Wombles and Willy Moon

We are heading down the home stretch with the last few letters of the A to Z Blog Challenge.

We have W, X, Y and Z left. WOW! I can't believe I made it this far.  Today's letter is W.

The Wimbledon Wombles.  Those orange, fuzzy foragers who were under-ground, over-ground Wombling free?  Sticking their bear-like pointy noses into everyone's rubbish and always finding something of significance?

Remember Great Uncle Bulgaria with his specs perched on the end of this nose and his tartan shoes. Orinoco is the lazy one, who is always late,  Tobermory the clever one and bossy Bungo.   Madame Cholet who spoke with a very posh French accent, who I always thought was Madame Charlotte and Cousin Cairngorm McWomble the Terrible.  There was wee Wellington with his blue and black cap and black rimmed specs?  They were all dead cute.  I used to watch the TV series every Saturday morning and sang along to the very catching song "Wombling Free"

The Wombles always had brilliant adventures while on "Tidy Up Duty".  They used to find all sorts of useless stuff that they made interesting.  My Dad always used to say that "The Wombles could make honey outta dog shite!"  Yeah...my Dad is quite a character with a mouth like a sailor...

Did you enjoy watching The Wombles?

Today's music features Willy Moon. He's not vintage, but his music definitely sounds from a different era. 

 Enjoy!  

Hall Rules and Heebie-Jeebie Horsefeathers

I'm going way back in time now...this is almost a cheat post because nothing about this time makes me nostalgic, but I do love watching Downton Abbey.  

This period drama series is set during the Edwardian era and quickly moves through time to include pre- and post World War and then through the swinging twenties.  

The story is not only about the aristocrats and how they live, but more interestingly about the servants and the "downstairs" way of life.

It has such awesome costumes and the polite dialogue is completely foreign in the beginning.  It often makes you think what it would be like to living during those times when women were oppressed and men called all the shots.  Not even your inheritance, as a lady, was secure...land could only be passed on to male heirs.

It was time when high-tea was served by servants in the posh drawing room at the request of a bell and mail arrived by hand.  When women wore gloves and everyone dressed for dinner.  No-one got Half-seas over without getting side-ways glances.  Everything was so sophisticated and formal.  

Servants had strict Hall Rules;  "No Swearing or indecent language while the cloth is on the table" or "No one is to be suffered playing cards in the Hall before 6o'clock in the evening".  If they did they were fine thruppence!

Here's a true story of Life below stairs which is really interesting.  Enjoy!  See you tomorrow.

Take A Chill Pill

The Letter C finds us jumping back in time to these...

Kids of today would not understand the relationship between these two items - The Pencil and The Cassette Tape. 

When your favourite MixTape got eaten up by your Sony Walkman, you opened it up, pulled out the cassette and the miles of tape that the Walkman "ate", you had to insert the pencil between the cogs in the holes and wind the tape back into the cassette manually. 

If you didn't have a pencil or a pen, you used your finger and tore all the skin of your Peter Pointer while doing it.  We often had to do this with our favourite Mix Tapes, because we played them over and over again and the tapes would get stretched.  It was your worst nightmare if you snapped the tape on your favourite U2 cassette.

Sometimes, we even used cellotape to rescue the poor thing.  It always left a muted section on your tape, but it was either that, or chuck the entire tape in the bin?!

Remember Cabbage Patch Kids with their very own Birth Certificate?

Care Bears.  Everyone had a favourite and we used to watched the TV Show every Saturday morning

 

The Cure are today's Retro band.  I used to love Robert Smith, but was always a wee bit put off my his messy hair and smudged red lipstick.  Good toonz though...

Where’s the Beef?

Welcome to the Letter B of this year's A to Z Blog Challenge.

Who remembers the TV series Beyond 2000? 

Here's an episode from 1987 taken from Betamax.  Remember Betamax? 

Yeah, well our wee family had the Phillips 2000 video recorder and we thought we were the shizzle!  

The Phillips VCR had fancy analogue double-sided tapes like audio tapes.  Twice the amount of recording time - Booyah!

The commercials an frikken epic. 



My retro musical feature for the letter B is the B-52's who had huge hits in the 80s like "Love Shack" and "Planet Claire".  They were pretty new wave and not everyone's cuppa tea.  This was my favourite song of theirs.

See you tomorrow for the letter C....

A to Z Blog Challenge Theme Reveal

This is a last minute decision to take part in the 2015 A to Z Blog Challenge. 

I haven't blogged in almost a year, so I thought this would be a brilliant way of getting back into the swing of things. 

I have done four previous A To Z Blog Challenges successfully, so I thought I'd give it another go just for old time's sake.

 And that, my Pretty Plonkers, is exactly what my Theme this year is going to be....Retro Nostalgia.

 


 Here are the hosts:

Arlee Bird @ Tossing it Out

Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh

Jeremy @ Hollywood Nuts

Nicole Ayers @ The Madlab Post

Author Stephen Tremp

Heather M. Gardner

AJ Lauer

Pam @ An Unconventional Librarian

Matthew MacNish @ The QQQE

Zalka Csenge Virág @ The Multicolored Diary

S. L. Hennessy @ Pensuasion

C. Lee McKenzie @ The Write Game

Joy Campbell @ The Character Depot

Susan Gourley @ Susan Says

John  Holton @The Sound of One Hand Typing

Lisa Buie-Collard, Author