Oh! To be young and fit again...

[Steve kay]

When I were a lad, we’d each pick up an engine at the gate to the Three Counties show ground, and then run to Hanley Castle. The last one to arrive had to buy the first two rounds in the Three Kings. We thought we were strong until that time when a couple of serious lads carrying Scammel gearboxes in a race from Welland Steam Gala overtook us. And the next apocryphal story please.

[Reckless Rat]

That's nothing. When I were a lad I used to carry two Merlin engines across a field of broken glass, barefoot with a Mighty Antar on my back...

[jpsmit]

That's nothing. When I were a lad I used to carry two Merlin engines across a field of broken glass, barefoot with a Mighty Antar on my back...

Luxury..... we usta dream O carrying two merlin engines and a mighty antar.

And you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

[Howard Wright]

Hi Fellow tall tale tellers!

Reminds me of the folk tale from Peover church in Cheshire.  There is a huge oak chest in the vestry which, as the story goes, is used as a test for a good Cheshire bride.  If the bride can’t throw back the lid with one hand and with one action she is not a suitable wife for the Cheshire bridegroom.

Bit harsh I would say!

Cheers

Howard

[Mike Costigan]

We couldn't afford the down-payment on a Mighty Antar, so we had to make do with two Merlins and an ancient Kestrel we had lying about.

[David Stepney]

We couldn't afford the down-payment on a Mighty Antar, so we had to make do with two Merlins and an ancient Kestrel we had lying about.

Shades of 'Old Mother Riley' no doubt.

Thinking about Arthur Lucan, who played the character before the war: I had a great aunt who was a 'B' movie actress between the wars (going by the name of Marilyn Mawn) On one occasion, my mother, then about 17, was waiting in my uncle's car at Pinewood Studios  whilst he was collecting my aunt from the set she was working in.. Whilst she was waiting, Arthur Lucan, who had a reputation for  being partial to pretty young women, approached my mother and attempted to 'chat her up', whereupon my mother very primly told him that she was waiting for her uncle. " Oh, is that what you call them nowadays?" quipped Lucan.

[A G Wood]

Hi Fellow tall tale tellers!

Reminds me of the folk tale from Peover church in Cheshire.  There is a huge oak chest in the vestry which, as the story goes, is used as a test for a good Cheshire bride.  If the bride can’t throw back the lid with one hand and with one action she is not a suitable wife for the Cheshire bridegroom.

Bit harsh I would say!

Cheers

Howard

Isn't  there an apocryphal story of Richard Trevithick flinging an anvil  sledgehammer over the roof of a thatched cottage for a wager?
When I reflect on all the manhandling I used to do with automatic transmissions and manual transmissions in confined spaces (only room for one lifter) under vehicles on hoists and over pits,  I just shake my head. No wonder my knees hurt. It wasn't until one of the other lads dropped a freshly overhauled torque converter off the nose of freshly rebuilt transmission and dented it (narrowly missing denting his foot) that the manager relented and let us buy a proper transmission jack.