Ephemera Of Days Gone By

Nostalgia. It’s an easy hit, a quick bit of shorthand and very much a lazy writing gimmick (“Do you remember…?”). Still, I’m trying to pump one of these out on a daily basis* so I’ll take the tried, cliched inspiration where I can get it. I also get that it’s a tired, cliched gimmick to kick off with an oh-so-clever disclaimer stating that you know how unoriginal this post is but, despite that, you’re going to do it anyway so I will refer you back to my previous point about trying to squirt these little brain guffs out on a regular basis. This level of barely adequate writing doesn’t come without an absolute minimal level of effort being expended upon it, you know…

So one of the books I was reading had a description of something that I hadn’t thought about for quite some time and it sparked off a pleasing memory which lead me on a trail, starting with...

Tube Platform Chocolate Dispensers
I will also freely admit that this nostalgia is very London-centric but this is where my memories have been made so this is where I’ll get nostalgic feelings. I’m not likely to get them for Birmingham, i’m afraid (no offence, Birmingham).
These were a specific type of vending machine. They had a selection of little drawers at the bottom for each type of chocolatey goodness contained within. From memory (and this is a little hazy so definitely take this with a pinch of salt or disregard entirely), the chocolate bars were sometimes shaped differently so as to fit neatly into the dispenser trays. I remember thinking they were quite pricey so the economics of vending machines doesn’t seem to have altered much.

This lead me to thinking about…

Cigarette Machines In Pubs 
Definitely a relic of times gone by especially once the smoking ban came into effect in 2007 (hard to believe that was 12 years ago, isn’t it?). Being a non-smoker type, I never used them (and, being a non-smoker type, I definitely don’t miss spending an evening in a pub or club** meaning that everything I was wearing would be stinking of cigarette smoke the next morning.) but they were a fixture of my formative drinking years.

Of course, thinking about spending time in pubs lead me to…

Those Bits of Cardboard With Peanuts Or Pork Scratchings On Them With A Picture Of A Topless Woman Underneath
The idea being that, as more and more people purchased nuts or scratchings from said board, it would gradually reveal the sort of picture that was, in those days, readily available on Page 3 of The Sun. This is the sort of thing that people bemoan as being “not allowed these days” when, in fact, it’s best consigned the 70s/80s where it belongs. This reminds me more of being in pubs as a youth rather than as a boozer in my own right.

So there you go. A simple nostalgic item in a book that sparked off a trail of nostalgic thoughts. Is it telling that the last item my brain wanderings settled upon involves an image of semi-naked lady? I’ll leave the psycho-analysing up to you...

* Weekday daily, that is

** And by “club”, I generally mean “rock club” or “place where a mate’s band was playing very loudly”