EileenH

I'm afraid I got fed up with the woman telling me I was going to have my broadband discontinued so I was a little bit rude. When I said, 'Oh, piss off!' she rang off and hasn't been back. I hope she wasn't too traumatised.

I can remember our Mam's divi number - 37581 - and also my own when I got married - 100349. I remember the first 'self service' co-op on Wilford Road, the Medders, when I was about eight or so. You handed your shopping bag in at the counter and was given a wire basket for your shopping. You went round the shelves doing your shopping then they swapped bags when they totted your purchases up and took your money. I remember being gobsmacked at the concept of 'self service'. I said, 'Surely people will just nick things.' Shows what a naturally larcenous mind I had at that age.

I've finally got my broad beans in. They've been sitting in root trainers and have been ready to go in the garden for ages so I was worried they were too tall and would flop over but they're fine, sitting up straight and tall. Phew. Really miss the allotment.........

My sister and her husband are members and have done various activities and bus trips. They just do the ones that interest them and they enjoy it. I'd certainly join but I'm sort of housebound so meetings and courses are no-go.

Our children's matinee in the Medders wasn't quite as posh as the ABC Minors. It was Saturday afternoon at the Imperial on Wilford Road - The 'Imp'. It was the threepenny rush - went up to fourpence in about 1950. There wasn't any song or badges or anything, just a film and a serial. I think they had a few stock films they showed repeatedly. I remember a silent Charlie Chaplin film that appeared a lot. When the film broke down everybody would shout and Boo and they'd put the lights on for a bit. On a slightly different subject - can you remember 'A' films that children co

Keep battling! Forty years is a long time but you can do it. It's a little bit easier now that you don't get it on all sides in pubs and buses isn't it? (Don't know what PIV is but good luck with that as well.)

Bought a 'ricer' because the TV chefs said it would make better mash. Not strong enough to press the handles so I've gone back to the perfectly efficient tater masher! (Been trying to remember where the breadmaker is - it's in the loft!)

We always adopt retired racing greyhounds. Jimmy is our fifth one to date. They come ready trained to the lead and house trained but have limited recall skills and highly developed prey/chase instincts so he's never off the lead except on our garden. He behaves beautifully and is a confirmed couch potato for 22 hours a day. Funnily enough the ones we've adopted don't go upstairs. They don't seem to know what they are. They watch us go upstairs as if wondering how we disappear into the ceiling but don't follow us. Wouldn't have another breed.

I've just started reading 'Mythos' a retelling of the Greek myths by Stephen Fry. As I read it I can hear him telling the stories. I believe he does a number of audio books but I've never had one.

Nah! It was Creative Writing - aka making things up and writing them down.

Hello! Great to be back. I'm enjoying browsing the site to catch up. I've spent the last couple of years with my head stuck in my laptop doing a Master's degree with the Open University. Finished this summer so I'm FREE! Sort of shuffling my feet and looking around at the world and wondering, 'Now what?' The options at the moment are indoor hang gliding or extreme embroidery.

There was a shelter on Hawthorne Street at the top of our yard, a brick building with offset doorways so that they were open but you couldn't see inside. I suppose that was to keep lights from showing if people had lamps or candles. As I was a total wimp I never went inside but it certainly smelt funny. I know my mam wouldn't go in it even if there was a raid warning. I remember it being knocked down by a swinging iron ball on the end of the arm of a crane.

Oh those stews! Mouth watering at the memory - - - -

Gosh, Jill. That's nudged my memory. I remember Mam on her knees in front of the range with what she called 'black lead' making it shine. It had an oven on one side of the fire and a hot water tank on the other, with a lid and a ladle to get it out. The fire had a drop down plate thingy to cook on. The rooms had pipes round the edges of the ceilings that I now realise were gas pipes, although we had electricity when I was a child. My grandma - next door but one - still had the gas lights on her walls.

Yes, that's Brincliffe! It's the back of the school where the hall was and the playground. It wasn't a purpose built school so all the classrooms were different shapes and sizes. There was a 'haunted' tower that was out of bounds. There weren't any playing fields so we had to go to hockey at our pitch in Bulwell and then to the dance lessons at the Mellish! We had to crocodile round to Kirk House on Waverley Street for dinners and domestic science and needlework lessons. Then after dinner we went for break on to the Arboretum, where we got up to all sorts of things depending on age - from cha

The merger must have been a nightmare, Jill. Glad I was spared it. Brincliffe was a small, one form entry grammar school so there was no way it could have turned comprehensive.

I was at Brincliffe, at the other side of the Forest. I left in 1960 but I believe that Brincliffe flitted across the Forest when it had to close. So if I'd been younger I would have joined you, swapping the bottle green for the scarlet.

Thanks, nonnaB. Sounds yummy!

Crikey, nonnaB. your recipes sound wonderful! For the last dish, the sauted courgettes and potatoes, are the eggs beaten or slipped in whole?

I don't but the other day I was furtling through my late Mother in Law's shoe-box-of-bits and came upon a bag containing half a dozen long, vicious looking pins with different decorative knobs (can't think of a more appropriate word for them).from fancy jewelled ones to plain beaded ones. Interesting. Don't know how efficient they'd be to keep a hat on but used as a defensive mini-dagger I reckon one of them could give a mugger a nasty perforation!

Oh yes, that's Midland Station of course. I was waiting in Slab Square to cheer them on the Council House balcony. What an evening!

John Hanson! A great favourite of mine. I saw him in 'Desert Song' of course, and do I misremember seeing him in a production of 'The Student Prince' at some time, or is this wishful thinking? I wonder. If only I'd thought to save programmes like some other clever person.

It irritates me when a character in a TV drama gets a text that's vital to the plot, cue dramatic fanfare or shocked gasp as it's shown, but you'd have to have a 60" screen to read it.

I enjoyed the Huntingdon Street one, too. Getting the last bus back to Calverton at the weekend turned the bus station platform into a community! When Barton's expected a high number of passengers they'd put on a duplicate to run with the main bus and the conductor would organise us. 'Only on the Duplicate if you're going all the way.' would cause a few choice remarks. The conductors were very much in charge in those days. I remember getting on with my friend to be told, 'Downstairs, you two, where I can keep my eye on you.' Heaven knows what we used to get up to upstairs.

Oh Salad Days! A lovely little musical. I went to see it in the sixties at the Theatre Royal. Happy memories - I bought the cd but it wasn't the same.