General Chat

There is a Swedish museum curator being sponsored to record sounds which are disappearing.

Probably too late to record them now but I really miss the sound of foghorns out at sea. There was something very moving about that sound and I cried when the sounds of all the coastal foghorns were played on the programme Coast.

What sounds do you think are worth recording for posterity?

In the 1970s, a lady who worked with me liked to tape different accents. It was just a hobby.

She had a short piece of prose on a sheet of paper & she simply asked various people to read it out loud for the benefit of her tape.

She did this for many years & I have often wondered what became of her precious recordings.

Maybe the sound of letters being delivered through the letter box!

but these are some of the sounds that maybe should have been recorded

The clip clop of the milkman’s horse plus the jangle of the bottles.
Delivery people whistling
Foghorns across the Solent at the ferry (repeating what you said Sharron).
The dockyard hooter at end of work
The coalman’s ‘shout’ And the sound of coal hurtling into the coal hole.

Silence. The windows are small and rare.

Not for me Island I just have to remove my hearing aids. Oh no that won't work I just hear the tinnitis then. :-)

The sound of silence followed by a hiss and a couple of crackles as the pickup descended on the latest 45 hit and peace was disrupted as far as a 1960s Dansette aided by an external amp could manage. Paint it Black.

The tight sound of a 650 Bonneville being revved at the lights.

The chinking milk bottles and whine of the electric milk float early on Sunday morning on the way home from the club.

Smokey London evenings and the soft hiss of gas as the lamplighters went about their business.

The sharp crack of lead shot - modern steel shot is not the same even tho' far better for the environment.

Ultimate ticket machines on a London bus.

The heavy thudding start up steam of railway engines which for me is mixed up with holidays and going away to school.

The old purring dial tone.
On the third stroke it will be never no more, precisely

Old typewriters

ah, nostalgie

Radio....."this is the BBC Light programme" then hearing childrens' teatime favourites including Just William ...."coming mother" lol


We still have fog horns out at sea Sharron....low and sad sounding :-(.... but not,unfortunately, the sounds of men working in the shipyards :-(

Most of these sounds will have been recorded already.

It is surprising how some recorded sounds just don't meet the expectations of the listeners so have to be faked to satisfy what we think they sound like.

The sound of the whistling kettle always brings back childhood memories for me. I brought an electric whistling kettle a few years ago, but it was not the same. :-\

Hello children. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

:-)

Ice cream vans

Steam trains

Punch & Judy

Laughing Policeman

:-)

Where on the coast are you Mau? I want to come and hear the foghorns again.

What about the bell on the bus, ding ding?

I can remember the sound of the baler in the field too. There were combines but the farm where we were didn't own one so they used a reaper and a baler.

As a child in bed I was allowed to have bedroom door
open to hear my favourite radio programme before I went
to sleep...The Goon Show, they had me in fits of laughter.

Emma :-)

A great idea.

Near the River Tyne Sharron...........on a dark, damp, foggy night you'll hear the mournful fog horns :-(

......whey the fog on the Tyne is all mine all mine :-D

somebody should record all the funny jokes.

because in 100 years time they won't exist........ they will have been banned by the politically correct brigade :-(

I have not heard a fog horn on the Solent for years. Can remember sitting in the garden with the young lad next door, who must be fifty- four now, listening to a ship coming round the bill from west to east and another going the other way.

This reminds me that I have not heard the lifeboat maroon for many more years either. That was superseded by pagers which, themselves, are now pretty passé as well.

When I was young, in my upstairs bedroom I would lie awake,and
the windows would cast the light from the passing (very infrequent )traffic onto the bedroom wall, and hear the sound of the car or lorry going past......
the rat ta tat tat on the cast iron door knocker,
the sound of ships hooters "talking" to the Tugs, in the docks,
the cacophony(?) of them at the turn of the new year......
sounds of Rathbone street markets costermongers.......

and going along with Island and Ann,the sound of silence ruined by tinnitus....

Like Rollo.....

the Velocette with its fishtail exhaust

the Rudge Ulster with copper tailpipes

P'dump p'dump of the Vincent big twins

I miss hearing my mother's lovely voice. She was an actress with ENSA in her late teens and years ago I recorded her reciting, amongst other things, Portia's speech from The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.
It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes . . .

Unfortunately I am unable to listen to it now because it is on a reel to reel tape and I no longer have a tape recorder.

Sharron, I think I may have been listening to the same foghorn as yours. When I was a child staying with my grandparents in Aldwick Bay, I used to love the sound of that mournful foghorn when I was tucked up in bed at night.

There must have been a fog horn on the Nab, all lighthouses had one I believe, but I don't think I can remember it.

Another sound I have just thought of is those tills where the price popped up when you pressed the keys down and made it go "ching".