Ideal Home Exhibition, Earls Court

Do they still sell those tubes of "gunge" where you put a dab on a straw and blow a ballon with it? ;) c1958

On Wednesday 06 March 2013 11:10 brass monkey wrote in uk.d-i-y:

One post and you hijacked my thread, you old bugger ;->

Yes - we had those in the late 70's. Utterly crap they were too. Except for sniffing. Which means you'd have to be 18 to buy them now I expect.

I went a couple of years ago and was very disappointed. Virtually none of the marvellous stands offering gadgets you have never heard of and would never actually need that used to make it worth visiting.

Colin Bignell

I saw the thread title, and my first thought was "blimey, is that still going" ;)

Yeah, we went 3 years ago, bought a water softener/tap water filter from East Midlands Water Co.

By and large the show is useless. There is no scope for getting "ideas" There are some furniture and kitchen fitout cpy stands but they were staffed by yo-yos.

On Wednesday 06 March 2013 12:55 Tim Streater wrote in uk.d-i-y:

So it's all Lawrence Llewellyn-Bollocks fluffy cushions and "decor" then?

Thought as much...

It did use to be fun:

2) Lots of stalls selling widgets like funky whisks and peelers (hey, french peelers were a *novelty* once).

I suspect (1) is now in the realms of the Internet and Home Automation forums. The one thing that is hugely disappointing about home automation is that there is not a development of a standard protocol to which the market is then filled by compatible widgets covering every domain...

It's going to cost you!

Some of that stuff is still there. But that would be no reason to go a second time.

No wood-burner cpys, f'rinstance. No cpys pushing (say) underfloor heating or hot water pipes on the roof or heat pumps.

On Wednesday 06 March 2013 14:45 Tim Streater wrote in uk.d-i-y:

That's very surprising. Used to be the place to go for *exactly* that stuff...

And there was usually free food, too, albeit in small samples. Does anyone else remember those miniature Hovis loaves?

Bert

I loved those!

Whatever exhibitions I have been to at the NEC recently seems to have had lots of stalls with French guys selling ratchet pruners, busy slicing branches. Not bad tools, but they are available on ebay at a fraction of their price.

Chris

Still have a set of loaf tins to make these somewhere :-)

How about the 'bottle choppers' to make a set of tumblers out of old beer and wine bottles?

Bought one but never managed a clean break on the cut line.

I thought it had finished there given Earls Court was being sold off for housing.

Damn, I remember those, as someone else said from some visit in the mid 70's

Made one from Mecano, never got a clean cut.

The only decent thing I remember was some "gunge" called MistaBrite for cleaning glasses (it smelt as though it was some sort of neutral paste with meths in it).

As sold at every decent baker's shop until the 80s at least. They made a nice change from sickly sweet buns.

They were apparently advertised in 2009? but I've not seen any recently. I must remember to have a look next time I'm shopping. They had been discontinued for a while.

As this is a D-I-Y group, buy some Hovis flour and bake your own?

On Wednesday 06 March 2013 20:12 Andy Burns wrote in uk.d-i-y:

It is??

And no:

"From 15 March - 1 April 2013, the iconic British Home Show will return to Earls Court, London for its 105th Year!"

Blimey - 105 years... wonder what they had at the 1908 one!

With "HOVIS" pressed into the side?

I thought it was embossed rather than debossed?