Random thoughts from a random mind


Weird or What…or Just Coincidental?

Reading a post entitled The Battle of Hastings and Battle Abbey from Forestfae.wordpress.com the other day got me thinking.

In her post she mentioned the fact that when she arrived and parked near the Castle gates, her milometer was displaying 1066, (there is a photo to prove it too), which is rather weird considering the dates of the battle. (Not the photo being weird I add). Now I’m always fascinated by strange ‘coincidences’ like that. I’d go as far to say that those sorts of things seem to happen all the time to me.

They do. As I haven’t logged these things down over the years, because I didn’t know that I’d be writing a blog, my memory is going to have to get its act together.

I wonder if it happened to Dickens

Well, there were the times when I thought I’d ring my son, on one occasion, and my brother, another time. They were different days, months and even years apart. I picked up the receiver to dial the number and on both occasions the recipient was already on the other end. That was before I’d even dialled their number. There was no ringing for me to answer either. They had just decided to ring me when I’d decided to ring them and it was all done simultaneously. On both occasions it had happened at a time of day when we never ever called each other normally too. How strange.

I didn't even dial and you're there? Weird!

Other things that happen are I could be writing, maybe filling in a crossword or writing a letter and a really obscure word, one that I hadn’t heard for years would be mentioned on the radio or the television just as I’m writing it. That has happened so many times it’s uncanny. I don’t know why these things happen.

I’ve written a post about ghosts already but there was a time when my daughter and son were at our flat, the one I think is haunted, and we were talking about a film where a word is mentioned 3 times and something happens. Well, at the time we had a fan heater and my son jokingly said that word 3 times and it turned itself off. After we got over the shock, I decided to do the same thing. Again the heater turned itself off. My partner tried but nothing happened for him but my daughter had a go afterwards and how ‘spooked’ was I when off  it went again. I’m getting goosebumps writing about it.

None of us turned it off.

My children have had other similar things happen to them also. Things like we’d be singing a random song, as we often do, and put the radio on and hey presto it would be playing. We would mention a friend who we hadn’t seen for a long time and bump into them on a shopping trip.

I know people often tell stories of siblings feeling pains when one or the other have been in labour. That’s happened to me. I don’t have a very close family due to the fact that we spent a lot of our childhoods in different children’s homes but when my youngest sister was in labour, I wasn’t told she was, I felt the most horrific pain for a few hours. I found out the next day that she’d had her baby.

The last thing I will mention is my mum. She died in 2010 on her sister’s birthday two weeks exactly after my dad, who died on her birthday.   They divorced in the 70s and hadn’t spoken to each other since their split. None of them had gone on to meet anyone else and as far as I knew my mum had ‘hated’ him with a vengeance for the way he had treated her and us children. Anyway, I hadn’t seen her for a few years, but the day she was taken into hospital I had a sharp pain in my chest which made me a bit breathless. Just then my younger sister rang to tell me that she was in hospital and it didn’t look good. I went to see her to say my goodbyes but she was unconscious. I managed to tell her though and I think she heard me because the machine that monitors the heart rate began to show some activity by peaking rapidly.

Although I digressed slightly there, the point I was making was how close my parents were without anyone noticing. They chose to die in the same month and year and none of them knew. I find that very strange.

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Memories are made of this…

As a child of the 70s, I can remember being sent to the shops to buy cigarettes for my father when it was possible to purchase them in singular quantities, if you so desired. I would’ve been sent with a note to Miltons (our local shop) to buy 10 Park Drive Plain, or fewer, and not a thing was said. You couldn’t do that now in the 21st century.

Whilst in the shop, I would drool over the many sweets on sale then. All of them in glass jars in a row in the window. You could buy them in quarter pounds, which for a youngster was just enough a whole day.  (Who am I kidding? They’d be eaten on the way home from the shops!) Where have they gone now?

Thanks to ebay.co.uk for this gift box

The sweets that I remember, that have disappeared as far as I know, are Spangles. These were fruit flavoured, boiled sweets and I loved them. I loved all the fruity sweets best.  Other sweets from my past are:

Dip dabs

Black Jacks

Sherbet, (especially the orange one. I used to dip in my finger and ate and ate it until my tongue cracked and my finger was as orange as an…orange. Sorry about the simile.) *Note to self,  find a better simile.

Marathons (Now Snickers)

Fruit salad chews (yum)

Cola Cubes

Lollipops covered in thick chocolate, (can’t remember their name but they were FAB)

Opal fruits (Now Starburst, I’m sorry No, No, No, They should’ve stayed   ‘Opal Fruits made to make your mouth water’

 Toffee pillows, toffee slabs, (My dad loved slabs of toffee even though he had no teeth, but had hard gums). I didn’t mean ‘hard gums’ sweets, (aka American Hard Gums).

Love Hearts, their captions have been updated to match txt messaging nowadays. They used to have sayings such as, ‘Be mine,  you’re sweet, I love You’ being  just a few that I remember.

As sold by sweetwonderland.co.uk

Sherbet Dip, sherbet pips and anything sherbety. Incidentally, just looked up ‘sherbet’ in the Oxford Concise English Dictionary, and found 4 definitions depending where you live.

  1. Brit – A flavoured sweet effervescent powder eaten alone or made into a drink.
  2. (Especially in Arab countries) a drink of sweet diluted fruit juices
  3. N. America –  water ice; sorbet
  4. Australian – humorous – beer  

* Just thought of another simile to describe how orange my finger was after eating sherbet, as orange as a carrot. That’s better isn’t it.

Also on sale were, Golf balls, Parma Violets, Bazooka Bubblegum, (They had a comic strip inside), Revels, Toffee Poppets, Rosy Apples, and many more. If you can think of any I’ve missed feel free to comment.

Bars of chocolate that have disappeared as far as I know are, Aztec bars, Bar six, Picnics, Fruit and Nut bar, Icebreakers which had mint chips in and Topics.

My partner reminded me that the TV advert for Topic was, ‘What has a hazelnut in every bite?’ And the answer would be shouted out, ‘Topic’  Unfortunately, he used to shout out, ‘Squirrel Sh*t.’ I say ‘unfortunately, because his parents would send him to his room or worse.

The adverts were memorable too. Who remembers, ‘Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut Case?’ or ‘A finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat?’ or ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play?’  ”The Milky Bar kid is strong and tough, and only the best is good enough…’ (that one’s still going). I loved those adverts.

Not only have some of  these things been lost and forgotten but the chocolate products that survived have become smaller. I know people will say the usual thing, ‘they were bigger when you were a child but then you had smaller hands.’ I do agree with that but things like Wagon Wheels and Curly Wurlys have become smaller for sure, regardless of hand sizes.

I always hear myself saying, ‘Crikey! They’re not as big as they used to be! (  Unintentional innuendo) I say it quite a lot when it comes to chocolate bars. I feel cheated by the size compared to the price. However pricing is another issue, one that, once I get started, I could rant on about for days. I will spare you that because that’s another story…



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