Mine came with this tool.
Their naming department might need some help.
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They were commoner in the UK about 55 years ago than they are now. That was when I was 10, and people had been installing them and finding out they weren’t too hard to jam or break. The fashion faded.
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Yeah, we had one in the mid-Eighties in a new build. Didn’t use it much
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I run tabletop club for the kids at my secondary school after school on a Friday (I know? Who would pick Friday - they chose it!).
The year 11’s have just left school and left me this card…
I, obviously, can’t share what was written within, but I am just a big blubbery mess right now. Happy crying is so nice(?)
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We recently learned that our local comic book store Things From Another World (owned by Dark Horse Comics) is closing at the end of the month, as well as it’s other two locations, though the Universal Boardwalk location will close at the end of September instead. The one near us has been there for 40 years, though it had different ownership originally.
Over the years, we’ve gone there for Free Comic Book Day, gaming events, costume contests, signings, sales, etc. I even had a box there for a couple of years. Staff was always friendly and welcoming. My wife was able to buy TI4 at one of their other locations for half price. Just lots of memories.
We stopped by today, as they are starting clearance sales with everything 50% off. Picked up a few things, knowing it is likely the last time we will go there.
It’s just another in a long line of…I guess social/emotional touchpoints to disappear over time. First one I remember was the gaming store I went to in high school, The Last Grenadier. Tried stopping by when I was home from college on break and it was just gone.
Others, in no particular order, include Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Books, places I bought so many books in my teens and twenties. Later followed by Borders Books, where my wife and I would go every week or so and come home with a new book or manga. Toys ‘R’ Us, where I had so many childhood memories, and then the memory of taking my first kid and buying the first toy he ever really picked out for himself.
The shopping mall where I first met the woman who became my wife is closing soon. Fry’s Electronics which was another place we would go to monthly or so. Hakatamon, our favorite restaurant for a while. Pietro’s Pizza, which had an arcade for the kids and blacklight mini golf closed a few years back. We had birthday parties for our kids there a few times. It was also the place we used for some social outings for the kids while they had therapists who could do such things. Our older son especially always had a great time there.
And it’s not just businesses. My aunt and uncle have both passed on, and their house was the central hub for my dad’s side of the family. They built it themselves, on land owned by my grandparents, close to their own house (which doesn’t exist anymore). We would come up for a week or two every summer. I lived there for a couple of years after college. It was where everyone would go for Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Now it’s not in family hands. Don’t know if a bank still has it or if it’s been sold. With my kids, it was hard to find any time to go across town to visit, even on holidays, but anyone was always welcome to stop by for a spell. It’s really odd to know it can never happen again. Also odd to know that something similar will eventually happen with my parents’ house. My childhood home.
Guess it just leaves me feeling nostalgic, and very aware of how impermanent things are.
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I hate the impermanence of the world.
I grew up in Barrow-in-Furness, but now live just 45mins away in Lancaster. Roughly twenty years has gone past, and every time we go back there is just a little bit less of what we knew. The Barrow we grew up in no longer exists, just this shell with some of the same faces.
My sister has been sending me photos all week of the Primary school I went to (god!, 45 years ago!) that is now being torn down and replaced with prefab concrete buildings. I walk around the town centre and the soul of the town has changed beyond recognition. I have changed too - but I feel a sense of despair lying across the whole district.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
Even where we live now we have seen shops come and go, and miss quite a few of them.
Oh! Nami Sushi! How we will remember you! (We even bought a lot of their cutlery and bowls just after they shut for the final time.)
Waterstones! Buying a book there and going across the road to the pub (also gone) to read and drink.
And… in Preston…
Toys-R-Us. We used to take the boys every birthday and they got to pick out one toy. Usually one for Dad too 
Why am I crying?
EDIT: Getting that poem quote had made me rather thoughtful…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Seems to describe the world we live in at the moment too…
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I had some similar observations during our trip–remembering how traveling has changed. And you can never revisit the same place, taste or experience again. It is possibly the reason I take so many photos to give myself the possibility to recall those moments even when I cannot have them again.
I also feel it is a function of getting older. We accumulate experiences and the older we get fewer things are new, and more old things vanish. And it becomes harder to find and appreciate the new when we like our routines and the familiar places so much: I’ve been drinking the same roast from the same coffee roaster for probably 15+ years now.
My dad is always complaining that he cannot get those wines anymore that he used to buy in the 80s and 90s. But there are some really good wines today. He can add to his experience but not repeat those old memories. But sometimes he just needs to talk about the good old times–while drinking something new.
It is difficult to appreciate the moment and not be nostalgic for the things that are gone. Nostalgia is fine I think. I just don’t want it to eat up the present.
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I played in a series of Ars Magica based LRPs by New World Order Games over a period of about 10 years, and was one of only 2 players (I think) to play the same character at each game.
That poem was one of my character’s touchstones, and always affects me when I read it.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
is social media writ large.
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At one point I lived right next to Tottenham Court Road tube station, one street back from London’s biggest shopping street “Oxford Street”. This was fun (and high energy because there are huge crowds every day) but the biggest thing is that I now have HUGE amounts of “this street used to be different” because the entire area has been redeveloped.
There was the greatest late-night fish and chip shop Dionysus, which may have also been the very first kebab shop in England (apparently it’s moved to Southgate now).
Soho is just completely different, but even then there was a chocolatier that’s now gone.
Charing Cross road used to have lots of bookshops and a comics shop, there are about two bookshops left total.
Seems like favourite restaurants barely last a few years.
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There is a restaurant called Dionysus there. I’ll take a look.
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I used to live in Southgate, towards the tube station end. I’ve just discovered the Woolpack and the Cherry Tree are gone (well the Cherry Tree was turned into a brasserie 
) ! Spent many hours in both. Sad times
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The Cherry Tree is still there. It’s changed from being a pub-restaurant to a restaurant-pub, as a branch of Browns. Browns wanted to get rid of the old name, but were not allowed to.
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I’ve just edited my post to pretty much say that, before i saw your post! Looking at photos, it might as well have gone. Very different!
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God, my memories of Tottenham Court Road are from… 1988?! And even then it was just a couple of trips to meet my then girlfriend (now wife’s) Dr Who friends.
Wow… talk about memory lane!
There was a pub, I can see it… and I have a photo somewhere?..
Nope, can’t find it, but here is one of me and Carol round about that time…
Good god, I look like a child. I mean, I was only 18-19 years old.
This would have been taken at Butlins, Minehead where we used to go regularly, well into having kids. Not been for about 11 years now?
So, in answer to the question “How are you today?” - feeling nostalgic for my youth; when health wasn’t a problem, when stress was SO MUCH LESS, and when the world seemed to make sense.
Yeah… Anyone got a time machine?
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Yes. Unfortunately it’s stuck in forward mode, and it’s been rate limited to 1s=1s.
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Pub on TCR might have been the Jack Horner? Not sure how many others are 1988 era.
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Several years ago I read an article which was interesting, but trivial by modern priorities. How the US used to suffer from something called the screwworm and how we, at great cost, eradicated it from the entire continent. And how we, to this day, maintained a biological wall in Panama to keep the screwworm from getting back onto the continent. Logistical partnership with Panama, mostly funded by the US. A 365 days/year, 100 years per century effort to maintain the wall.
When I heard there was a screwworm outbreak in Texas I thought, oh no - did DOGE cut the wall? With its characteristic lack of curiosity or research? Like they cut those nuclear administrators? But it’s less likely anyone would raise an uproar to get the “great worm wall” back in place.
Sounds like it’s more complex than that. The worm wall was already failing and screwworms were already moving up the central american corridor. No one knows why - some combination of climate change and possible adaptation to bypass our decades of sterilization.
So - likely the screwworm was bound to spread no matter what we did. But the fact of the matter is, the USDA is gutted and is not equipped to understand, track, or respond to the new outbreak. And it’s likely to cost billions either in response or lost livestock.
And I, of course, now have to go to sleep knowing that flesh-eating parasitic flies are back in my country.
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Remember, this is the government, and they are here to help. There is no ‘either’ about it. The response will cost billions, but it will not prevent the lost livestock or billions in damage. A bunch of well-connected contractors will do well out of federal money for years, though.
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Political joke here
I’m stopping before I get ban hammered!
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Yes. Remember that all politics are terrible
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