Batteries Not Included?
Ingle Nooky?
Bring back the tobacconists, they had "old shag", "Hand rubbed shag", virgin flake" All sorts of stuff.
A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away.......
When I was 11 and my senior school was in the big city, my mates and I were engrossed in the Surgical Appliance store. It was strategically placed next to the Windsor Baths, just up from the Gaumont Theatre and opposite the bus station. The throbbing heart of the Metropolis! Fresh from our school swimming lesson we'd stand outside the window display, clutching our damp towels and schoolbags, staring in and trying to make sense of it all. It held an awful fascination, "what on earth do you think
they are for?"
It wasn't the full size models of buxom women modelling pink rubber corsets, or men's torsos wearing a variety of trusses, or even the false limbs. It was the boxed stuff at the back, with names like "Mystic Menstroids", or with pictures on them that made clear what the contents were (a large glass tube with a rubber bulb attached by a rubber tube), but not the purpose. The proprietor was tall thin and wore a white coat buttoned up to the neck. He had a menacing appearance to go with his metal rimmed glasses and used to come out and scare us away from leaving handprints and damp forehead marks on the window. We all thought that he was an escaped Nazi death camp doctor, hiding in obscurity.
. I think the last one is inspired
