It's May 1 today, which reminded me how, in what now seems the dim and distant past, gangs of kids would go around the streets of Birkenhead 'May Queening' on this day. This involved a girl dressing up as the May Queen and her attendants trooping along with her and asking passers-by to give 'a penny for the May Queen.' Anyone else remember this? I assume it's long died out.

Yes we use to dress up with net curtains and stuff going up and down Market Street to the pubs

Oh yeah I remember may queening with my friend........we would have net curtains on our heads and go knocking on neighbours doors........until my dad put a stop to it! He said "you do not go knocking on doors, that's begging! If you want money you come to me! now take that curtain off your head and get in!" Well that was may queening cut short! Lol

Yes I remember it well, we used to do it in our street and I was always the May Queen because my Birthday was the next day on the 2nd This was about 1964 when I was five and went on for a few years after that.My mum always said we could not knock on doors for money but most of our neighbours would give us sweets and sixpences anyway.We had a nice childhood my mum and dad always did parties at halloween and bonfire night with duck apple,toffee apples Roasted chesnuts.jelly cakes and all sorts of goodies, all the local kids would come.Happy times

I don't remember, other than the local church having a May Queen procession and a maypole erected in the grounds, but thought May Day was at Whitsum.(to do with Pentecost). Also thought maypoles were of pagan tradition . So one way or the other I'm confused......

Should have said I thought the May Queen was Whitsun and yes, May Day is the 1st of May . Totally confused now. goodnight.

Yes, I remember it well. As I recall, even the lads got involved. One year, when I was about 10, me and my mate, Georgie, who was a year older, decided to dress up as Arabs (I know this probably wouldn't be "politically correct" these days) . I had a tube of typewriter ink which we used to blacken our faces and Georgie's sister used bits of old curtains to make turbans for us and we spent the whole day "May Queening". We had a great time and if I remember rightly, we made quite a bit of money. The only downside was it took about four days to get the typewriter ink off our faces!

I do think it's long since died out and that kids today prefer to channel their energy into dressing up for "Trick or Treat" on Halloween. When I was a kid, Halloween was pretty boring and simply known as "Duck Apple Night", so, as far as dressing up goes, May Queen was the highlight of the year when I was a lad.

I've never heard of typewriter ink; thought they only ever used ribbons.

Didn't have the typewriter to go with it but presumably it was used to re-ink the ribbon... I thought that might have been obvious to most people

Hi Dave they had a discussion on it last night on the nostalgia show.This is on Radio Merseyside hosted by Linda McDermot at 10PM good show. maybe a bit common for a few on here but I enjoy it.You can listen to it on BBC LOCAL RADIO I player

Cheers for the heads up, valli, will give that show a listen as soon as I log off here.

Interesting; the only typewriter ribbons I knew were half black and half red; you wouldn't have been able to re-ink them. Maybe they made all-black ones which you could re-ink.

FYI; Yes, you could get all black ribbons, in fact, all through the 1980s and most of the 90s, I had an old Olympia typewriter (that served me well right up until I got my first computer) and I only ever used all black ribbons (never had much call for the black and red ones).

I've still got AND use my Olivetti Linea 98 tripewriter. Black/red ribbons are the most common I think and still available. In the past have used all black and blue/red ribbons.

I've never seen or heard of ink for "re-inking" typewriter ribbons. It would be an impossible job. The stuff dave2745 used must have been a tube of Zebrite (Grate Polish, that's mostly carbon black) or a tube of printers/fingerprint ink.

Being an old(ish) fart, I still use Zebrite on the fire irons etc. Oh yes... I still use carbon paper too.

Welcome to the 1900's Pinz!

"Zebrite" must be the modern version, for when I were a lad, after a hard 24 hours down pit I had to use "Zebo Grate Polish" on our stove.

It was definitely a tube of typewriter ink because it stated this clearly on the tube itself, but you have to remember, this was back in 1964 (but that's not to say it was manufactured in 1964, it could've been much older than this). Whether it was for a specific make or model of typewriter, I could not tell you. Like I said, at the time, I didn't have the typewriter to go with the ink so I have absolutely no idea how it would be applied to the machine.

I would, however, like to pick you up on the point you made about it being impossible to re-ink a typewriter ribbon. I beg to differ because I have actually done this when I had my Olympia typewriter. Although, to be honest, I actually used rubber stamp pad ink to rejuvenate my dried up ribbon, but hey, it did the job and contrary to your claim, I actually found it relatively easy (albeit a bit messy).

I still had my old Olympia typewriter up until about three years ago. It was stored up in the loft and it weighed a ton. I decided as I wasn't likely to be using it ever again, I might as well get shut of it so off to the tip it went.


Lastly, apologies to yoller, this thread is supposed to be about May Queen Day, not typewriters!!!

dave2745 Realising that I'm veering OT with tripewriter ribbon/ink stuff, I've sent you a pm.