Things that time forgot.

[pastoralguy]

I guess we are all of a certain age and remember the grocers shops of our childhood. I also recall the tubes on wires system for whizzing money and orders round shops, but am not sure where I saw it: possibly in Sainsburys in Cambridge in the late 1960s.

Jenners in Edinburgh had them when I was a boy. I was fascinated by the whole process.

[Bryn]

I guess we are all of a certain age and remember the grocers shops of our childhood. I also recall the tubes on wires system for whizzing money and orders round shops, but am not sure where I saw it: possibly in Sainsburys in Cambridge in the late 1960s.

I seems to recall Foyles having such a system at one stage of its arrested development. More common, I think, in department stores was the pneumatic tube system used to the same effect. Here is a link to that sort of system used by the Philadelphia Post Office.

Oh, and here's a site listing various department stores which used the 'cash railway' system.

[Nick Armstrong]

you can get yer jolly old Vesta Paella on ... amazon ! Handy 7-pack for just over £3 a throw (I use the term advisedly).

Ditto yer actual Beef Curry and yer Chow Mein... And as for Butterscotch Angel Delight... (Talk about keeping up with the times - why, there's even a trendy-healthy No-Added Sugar Butterscotch Angel Delight these days !

Yer Vesta Beef was the first curry I ever tasted. But the Vesta dish I used to like most c. 1972 was their Beef Risotto - now that seems indeed to have vanished down the plug-hole of Time, per this thread...

Mind you, I did pick up a Vesta Beef Curry a few years back and it was vile - so, so salty

So perhaps it's a good thing I cannot disturb my fond Risotto memories...

Just been watching The Ipcress File (ideal for a rainy Sunday afternoon) - and was amused to see the supposed epicure Harry Palmer recommend piled high Vesta packets as 'excellent' to his boss as they wheel their trolleys round a mid-60s Safeway (a Vesta prawn curry is selected )

[gradus]

Ah Vesta! (sorry Katy)

Fur coats - there must be hundreds of thousands in the wardrobes of Britain, surely they, the coats that is, should be put to some useful purpose?

[vinteuil]

Ah Vesta! (sorry Katy)

Fur coats - there must be hundreds of thousands in the wardrobes of Britain, surely they, the coats that is, should be put to some useful purpose?

.

... good idea. I think they should be used as fur coats

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Fur coats - there must be hundreds of thousands in the wardrobes of Britain, surely they, the coats that is, should be put to some useful purpose?

The lingerie drawer often surprisingly empty, though.

[vinteuil]

The lingerie drawer often surprisingly empty, though.

... oi! You may be able to get away with that oop north, but really....

[ ... down here we prefer 'all mouth and no trousers'. Well, I'm not sure that 'prefer' is perhaps the best word... ]

[jean]

[A pedant writes: It should be All mouth and trousers. Beware false analogy.]

[vinteuil]

[A pedant writes: It should be All mouth and trousers. Beware false analogy.]

... thank you for the correction. I understand however that both variants are current.

[jean]

True - but the addition of the negative spoils the meaning.

[vinteuil]

True - but the addition of the negative spoils the meaning.

... does it really?

All fur coat and no knickers (no better than she ought to be, as my great-aunts would say)

All hat and no cattle [US] (all talk with nothing to show for it)

All mouth and no trousers (all talk with nothing to show for it, taking 'trousers' as synechdoche for membrum virile)

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/19/messages/511.html

[jean]

... taking 'trousers' as synechdoche for membrum virile)

That's the bit that doesn't convince me. Without the negatibve, the trousers are indeed there, but there nothing in them.

...One of the joys of language is that sometimes it is the little things that trigger the most intense debate. Such as one little word: "no". Or, more accurately, the difference between trousers and no trousers....

[vinteuil]

Especially as the phrase didn't have a negative to start with.

... do we have any evidence for this assertion?

[Nick Armstrong]

the trousers are indeed there, but there nothing in them.

Modern political life in a nutshell, jean...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I had always thought that "all mouth and trousers" referred to parents who provided material necessities (food and clothing), but were lacking in a sense of emotional "care" for their offspring!