Rob.L

#12 This is Kodachrome, not Ilford, but hasn't been stored very well in the last ten years - the slides were left in suitcases in a damp garage. I will get round to cleaning-up the scans as and when, but have a few thousand more slides to get through first (none of any local relevance, though).

Thanks, Siddha. My dad was a semi-professional photographer, mainly covering cycle racing, but he also used to do weddings, baby photos, and was an occasional contributor to the Guardian Journal and Evening Post. All of which meant he needed the best equipment available, which consisted of Leica cameras with various lenses. These days, the equivalent kit would be around £5000. So a bit more than a hobby for him!

Thanks, Lizzie. Your usual drinking pals missed you tonight! As for the scanner, I got it from Lidl last week. It only cost about £30. They may still have one or two left. Very easy to use, just load the supplied software, plug into USB, and scan away!

Been busy over the last few days digitising some of my dad's slides from the 1960s. While most of them were family pics, he did take a few of Nottingham and some villages. A couple of them stand out - one of Drury Hill and one of Garners Hill, with the railway viaduct in the background. There are also some he took during the Margidunum dig in 1968, and a couple of Gedling Colliery taken in the early 1980s, just before it closed. See what you think...

Daily rate £49.50???? When I used hire cars for business travel, the going rate for an Astra-sized car from Enterprise was about £27. And that was all of three weeks ago.

Plenty of opportunities in Nottingham itself. You only have to look upwards, rather than down, when walking around the city.

On one of my lines of ancestors, they were mostly agricultural labourers, at a time when pay was a pittance and nobody in that line of work was able to afford their own homes so lived in tied cottages. If there was no work, there was no pay, so they had to rely on Parish welfare payments to survive. And as soon as they couldn't work, they were out of the cottage and into the workhouse. All in all, not that different from the conditions many slaves endured. Which is why I'll be damned if any of my hard-earned goes on any spurious claims from descendants of slaves.

Something you may be interested in, on BBC2 on Wednesday (8pm)... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ybzg1

As a lad, I'd while away an hour or two in Wendy's toy shop on Westdale Lane, Mapperley. As the owner knew my parents, she didn't mind me hanging around. I even managed to make the odd purchase once I'd saved enough pocket money.

Especially if found at a Roman camp next to a Roman road.

Left-handed people are sinister.

Did Alan Gough go on to work for the GPO (PO Telephones, later BT)? If so, I worked with him back in the 70s and 80s, but lost touch some years ago. If it is the same feller, he was once on "Game for a Laugh" when Jeremy Beadle put a drilling rig in his back garden pretending to drill for oil. Alan went absolutely mental!

I remember getting kicked out of that little restaurant in about 1974, after me and my mate decided to spray each other with the ketchup for the plastic containers. I reckon it was the dodgy burgers that made us do it.

On this day 70 years ago, the Red Army was marching across Ukraine. Spooky! http://ww2today.com/

Have a look on http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html I'd link to it, but trying to navigate that site on an iPad is a nightmare! As I recall, only the first few roads linking Westdale and Porchester had been built then, so it would have been fairly low density.

#19 Had that experience with a road once when on a cycling holiday in Scotland where I seemed to be able to freewheel up a hill. This one, in fact - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Brae

Never ceases to amaze me how anyone thinks they just have to follow the instructions from Sat-Navs (GPS), even if logic tells them it's wrong. You read about these drivers who take goods vehicles or buses down cart-tracks or under low bridges "because the box told them to". As I was driving back from Newcastle once, I had one tell me to turn left immediately. I was on the A1(M) at the time, and that would have sent me down a rather steep embankment into a ditch. To make matters worse, for the next ten miles, it kept telling me to make a u-turn.

Re the Peter Jackson film. I saw a while back that they were looking to recruit lots of special effects experts for this remake. Unlike for the original where they had real pilots flying real planes, and a budget of about 3/6 for the special effects. (Not that I'm decrying what was the best they could do with the technology available) And that Gibson's dog would be renamed to Nidge.

As Nottingham grew, the number ranges changed. As said, in the 70s, City numbers were 5-digit and began with 4 or 5, then new ranges were added with 6-digits (41xxxx, 58xxxx). Sherwood numbers were also 5-digit starting with 6, then changed to 6-digit 60xxxx and 62xxxxx, Arnold was 26xxxxx and later, 20xxxxx was added, Carlton was 24xxxxx but as that exchange ran out of capacity, the new Gedling exchange was built with 87xxxx numbers. Bulwell was 27, then 75 was added. There were quite a lot of changes to other parts of Nottm. The most significant being the 52xxxx range, exclusively for Di

Stephen, You sure about that number? City centre numbers all began with 4 (Castle exchange) or 5 (Archer exchange)

Talking of Lancs and Lincoln, my wife's late uncle took a rather good picture once. It even made it into the Daily Mail.. Full article here - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324297/Behind-scenes-The-Dam-Busters-How-crews-created-scale-models-targets-flew-real-Lancasters-make-classic-war-film.html

Link for the Canadian trip - http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/archive/raf-bbmf-to-host-canadian-warplane-heritage-museum-lancaster-during-visit-to-england-24022014

As a born & bred Nottinghamian, I've always felt a lot more affinity with the friendly north, rather than them miserable boggers down south. Just try smiling at, or talking to, people in London and the south east and see what reaction you get. More often than not, they think you're mad. Folk up North would smile back, and stop and chat.

If you ever get the chance, listen to Sylvain Guintoli, who races motorcycles in World Superbikes. Born and bred in France, he married a girl from Leicester, lives near Donington Park, and now speaks with a combination of French and East Mids accents.

Lizzie, You know me. Anything for a cheap night out. Only stopped going there after getting my backside pinched on the dance floor one night.