Extra ether, and if none of that a blowtorch to warm up the head, ahh breathe deep, those were the days.
I had one bolted to a big wooden packing case on a concrete verandah (stoep). The home-made prop wasn’t balanced and the vibration was sufficient to ease the packing case down the slight slope in the smooth red polished concrete. The local Africans thought it was the tiny prop pulling fifty kilos of wood.
Most of the time that diesel was in a boat driving a reduction box to the screw. Starting it in the boat was a nightmare with the pull cord on the flywheel. That one ended up instead with an electric motor from a Meccano set fed from an old motorcycle battery.
I didn’t even have a clockwork motor.
Instead it was a cotton reel, a panel pin, an elastic band and a small lollipop stick, and if you cut notches in the reel it could walk up slopes.
Bet there are loads of you know what it was.
Health and safety would go nuts if you gave that to a child nowadays.
Old Chemistry sets took some beating, can you imagine what modern health and safety would make of some of those old sets, you could easily poison yourself or worse , but we loved nothing more than trying to concoct some toxic brew or something that would fizz or go bang
The red No.1 electric motor with reversing switch was an optional extra, wonderful!
I saved up several months of pocket money to buy it as soon as I saw it announced in the magazine because I was fed up with the original clockwork one. Mine was just like the one on the left in this picture I found.
I used to have a Johnny Seven one man army toy gun, it was like a multi use assault rifle, it fired white bullets and all manor of grenades and projectiles, which ended up behind the sofa, in my Dads dinner, in the bushes etc, I wish I still had it as they are popular with toy collectors.
They also made plastic meccano years ago and maybe still do, but it wasn’t a patch on the proper metal meccano which was great fun,until mum hoovered up the nuts and bolts.
Reviving this thread started by Bosley…re, health and safety.
Who remembers bus conductors with green fingers?
My regular school conductor had pink finger and thumb tips due to him licking them so he could grip the paper ticket and rip it from the machine.
Anybody remember The Bumps on your birthday at school?
This is where your ‘friends’ would grab a limb each and pull you skywards, allowing you to drop back onto the ground; once for each year (plus a couple for luck). If you were lucky, this was on the school field, not the quadrangle.
Mentioned that to my kids when they were at school and they’d never heard of it.
I bet that wasn’t so good for his taste buds either
I used to go to an old tradesmans cafe years ago, not only was it filled with cigarette smoke but the owner would be cooking your food with a dog end in his mouth
“My conductress on the number 19 she was a honey.
Pink toenails and hands all dirty with the money”
Wild West End - Dire Straits 1978
I had a very large s/h metal Meccano set (4 wind-up motors etc.) which I gave to a younger cousin when I was a teenager, but when he grew older my Uncle took it to the local council rubbish tip!!!
I had an Aunt like that, she’d be cooking the food, chatting away with a “ciggy”** in her mouth and we’d be transfixed watching the ash get longer and longer but always a the crucial moment, before it dropped into the food she’d take it out of her mouth, tap the ash into the kitchen sink and carry on. Ah, the simple pleasures of a country childhood.
**Apparently the word “f.a.g.” is a no-no??? . It’s a PC World, and I’m not talking about computer shops!!!
I have asthma, always from an early age, more under control now than in my schooldays. One trip I never enjoyed was visiting the asthma clinic in Derby, he was a leading authority on all things to do with asthma and apparently at the time a pioneer in the causes and treatment of the condition. He used to carry out his consultations with a cigarette lit in his lips and only ever took it out to speak, that too had a long ash tail hanging off it, unbelievable.
There was a guy in Derby who featured in the news a few years back, he chopped his hand off with a circular saw. Well I think it was some way up the arm.
A well known hand surgeon luckily for him who resides in the area stitched it back on.
In the early 80s, my wife to be used to get the old style 19 bus with a conductor from Roseberry Ave Clerkenwell, to come and meet me at weekends , those old ticket machines go for hundreds on ebay
Remember when you couldn’t reach the pedals on your mates racing bike and it was a case of right leg through the frame for the pedal and left leg and body hanging out the left side of the bike, then pedal down the street like a demented crab.
My Dad also had a fixed gear racing bike, again too short to reach the pedals so it was both feet on one pedal and bob up and down…happy days.
. It’s a PC World, and I’m not talking about computer shops!!! 
those old ticket machines go for hundreds on ebay