Jill Sparrow

Welcome to Nottstalgia, Jim Farrell and good luck with your research. I attended ballet class with the daughter of a GI when I was a child. Her mother had some stories to relate. She'd had a very tough experience in the USA and returned to the UK as a single parent.

#62 What about Henry Ireton, the Attenborough lad? You don't see many pictures of him. Depends on your view of the Civil War or, as some call it nowadays, the English Revolution, I suppose but he stood up for his principles and put his money where his mouth was. He paid the price for it too!

Welcome to Nottstalgia, Roddus0. Hope you will enjoy this site.

#6 Ah, now you're talking, Loppy. With 4 moggies trained to weed the garden, I'd be able to put my feet up. Are they interested? No chance!

#4 Jake is obviously not the kind of beagle who does traditional hound things. Try him with something slightly different, knitting perhaps?

Saw the moon very clearly here in Derbyshire tonight. Beautiful. One of my earliest memories is of waking up in my cot and seeing the full moon shining through the window. Remember looking at it through the bars on the side of the cot. I have always been fascinated by the moon.

#64 I can understand why Avon Occur might appeal to men as it's quite a strong, masculine fragrance. Too powerful for many females. It must appeal to someone as I believe it is still in their current range or was a few years ago. I was quite fond of Mary Quant's Havoc in the 70s. No longer available. I like Avon Soft Musk too. It always seems to be the case that if I like something, it gets axed!

#8 Me too, Catfan. I will never subscribe to Facebook!

You're right Ian, although the money that has been poured into educating children, young people and young parents on the subject of healthy eating is substantial. Maybe we need to go back to Woolton Pie and the National Loaf. On the other hand, it could be nature's way of thinning out the population!

#5 Walter and Jack! Two of my favourites. Can't beat their comic timing! #6 I can't believe that, Loppy!

#24 Me too, I said ME TOO!! MIAAW!!

In the late 60s, my sister did a bit of Avon representing. The order would arrive in a large cardboard box and boxes for the individual items were supplied packed flat. It was my job to make them up, unpaid of course. I'd go with her on her rounds and carry her blue Avon case. The case and samples were all supplied free in those days. No so now, I'm told. There was Pretty Peach for little girls, soaps on ropes, some awful perfumes that made Devon Violets smell classy! Occur was one of the worst. She enjoyed it for a while and had quite a large group of customers.

Why do even very young children these days seem to be unable to speak without shouting? I can't abide people who shout or have loud voices. I really couldn't live with that. Bad enough having a cat who shouts but at least she has an excuse. She's stone deaf!

Coca-Cola sorbet?

#12 With a soupcon of ketchup de tomate and sans le lemon wedge, of course!

#11 What's the matter with you, FLY? Don't you know that's considered haute cuisine for many children these days?!!

#53 The smell of lilac always reminds me of the tree at the bottom of the garden when I was a child. We used to make "perfume" by pulling some of the bracts apart and shaking them up in a small bottle of water. We did the same with orange blossom and rose petals. Simple childhood pastimes...no computer games in those days!

#53 It would be one of those enormous Norwegian Forest Cats, Catfan! I know two of them. Gigantic they are. Very friendly though. If it had caught you it would probably have cuddled you to death!

My mother always did jacket potatoes in the oven and was insistent on never cutting them open, since this ruined them. She would break them open by holding them with a thick tea towel. She would have no truck with oven gloves. Mind you, she said cooking them this way came a poor second to the ones she enjoyed as a child, at her grandma's house in Basford, cooked in the coal-fired range oven. The same went for rice pudding. Today, I do jackets by brushing with olive oil, pricking skins, wrapping in foil and placing on the cast steel top of the multi fuel stove. Takes time and regula

#268 You're a brave soul, Catfan!

#118 Thanks are due once again to my good friend Catfan for posting the image of Percy Eaglesham Barber. Samuel John Barber, a chartered surveyor and architect, married Margaret Ann Stenson in 1851. Margaret Stenson hailed from Denby in Derbyshire which is where, early in the 1880s, J W Fryar's brother Mark Fryar became manager of the Denby Drury Lowe Colliery. Samuel and Margaret produced several children, all born in Church Street, Eastwood: John Stenson Barber, MRCVS, Percy Eaglesham Barber who emigrated to the USA and died in Minnesota in 1940, R

#48 Oddly enough, Margie, toilets are probably the only phobia I have and it originated from my very unpleasant experience when I first started at Berridge Infants, which I've written about under First Days at School. To this day, I'm phobic about certain toilets. I cannot use the old fashioned, high level cistern type. They just give me the creeps. Although they are few and far between these days, there are still some around. It was a nightmare for my mother when I was a child because they were everywhere. A few years ago, I went to give a talk to a local h

#265 Only if they've got HG though, eh Catfan!

#49 I like lavender and use it in scented candles. Good on Mrs C for not using products tested on animals!

I had lunch with my sister yesterday and I was pulling her leg about when we were children and her nightly ritual of looking under the bed before she got into it. What she thought was there, I don't know but nothing ever was! She was terrified of the dark and insisted on sleeping with the light on. When we shared a bedroom as children, this caused major problems as I could never sleep with the light on. As a three year old, I had to take my ten year old sibling upstairs to the toilet if it was dark because, even with the landing and hall lights on, she was too scared to go on her o