Progress Report

[poliphilo]

So where are we up to with the bathroom?

The new wall cladding is in place (it's white with iridescent sparkles) and so is the ceiling cladding (it's white and shiny.) The pipework is sorted and there's a new radiator fitted, also a new light fitting. The suite that is going to fill the empty space is sitting on a blanket in the garage and the vinyl floor covering is due to be delivered today.

The only thing we're keeping from the old set-up is the green frog toggle for the light pull.

Comments

[shewhomust]

The one thing I still want to find for my still newish bathroom is toggles for the light and ventilator pulls. I admire your frog, with a degree of envy.

[poliphilo]

It's something my mother bought- so it's been around a while- and predates our moving in.

[oakmouse]

That's a charming frog! It reminds me of some of the Red Rose tea figurines from my childhood, which my grandfather collected. I wonder if it hails from the Wade Pottery as well?

[poliphilo]

I've no idea where the frog came from. My parents bought a set of these animal toggles back in the day. I doubt that they're Wade; the Wade figures I'm seeing online are more realistic- and have more detail- but who knows?

I didn't know about Red Rose Tea. How did that work? Did you collect coupons and send them off for your figurine or did you get a figurine with every purchase?

I used to collect tea cards. Every packet of Brooke Bond tea contained a card- and they built up into sets- famous people, wild animals, wild flowers- and so on- and you put them in an album. I never managed to collect a full set of anything.

[oakmouse]

You're right that the Wade figurines were more realistic. I was looking at the color and depth of the glaze, which reminds me very much of the glaze on the Wade figurines. However, that glaze might have been used by many companies during the same time period, so it's not enough to go on all by itself.

Red Rose tea came in boxes of umpty individually-wrapped tea bags, and you got one figurine per box. Generally, a specific set of figurines would be available for a fixed period of time, and some of that set were more common while others were rarer. The idea was that the more tea you drink, and thus the more tea you buy, the more likely you were to get a full set before they were discontinued. People also sold and traded them via newsletters, collectors' guilds, and little neighborhood second-hand shops.

I've only got two Wade figurines, because in general although I thuoght they were cute, I didn't much want to collect them. My grandfather gave me one not long before he died, a blue seal, which was a duplicate of one already in his collection. Then years later my husband, at the time my live-in boyfriend, went to a science fiction convention and was given a blue seal --- a different version than the other, from a later set --- by the hostess of the hospitality suite when she opened a fresh box of tea. He asked for it on purpose so he could give to me. So I have those to together on a shelf, but that's my whole collection.

My brother used to collect baseball cards; they came in packets of bubble gum. I don't think he ever got a complete set of anything either.

[chochiyo_sama]

The frog toggle definitely must stay!

[poliphilo]

There was an American kid at one of the schools I went to who had a huge collection of baseball cards- and gave away the ones he didn't want. I ended up with a bunch- and treasured them- even though I had no idea about the game.

[poliphilo]

It will, it will.

[oakmouse]

Baseball cards really were kind of cool. I left my brother's collection alone because I got interested in regular playing cards instead --- and he also bribed me with troll dolls and Rat Fink dolls!

[poliphilo]

Ailz likes trolls. Ratfinks are new to me.

[oakmouse]

Rat Fink dolls were a very American thing; I don't know that they ever really got outside of the US. I didn't like the full-size dolls, because they looked sleazy and gross, clearly the bad side of hippie and biker cultures. But I loved the rings, which made me feel tough and competent --- very welcome for a chronically bullied, shy, disabled, undersized kid whose only effective weapons were my orthopedic shoes with steel wedge arch-support inserts.