Beamish Museum, County Durham

For those of you who don't know it, Beamish is an open air museum recreating the life and times of people in North East England. The two main areas - the Edwardian town and the Pit Village are set around 1913. There is also a railway station, a 1940s farm, an 1820s landscape, a country house, waggonway and other areas all painstakingly portraying life as it was at the time.

The whole site is linked by a tramway and old busses. It really is an exceptional place to visit - houses, shops, workshops all staffed with people in period costume explaining what was going on in the buildings.

We're at an age when we can remember many of the items on display from our grandparents time - or even later! The hardware department of the local co-op is regularly asked for fork handles and hoes, as in the Two Ronnies sketch. And Arkwright's till lives on in the grocery department.

One of the funniest exchanges though was in the old garage, where, amongst other stuff they had acetalyne lamps on display. I remember Dad having one of those belonging to his dad, which was used on his bike. The gas was created by water dripping onto carbide which was then lit to create enough light to see them home from the pub. In the winter the water used to freeze so the byproducts of excessive drinking was used to thaw the water!

The guide at the garage related other, more imaginative uses for carbide - fishing for example. Carbide in a bottle with a little water thrown into a lake. Bang, lots of fish. Carbide mixed with bread and fed to rats down a mine. Rats wandered off, then exploded. Same with seagulls apparently. Sailors would watch as the birds suddenly became a small ball of white feathers the dispersed in the wind. None of this occurred to me as a young boy of course, but I do remember still being able to buy the stuff from cycle shops at the time. Nowadays even the museum can't use carbide to demonstrate the lamps - health and safety of course, but you get some idea as to why it might be a good idea not to use it!