Rob.L

The lodge at the Nottingham Road end is still there, but despite living two minutes away for the last 20 years, and walking the dog round the park twice a day, I never knew about the lodge at the 'top' entrance until I saw Cliff's map.

I recall reading somewhere that the front garden walls of the houses on Thackeray's Lane either are the original walls as shown in the pic above, or re-used the stone. Whichever, it's sad to lose such a nice looking building. I also see that on the OS map in Cliff's post, there was a lodge at the 'top' entrance to Arnot Hill Park. I wonder what happened to that.

Which won't last that long if I'm not driving.

Especially for the quiz winners!

Superb pics!

Wish we could get Burton's quality for those prices now. As an aside, I notice your parents' address and that it was in 1962. You'll remember when Marshall Hill Drive was unsurfaced after Gardenia at the time? That was when and where I had my most spectacular accident on my push-bike, aged 6. It only had a front brake and when I left the tarmac, I slammed the brake on and somersaulted over the handlebars. My mum feinted when she saw the cuts, grazes and blood!

The cycle shop (Langdale's) is nearby, but not where Syd's was. Syd's is now "Urban Sanctuary", a beauty therapy shop. There is still a petrol station in Lambley. I don't know quite how they manage to keep going with all the competition from supermarkets, but they were still there the last time I went through the village.

Or Pearsons? I seem to remember going downstairs in there in the 70s to mooch around the records, although I generally got mine from Selectadisc on Goldsmith Street.

Syd's (note spelling) was a National station, on the corner of Westdale Lane and Haywood Road. It was another of those with swing-out pumps as the site was really too cramped to get onto. I used to go there regularly to get bulbs, fuses, and the like, as I lived a bit further down Westdale Lane at the time. There was other petrol stations down Westdale - the Gulf garage which was opened in the early 1960s (I lived next door, and knew the family well, so got lots of freebies), and another further down between Elmhurst Avenue and Blenheim Avenue. Both of them are now car sales sites. There w

Until he retired in the early 1970s, my dad used to work at Mapperley Hospital. His then boss was Duncan MacMillan, who died some years ago. A few months ago, my brother was delivering a parcel there (now renamed to Duncan MacMillan House) and mentioned to the receptionist that dad used to work for Duncan. They told him that Duncan is still there, walking the corridors, and has been seen quite a few times. Knowing the NHS, they're probably still paying him.

First video was a Ferguson VHS, about £400 from a shop on Alfreton Road (Nottingham HiFi?) around 1980, which came complete with three months membership of their video rental side. Remember renting 'Flesh Gordon' and wondering why the tape went grainy at certain parts of the film (previous renters using 'pause' for too long, as it happened. ) Only occured to me the other day when a mate offered to lend me a tape of a programme that I couldn't watch it as I haven't got a video player any more thanks to Sky+ and PVR. Such is progress.

A bloke I used to work with had one of those. There's a car park under the Queen Street Post Office which Post Office Telephones people used to use in the 70s and we always knew when he used his Warty for work as the underground car park resembled a combination of a foggy day down Stoke Lane and a battlefield during a WW1 gas attack every time he started it up.