21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff)

by Steve Stack

  Followed by:

  ‘No, you hang up first … no, you … I’m not … love you … bye … bye … bye … are you still there? Yeah, me too …’

  If they do, then you probably remember a time when most homes only had one phone. This was before the days of mobiles, of course. If you wanted to make a call you often had to do so in front of your entire family, something that could prove incredibly embarrassing to a teenager in the first flush of love or bloody annoying to anyone trying to watch television while mother hollered down the mouthpiece to a deaf grandparent.

  Don’t forget: no texts, no email, no instant messaging. If you wanted to speak to someone when you got home from school, or from work, then you had to do so using the only phone in the house.

  That is, if your parents would let you, what with the cost of phone bills and all that. Nowadays kids spend more in a month on their mobile bill than our folks used to pay in a quarter for their landline.

  Oh, how times have changed.

  Dodo Rating:

  Trimphones

  Nothing dates an object more quickly than futuristic design. Create a telephone in the 1960s that looks like it is from the 21st century, and by the time you reach the 21st century, it will look more like an object of the ’60s than anything else from that time.

  Such was the case with the Trimphone, an attempt by the GPO (before it was privatised and became BT) to create a luxury telephone for which they could charge more than the traditional rotary dial version.

  The handset of the Trimphone (Tone Ring Illuminator Model) sat vertically on top of a body that resembled a slap of Cheddar cheese. The dial lit up when in use (although there was a health scare about the gas used to create this effect and it was removed from later models), and you could use the phone cradle as a handle to carry the whole thing about with as you chatted nonchalantly but in a futuristic fashion.

  The Trimphone went through a few design changes from its arrival in the mid-’60s till they stopped making it in the early ’80s, including a touchpad model and an array of designer colours. However, none of these could disguise the fact that a phone that looked cutting edge in 1965 had become something of an anachronism less than 20 years later. It was outlived by its rotary dial older brother.

  Dodo Rating:

  Directory Enquiries

  Where we now have two very dodgy-looking blokes with moustaches in running gear harassing Ray Parker Jr and urging us all to call 118 118, we used to have delightfully well-spoken ladies at the end of the number 192.

  ‘Hello, Directory Enquiries …’ they would respond, albeit after what could frequently be a rather long wait for an answer, but the mists of nostalgia can allow us to conveniently forget such trifles.

  The system was pretty much the same as it is now: you would give a name and possibly an address and the operator would try to track down the phone number for you. It used to be a free service, and was just one of many phone services that the GPO operated in the days before privatisation and deregulation.

  There was the speaking clock, of course, which still exists. It started out in 1936 and the first voice was that of Ethel Cain, a telephonist who entered a competition and won ten guineas for her trouble. There have actually been only three other permanent voices for the speaking clock, which receives over 60 million calls a year, but there have been special one-off voices, including that of Tinkerbell during a Disney promotion.

  But do you remember the old service that allowed you to call in and listen to the latest music releases? Or the one with football scores on a Saturday? There was even a Santa line at Christmas.

  Many of these have fallen by the wayside now that we have clever phones and internet and, well, just don’t use our landlines anywhere near as much, but the flurry of private directory enquiries numbers suggests that there is still plenty of demand for that service, at least.

  Dodo Rating:

  Toothpaste Tubes Made of Metal

  Kids today don’t know how lucky they are. A simple push on a pump action dispenser and out spurts a minty worm of toothpaste.

  Just give them a real old school tube of toothpaste, one made of metal, and let’s see how they like that.

  Toothpaste tubes first started appearing towards the end of the 19th century and prevailed right up until the Second World War, when metal shortages led to experiments with a plastic/metal mix. Metal tubes weren’t finally phased out till the early 1990s.

  Whatever the history, the point is that squeezing the last pea-sized bit of goo out of a metal toothpaste tube was one of the most difficult things an eight-year-old could ever be asked to do, especially if someone else has been squeezing from the middle. Woe betide the youngster who managed to split the tube while desperately squeezing, leading to tiny spurts of paste flying all over the place.

  Gone, but not really missed all that much.

  Dodo Rating:

  Jif

  Jif was the nation’s favourite cleaning fluid, available in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and applications.

  In 2001, the name was changed to fit in with Unilever’s global branding for the product.

  It is now called Cif.

  Which is just plain silly.

  (See also Marathon and Opal Fruits.)

  Dodo Rating:

  Creamola Foam

  In an attempt to broaden the international appeal of this book, here is an entry for Scottish readers.

  Creamola Foam was a powder that, when mixed with water, created a sweet fizzy drink. It came in lemon, raspberry, and orange flavours, with a cola version added later on. It was made by Rowntree’s in Glasgow and, for some reason, and a bit like tablet and Edinburgh rock, never really made it down south.

  Now, being from down south myself, I have never tasted the foamy delights of Creamola, so I asked my Scottish friend Kat to describe the taste for me:

  ‘It’s as if someone had made orangeade milkshake. Not very nice, now I think of it, but at the time, when I was seven, it was great.’

  But in 1998, Nestlé’ (who had taken over Rowntree’s) stopped making it.

  In the more than a decade since, several petitions and online campaigns have been started to try to persuade the makers to bring it back. The issue was even raised in the Scottish parliament.

  Now, I don’t want to slight the nice people at Nestlé, whom I have taken the mickey out of elsewhere on these pages, but I would politely point out that no one wants a horde of angry Scotsmen chasing after them for any reason, least of all if they are demanding the reinstatement of their favourite effervescent fruit drink.

  Fortunately, perhaps, for Nestlé, two Scottish companies have started making their own versions of the drink with both Kramola Fizz and Krakatoa available on shelves north of the border.

  Still none down here, though.

  Dodo Rating:

  Milkshake Straws

  You used to be able to get these from your milkman but I haven’t seen one in years. Short paper straws, sealed at each end, they would contain flavoured powder – strawberry, raspberry, banana, all the usuals. The idea was that you tore off one end and poured the contents into a glass of milk, gave it a bit of a stir, and, voilà! – a tasty milkshake.

  Of course, kids being kids, more than one straw in every batch would be unloaded straight into the mouth for a kick of pure whatever it was that went into these things.

  Milkshake straws probably enjoyed their peak of popularity in the days of Humphrey, the mysterious milk snatcher in the Unigate TV ads (more on him later), his trademark red and white striped straw proving easy to promote to children.

  Dodo Rating:

  Duo Cans

  I’ll be perfectly honest, I don’t remember Duo Cans myself, but my dad suggested I put them in and, being the dutiful son, I thought it only fair and proper that I made the effort to research them.

  And what a peculiar piece of ready-meal culinary genius they were too.

  Basically a can of curry and rice that you opened from both ends �
�� one end had the curry, the other had the rice. First, you had to heat it up by sticking the unopened can in boiling water. Once it was hot enough, you burnt off your fingerprints by opening this cylinder of molten metal – at both ends! – with a can opener then poured the contents onto your plate.

  Hard to work out why they didn’t last, really, isn’t it?

  Dodo Rating:

  Black and White Television

  You could be forgiven for thinking that black and white televisions were well and truly extinct, but you would be very wrong indeed.

  OK, so there aren’t that many of them around, but there are still over 25,000 people in the UK who own a black and white TV licence. It costs about a third of a colour licence, which may explain the attraction.

  A fair proportion of black and white owners are elderly people who own an old set and haven’t upgraded, but the old monochrome idiot’s lantern remains popular with cheapskate students and for use on boats and caravans.

  Colour television didn’t really take hold in the UK until the late 1960s. Up till then, black and white held sway – it was the only option, and millions of homes had a set sitting in the corner of the living room. And despite the domination of colour in the 1970s, it was still fairly common to find black and white tellies in use, especially if you were visiting your grandparents, until a fair way into the 1980s.

  Of course, by then it was a proper disadvantage to be devoid of colour, as this classic line from Ted Lowe during a snooker commentary proves:

  ‘And for those of you watching in black and white, the blue ball is just behind the pink.’

  The number of people owning a black and white licence is dropping by almost 10,000 every year, so we are very soon to see the eradication of this historic piece of technology. I trust we will all stage a minute’s silence when that happens.

  Dodo Rating:

  IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

  Where we walked and played, commuted from, and came home to …

  White Dog Poo

  I am willing to bet that few entries in this book will get readers (of a certain age, at least) more nostalgic than this collection of paragraphs on dog shit.

  The younger ones among you may find this hard to believe, but mention those three magic words to anyone over the age of 35 or so, and their eyes will glaze over, a strange smile will cross their lips, and they will be transported down memory lane to summer days of yesteryear when the nation’s pavements were littered with canine fragrant parcels baking quietly in the hot sun.

  You still see a lot of dog shit around these days, and frankly the culprits – or, more correctly, the culprits’ owners – should be taken outside and shot, but the offending pile is usually a shade of brown. This was not always the case. There are no statistics available (which is a further outrage), but my completely unscientific method (which involves casting my mind back and having a guess) would suggest that around 30% of crap on the pavement pre-1985 was white.

  Here’s the science bit: Dogs used to eat a lot more bone and bone meal in days gone by. A dog with a bone is a classic image, but you don’t actually see it in real life all that much any more. Bones, as any school kid knows, have lots of calcium in them, and white dog poo was basically the calcium left behind when all the other component parts of the turd had evaporated, been eaten by flies, or otherwise broken down.

  We are also, as a nation, a lot more disciplined about picking up after our dogs, so steaming piles of doings are rarely left on the pavement for long enough to turn into ghost-like versions of themselves.

  Fascinating, isn’t it? Sort of.

  Dodo Rating:

  Whistling

  When is the last time you heard someone whistling? Think about it. I don’t mean a quick wolf-whistle (although now I mention it, you don’t hear many of them these days, either), or a builder sucking air through his teeth just before giving you an outrageous quote for a new extension, but a full-on, high decibel, cheerful tune from start to finish.

  Chances are it’s been a while.

  But everyone used to be at it once upon a time: window cleaners, policemen, school janitors, milkmen, taxi drivers, all sorts of people. Now it appears to be something of a dying art.

  Now, I accept that this won’t be a source of regret to everyone. Miserable sods who don’t like a cheerful tune emitting from ’twixt the lips of manual labourers are quite possibly overjoyed at the dearth of ‘Waltzing Matilda’s or ‘My Darling Clementine’s, and that is fair enough.

  Personally, as someone who can’t whistle at all, I kind of miss it. Perhaps I could call upon the musically lipped readers of this book to pucker up and belt out a tune at some point in the near future, just to improve the rarity rating of this sadly neglected art form?

  Of course, just because you don’t hear window cleaners performing a wind solo while you walk down the street doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who take the fine art of whistling seriously. The International Whistlers’ Convention takes place on a weekend in April every year, usually in Louisburg, North Carolina, although it tours occasionally and has been held in Japan and China – a truly global event. There are Child, Teen and Adult age groups, and entrants can perform in either Classical or Popular categories.

  There is also a Whistlers’ Hall of Fame which includes such luminaries as Bobbejaan Schoepen, Quingyao Cao, and Marge Carlson. Their occupations are not given but I am guessing at least one of them is a milkman.

  Dodo Rating:

  Bob-a-Job Week

  From the end of the Second World War right up to the mid-1990s, Bob-a-Job Week thrived around the country. Cubs and Scouts would roam the neighbourhood, knocking on doors and offering to do any odd jobs in return for a nominal payment – the ‘bob’ in Bob-a-Job being slang for an old shilling.

  Washing cars, mowing the lawn, walking the dog, helping the elderly with their shopping, anything was up for grabs. One Scout troop even cleaned jumbo jets at Heathrow, although they probably got paid a fair bit more than five pence for that. Unless they were cleaning Ryanair planes, in which case Michael O’Leary would almost certainly have charged them for the privilege.

  It was a great concept and very much a win-win situation. The Scouts raised some money for new woggles or books about knots, and members of the public got some annoying jobs sorted out for a pittance.

  Sadly, the practice died out as our country became more and more obsessed with child safety, and the idea of unaccompanied children knocking on the doors of strangers didn’t seem such a good one any more.

  It is, however, scheduled to return, albeit in a new form. The Scout Community Challenge will involve groups of cubs and Scouts, rather than individuals or pairs, teaming up to work on community projects. Quite how that helps the old dear who has been waiting for nearly 20 years for a nice young man to clean her windows remains to be seen.

  Dodo Rating:

  Raleigh Chopper

  The Chopper was, without any shadow of a doubt, the bike of the 1970s.

  Designed to echo the look and feel of a chopper motorcycle (think Easy Rider), it was the coolest bike on the streets. It was also the most impractical.

  The laid-back aesthetics led to an unstable ride, especially at speed. The high-backed saddle was great for giving ‘backsies’ but that made it even more accident-prone and, if you ever dismounted at speed, the gear stick was strategically placed to castrate the male rider. The rear wheel was larger than the front and the high handlebars made few riding positions comfortable for more than a few minutes.

  All that aside, it became a cultural icon and was the ubiquitous mode of transport for the suburban ’70s teenager.

  By the time the 1980s came round, the Chopper was overtaken by BMX culture. The appetite for bunny hops, 360s, and half pipes rendered the Chopper obsolete. That, and the desire to cycle for more than half a mile without killing yourself.

  Believe it or not, the Chopper was relaunched in 2004 with a tweaked (for which, read ‘boring’) design. The seat
had been lowered to discourage passengers and the gear controls were moved to the handlebars. Sensible, but dull. It has not made a significant impact.

  Dodo Rating:

  Raleigh Grifter

  For a bicycle that was only manufactured for seven years (1976–1983) the Raleigh Grifter has left a remarkable impression and is fondly remembered by people (OK, mostly men) of a certain age.

  Pitched as the younger brother to the Chopper, it was a far more practical bike, even if it was very chunky and heavy. The stand-out feature was that the gears, all three of the blighters, were controlled from the handlebar grip, as close to a motorbike throttle as a 12-year-old was likely to get in the days before joyriding and petty vehicle theft.

  Looking back, the Grifter was really a simplistic hybrid of a BMX and a mountain bike, and may have played a small part in the success of the latter in the years that followed. After riding a Grifter, the move up to a racer was not quite as satisfying.

  Dodo Rating:

  Roller Skates

  Everyone had roller skates when I was growing up. Learning to skate was a rite of passage similar to learning to ride a bike. Kids would start early with a pair of Fisher Price plastic jobs that could be adjusted as your feet grew. You then graduated to a rickety metal pair that, likewise, could increase in size as you went up the scale of that foot measurement thing in your local shoe shop.

  Such childish toys were mere piffle, however, when compared to your first pair of roller boots. Fashionable (then, at any rate), sporty boots with integrated rubber wheels and a front stopper were the skates to have.

  Any summer weekend in the suburbs you would see kids star-fishing their way down the pavement as they desperately tried to stay upright, two purple patches on their knees where grazes had scabbed over.

  But more serious skaters wouldn’t be seen dead on an actual pavement; oh no, they could instead be found spinning, pirouetting, and gliding backwards effortlessly in the local park, along the seaside esplanade (the wearing of a Walkman playing disco music was compulsory), or, of an evening, at the roller disco, many of which had sprung up in out-of-town shopping centres.