Pics of your past (2018)

Probably put this one up before, but my friend says I look like Willow in it

 

Didn't know they had colour back then our mandy

 

A rare occurrence....I'm clean!

 

"What fine fellows we once were."
I think that was said by Samuel Pepys.

Anyway me in 1968 with two of our kids when I was a "budgie smuggler."



Again in 1970 at our house in Marford, in Wales. I'm standing in our garden. As far as the eye can see behind me became a huge housing estate. I'm wearing one of my wife's knitted creations, she made the design up herself.




Our two boys at Butlins in about 1970.

More of my wife's knitting, she made up the patterns they liked them this bright. The older one now has been a consultant engineer for twenty years.



Our daughter when she was I think about two. She trained at Great Ormond Street and became a specialised ICU sister. She later went to St. Mary's specialising in the care of kids with meningitis. Then as many nurses do, went "agency" for twice the cash and shorter hours, being sent back to do exactly the same job she was doing before.

She'll be fifty this year, 5' 10" blonde, slim, with four kids between seven and twenty one. She admits herself she's "high maintenance."



My sister at the age of nineteen, she's seven years younger than am I. In her "rocker gear" when she came up on a visit and we went to Blackpool on a day out. It's in the Tower café. Note the coffee cup and cigarette in the same hand.



She became a manager for a big American bank in the seventies when they were expanding their operations.

This is funny

Later in life after having a family, she went back to work part time in a local bank, just for something to do.
She must have impressed her manager with her capabilities, he suggested that she could apply to be a manager.. She replied,

"Well I was a manager for, (name of the bank) before."

"Oh yes? What was your branch?"

"The Middle East, but I'm happy doing just what I do now." (she managed all the accounts from her office in London),

 

This is worth a look.

23 photos that prove your parents were once so much cooler than you are

 

Yes, I did say at the head of my post.

"What fine fellows we once were."

I remembered it from a book I read about the history of the Navy in Nelson's time.

 

My only naval experiences were in pedalos.

However our eldest son who before a became an engineering consultant, was an executive for a large bank (he was a vice president- they had no end of 'em) but not in banking, but in the corporate realty division. That bank in the eighties had a yacht club, with three thirty-odd foot ocean going cruisers. (No doubt provided from the income from the extortionate rate of interest they charge their customers). So he did some ocean sailing. He was also a member of a sailing club that used one of the North London reservoirs. I think they sailed two-man Lasers.
He said he was once rebuked by the Commodore after a race, because he'd been seen smoking when out on the trapeze. He told me as they were on a long reach in a steady wind, he'd been able to make a roll up whilst out there! I'm not sure if he was telling the truth, but I wouldn't have put it past him.

Funny story,
Back in the eighties when Western banks were moving into Eastern Europe, they were opening call centres there right and left. He had the job of finding a suitable location in East Germany. He did the negotiations on site with a military man who was "covered with gold braid." These countries were desperate for US dollars.
Having negotiated the rental of a suitable space at a reasonable rental, he returned to England and reporting to the group he told them he'd found suitable space, the upper floor of a large building.

"What about security?" He was asked.

"That's all taken care of, there'll be armed guards at the entrances of the building, 24/7.

"Won't that be expensive?

"No, It's free."

"How's that?"

"The Stasi's on the ground floor."

They never gave them any bother.