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MG Midget and Sprite General - 8mm Film Footage 1963 (SMC)

I've just come across this footage on youtube which shows some great street scenes and period cars from 1963, filmed in a village near Solihull.

There is at least one Spridget that I spotted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrMB-A9Vpgo
Dave O'Neill2

Fantastic.

Where do you begin to comment on that?

If I could flick a switch, I'd jump right into that picture, and screw today.

No yellow lines on the roads, slower pace of life, prices that stayed the same for more than a week.

Yeah yeah, tell me about all the great advances we've made, in every aspect of life.

Screw it all, I want to go back there, and die ten years younger. Seriously.

It would be instructive to see the same route travelled today.
Lawrence Slater

That is really nice!
And not a singe German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, etc car! I guess they are the reason then for all the congestion nowadays, remove all those from the roads and they would be as empty now as in 1963 - or more so!

But shock, horror those swings didn't have rubber safety mats, just hard tarmac.

But where did we go wrong?
Guy

Hi what a lovely film, looks as though you could walk on those streets without fear of being attacked, I was 8 in 1963 living in Yeovil and my dad had just bought a brand new Zephyer 4 having sold a 1957 Rliey Pathfinder, biggest mistake he ever made, his words not mine.


Gordon
g c pugh

Yes I noticed the terrible lack of safety measures in the playgrounds too Guy. I'ts a wonder any kids survived into adulthood. Thank goodness today all those nasty old swings and roundabouts have been banned. :)

Can you remember making the roundabout spin really fast and seeing how long you could hang on before you fell off feeling sick and dizzy? Loved it. :)
Lawrence Slater

Those were the days!

All that British metal (did you notice the BMW Isetta interloper?)

Even a Great Western "Castle" and "Hall" to set the scene.

Dave
D MATTHEWS

That was really great, I believe the only spridget I saw was at 8:43 over on the far right side.
Rick Bastedo

What a great film... Its hard to belive that just 10 years later cars would reach there greatest peak of automotive engineering perfection then begin there down hill slide into the worthless crap we have today we lovingly call A to B transportation

Those really where the days...true freedom and independant living

Prop

Prop and the Blackhole Midget

Great find Dave...

Good old days..

:-)

Mark.
M T Boldry

I'm filled with nostalgia today. The scenes in that film are almost tangible.

When you look at that film, it's staggering just how much the world has changed, and the rate of change now, is greater than ever. 48 years is all that has passed. When I was 10, when that film was made, time seemed to stand still.

It wasn't quite as sedate as that in Streatham, but it was in Croydon where my grandparents lived.

That chap with the gauntlets, that got into his vauxhal victor and drove off (almost an image my grandfather getting into his Wyvern), seemed to be an ever constant image when I was younger. I even had a pair of gauntlets just like those when I first got a motorbike. Stuff left over from wwii, army surplus, webbing, gas masks bags used as rucksacks, bomb sites, ----.

At some point in the mid/late 70's, is I think when the world I knew in the UK seemed to begin to accelerate in to the past, and I for one, had not yet tired of the present I knew and grew up with.

I suppose if I were born today, I might be better suited and ready for the ever present change we experience today.

And yet, I can't help feeling, especially with these new younger 60's classic owners, seeming to confirm it to me, that our world is crying out for the pace of change to stop, or at least slow a little. But I think the momentum now is unstopable. It's become self perpetuating, and every year brings another new discovery or invention.

That film was just 48 short years ago. Back then street scenes looked pretty much the same for far longer.

Can you imagine how the world is going to be and look in another 48 years?

My brother wants to live forever, he's 3 years older than me. I'm less decided. Something in me wants to see much of 60's/70's scifi begin to come true in the future, and I partially regret that I won't be there to experience it.

However, a greater part of me is more than happy to be content with todays and yesterdays advances. I've never tired of them. I still like valve technology, and things I can take apart. I conclude, that I was born too late.



Lawrence Slater

What a wonderful film.
My mother-in-law had her business (the Kitchen Gallery)in Dorridge for years up until a couple of years ago (it's now moved to the old gas board building in Sollihul on the Stratford Road). She will be thrilled to see this.

There is this film of London traffic. There is a Lenham at 18 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SVgqtPgK5A&feature=related
Gary & Gaps

I loved that and endorse everything that Lawrence says. It is very professionally done too. I also loved the music, but can you imagine what would happen to you and your camera if you were seen within 100 yards of a kids playground today?

Bernie.
b higginson

X 3 ... I totally agree with lawerance as well...

When i saw the film, esp of the play ground i was struck with an odd fact.... I cant remember the last time i saw children play NON organized baseball in an empty vacant lot....you know, you get a bunch of the neibor kids togather and just play modified baseball cause its a nice afternoon and nothing else to do...
The big rock is 1st, the tree stump way out there is 2nd an old tire is 3 rd and the Tee shirt of the catcher is home plate.

Ill bet its been 15 years

I just cant help the feeling we are hurling faster and faster to some unknown cosmic climax....weather thats into a rubbery laytex compond of oblivion , a rough, rugged anal cavity of galaxy slavery to another celestrial race, or the soft wet warm folds of mother gihia and assention.... Is yet to be determined...but the fact is we are going to go bang. This componding pace of human de-evolution is un-sustainable


Lawerance... Im sure you will still be alive for the end... After all dec 21 2012...is just a few months away... And frankly, i cant wait... What a great day that will be.... The Big period, THE END of humanity!!!

Prop
Prop and the Blackhole Midget

Dec 21 2012 Prop? Well at least I'll live long enough to get rat faced again on my brothers birthday on the 17th December then. :)

Nah, sadly I don't think the end is nigh for a very long time to come. The end of the world is so passé.

No, I think homo sapiens world, will just carry on getting ever more complex and stressful.

"into a rubbery laytex compond of oblivion" Well maybe the future aint so bad after all then, from a fetish point of view. lol.

Bernie, I agree the music is very evocative. He picked a blinder to open with stranger on the shore. Gave me goose bumps watching, whilst the music played.

Gary, If you weren't there driving at the time, judging by todays traffic, you wouldn't believe you could once go from Streatham to Stoke Newington in about 30 minutes at 7:30am. I remember doing that circa 19070/71 or so with ease. Straight line no diversions and almost no traffic. (Bit congested passing Bank on the way home at about 5pm though).

How can something so craved, be so far out of reach? It's very much alive in my mind, and yet untouchable.

Now there is something that needs inventing. To be able to step into your own thoughts of the past.


Lawrence Slater

I am as keen on nostalgia as the next man, maybe even keener, however I am pleased the world has moved on significantly

When we look back we always have rose tinted glasses on. Summers always seemed endless etc. etc.

In reality we were all struggling

My father was a steelworker (as were most people in my town)

If we were lucky we would manage a week in a caravan at Yarmouth, didn't have a car (as was the case with most families in the early 60s), some people had a television, their children seemed to have loads of friends.

I got a second hand bike one christmas and was I grateful??!!

Yep nostalgia is great but we are far better off today, if you like we could always go back to edwardian times, now that was living? NOT!
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

Rob, I refer you to my comment in my first post on this thread.

"Yeah yeah, tell me about all the great advances we've made, in every aspect of life".


Lawrence Slater

without doing the Frost scketch that went to be Monty Python's four Yorkshiremen

I almost posted elsewhere on a thread about parents classic cars that up until I moved to Northampton at about 13 (1973) the streets where I lived in a small town, then village then back to small town, all council houses and a Pre-fab, on those street very, very few owned a car, I think my extended family had three moppeds

I can only remember day trips to the seaside on a coach or school trips

the welfare state helped to look after me and educate me (I was quite bright for a short time)

sometimes I wish I'd been born 10 years earlier but I'd have still lived through the worst of bigotry, small mindedness, class and religion

and I'd probably still be around now but 10 years older

living as Edwardians was (one of?) the first of those TV programs where people lived as they would have in the past, most didn't like it especially those that would have been poor and/or low 'class'
Nigel Atkins

Well for your information.

I was born pretty poor, was dependant on free school meals and milk, and grants for school clothing. We didn't own a fridge or a TV until I was at least 9, and my mother never learned to drive. I spent 3 or 4 years in a childrens home because my father pissed off and didn't support my mother and her other 3 children.

Yes I was VERY privilleged as a child.

I LOVED every bit of my childhood and didn't sufer because I didn't have any of the so called priviledges.

Bigotry, small mindedness, class and religion? So what's change Nigel?

So the argument is, that because there were problems in the past, the past was a terrible place to be?

Cobblers.

Give me the 1960s over this century anyday.



Lawrence Slater

As they say Nige!
Good comedy is always ood when it reflects true life. :)

Don't know your exact circumstances but I am pleased some one was there to help!

I was watching a program the other day about the change from steam to diesel traction on the railways.

I loved the part that showed youngsters on the station collecting engine numbers.

That took me back, I used to sneak on the train at Sc8nthorpe and travel to Doncaster to collect numbers on that station all day. Dodging the ticket collector by visiting the toilet was part of the fun.

It wouldn't happen today of course because we can afford to purchase the ticket. However looking back I was let off loads of times I believe because the guard knew that we did not have spare money for train spotting outings.
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

I think we all got free school milk didn't we (or did Mrs Thatcher take it away?) free school meals and grants for clothing, yes, yes - tocH, there's a name you don't hear anymore

I had loads of privileges all provided by the welfare state and up to a point I had a good childhood

if it's 'dysfunctional' family trumps we're playing forget it I've got the whole suite

as for the change in bigotry etcetera, well I think only as a generalisation the further you go back the worse it is, the younger generation are more tolerant – perhaps too tolerant about somethings

and yes they lost again today :)
Nigel Atkins

Two moaners, no wonder you were unhappy with your pasts lol.
Lawrence Slater

Like many on here we never had a car during my younger years, but looking back I find it funny now, to think that as my dad was a farmworker, he had passed his test on a tractor, but did not have a full car licence until several years later.

Trev
T Mason

and by two moaners do you mean you and I or Bob and I :)

no need to answer that

I'm unhappy with my present and future but not particularly with my childhood thanks to the welfare state - I bet the welfare State had a handbook and it was veryuseful and good :)

Trev,
my elderly neighbour only learnt to drive a car when he was 50 in 1958 - he told me you could get a licence by getting someone in authority to sign for you (he might have meant his much earlier motorbike licence?)
Nigel Atkins

And while I really loved living in the New England
of the 40's and 50's, what with the uncluttered
Maine lakes and woods, I would never trade either
of our 97 Hondas for my 52 Dodge or my 55 Ford. Yeah
they were neat cars, but last 15 years?? No way.
Seems that Dad had to trade his cars every 60k
or so.
chuckc

I used to dream of livin' in a corridor - it would have been a palace to us.
I just looked at some of the route on Google Street View so some things have improved - unfortunately not Knowle.

1963 was a great year for me - I was born:-)
Andrew Dunn

on Google Earth you get a history slider that can show you previous street maps, some more than others but it's very interesting especially for those that have been living abroad for a while and don't know how much things have changed even in the last few years for some places
Nigel Atkins

This thread was discussed between 14/01/2012 and 16/01/2012

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