Do You Remember ?

[Canary42]

While reading Pam Ayres collected works* this evening, I came across something which I remember being used widely when I was a youngster. So, here's the poem :-

My Mother had a Flit Gun
It was not devoid of charm
A bit of Flit,
Shot out of it,
The rest shot up her arm


*The Works by Pam Ayres, BBC Books ISBN 978-1-84607-793-7

[Buenchico]

Before my time (just!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flit_gun

[choux]

I do indeed, Canary.

[jourdain2]

I just remember that! Out of such stuff are careers made. :) I love most of her rhymes.

[jno]

reminds me of Ogden Nash

Shake and shake the ketchup bottle.
None'll come and then a lot'll.

[Canary42]

Like Hoover, Flit was a brand name which became generic.

[10ClarionSt]

Yep, I definitely remember the Flit spray. Much needed in the slums of Manchester in the 1950's. And other places too, I should imagine!

[10ClarionSt]

And then there are family members, as Pam Ayres points out in this clip.

[Gill1941]

Yea, I remember Flit Gun.
The poem is very apt it seemed to go everywhere but where it was needed.
Love Pam Ayres. Have seen her a few times on stage.

[Hopkirk]

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My mother, she told me no end,
‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’
Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!

If I’d known I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s,
Injections and drillin’s,
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine
In these molars of mine.
‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’

How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s me they are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

[sandyRoe]

Can you still buy the sticky fly catchers that used to be hung from the ceiling?
I haven't seen any for years.

[Canary42]

I still use flypapers.

[10ClarionSt]

Yes Sandy. I think they sell them in Tesco and other stores.

[roopower]

Love Pam Ayres, have a couple of DVDs. The story about the family trip to the seaside and her dad in his knitted trunks is hilarious.

[Peter Pedant]

erm
no
not wishing to be a party pooper - but I have been doing

In flanders field the poppies blow
between the gravestones row on row
that is our place. And in the sky
the larks bravely singing fly
high above the sound of guns below

ukraine and uvalde - get a bit glum when I am alone
sozza

[Ken4155]

Thanks for that hilarious clip, 10C. TTT never let on he was married to Pam Ayres:-)

[Peter Pedant]

god bless flit
ours could only be fired by adults - the little ones didnt have the knack
god bless fit - you couldn't get enough of it
in the home see a louse, well you can get THAt out of the house!

I cd be Pam - - god bless Flit as it terminated the Typhus epidemic in Rome and Naples in 1944 and saved countless lives

concentration camps - about half died after liberation from typhus. My father bartered typhus+ blood from the Russians for rations....no we have had that.

[Prudie]

No I don't remember the flitgun but wasn't Marlon Brando using one on the tomatoes just before he popped his clogs in the Godfather?

[Peter Pedant]

oh I thought he was being Dracula and had orange peel in hous mouth
( cd be both)

[pastafreak]

Our flit gun was kept in the garage...dad's domain. Only he used it...it was scary to me. Poison!

[Prudie]

All part of the same scene, playing with his grandson in the garden.