Haha the bloke going out ion the boat in his collar and tie reminds me that my old dad (long gone) was never seen without a tie - even though he wasn't in the least elegant or pretentious.
I was reminiscing only last night how my mum's mum lived next door to a Mrs Roberts and they never progressed to being on first name terms in the 35 years or so they lived in attached houses.... And how when I started work at the Coal Board in 1974 more senior staff (and I only mean lower/middle ,amehers upwards) were never addressed by first name, always mister or Mrs whatever.
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 24 Sep 20 at 17:39
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>> I started work at
>> the Coal Board in 1974 more senior staff (and I only mean lower/middle ,amehers upwards)
>> were never addressed by first name, always mister or Mrs whatever.
Same when I joined the Civil Service in 1978. The Chief Clerk at the County Court in Scunthorpe was Mr Griggs. More than my job was worth to call him Bill.
When I got to London a year later it was a bit more informal but you waited for the 'call me John' before doing so.
Gone a bit the other way now. It sometimes grates when sales or customer service people call me by my first name without asking but I live with it. My late Mother would tell them off.
I'm careful that way at work and ask before using first names.
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> Gone a bit the other way now. It sometimes grates when sales or customer service
>> people call me by my first name without asking but I live with it. My
>> late Mother would tell them off.
>>
You'd prefer Mr Bromptonaut?
>> I'm careful that way at work and ask before using first names.
>>
Fairly easy to do by age I would imagine, I doubt anyone under 40 would even notice not being formally addressed.
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>> It sometimes grates when sales or customer service people call me by my first name without asking but I live with it
Right with you there. Except for the word ´sometimes´. Oh and the bit about living with it. I don't.
>>I'm careful that way at work and ask before using first names.
Absolutely. Including using rank or title in public even when I'd use their christian name in private.
I am pretty much always referred to as "Don Mark" in such circumstances. It was weird at first but it's just normal now. To my children's friends it's always "Tio".
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 24 Sep 20 at 18:38
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There's a local carpet cleaning company that bombards me with leaflets. Every couple of weeks another one turns up.
As if this wasn't annoying enough, the latest one proudly proclaims that "due to sensitivity over gender issues" they are dropping all forms of title from their comms. So now they use only my first name and last name on the envelope.
I might have to go and soil their own carpets.
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>> I might have to go and soil their own carpets.
with gender fluid?
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That's pretty good, zero.
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>>The Chief Clerk at the County Court in Scunthorpe was Mr Griggs. More than my job was worth to call him Bill.
I know a Bill Griggs, but he's a long way form Scunthorpe.
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First job in the civil service and up to EO was first name after they said call me Jim or whatever.
(I avoid the term Christian name as I some of my customers are of different faiths and I don't want to offend.)
HEO and above were always by title and surname, though some would insist on first name terms.
When working with grace and favour etc. it was always official title (Sgt Major, Captain, Major, Sir, etc.)
Military bases (US and RAF) it was always by rank.
Industry seemed less formal. It was first name terms pretty much right away, save for Germany where everyone was Mr, Miss, Mrs as appropriate. France seemed less formal. USA the boss was always by title. Staff by first name.
Last edited by: zippy on Thu 24 Sep 20 at 19:23
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>>(I avoid the term Christian name as I some of my customers are of different faiths and I don't want to offend.)
They're that delicate, huh. What a very silly thing to be offended by. Working and living in multiple languages and cultures, as I do, being that delicate would make life very traumatic.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 24 Sep 20 at 19:31
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Crikey. Even when I left school 40 years ago the term "Christian name" was pretty well verboten in most contexts I came across.
Later, i came across lots of American and Japanese students, and we were told to use the term "last name" as they "won't understand what the word surname means". I don't know how true that is.
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>>we were told to use the term "last name" as they "won't understand what the word surname means". I don't know how true that is.
Not even first name / last name always works.
In Chile, for example, it's;
1) first name
2) second name
3) apellido paterno
4) apellido materno
Typically they will use one of the first two (with no consistency as to which) and the third as their day-to-day name.
Mostly I resort to asking simply "name?" and then letting them sort out what I mean.
It's typically only English speakers who get their panties in a knot over such things. Most intelligent people living an international/multi-cutural life have got better things to do with their time and in any case have a level of familiarity with the differences in such terms. And where doubt arises it's only ever confusion, not the offence beloved by the more ignorant.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 24 Sep 20 at 20:43
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Not so many years ago I ordered the Vicar of Dibley complete set through Amazon US and had it delivered to my mate's brother who is a Floridian, lives north of Orlando, for my collection a month or so later.
I said he could watch it. When I collected it they said, in all seriousness, they didn't know what a vicar was!
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>>hey said, in all seriousness, they didn't know what a vicar was!
Since a vicar is a priest responsible for a named parish, and they don´t have parishes, then you can kind of see why.
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I see that but there are plenty of American terms with which I am familiar, and I was before travelling there.
Anyway it surprised me! :-)
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I think that America awareness of other cultures is a national embarrassment. Or it should be.
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>> Later, i came across lots of American and Japanese students, and we were told to
>> use the term "last name" as they "won't understand what the word surname means". I
>> don't know how true that is.
I don't know if it still exists but the Ministry of Justice (probably still the Lord Chancellor's Dept at the time) published guidance for staff on different naming conventions. Originally a booklet, later on line. It used the convention of family name and given name, explaining how they were used in different cultures. Very useful but cannot eliminate every confusion.
Some cultures, France for one, use surname first in documents, often capitalising the former; my site bookings for my summer holiday had me as Mr BROMPTONAUT, Simon. That's simple enough but there are folks, like a former colleague called Richard Guy, where there is scope to get them confused. Last week I was helping a Romanian couple in dealings with DWP, he had a similar combination and, when asked for his name gave it surname first. Fortunately the DWP guy, one of their better people, was on the ball and got the interpreter to ask him to clarify. There was also a lot of confusion over his work and earnings history, which is key to whether he is entitled to claim. I suspect HMRC have managed to get it wrong way round so no match.
These days our diversity training suggests avoiding the term Christian name. Partly because of the cultural thing but also because it's not always understood. Some 30 years ago I had a new staff member start as a Clerical Assistant, a data inputter. She was, IIRC Malaysian, a youngster and a recent arrival in the UK on a spousal visa. English not first language and some confusion arose over what colleagues should call her. Her supervisor, a Black English woman, asked which of her names was her Christian name; the slightly fuddled response was that she was a Muslim!!.
We sorted it but the issue was simply that the term Christian name was not known to her.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 25 Sep 20 at 09:29
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>> >>(I avoid the term Christian name as I some of my customers are of different
>> faiths and I don't want to offend.)
>>
>> They're that delicate, huh. What a very silly thing to be offended by. Working and
>> living in multiple languages and cultures, as I do, being that delicate would make life
>> very traumatic.
>>
To be fair, it's a case of "some and some". As ever, there are some people that are professionally offended and it's just better to be cautious.
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>> And how when I started work at
>> the Coal Board in 1974 more senior staff (and I only mean lower/middle ,amehers upwards)
>> were never addressed by first name, always mister or Mrs whatever.
>>
Hi Smokie, I wonder if you know of a large office building in the Chesterfield area belonging to a descendent of the Coal Board (perhaps UK Coal). I visited for some time in the 2000's along with a few trips to collieries and re-developed sites, but I can't recall exactly where it was, save to remember if you approached from one direction on the road to get to it, it was a dirt track and probably not passible. Approach from the other direction it was fine.
I have tried to Google it but can't find it and guess it has been re-developed by now.
I don't suppose you know where it was?
Thanks!
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There was a time when I knew the postal addresses of the 12 Area HQs almost off by heart, and it could well be one of them but I can't see anywhere on the map near Chesterfield which rings a bell.
Bretby is about 40 miles south and that was a research place and I think eventually housed some of the London HQ staff when they relocated it (within a year of me leaving, which meant I missed out on a generous relocation or redundancy!!).
When I look at the map it has loads of places names I remember from the coal days but they were pits I think. Swadlincote, near Bretby, was one of the area HQs IIRC. SO was Bestwood, about 40m south while Mansfield and Eastwood Hall (both about 20m) was the locations of (I think) the Notts HQs. I'm pretty sure Edwinstowe was something other than mines too and Bolsover (which is a bit closer to Chesterfield) was an Area HQ (see www.aditnow.co.uk/Album/Photographs-Of-Ncb-Area-Headquarters-At-Bolsover_59511/)..
So not much help there I'm afraid, but at least I had an interesting 15 minutes browsing the map... :-)
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>> I'm pretty sure Edwinstowe was something other than mines too ......
Edwinstowe House was the HQ of No. 3 Area. The Large Office Block bit fits, but not (I think) the description of the approach.
In the 2000's Eastwood Hall would have been the Coal Authority HQ. Bolsover, I think, would already have gone.
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Oh good, so I was a bit right then.
The areas were names not numbers when I was there and there were 12 of then (1974 - 1982ish). The ones I remember were
Scotland (Lauriston Pl, Edinburgh HQ)
North East (Long Benton HQ?)
N Yorks
S Yorks (Doncaster HQ, may ultimately have become the NCB main HQ))
N Notts
S Notts
E Mids
W Mids
Wales (Cardiff HQ
Kent
My role was payroll for the 400 most senior staff in the industry and I think there were only 7 or 8 in each area - I remember Area Director, Dep Director (Mining), Dep Director(Admin), Senior Electrical Engineer, Senior Mechanical Engineer, maybe Staff Officer? The more senior were all cossetted and pampered, the AD and DDs had cars with chauffeurs, and often lived in Coal Board houses with gardeners etc, or were paid allowances for their own housing. Most people outside London got a fairly generous dollop of free coal - more than they could use I think.
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>> Most people outside London got a fairly generous dollop of free coal
>> - more than they could use I think.
>>
I grew up in housing with only open fires and a back boiler for water heating.
The miner next door's Household Coal allowance kept at least three houses going, even through heavy winters.
(Given it was dumped on the road, unbagged, (it was delivered by a dedicated tipper lorry divided transversely into allocations by wooden partitions) and we were up a significant flight of steps, one of my jobs was to load it into a tin bath, and, with help, deposit it in the various coal-houses, in return for part of the load).
....cue "Cardboard box?"........ ;-)
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My in-laws' neighbour was a senior manager in a Derbyshire coal mine. They had a large house in which the major rooms all had an open fire which except for mid summer were kept lit. The kitchen fire was always burning to supply hot water and the cooking range.
He also supplied MIL and others with sufficient coal to keep them over the winter months. This continued even after his retirement.
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>> The kitchen fire was always burning to supply hot water and the cooking range.
My maternal grandmother had a range in her house until she died in 1972. Not a mine property but in what was then very much a mining area. Built in the fifties but on the site of a previous 'unfit' property the outbuildings of which remained.
She had been widowed in 1936, my grandfather died of blood poisoning acquired in the course of his duties in the then still privately run Primrose Hill mine near Swillington (Leeds). Post nationalisation she got concessionary coal delivered by a tipper into the yard and which then had to be shovelled into the 'coal place' adjacent to the wash house.
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>> ....cue "Cardboard box?"........ ;-)
We ad a coal 'ole
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>>
>> We ad a coal 'ole
>>
The Barnsley Anthem......
"We're reight down in't coyle 'oyle
where't muck clarts on't winders.
We've used all us coyle up
and we're rait down't t'cinders.
But if t'bailiffs man comes along
he wain't be able to findus
Cos we'll be reight down in't coyle 'oyle
where't muck clarts on't winders"
Translated for you....
"We're down in the basement
where the dust accumulates upon the casement.
We've exhausted our anthracite
and we're now down to the residue.
If the Sherriff's representative calls
he won't be able to locate us.
Because we're down in the basement
where the dust accumulates upon the casement.
...as you were....
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Another youtube gem - smokie
