News from the 1980’s that never made the headlines
Just Published:
The 1980's Quiz Book (UK)
The 1980's Quiz Book (US)
This quiz book focuses on news from the 1980’s with 20 different categories and over
340 multi-choice questions.
These are weird, wonderful and odd stories and all true; for quiz masters needing
new and unique material and those who enjoy reading about the slightly bizarre side
of real life.
Take a short fun quiz on the 1980's Quiz Book page.
Tripe Dresser
The man who claims to be the last remaining hand dresser of tripe in England has
discovered the reason for the abrupt shortage of pure well water which threatened
his last ditch defence of a dying craft.
The Nichols family have sold tripe dressed by hand from a market stall at Great Yarmouth
for nearly 100 years. It is bought from local slaughterhouses, processed in the small
family factory standing over an artesian well, and sold to local people and holidaymakers
at the seaside resort.
"I boil my tripe in water whereas machine made tripe is boiled in steam boilers,”
said 47 year-old Mr Frank Nichols, the present owner. “They boil it for three-quarters
of an hour and then put it in chemicals to soften It up. Mine is cooked naturally
and ready to eat.”
When Mr Nichols’s water pump failed to deliver more than a trickle of water engineers
told him that the pump was in perfect working order, so his well water must have
been disappearing in some mysterious way.
For one humiliating day Mr Nichols had to boil his tripe in tap water. Fortunately,
his customers had lower standards for tripe than he had. “There was not a great deal
of comment, although the stuff was rubbish,” he said. “It looked like a well used
dish rag and it affects the taste, because you have got chlorine in the water.”
Mr Nichols came to the conclusion that it would put him out of business as a tripe
craftsman worthy of the family tradition, even if he survived by less exclusive methods.
He was totally perplexed about where his well water was going.
400 yards away workmen making bore boles for sewers and were equally perplexed about
why every bore hole they made filled up with water. Their own water pumps were pushing
out hundreds of gallons of water they did not want whilst Mr Nichols’s pump could
hardly produce a thimbleful.
“After a lot of rushing around,”said Mr Nichols, “we discovered that my well water
was leaking into the sewers through a gravel bed. I asked the sewer workmen to stop
pumping and soon after there was three foot of water in my well."
