-1; 6-1; 8-1; DISC ... and round the top is marked Odds On - PAT APPD FOR. I remember it from childhood but never knew what it was, although I remember seeing a picture of something very like it in an old book of my parents.

That book I luckily managed to locate. 'The Pageant of the Century' (1933), had this amongst its entries for the year of 1921:



So it's a type of teetotum used to play 'Put and Take' ... which was a gambling craze in about 1921, but one which hasn't re-emerged (yet) to my knowledge. On my one, which I suspect was originally owned by one of mum's older brothers as she wasn't even born in 1921, I assume the words are intended to represent the names of horses, and the numbers, the bookies' odds.

I also found this online, from the 'Illustrated London News', again from 1921 (December 10th).



The "Put and Take Craze": A Substitute For "Pitch and Toss" ... With a scout ready to cry "copper!", boys on a pavement gamble with a "put and take" (or, "sanfarian") top.

The text at the bottom reads:

"Put and Take," otherwise known as "Sanfarian," is a new game from America that has captured London. It is played with a tiny metal spinning top, having six or eight sides. The players take it in turns to spin, obeying the directions on the side uppermost when the top comes to rest.

The hexagonal one bears the following inscriptions: “Put one,” “All put,” ”Put two,” ”Take one,” ”Take two,” and “Take all”. On the octagonal (“Sanfarian,” shown in the small photograph above), there are two others, and the wording is slightly different. The tops are being sold in great numbers by hawkers. “Put and Take” has become so popular that it has been adopted as the title of a revue [ie a theatrical musical comedy]. Street boys play it on the pavement instead of the old “pitch-and-toss.”  The game should, of course, be played with counters, but it is fatally easy to use coins, and then it comes under the ban of the law as "dice."  Several boys have been fined.

So if the game was also known as "Sanfarian" in the UK ("Tommy's translation of ça ne fait rien - it doesn't matter") yet is said to be of American origin, did it pass through the UK during or shortly after WW1 and only become a craze when reintroduced from America in 1921?

I also found it interesting that as late as 1921 the law was so draconian that boys playing "dice" in the street could be hauled before the authorities and fined ... although maybe those mentioned as "boys" were actually teenage spivs who'd been happily fleecing their punters for large sums of money.

Your assumption about the names being horses appears to be correct, here is Yutoi winning the Cesarewitch in 1921.


http://www.britishpathe.com/video/a-sensational-cesarewitch/query/Yutoi

Scamp and Envoy were also thoroughbreds racing at the same time, their pedigrees are on line.

This is Golden Corn:



There's no trace of the others so far.

What I find interesting is the very specific nature of the spinner; I wonder if the upper hexagon could be changed to offer different betting possibilities? Maybe it would be used in a kind of sweepstake format?

Yes, it does seem to be all about horse racing and gambling. On this site:
Antique gambling chips

... there's lots of info and pictures, including this one (I didn't think that they would be named after real horses - although why not):

So they even sold dodgey Odds-On tops that were deliberately made to favour either the punter or the banker. That's sneaky ... though not as sneaky as not advertising it, I suppose.

Conkers have remained a lasting craze, with secret recipes (boiling in vinegar?) for the hardening of potential champion conkers. Even ludicrous Health and Safety rules have not stopped children enjoying this craze every autumn.

But I was dismayed to learn that our horse chestnut trees - such wonderful things - are under attack:

http://www.ourweboflife.org.uk/


Our conker trees are under attack by 'alien' invaders! Have you noticed whitish patches on the leaves of horse chestnut trees?  By the middle of summer, the whitish patches die and turn brown.  Sometimes whole trees turn brown, and it looks like autumn has come early.

The damage is caused by a tiny 'alien' species of leaf-mining moth, which is invading the UK.  For biologists, an 'alien' is a species not naturally found in an area or habitat.  The moth’s caterpillars eat the leaves from the inside.  Infected trees are weakened, and produce smaller conkers.


Something must be done!

Triceratops wrote:

How many millions of racoons died to make these:



Next time The Alamo is on, I'll be cheering for the Mexicans.

If the one I had was anything to go by, the answer is probably zero - mine was definitely synthetic.  I also recall this character whose appearance might have been caused by the "Crockett mania" following the film's release : http://comicvine.gamespot.com/baby-crockett/4005-72924/

Hoola hoops as I recall were popular for a while. I can't think why. Things like that come and go. Youths on blade rollers - or whatever they are called no longer weave a path through our town's shoppers but bikes on the pavement do. The 'must do must have' urge besets us all to some degree and kitchen cupboards must be filled with gadget stuff.....all  fodder for  future 'Flog Its' and Antique programmes if stored away long enough. I have not been tempted to make carrot spaghetti but friends have; bye bye posh veggie mandolines.

Does anyone remember a fad from about eight or nine years ago when children were making bracelets and other small items from rubber bands? They used a kit called a rainbow loom I believe.  They were popular for a time and then their popularity declined seemingly as quickly as it arose.  Going back to my childhood there were poppit beads.  They were plastic beads with a hole on one side and a connectoron the other. You pushed the connector of one bead into the hole of another and strung together a necklace or bracelet.

I've a feeling mention was made on the site of the citizens' band radio craze of the late 1970s/early 1980s, now superseded by the internet of course.

I was never any good at hula hoops but some people could keep them going for ages. There was also the game - I have temporarily forgotten its name, think it started with 'l', ("limbo"?) where you had to under a stick or rope as low as you could go. As usual I was no good at it, but I had a boyfriend who could go under it about 8 inches off the ground. What I was good at was quoits - my father was good at them and I cringe when I see the lollipop throws people do now - you have to give them a good strong hiff.
 
My young grand-daughter has just broken her arm falling off the monkey bars - I have heard they are being banned from some schools which I think would be a real shame. I used to hold on to the top bar and put my legs over the lower one, and let go my hands, and they always without fail landed on the bottom bar and twirled you over. I try to tell my grandchildren this but they never try it. 

But these were the days when our teacher would go to lunch at his home just through the hedge and leave us alone for an hour! I remember once having a stand-up fight with a boy in my class (our school had only 18 pupils) where I was covered in bruises but I had made him cry so felt I had won (even though he made me cry first!). My family as far as I remember didn't notice but even if they had it wouldn't have bothered them. I felt quite proud of myself.

The game of going low under a stick is called limbo dancing if my memory serves me correctly, Caro.  I haven't seen any monkey bars in English playgrounds for quite some time possibly for safety reasons but I can't say with certainty that they have been removed everywhere.  If Wikepedia has it right (for once) there are quoit leagues and regional variations of quoits.  In the USA the United States Quoiting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoits Association was set up in 2003 and holds annual tournaments.  Not that I ever had any aptitude for it. 

Caro wrote:

My young grand-daughter has just broken her arm falling off the monkey bars - I have heard they are being banned from some schools which I think would be a real shame. I used to hold on to the top bar and put my legs over the lower one, and let go my hands, and they always without fail landed on the bottom bar and twirled you over. I try to tell my grandchildren this but they never try it.

My sister once fell off the bars in a public park doing that or a similar stunt. She landed face first and split her lip. There was so much blood and the cut so deep that she had to go for stitches. She was, however, back in the saddle or rather up on the bars, within a few days. And I agree that banning such activities from schools etc only serves to remove a valuable learning vehicle for children. Today, decades later, she barely remembers the incident. For me, however, I can still see her running in tears towards my parents and myself in search of solace and her squealing is something which is permanently seared into my auditory cortex.
 
Play areas with swings etc for children have been an integral part of public parks since at least the opening of Birkenhead Park in 1847. The outdoor gymnasium, however, predates even that. An early example opened on Berlin’s Hasenheide in 1811.

I was thinking of school playgrounds, Vizzer but I was at fault for not making a clearer statement.  I remember going to a "swing park" with my cousins who lived on the north Liverpool outskirts.  They lived at that time on the Waterloo-Crosby border and later moved into Crosby proper.  I can't remember the name of the park but it had a meteorite in it if I recall rightly.

The parish where I live had a new school built about 15-20 years ago and I don't think they even commissioned monkey bars.  A lady who was the school secretary there but has sadly passed away said that while they were still in the older school (some of which was in the buildings that used to be the 'prep school' of the convent I attended, but I only went to the senior part) a stop was put to having the school plays on stage (in case the children fell off).  I think they used to have plays in the round in the school hall after that but don't quote me on it.

I'm intrigued by the meteorite LiR. Sefton Council's website lists no fewer than 12 parks in Crosby with a further 3 playing fields, but no information about a meteorite as far as I can see:

Sefton Council - parks and greenspaces

I have a personal connection with that part of the world (not Sefton as such but Liverpool) as my godparents were from Aigburth. And they were very active as godparents (they didn't have any children of their own) and were always interested in my development as a child, guesting me with wonderful trips to Chester Zoo and Snowdonia etc.

I think I was wrong, Vizzer.  I took my slightly older cousin literally when she said it was "a stone which fell from the sky" - my cousin can't have been more than 10 at the time.   It looks like the boulder came from Cumbria not space and alas was vandalised some while ago. It was/is in Coronation Park.  https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/local-news/vandals-target-crosbys-iconic-boulder-6957158
Mind you her father told me that their Heinz 57 dog (who was a sandy colour to be fair) was a pedigree golden hind!! So my cousin may have had something of the joker in her.