Was out and about on my bike today (very nice thanks as you ask, best £11 ive spent in a long time) and two moments of clarity.

 

A) walking down to post a letter (and have a fag, one downfall of bikes) and a kiddie falls end over end in front of me. As you do, I put the little sod right way up, and made sure he was ok. His mum comes out of a shop, and while not actually accusing me of trying to kidnap, mutilate etc her kid, she did make a point of saying about how little billy-bob (or whatever) shouldnt talk to strange men. So i think that in the first case its a sh1t state for the world to be in when you cant help an injured child, and in the second I hope that there are still people who are willing to help when/if the kid is in serious trouble.

 

 

B) on a lighter note. MArried people with kids, or planning to have kids base the area the want to live in (as far as i can see) on the quality of the schools/ nurseries. But myself and the good laydee are DINKIES, so what do we base the localle upon, and in a moment of epiphany it came to me....cobblers.

 

while I was out I was looking to have a pair of shoes repaired and drove around looking a cobbler, to discover that there are 3 main types and they seem to feature in three main areas. You have your 'dry cleaner cobbler' where both the clothes and the shoes are sent away to some little sweat shop in peckham and you cant get anything "while-u-wait" equates to high level of unemployment/ trainer wearers who dont get shoes repaired and if they do they are only for court appearances so it doesnt matter if it takes five days to get them done.

 

You then have your "big orange machine, man in a brown coat" cobblers, where the aformentioned man uses the aforementioned machine to do 20 min repairs in the time honoured fashion (ten minutes to stick on a bit of leather or rubber that is far to big for your shoes, ten minutes spent cutting/sanding the extra bit off and polish the shoe) middle class, enough money to buy shoes worth repairing and want them done in the lunch hour.

 

Last but not least the "old bespectacled man in a dark shop" cobbler, who will hand make you a pair of shoes (or hand repair them) will tkae three weeks to do it, but will effectively give you back a new pair of shoes. Rich, and have enough time on their hands/ pairs of shoes to not be concerned when they get their favourite loafers back.

 

Any other ways of judging your area? level of burberry worn by the local neds maybe?

 

And , in case your wondering, I got the middle guy today, lovely job and only a tenner :)

Agree about the kids issue - it's a shame that some people have an over protective attitude, but you do still have to drum it into them to be street wise... I wouldn't take offence at the mother's attitude - I've had it myself :rolleyes: Roughly how old do you think the kid was?

 

As for the rest of your post, I can't remember the last time I went to a cobblers. LOL - do we still have them round here? :confused:

 

Steve :)

Kid was about 5ish mate, he was fine, twas her getting out of her pram. the annoying thing was her kid was on the street while she was in the shop.lol

How come people who mend shoes also cut keys?? :confused: And make house numbers?? :confused:

When I was at school the cobblers could make a living selling segs. You were nobody at school if you didnt have Brogues, Oxfords or Riders with a millon segs in the soles LOL

Paul

.

 

Any other ways of judging your area? level of burberry worn by the local neds maybe?

 

 

ask Ya5een, He seems to know where all the neds/chavs/pikeys are!!!

Segs were bloody dangerous, you put too many in your shoes, go running down the road and end up on your arse.lol.

 

IS yaseen king of the chavs then or just keeps an oppo on them??

yep there is another way...look out for unwins...if it is a wine shop then you live in the poshest areas..if its a store less so...and if it says offie then you know you've hit bottom...anyway it sommit like that my memory fails me on the exact words

lol, never thought of that one. I'll say that when i first came down here andd went into an offie it shocked me. firstly it was called a "wine merchants" but the biggest shock was that there were no iron bars there. The offie where I grew up was just a counter with iron bars and everything alchoholic was behind them, so you asked for your beer or wine and paid for it and it got passed through the service opening. Walked into one down here and all the beer, wine and spirits were stacked in displays on the floor. Always supprises me that they dont get stormed by the lkocal and likely lads and emptied.

That maybe says more about where i grew up than anywhere else.lol

Heh offies, my old local Off licences were behind bullet proof partitions, all drink was behind the counter & more bars on the window than Barlinnie prison. Six cans of Tennants & bacardi for the missus please

 

Now the local 'offies' are Oddbins wine merchants, Jeroboams & Thresher :D - 2 Bottles of Stellenbosch Cabernet Sauvignon and a bottle of Friexenet sparkling wine... oh and could you deliver them my dear fellow... what what what... :rofl:

 

Being a parent of 10yr old, 7yr old boys & 2yr old Girl I am on uber alert mode when anyone comes anywhere near my kids, but these are the times & places we live in :(

 

:mad: what kind of Skank leaves her kid outside a shop :mad: My missus freaks even if we walk 2ft away from the trolley in tescos when the wee one is in it!

Oh! & Jock check out this link if you have never seen it before!

 

http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk

 

'Hey you ya dafty, watch ma berghoos

 

And for the Anglos, yes Glasgow is really like this!

 

:rofl:

i recall Prince Charles on a visit to a Glasgow factory was told by a worker they called it Disney Land...he said "is that because its fun to work here"....he said "nah...it's because that disnie work...that disnie work"

:)

Times have definately changed, I remember when I was a lad (cue hovis music, lol), I was out on my bike, riding for miles nearly every day. My brother & I used to make gokarts with/without steering & ride them down long hills leading onto the main road, lol. occasionally we'd end up in the road :eek: We had a dingie that we'd take on the canal which got upturned once over. My mum just used to let us get on with it.

 

Parents are very protective these days, but saying that, that's the way the world has gone. You've only got to look at all the health & safety rules & regulations in work etc to see that (No offence Jock, not having a dig at you mate:)).

Also, do you rekon the world we live in is worse or do you think that paedophiles have always been out there & it's just that we didn't hear about it as much back then?

Definately worse nowadays as it was when i were a lad!

I have a 14yr old daughter, try to give her the same upbringing

i had, out all day roaming the streets, pinching milk money etc.

Generally having a laugh with my mates. But you just can't, there

seems to be so many nutters out there nowadays, have to keep

an eye on her all the time. S'pose the worst from the old days

were Hindley/Brady, if those crimes were commited today it would

be front page headlines for a week or so...thats it! It just isn't a

rare crime these days. These offenders should be executed with no

questions asked, there is no need for them in society....at all!

So i guess the answer to your question is yes....things have got

worse.

Back to the parents thing, I know how you feel mate, I put my daughter on a swing in the local park, mind you I do live in a tad of a shadey area. Anyways, there was a kid standing next to the swing I had my daughter on, the poor bugger was obviously waiting for his mum to finish having a fag and talking shit to her boyfriend or whatever. 5 mins later the poor kid was still waiting at the swing, so I put him in it said 'there ya go fella' and gave him a push as I was alternating with me daugter.

 

Then about 10 minutes later his mother saw he had obviously been moved or somehoe got in the swing. She looked at me giving him a push and I just smiled, at which she looked at me like a peice of shit and told me to get her hands off her kid?

 

I thought it was rather charming told my daughter to close her ears and said '**** off missus the kid only wanted to go on the fkin swing, you wouldnt have noticed if some ran off with the poor guy'. Took me daughter out the swing and walked off, then she hurled abuse as I walked off wanting to slap the bitch.

 

She prolly thought my daughter was stolen as well.

 

Whilst I understand there are a lot of fukin weirdos out there, its not like she couldnt see I was with me daughter and only helping the little kid get in the ****ing swing cause he was being ignored.

 

Needless to say, wont bother with that one again.

 

And cobblers, I always go to the old boys in the makets, they need the cash, and bless em they do a good job and are geniune.

Is it the case that the more you protect your kids, the more they need protected? Looking at all the posts, a lot seem to have had the upbringing I had, you went out and looked after yourself, or if you got into a scrape you got yourself out (in most cases because you didnt want your parents to find out what youd been up to). The same sort of thing applies to babies, with all this sterilisation kit going on, its months before the kid comes across a germ, yet put them on the floor and the first thing a bairn does is put something in its mouth. So if you dont allow kids to learn how to deal with situations, when its faced with one it doesnt know how??