Newarker

l am currently re-reading a couple of my favourites: Europe in the Looking Glass - Reflections of a Motor Drive frrom Grimsby to Athens. In 1926 three young men drive across Europe in a large Sunbeam touring car and have various adventures. Cars then were of course much less reliable than today and they have many difficulties organising repairs (which are needed often). The author was Robert Byron who died aged 36 in 1941 when the ship on which he was travelling to Egypt was torpedoed by a German submarine. The other book l am re-reaing is Modernity Britain Book 2: A Shake of

My ABC British Bus Fleets 1960 lists 9 Guy Arabs from 1942-43 and 21 from 1944-45, all still with wartime utility bodies, plus 6 from 1945-46 rebodied by ECW in 1952. At that time MGO still had two AEC Regals from 1936 and five from 1938/39!

Part of the problem with the 11+ was that your chances of passing the exam depended on where you lived,depending on the availability of grammar school places. In the late 1950s those chances were as high as 35% in the south-west, 33.5% in Wales, down to 22.4% in the north-east and 18.9% in the south. The outlier was Nottingham City where you had only a 10.1% chance. Why was Nottingham so ill-favoured? Was there a shortage of grammar school places? If so,why didn't they build or convert more grammar schools?

Just to update plantfit's posting on 8 April 2019, an extract from the Post website earlier this year:- Business owners are becoming frustrated with recent changes at a Nottinghamshire retail park which has seen their customers receiving fines. Visitors at Northgate Retail Park, off Lincoln Bridge Road, Newark, are no longer able to leave the site whilst parked there, which means they need to park elsewhere to visit nearby businesses. They mean Lincoln Road, there being no Lincoln Bridge Road in Newark. Typical Post.

I'm sure this is not an original thought but whoever decided the entry charges seems to have looked at the cost of refurbishment and then worked out how much they needed to charge to recover the costs. This of course was the wrong way round. People will not pay over the odds to get the Trust/City Council out of a hole but will compare the cost with other attractions and decide whether it is value for money. Adrian Jones and Chris Matthews in their book Towns in Britain say the pre-refurbishment castle was the dreariest museum and art gallery you can imagine. From comments here and

The Post website has one of their compilations of nostalgia photos from the 1980s. There is a picture captioned "Paper Lace musician Mick Vaughan joins Cllr Dennis Birkinshaw to promote a record commissioned by the council - 'Nottingham' There are copies available on line of a record called Nottingham written by Mick Vaughan and Phil Wright of Paper Lace and recorded by Sheriff, release on the A.OK label in 1983. Can anybody provide a link to the song? If it was written by guys from PL you would think it might be reasonably commercial but l had never heard of it befor

Small world. 40 years ago l was working in the same building at Stavertongirl. lt was called Pinfold House, approached from Talbot Street along a drive at the side of Lambert House which was where the vehicle tax office was situated. l worked for Great Universal Stores which was the parent company of Cavendish Woodhouse among many others. Willerby Tailoring and Times Furnishing had offices in the same building. l haven't been along there for years but l bet all those buildings are student flats. As SG says, it backed onto the cemetery and an owl used to sit in a tree and watch us.

Lenton Times has a feature on Nottingham heliport which l had never heard of. British European Airways started a helicopter service connecting Nottingham and Leicester to Birmingham, intended to be a feeder service for its international services from Birmingham. The service started on 3 July 1956 to great fanfare but ceased in November 1956, BEA citing the need to save fuel due to the Suez crisis although the service had clocked up big losses. The site was used for a time by driving instructors and for go-karting but by 1960 the City Council had realised that the heliport was redundant and all

Wasn't most of the site previously occupied by W J Simms, Sons & Cooke, the building contractor? I think their address was Spring Close. It was mentioned under the Saturday Night & Sunday Morning thread that Simms' board was prominent towards the end of the film when Arthur and Doreen are discussing the future. She wants to live in a new house like the ones being built. l have always thought the estate you can see was Bestwood Park Estate under construction. Am l right?

Radio Nottingham has just broadcast a programme called For the Record: The Selectadisc Story (part 1). It's in a series called We Are Notts. Presumably part 2 will be next Sunday @ 1700 but part 1 is available on BBC Sounds. Well worth a listen if this was your era.

You can certainly expect to be called Duck in Newark but perhaps by an older generation or within family. Philmayfield probably mixes with the higher strata of society! In reply to letsavagoo, isn't "Me old love" a Yorkshire saying? "Me old flower" was the catchphrase of Yorkshire comedian Charlie Williams.

Some folk have mentioned mon't meaning must not but is it usual in Nottingham to say wain't for will not, or was that a Newark thing? l don't think l have heard anybody say wappy for many years, meaning eleven pence to the shilling or not quite all there. My Mum used to describe some people as not having much of a come-from. l think this just meant the family was poor but l was never entirely sure whether it meant there was some illegitimacy involved. l have never heard anybody except my Grandma say they didn't own to somebody, so if she didn't recognise somebody you w

The Newark coach operator Travel Wright aka Wright & Sons is to cease operating in early April. Apparently the business is solvent but the family want to retire and have been unsuccessful in finding a buyer. The firm is probably unknown to most Nottingham folk but was started in 1926 and has operated the Newark - Ollerton service since then as well as tours, private hire etc. They also operate the Newark - Collingham service. The demise of Wrights will leave Marshalls of Sutton-on-Trent as the only local operator apart from the one-coach Emjay Tours and Stagecoach but even they no longe

Thanks Deepdene Boy. lt must be unusual to have to re-register a vehicle, not just cancel the road tax while it was off the road.

A letter in the current issue of Classic Bus refers to NCT's 1963 batch of Fleetlines (64-94) which were registered 64 RTO to 94 RTO except for 73 which had a 1964 B suffix - ATO 73B. l have checked my 1965 edition of Ian Allan ABC British Bus Fleets and that's quite correct. I haven't seen any reference to this before. Was the bus delivered late perhaps due to an accident and had to be registered in 1964? Had 73 RTO already been reserved by somebody? My Ian Allan book lists the NCT depots as Parliament St, Trent Bridge, Sherwood, Bilborough and Bulwell but notes that Bulwell was