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This is my entry for the Weeping Horse award for the most boring blog post of the year. Another item stuffed in the back of the drawer of things I didn’t know what to do with.

We were told to buy one of these when I started my Computing Masters course in 1980. Except for the square and rectangular boxes, I never used it. 

What is it? I don’t really know, other than to say it is a template for drawing symbols used in computer flowcharting. I hardly gave it a second glance until now. It relates to an approach to programming that was becoming outdated before the course began. I think it was used for designing COBOL programs that took ages to run with no human input once started. I have no idea how to use the symbols. What is an auxiliary operation, a terminal interrupt, or a transmittal tape? And there were even more symbols on the packet it came in, on both sides. 

The packet it came in, and an example of how the symbols are used

The course taught us a different technique called Jackson Structured Programming (JSP) which was more suited to programs that interact with the user, as in most of today’s software. JSP defines programs as combinations of sequences, selections, and repetitions. It uses a notation consisting only of rectangles, plain for sequences, marked O for selections and * for repetitions. If you adhere to its rules for putting them together, you avoid the unintelligible, spaghetti-like tangle of code that defeats most novice programmers. I found it invaluable. 

Later, I used something called Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM). This employed a further set of techniques with names such as Data Flow Diagrams, Logical Data Structures, and Entity Life Histories. It organised data into the most flexible and efficient form, which was helpful in systems that handle complex information, such as customer orders, stock control, or bus timetables. This figure shows some of the notations. I could probably just about remember enough to explain them further, but it would be gobbledygook.  

Jackson Structured Programming example from my Masters Dissertation
SSADM Logical Data Structure and Data Flow Diagram

I know it is off the end of the autistic spectrum, but I enjoyed this kind of stuff and took great pride in it (and in what I was paid to do it). If the design is right, software works as intended without bugs that need fixing all the time. At the computer company I worked at, our large and complicated service management system did what it was supposed to do. It was used throughout Europe and elsewhere. The design was right. I would say that, today, companies like Amazon and Ebay largely have it right. So why don’t government systems such as for the DSS Carers Allowance? Why didn’t the Post Office? There used to be a saying based on the quality-time-cost triangle which was that you can have it good, you can have it quick, and you can have it cheap, but you can’t have it all three. 

To come back to the template, it was not used. Like with books, do not buy anything a university or college recommends until it is needed. It might not be. 

What to do with it? It takes up little space. It is back in the drawer with all the other useless rubbish. 

Edwards’ “Harlene”

Another oddity from the side branches of my wife’s unusual family tree. 

Reuben George Edwards was born Reuben Goldstein, but like many others changed his name to something more “I’m not Jewish” which was better for business. His wife’s family had changed from Nathan to Newton, and other relatives to Lewis, Lawrence, Harris and Ellis.   

Reuben founded Edwards’ Harlene, manufacturers of hair restorers for men and women, in the 1880s. Bizarre and rather unsettling newspaper advertisements made claims that would be illegal today. One pictures a young mother with high-maintenance knee-length hair, standing at her dressing table, being asked by her daughter, “Mama, shall I have beautiful long hair like you when I grow up?”, to which she replies, “Certainly, my dear, if you use ‘Edwards’ Harlene’.” Another shows an improbably hirsute man with beard and handlebar moustache, and a woman with thick wavy locks:   

Edwards’ “Harlene” positively forces luxuriant hair, whiskers and moustachios to grow heavily in a few weeks without injury to the skin and no matter what the age.

The world-renowned remedy for baldness, from whatever cause arising. As a producer of whiskers and moustachios it has never been equalled. As a curer of weak or thin eyelashes, or restoring grey hair to its original colour, it never fails. 

My goodness! If only you could still get it. With some of that I could have been in Jethro Tull, or more likely Wizzard for which I’ve got the nose but not the hair. It would be Christmas every day. 

The business was very profitable. When he died in 1943, Edwards left £86,500, equivalent to over £3m today. 

They founded the Edith Edwards Preventorium at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire, for the treatment of tuberculosis, in memory of a daughter who died aged 15 in 1914.

Housewives’ Choice

This is where I lived until the age of 6. It seems unchanged except for replacement doors and windows, and the back bedroom has been divided to make a bathroom. That attic is where I played with my dad. 

The front door opened on to a passage past the front room and stairs, to the back room, with a single-storey kitchen behind. There was an outside toilet behind the kitchen, and we hung a paraffin lamp under the cistern to stop it freezing in winter. There was blue paraffin and pink paraffin, just different brands I think. They had the same distinctive smell, both liquid and alight. 

For hot water we had a gas ‘geyser’. It had blue flames underneath when in operation. For large quantities to fill the bath and laundry dolly tub we heated it on the gas cooker, or lit a fire in an outhouse (the “wash house”) at the end of the garden. A bit later we did get a stand-alone Ada washing machine with a wringer on top and a hose that hooked over the kitchen sink. 

Here we are at the back of the house, ‘tin’ bath against the wall. With no indoor bathroom or toilet you needed a ‘po’ under the bed. The music of the tinkling deepened with the content, especially with enamel metal ones, although I guess they were warmer than porcelain for women to sit on. Did couples have one each, or share? If that sounds primitive, my grandma still used an earth closet. ‘Pos’ were also useful in freezing weather. It was all very well for men; they could wee in the kitchen sink over the dirty dishes. Now we want en-suite bathrooms and a shower every day. 

Before I was old enough for school, I was at home with my mum. Dad went off to work, and Mum began clearing up the breakfast table and doing things in the kitchen (and of course emptying the ‘pos’). I would play on the back room floor. After starting school, the same routine continued during holidays, and after my brother was born and we moved to another house with the luxury of an indoor bathroom. 

At 10 past 9 each weekday, Housewives’ Choice came on the ‘wireless’ as we then called it. It played popular songs. I soaked them in. Before I was 10, I could sing the tunes and at least the first verse of possibly 100 contemporary popular songs. That does not include the older songs my dad sang, traditional tunes, or hymns and carols.  

Last month’s post about uncool singers had me wondering how many I still know. Over the following days they came tumbling out of my head until I was begging them to stop. Here are some I can still make a decent attempt at. I tend to remember the tunes, but not always the words or singers. 

For a start, there was the Housewives’ Choice signature tune. I can also do Workers’ Playtime, Two Way Family Favourites, and Children’s Favourites. Or how about the music Granada Television (then the commercial channel for the whole of the North of England) played before starting up at five o’clock? 

The earliest contemporary song I remember is The Ugly Duckling by Danny Kaye (1952). Danny Kaye also sang Wonderful Copenhagen (1953). I doubt my memories are from those years because I was very young, and they were played incessantly later. 

Also from 1953 is She Wears Red Feathers (Guy Mitchell). He also did Singing The Blues (1957) but I suspect it is the slurred and affected Tommy Steele U.K. version I remember. An older boy copied it as he rode his bicycle along the street. Tommy Steele also sang Little White Bull (1959). 

I mentioned Memories Are Made Of This (Dean Martin, 1955) and Magic Moments (Perry Como, 1958) in last month’s post. Perry Como also sang Catch A Falling Star (1957) and Delaware (1959). I am pretty sure I remember them from that time and still know most of the words. 

Alma Cogan was hugely popular in Britain in the 1950s. I can still do Where Will the Dimple Be, Twenty Tiny Fingers and Sugartime (all 1955) which are fairly awful. But I seem to recall her recording of the brilliant Love and Marriage (1956) being played a lot, even though it was Frank Sinatra that had the hit. Illusion; conclusion; institute; disparage: good for the vocabulary, too. 

Another awful song was Pickin’ a Chicken (Eve Boswell, 1955). Sadly I still know it.

Michael Holiday had a wonderfully rich voice, but died tragically young. I knew The Story Of My Life (1958) all the way through. Is that why I write what I write?  

The Beverley Sisters were also very popular. As well as Sisters (1954), they were well known for Little Donkey and Little Drummer Boy (1959). 

My mother liked to point out that David Whitfield was from Hull whenever he came on, but I could not bring to mind anything he sang. I am surprised to read he sang the theme tune for the TV series, The Adventures of William Tell (1958). Ronnie Hilton was also from Hull.

That’s over 20. There were so many more. This is the personal compilation of a child of the 50s. I had to stop somewhere. It was becoming painful. I can still sing them all. I made the list from memory and looked up other details later. Some were covers of American songs by British singers, and some the silly kind of songs that appeal to children. Commercial compilations of 1950s hits are very different. 

When older, I had a transistor radio. I listened to 208 Radio Luxembourg at night under the bedclothes (Radio Luxembourg circumvented the BBC monopoly and ban on advertising). One night there was a request for ‘Love Me Do’ by The Beatles. I’d never heard anything like it. It stuck fast in my head, and music changed for ever. Parents thought it rubbish, not that it troubled them much. It would be some years before you would hear it on Housewives’ Choice. 

Philately will get you nowhere (unless you’re Dennis J. Hanson)

New month old post: first posted 26th March, 2015

From when I was fairly new to Blogging, and often wrote very long posts. Yet it has had over 12,000 views, so I have left it unchanged. The original 70 comments are here, although most commenters (other than Kid - thankyou) seem now to have dropped off Blogger. 

 

The ads were irresistible: 

ALL FREE OVER 200 STAMPS PLUS THE FAMOUS PENNY BLACK & CAPE TRIANGULAR FACSIMILES The famous 1840 British “PENNY BLACK” and the 1853 “CAPE TRIANGULAR” facsimiles (originals worth about £45) plus a genuine dealer’s mixture of 200 unsorted stamps (Catalogued over 30/-.), all ABSOLUTELY FREE! Just ask to see our New Approvals. (Please tell your parents.)

This old PENNY RED and approx. 500 stamps for only 1/-. Here’s a super bargain that no collector can afford to miss! Send only 1/- today for this guaranteed and unsorted collection of about 500 stamps, often containing scarce and unusual stamps, plus this Great Britain 1d. Red issued 100 years ago. ... This very valuable offer ... is to introduce our Latest Approval Books. Please tell your parents when sending for Approvals.

This famous BLACK SWAN plus 213 stamps all FREE! The 213 are all DIFFERENT and include 14 Special Stamps (catalogued at over 10/-) such as the 80 year old British ‘Penny Lilac’. Whole collection is catalogued at over 45/-, yet it will be sent FREE to all who ask for our New Approvals. Please tell your Parents.

Wow! Two hundred FREE stamps! Five hundred for a shilling! ‘The Children’s Newspaper’, ‘Meccano Magazine’ and most comics were full of such offerings from a massed approval of stamp dealers – heaps of stamps free, or for just a few pence, if only you would ask to see their Approvals. The most prolific pedlars were the Bridgnorth Stamp Company and - undoubtedly the best because it was just along the road from where I lived - Dennis Hanson’s Philatelic Services of Eastrington. Some of his promotions took the form of a super stamp quiz. 

The quiz is from 1963 but for anyone who fancies submitting a late entry (at the time of writing I believed the business still existed) I’ve added my answer attempts below at the end. I suggest you increase the value of the 3d. stamp to take account of inflation (second class should do it), and oh yes, don’t forget to tell your parents.

Dennis Hanson started buying bulk stamps while still at school in Scarborough in 1935, sorting them into small packets, and selling them to his school friends and also through his father’s general store. He moved to Eastrington two years later and over the years has traded under a variety of names including Philatelic Services, D. J. Hanson, The Stamp Club and The Universal Stamp Company. He was still in business seventy-five years later although he has never gone online. Over this time, dozens of Eastrington ladies have found agreeable employment fixing stamps into Approvals booklets and posting them out to customers.

Dennis Hanson and his staff in 1993 (from Howdenshire History)

As one of those customers it’s not easy to explain the appeal of stamp collecting to the screen-fixated youngsters of today, yet it used to be among the most popular childhood hobbies for both girls and boys. You could spend hours in exaltation, sorting through piles of stamps, carefully separating them from their envelope corners in a bowl of water, and drying them out between sheets of blotting paper.

The attraction was of course in the sheer beauty of the stamps, their vivid colours and stunning art work, and the way they captured the imagination by association with the history and geography of the world - conflict in Europe, communist revolution, African exploration, colonial independence. Looking again at my old stamp album (having just retrieved it from the loft where it was in a brown paper parcel wrapped up long ago by my dad). I’m amazed to see how much time I must have spent drawing little maps and transcribing information about different countries.

Stamps from Aden, where my aunt and uncle lived for a time, overflowed their page very quickly

 

Dennis Hanson clearly had a great knack for marketing. The whole purpose of the give away offers was to entice you into spending your pocket money on his Approvals which were mouth-wateringly presented in little chequebook sized booklets. Even when you managed to resist and return them all unpurchased it wasn’t too long before another booklet arrived, and then another, and you had a job to stop them coming.

A wodge of approval booklet pages from which the stamps have been removed show that I didn’t resist. I spent a small fortune – around 60 empty pages with a total value approaching £5 (which would have a purchasing power of around £100 today, and more than double that in terms of earnings): “Very scarce set of 6 mint & used Albania 1917 Koritza Eagles 2/-”, “Complete fine-used set of 2 Hungary 1952 Railway Day (catalogued 1/6d.) 9d.”, “Handsome set of 6 mint Paraguay 1958 President Stroessner 1/6”. And then a page in red ink: 

Superb stamps given Free. They are not for sale they are FREE . . . Set of 3 unused Herm Island 1954 Triangular Sea-Birds, local stamps with a face value of 1/2d., from part of the United Kingdom. Now obsolete and scarce. . . . YES, ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE. If you purchase 5/- worth or more from this Approval Book you may take this page right out of the book and keep it. These grand stamps will add lots of value and interest to your collection! It’s our way of showing our appreciation of your valued patronage.

This doesn’t count yet more pennies expended at the corner shops that also plied philatelic produce in racks of cellophane packets.

Very soon, my spring-backed, loose-leafed Movaleaf Stamp Album, bought one afternoon from Clifford Moss of 31 Woodhouse Lane on a trip to Leeds with my dad, was bulging with stamps from all the old countries, many no longer in existence, such as “Jugo-Slavia”, the Weimar Republic of Germany, and British colonies such as Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. 

Still more interesting is my dad’s 1930s Triumph stamp album where among many other surprising things we find Queen Victoria’s head adorning stamps from the six Australian territories which issued stamps separately until 1913. It’s also surprising to note that my dad must have continued to collect stamps into his twenties and thirties because his album contains lots of Elizabeth II issues.

As with most people, my interest waned as I grew older, although losing myself in my album now, in reverie, I could easily imagine taking it up once more, becoming expert in a specific area, something unfashionable and politically incorrect, perhaps stamps of the British Empire, assimilating all the lessons from history they bring with them.

What began to turn me off was in fact the antics of the very same Dennis Hanson who so altruistically cultivated my interest in the hobby in the first place. His bulk packets of unsorted stamps contained far too many cheap and flimsy ones from far eastern countries, and a disproportionately high number portraying the grim bespectacled face of King Baudouin of Belgium who looked like the dad of one of my friends.

Even more unforgivable were the Approvals that weren’t really proper stamps at all. The Herm Island stamps mentioned above were one example, used only for a private postal service from Herm to the nearest official post office on Guernsey, and obviously printed as a commodity to sell to tourists. But it was the stamps of South Molucca that really annoyed me.

“These Stamps will never be catalogued” it said on the front of one booklet. On another “Stamps of the South Moluccas Republic and the Forgotten War. ... although not listed by Gibbons, they are undoubtedly of philatelic interest.” And although they may have looked magnificent with their colourful images of the mammals, birds, fish, butterflies and plants of a small group of Indonesian islands, the republic never gained independence. Some stamps were issued by a would-be government in exile in the Netherlands, and others were produced without authorisation by a German stamp dealer. None were ever postally used and no reputable dealer should ever have touched them. Four pages crammed-full of bogus Republik Maluku Selatan stamps in my album show I was well and truly taken in. 

So, Mr. Hanson, having worked up a fury over being diddled fifty years ago, I’ve decided to send in my quiz answers even if you are over ninety. I’ve just now posted them off. It will be interesting to see whether I get any response. Sadly I can no longer tell my parents.

My quiz answers: 1 – Twopenny Blue; 2 – No; 3 – British Guiana 1 cent Magenta; 4 – Yes; they are produced for collectors but many avoid them; 5 – Sweden; 6 – Yes, they bear the name Grønland; 7 – Yes; 8 – Hungary; 9 – Yes; 10 – No, they are for guidance only.

POSTSCRIPT  - No reply at all. Not even a facsimile.

SECOND POSTSCRIPT
In early August 2015 I received the following email:

My name is Charlotte Hanson I was googling my Grandad Dennis Hanson and came across your recent post. My Grandad sadly passed away on 29/07/2015. I know he would have loved to have read your post and give you a personal response to your quiz questions if it wasn't for his ill health this year. It makes us proud to find so much information about him on the Internet so thank you.

I replied to say how sorry I was to hear of her grandad's death, and thanked her for not jumping on my rather irreverent post. Dennis Hanson made a go of doing his own thing – an example for us all I think. A notice appeared in the Yorkshire Post and other regional newspapers, and an obituary on the East Yorkshire Local and Family History blog.


Other Hanson items (right click and open in new tab for full size):

In the original comments was a discussion of a box of around 200 unused approvals booklets sold on ebay in August 2017 for £227. Here are the images associated with the listing (right click to enlarge):