Your Today in Pictures...

[Brian Fretwell]

I also remember trays of live eels in Brixton - behind the Pie and Mash shop.

[Ken Finch]

I simply cannot resist responding to this Dom. Just along the coast from here, the town of Whitstable is renowned for its Oysters. However, we Brits also eat mussels, whelks, winkles, prawns, shrimps, crabs, crayfish, lobsters, eels which are often Jellied. All caught from various parts of the U K coasts. In the days of my youth, it was quite a tradition to have shellfish for tea on Fridays. However, lobsters were too expensive for many people. When I was a boy, living in Woolwich, London, every Friday you could buy the shelfish from the fishmongers van in your street. I also remember trays of live eels in a fishmongers shop in Woolwich. (Hereford Square). If only my more recent memories were as good as my early ones! 😊

[Dave Bickford]

Mussels are a speciality of Belgium and North France. I don't know how popular is is in other countries.

We definitely eat mussels here in the USA. They are readily available in any supermarket all year, at least where I live. Clams might be more popular, but that likely varies by region.

Also, to avoid going off-topic in a “pictures” thread, this is my Elmo ST100 in its original box (to keep the dust off). I may take it out and play a film or two this evening. Perhaps a Three Stooges short. We shall see…

[Graham Ritchie]

That reminds me very much of this when I screened this film at the cinema

[Douglas Meltzer]

Dominique,

Mussels are very popular here in the states. North America has one of the highest diversity of mussels (freshwater) in the world.


Joerg,

Nice "decorations", as long as they don't get aggressive during the festival.

[Dominique De Bast]

Hi Dom, It was at Paris flea markets where Kevin Brownlow found many of his 9.5mm rarities. It was at the time when many people were dumping 9,5 for that “upstart” Super 8!
Here in the u k most towns and villages have weekly Boot Fairs where people fill their car boots with unwanted items. We also have weekly markets where house clearance merchants set up their stalls. In addition, most towns have antique/junk shops. We have a number of them in Herne Bay. Cine items and films used to be quite common but not so much these days. Most of the projectors I have seen are silent machines which have been up cycled into table lamps! Ken Finch😳

Great to know, Ken. I never saw "Boots Fairs" in London. In the 90's, you could find a lot of cine material in this kind of events in Belgium and in those pre-Internet times, you could make a lot of bargains.

[Dominique De Bast]

Do you still remember the British TV series „the prisoner“ from 1967-68?

Of course, very popular, here. "I'm not a number..."

[Dominique De Bast]

Brilliant Dominique although I am not into eating shellfish

Mussels are a speciality of Belgium and North France. I don't know how popular is is in other countries. I know the eat it in Istanbul as well but I never saw any in Arabic countries (nor in Israel, but that's for religious reasons).

[Graham Ritchie]

Brilliant Dominique although I am not into eating shellfish

Joerg

Growing up in the 1960s The Prisoner is one series I have never forgotten, the big balloon, or should I say the rover, even made its way in later years to The Simpsons

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Do you still remember the British TV series „the prisoner“ from 1967-68?
Then please take a look at the decorations of yesterday‘s „lake festival“ on the „Orankesee“ here in Berlin.

[Ken Finch]

Hi Dom, It was at Paris flea markets where Kevin Brownlow found many of his 9.5mm rarities. It was at the time when many people were dumping 9,5 for that “upstart” Super 8!
Here in the u k most towns and villages have weekly Boot Fairs where people fill their car boots with unwanted items. We also have weekly markets where house clearance merchants set up their stalls. In addition, most towns have antique/junk shops. We have a number of them in Herne Bay. Cine items and films used to be quite common but not so much these days. Most of the projectors I have seen are silent machines which have been up cycled into table lamps! Ken Finch😳

[Dominique De Bast]

Each year, the city of Lille, in North France, hosts for a week-end the biggest streets flea market in Europe.

[Graham Ritchie]

Well today I finished building the wooden framework, pulled the overhead tarpaulin across, so its looking pretty good, just to fit a curtain track along with some second hand curtains I bought last week, they in turn, once pulled across at the back of the projector should give enough darkness. After that I will run some film.

[Chip Gelmini]

In case of fire, break glass and pull the handle

[Steve Klare]

We've Been Touristed!
.

Starting in 1923, 100 years ago now, there was a split in my family. My grandfather, his sister and youngest brother left Germany for New York. Times were tough over there and it seemed the best way to find a future. Two of his brothers stayed. Both were sent to WW2 as middle-aged men, but only one came home, and pretty busted-up at that. (-at least he kept his leg.)

This survivors' son came to New York in the early 1960s and joined the American Klares. He got his American Citizenship, went home to settle his affairs, met a girl, got married, stayed in Germany. He turned 80 this summer and he's still there.

We were like two isolated families for a long time, until my wife and I went there in 2002 and reconnected. We loved it: the the food, the beer, the architecture, the language and the culture and a chance to see where we started out before Ellis Island. We've been back twice since: did the trip of our lives in December '18 celebrating Christmas over there, not as a bunch of tourists but as a family.

That same survivor's eldest son and his family were here two weeks ago. They wanted to see how WE live! They tried our food, they saw our scenery, they spoke our language and enjoyed our culture too!

We took them to see the Blue Man Group because neither their kids nor the Blue Men speak English: seemed a good fit!

They made kind of an astounding request: they wanted to see a "Mets Game". Note: they didn't say a "baseball game", but specifically a "Mets Game". I asked my cousin about this: "You're not from here. You can root for anybody you like. Why the Mets?!"

The answer starts with his Dad, and is rooted in my own New York branch of the family back in the early 1960s, when I was still pre-Kindergarten and barely here at all. They were Mets fans through and through and to stray from this was basically heresy. Because of modern technology, my family over there has started to watch baseball along with their Fußball. I guess maybe even because of us, they consider themselves a little bit New York (They are just a little bit Minnesota on his Mom's side! -strange how that works!). They approached the New Yorkest among themselves for wisdom about who they should root for and my Uncle told them "We are Mets fans!". (-even after 60 years!)

-and so: we took them to a Mets Game. As they are wont to do these days, the Mets got clobbered, but at least they put on a good show!

-but what a thing, that OUR lives are somehow interesting enough that someone would fly six time zones to see OUR stuff!

(C'mon! It's just US!)