banjo48

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Posts posted by banjo48

  1. Not been here for a while, few health issues been keeping me busy but settled down a bit now, just caught up with this thread and a few memories came forth.

    Dr Foy my family doctor when I was a child, also did a home birth when my wife had our son in 1968, midwife called him out as the baby was becoming stressed, no phone then so I remember running up to mapperley tops to use the payphone. We were staying at mums place as we only had a flat in Hyson Green and it was cold and damp whereas mum had the central heating.

     

    Twigdons, used to deliver papers for them, opposite the war memeorial top Woodthorpe drive, Judges, my old mum used to clean the post office for Barry Judge.

     

    Co-op on corner of Gretton road, used to run up gretton often to buy some cheese and best butter from there which was loose and had to be cheese wired cut and the butter was formed with a wooden paddle for dads packup.

     

    Pickerings the chemist, used to buy all my ilicit chemicals from him to make my potions to blow things up !

    He was a small dumpy man with thick frameless glasses and I seem to remember his daughter going to plains road school when I did.

     

    Spencers farm, another name from school maybe Roland ?  Masseys farm on Spring lane, my first girlfriend Rosalind Massey their daughter, from plains road school.

     

    Smiths jewelers, daughter Lucky also went to plains road school.

     

    Williamsons joiners and builders, son Michael was a friend and went to school with him too.

     

    That'll do for now becoming melancolic (is that a word) ;-))

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  2. Remember being dragged to the Heart of the Midlands club to see him by my now wife and her sister, I definitely did not want to go, but I don't think I've ever laughed so much ! not a bit like the TV Ken Dodd, yes still the silly tickle sticks and other bits,  but the blue humour had to be heard to be believed.

     

    What a talented performer, RIP Ken Dodd.

  3. Talking of the Sledging on Breckhill fields, my older brother carried a poor lad up to our house, that had hit a stump of a bush or tree half way down and was obviously in a bad way, mam rang for the ambulance and later we found out he had ruptured his spleen ! my brother probably saved his life.

     

    Anyone remember the mushroom farm on Beech avenue, used to walk down the field to there and they'd pick the mushrooms fresh and weigh them for you. Think the owners were Polish but may be wrong.

     

    There was another cottage abutting the right hand side (Beech ave on the North) edge of the field that I got to know the old lady, she grew heaps of cacti and she gave me some that she had cultivated, I used to tidy her garden for her and cut the hedge. I had an old ex army machete that was razor sharp and made short work of trimming hawthorn hedges. She often used to call me over while I was playing in the fields, think she was very lonely.

     

    Someone mentioned horses in the field too, my dad got up one morning and there was a couple in our garden eating his prized veggies ! someone (me ) had left the gate open.

    I also used to go and collect the manure from the field for dads garden.

     

    Also rode my first motorbike around the field for a while, but soon got a few noise complaints so that had to stop, I was probably 14-15.

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  4. Cliff ton

    Can plainly see our old house on the second photo on Coronation road. Thanks for that.

    Actually an edit as dad didn't build till the very early 50's so just the old orchard where the house would eventually be.

    Remember my dad bought the land from an elderly chap who owned several orchards around there, one also at the bottom RH side of Gretton road, he bought our land for 80 pounds, and had the option of the rest for a total of 300 pounds, at the time dad couldn't really afford it so let the offer go, later one of his building mates bought the other land and built four houses on it.

     

  5. 2 hours ago, MargieH said:

    Banjo, thinking about your house backing on to Breckhill fields,  was it on Coronation Road or further along the Plains?   As well as playing in the brickyard, I too used to wander on Breckhill fields before they were built on.  There was a cut-through path over a stile from Breckhill Road (starting a bit up from the bottom of Maitland Road) which led down to the bottom of Melbury Road / Wensleydale Road.  It was an alternative route to walk to Arno Vale school via Coningsby Road.  I tended to use the more standard route via Breckhill and Littlegreen Road but remember sometimes coming home up the little path.  

    I used to catch the 25 bus at the bottom of Maitland Road (going up Breckhill Road) to go to secondary school in the 50s, and 2 friends used this little path to get from Melbury Road to this bus stop. 

     

    Our old house was on Coronation road MargieH.

    The path you mention was along the bottom of the field and yes from Breckhill road to Melbury road. There used to be a small cottage about half way down on the left, and a memory I have is of me and a mate playing with my new birthday present, a real long bow with arrows, I shot one over the temporary target we had set up and I will never forget it ended up stuck in the flat roof of that cottage ! we ran like hell home and left the arrow.

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  6. I too used to play on the old brickyard banks and fish in the ponds ! also MargieH I collected pussywillow for my mum to put in a vase as it seemed to last forever.

    Had some wonderful times on the old brickyard and adjacent fields, our old house backed onto Breckhill fields so it was our natural playground, dad even put a gate in the rear hedge so we could get easier access.

     

    When the fields were built on, the builders who bought the land, A C Butler & son whom my dad knew very well also being a builder, had to leave us access to the old gate as it had been there so long and was considered a "right of way"!

    When I sold the house in 2005 the old gate and access was still there but had been over grown for years then, and I believe the owner of the house below had taken over the land below the gate to enlarge their garden. Maybe mum had given them permission to do it by then, I don't know.

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  7. Chulla I wish you well mate.

     

    End of November I had my usual annual blood tests, here in oz we have a them as a normal screening test for any nasties that may show up.

    All good till I get the call from my GP asking me to make an appointment, well my PSA appeared to have jumped a bit so rather then embarrass the both of us (my doc is a female) she made me an appointment to see a male urologist.

    Long story short story, I had 3D MRI which found a lesion so then the dreaded biopsy which not only gave me septicemia and a 4 day hospital stay on intravenous antibiotics, but diagnosed intermediate prostrate cancer too !

     

    After the initial shock and horror, then the depression and panic attacks, I'm now awaiting to start my 7 weeks radio therapy in a week or so.

     

    They assure me the prognosis is good as the cancer is contained, but they will not operate as I have a couple of other issues that mean a major op could be risky.

     

    On top of this I  lost my dog a week after my diagnosis, she was my faithful friend for nearly 10 years but went downhill suddenly with some nasty auto immune thing, she only managed 4 days till we had to have her peacefully put to sleep.

     

    So overall I've had a really shit Christmas and early new year. The happy pills my doc gave me seem to be doing there thing and my demeanor has improved, I still hope to be able to join you guys for a beer some time in July this year, as long as all goes well.

     

    Think I need a good holiday after all this crap that's assuming I get through it all.

     

     

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  8. Met my good lady at GMW on a Friday night in 63,  knew John Langdon from his days at school, hanging around top of Westdale lane in our youth and the band the Incrowd.

     

    Last I heard he was in a band with Paddy Flint a few years back and there was a youtube video doing the rounds I think. Remember his dad too, always  in his long blue crombie coat bit of a "Delboy"  and used to brag he'd never worked a day in his life ! John used to say the same that he wanted to be just like his dad workwise.

     

  9. Yes went there from 55 - 59  not a lot of memories left of it though, apart from the toilet block being in the play ground and also all the old sandstone walls around it.

    Oh and my first ever girl friend called Rosalind she lived on a farm up on Spring lane near the Dumbles (not a girl friend in the "real" sense Lol ) we sat next to each other and I used to pedal my bike up to see her at her dads farm after school.

     

    Also we had to walk down Hazel grove then Digby ave to play sports  where the Arnold & Carlton college is.

     

    And I think the 31 bus terminus was on Plains road there too but that may have been later when they moved it from top of Westdale lane.

     

     

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  10. My perfect pork pie breakfast would be a good pie, a nice crispy pickled onion and maybe a slice of ham off the bone with a chunk of crusty bread slathered in real butter !

    Can't stand mustard, just the smell turns my stomach !  maybe a bit of Branston on the side.

     

    My wife came in the other day and said she had got me  a treat, it was a medium pork pie from a new manufacturer here, it really looked the part but was I wrong,  yuk it was overpowered with thyme and the meat was very hard and unpalatable.

     

    How I long for a real pork pie from Pork Farms or Bonds maybe.

  11. Unruly children must be an Ozzy-UK route thing as I have had many flights ruined by them, It's not really the kids fault but the parents.

    My last return flight from the UK I had a screaming toddler kicking my back through the seat for almost 10 hours, even complaining made no difference, I spent a fair bit of time standing at the rear near the kitchen just to escape it but during turbulence was forced back to my seat, the plane was chokers with no spare seats at all.

     

    Made a decision never to fly the middle east stop over route ever again  and never will.

     

    My next long haul, god willing, will be direct Perth to London with the new Qantas dreamliner service , no stops and premium economy, no kids !

  12. I've got 2 pairs of original "Footprint" pipe wrenches, a large set and a small, they are still used occasionally.

    Mine are actually stamped with a footprint, so that must have been the manufacturers logo at the time, made in Sheffield.

     

    I also have a pair stamped with GPO from my PO engineering days !

     

    Tools are my weakness ! always have been, I can't help myself, have to buy the best quality I can find as I cannot stand cheap rubbish tools.

     

    My wife says she will have a massive sale when I pass, knowing her she'll give the stuff away just to be rid of it, I joke and say I'm going to label it all so she knows the value, but dare'nt yet as she'd kill me if she knew what I'd paid for some gear !

     

    I've still got all my dads original bricklaying tools too, makes me tingle a bit when I use them, which I only did the other day building a small garden brick edging.

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  13. Just caught up reading this thread, very interesting Rog, looking at the pics, i see there is a fair bit of chain from the pedals to the rear , how is it tensioned or does it just rely on the deralieur "sp" gear ?

    Also I see the chain runs inside some tubes under the seat, obviously to stop chaffing your legs whilst pedaling. Be a bugger to get  anew chain through them I would think.

     

    Keep the pics coming, some nice green scenery around that area, miss that living here in Oz, we get green in winter but nothing like the rich green english countryside.

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  14. On my last trip to Nottm i think I spent more time in Newark than our fair city ! easier access and parking and I enjoyed the big outlet stores near the A1.

    Some lovely little pubs around the Trent valley too for a real ploughmans lunch.

     

    Hope to be back to my  roots again next year for my 70th all being well. Still twisting my good lady's arm though as she doesn't really enjoy her return trips back, she's only been back twice in nearly 30 years ! and one of them was a funeral !

    She hates the long haul flights too, mind I'm not keen either as I always seem to get stuck with screaming kids running around causing havoc to everyone except their own parents.

  15. Firstly let me state that I'm not having a go at the smokers that may be still around here, I'm on about the litter (stub ends, butts whatever they are called).

    We've just had a brand new super duper shopping center open near us, it has had nothing spared and must have cost an absolute fortune. It has several entrances and at each one you have to run the gauntlet of the smokers even though they have a special place with seats and bins about 50 mts away especially for them.

    But the real issue is not so much the gauntlet of stale smoke but the mess they leave behind ! cigarette ends are stubbed out on the floor everywhere on the brand new marble paving all around the entrances, and often it's staff from the stores that have nipped out for their 10 minute scive to satisfy their urge.

     

    So incensed was I the other day I went into the management office and put in a formal complaint, the lady was very nice agreed with me entirely and said they would look into it, yeh right, just this AM had to run the gauntlet yet again and actually witnessed an older lady doing her stubbing out !

     

    But it's not just these thoughtless individuals it's as above the fast food rubbish thrown on the floor even though there is a bin literally 5 mtres away ! they're just low life morons.

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  16. I grew up on Co-op 99 tea, my mum used to make it strong ! so I always put more water and milk in to make it palatable. The other offering was water or Camp coffee, not my favorite at the time.

    She also would only use sterilized milk, but I got used to it I suppose, now I drink gallons of the stuff (tea that is, no more horrible stero milk)

    When I married my wife didn't like loose tea so we progressed to tea bags and have for most of our adult lives, but last year we bought a nice stainless tea pot and some loose tea and occasionally sit and have an afternoon brew of two mugs each !  got to be Dilmar or Tetley though, can't stand the Aussie rubbish.

     

    The Aussies are mainly coffee or coke drinkers but most of the poms drink tea.

     

    Mum used to say tea bags was the sweepings up off the tea room floor Ha Ha.

    Her next door neighbour was the Flowery Peko tips sales manager in the midlands, another memory as he used to bring home tea chests with it stenciled on the sides.

  17. My wife and I got sick of the taste of so called butter from supermarkets, bland and nothing like the old fashioned stuff we grew up with.

    Even the Lurpack didnt taste the same.

    Then we found a small local dairy here in SW W Australia, and they make it how it used to be made, although expensive well worth it as it actually tastes like the "proper" thing.

    Only problem is we literally ladle it on our toast or crumpets !

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  18. I'm currently in the Pilbara region of NW W Australia, visiting our youngest daughter, she's a midwife here.

     

    Some amazing trains here and most if not all are now driverless !  they are controlled from a central hub in Perth about 1000 miles away !

    Very disconcerting when you see the barriers on the road crossings come down and the train goes slowly past with no one at the controls, some of these iron ore trains are a couple of klms long.

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  19. Remember my old maths teacher , Mr Greenwood, ridiculing me in front of the whole class because this new fangled algebra thing we was learning went straight over my head ! did absolute wonders for my self esteem at the time, he told me I would never make anything of my life  if I could not understand such simple things.

     

    Few years later at tech college I got a distinction in maths in my C & Guilds exams in electrical engineering, lots of algebra in it too !

     

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  20. Saus and egg sandwich simply delightful and set you up for the day ahead, our regular early morning stop on the way out to Derbyshire when I worked for the PO as a Techy. Used to be 3-4 Red and white PO engineering vans outside virtually every morning.

     

    Noticed when I went back last there was now parking restrictions outside so that wouldn't do business much good.