REV RON GREENALL: A penny for your thoughts on this....

'Sleep tight' How often did your mum and dad use these words to you as they put you to bed?
Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
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They originate from a Shakesperian phrase when bed bases often had rope in them and the tighter the rope was the better you slept.

Now to those of you who have still penny and two penny coins around from the original decimilisation.

Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
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It seems that these can be of some major value. Check up on yours for you could be sitting on a fortune.

Now to my first picture - you may recognise this from the old type of public toilet you needed an old penny for.

This is from where the phrase “I need to spend a penny” came from. It costs a bit more than this to use a station toilet today.

Why an advert for nylon stockings for my second offering? Because in this week in 1938 they were first put on view in the USA.

Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
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Only after the Second World War did they become widely available in Britain but some American GIs serving here brought them over for their sweethearts.

By the 1950s motorists realised that an old pair kept in the car boot could be used as an emergency if your car fan belt broke!

My next picture is that of a comic - it was this week in 1890 Comic Cuts the first British comic was launched and I ask the question which comics did you get as a child?

Did you swap them around with friends after reading them?

Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.

My favourite was Eagle. It was the idea of and edited by a vicar, as this Reverent Reflections is for you today. Now there is a thought for you.

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I started with a sleep quotation. Some of my friends who grew up in Clitheroe during the war years near a refurbished old mill used then for aircraft production had to put ear muffs on to shut out strange noises from the works.

This was engineering work on parts for the Gloucester E 28/39, the UK’s first jet aircraft which made it’s maiden flight this week in 1941 and transformed the war and aviation after the war.

My fourth picture is from its designer Frank Whittles’ memorial at Cranfield. We really should not muff but celebrate our local part in the work of this buff.

Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.
Rev Refs May 14th Nylon stockings ad, comic, Charnock Richard Services, a Rubix cube and Frank Whittles memorial at Cranfield.

Nor must we forget the importantance of Blackpool’s aviation history had, so I give you this very old shot of an aircraft flying over the sea around 1912.

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Next comes a different transport shot. I went as Vicar of St John’s Coppull in 1969 and this is a shot of the Charnock Richard Services that year.

Traffic was still quite light and we could still use the service road as an exit for the A49.

My last picture is of the Rubix cube. Did you have one? What is more, did your use of it keep you awake you to sleep?

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