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As mentioned earlier, Tuesday night at the Bulwell 'spoons was poetry night as part of the annual Bulwell Festival. What a very good occasion it was - attendance was 45, which pleased Wetherspoons. About 15 of us recited and only one was not rhyming verse - I gave them five of mine. This was a far more enjoyable experience than the one I attended earlier in the year by the Nottingham Poetry Society. The lady who organised the event, Joy, can be seen addressing the audience in the photo below. A comical gel, her 'party piece' was her singing Greensleeves. The tune was the same b

Do you like my ghost bird? Took a photo of it this morning...

Just another few memories from the little area that was my stomping ground more than 60 years ago... As I've already explained, the two fields opposite Southglade Rd. were part of Jarve Goddard's 'Southglade Farm'. Those fields were mostly just fallow and ended up being left out of farming use altogether by the late 1950s, But Jarve did have his cattle on there when we were kids. They were black and white cows which I always thought ought to be called 'Freesians'. I have a very specific memory of a young lad calling the cows in.. presumably for milking. I have no idea who the lad was.

It is a small world. We are related through that link. My mother was Joan Jackson, Phyllis Jackson was her cousin, your fathers cousin. John had a sister Elizabeth who married another Jackson who lived in Heathcote Drive /Street Aspley Gardens in the 1930s. In the letter I have she was hoping her daughter Nancy would get a job at the Players factory. My grandfather joined the army when he arrived in Australia in 1915/6 and was shipped to Egypt, Gallipoli and France, I think he came back through England. He married in Australia, worked in a coal mine again, had 3 children, enlisted in

Thank you Jill! I had seen your name and have this Jackson Sparrow marriage in my tree. John was my grandfathers brother, Phyllis would have been my mother's cousin. So nice to know that the family kept going! My great grandmother died in 1932 and there was not much contact after that. When my mother died last year I came across all the photos etc sent to her father. She went to Nottingham with her sister in the 1980s, but there had been lots of changes, addresses hard to find. I have a photo of John and Clara with a child but I think it was too big to attach! So nice to hear from yo

I finally got a picture up, involved signing into things with the Antarctic time zone! This is John T Jackson, Clara nee Sparrow and one of the children. I am going to put up Marion, Gladys and Fred, back to the ether. These are from original photos that my mother had in a box. Names were written on the back by her grandmother in the 1920s.

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This is Phyllis Bunn, nee Jackson, when I met her in 1997. The resemblance to her father is striking.

Well, isn't it a small world, Jodi? I somehow had a feeling there might be a connection but with a name like Jackson, could have been wrong. Phyllis showed me a couple of photos including possibly the one you mention although I can't be sure. She did have others but by the time I met her she was in very poor health and wasn't able to find them. They may have been destroyed when she died. I will post a photo I took of her when I get a few moments. She was a nice old lady but didn't seem to know much about her family and certainly nothing about William Sparrow. When I met her, she wa

Does anyone have any unusual experiences they would care to relate? Here is a starter for ten: The Great Skua is known as "The pirate of the seas" and I have fallen foul of their sharp 'bill-hook' beaks in the past; so can you imagine how thrilling it was to have one of these birds hover in front of me and gently take a piece of fish from my fingers whilst on the rocks sea fishing last week?! Alas, I couldn't hold fish and camera together, so sadly, there is no photo Here's a photo of one that I took on Handa Island in the far north west of Scotland, a few weeks ago. T

I don't know whether there is a connection but some years ago I met a lady named Phyllis Bunn. Her father was a John Thomas Jackson and her mother was born Clara Sparrow, my grandfather's half sister. The Jacksons lived in the area around Clapham Street, indeed Phyllis remembered that among their neighbours was the Sillitoe family. Phyllis didn't know very much about her ancestry but she did mention some chap who emigrated to Australia. Phyllis was born in 1915 and had a sister, Gladys M Jackson born 1912 and two brothers, Frederick Thomas Jackson born in 1913 and Kenneth Vivian Ja