alisoncc

So how many of you still "touch wood" when speaking of things like "haven't had a cold so far this Winter - touch wood". That and going shopping for the "rations". Still do both here in Oz.

Thanks. Actually not the '60's, would have been early-mid fifties. Probably 1953/54 ish. Those tea chests used to come in handy. Everyone seemed to have a few around for storing stuff in. Besides the two we had for bringing back fruit and vegies from the allotment, we had another slightly mucky one for collecting coke from the gas works. Once a week in Winter we would push our tea chest/pram wheel barra' across Arky, up Station St and across London Road to collect a tea chest full of coke from the gasworks. Sometimes the coke was still hot from being heated up to release the gas. Remember the

Fond memories of Sneinton markets. We had an allotment up at Hungerhills with two big apple trees and a pear tree. Remember walking back from there to the Meadows with two tea chests on a set of pram wheels. Both tea chests were full of a fruit off the trees. Just me, ten and sister eleven, pushing the barra' home. Chap comes out from one of the stalls and offers to buy them from us. We would have been skinned alive if we had, but we did offer to swap some for some other fruit. Vague recollection we each got a bag of hot chestnuts to scoff on the way home.

Think I've written before here about wrapping a lump of plasticine around the base of a penny banger. Lighting it and when fizzing drop into the fish pond at the Memo gardens. Accompanying explosion underwater was sufficient to stun the goldfish, Said fishies would then float to the top allowing us to collect them in jam jars to take home. Remember raking through the still hot ashes of the bonfire the next morning looking for potatoes that had dropped in and never been recovered. Might be encased in half an inch of charcoal all round. But if big enough the centres were magnificent.

That's alright. You always missed. Haimes did run the radio and TV shop on Summers St, and it was a younger one that drowned in the canal who I knew. He would have been eight or nine. Tootins didn't have any kids when they lived next door to us. Although I had a brother - Mike, who moved with the rest of the family to Oz in 1964 or thereabouts. We were the Cooks - six kids all told. Two of us went to Mundella and an elder sister went to Deering.

Motorists would have had to turn off Queens Drive at Waterway St and then turn left down Queens Bridge Rd to get to Kinglake and Brierley Streets. Or turn right to get to Traffic Street and the Queens Grove. Must have been Queen Vic, as the old King hadn't died at that stage. See here: The building to the left of the base of the red arrow was the Boots factory. Funny to think having a chemical factory across the street from a primary/junior school. No elf and sefty then for us little buggers. Here's the corner of the Karlsruhe building looking down from the Grove Tavern:

Dad was a guard with LMS railways. Regularly used to walk up Traffic Street and across Wilford Rd to the railway sheds to meet him after work. A big thing though was the Railway Club Sunday afternoons. Whole family - eight, would walk down Queens Drive in our Sunday best, along the Embankment to Spenii, cross the river into West Bridgeford. and then right along the river to a pathway behind the big houses. The Railway Club was one of them. There were a few boats tied up on the river to the right of the pathway. The club was a big house in it's own grounds. Lots of room for us kids to run aro

Penny for the guy Mister.

Wasn't me. I left in 1960 to join Auntie Betty's Flying Circus (RAF). There was a youngster who drowned in the canal mid '50's by the family name of Priest who lived at 11 Summers St across the street from us. IIRC there was a newsagents at the bottom of Summers St, on the corner with Waterway St, opposite the off-licence on the corner of Annersley St. And there was radio and telly shop at the top end next to the chippy. Only tourists and visitors went to that chippy. The one on Waterway St gave more chips for your thre'pence.

http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/asearch?search=nottingham Alison

Can recommend a jam sarni dipped in batter and deep fried. Favourite pudding for afters down the Medders in the '50's. Alison

I have a solar powered torch. Dead loss when it's dark and there ain't no sun. Alison

Haven't seen the man from the Prudential for a long time. And we used to get a man selling rabbits off a barrow. Mind you that was in the fifties when rationing was still in place. The rabbits had been gutted but still had their skins on. The man selling them would skin them for you if you wanted. We also used to get rabbits from the guy next door who kept a couple of ferrets. He would go off early with them down by Fareham Brook where he reckoned there were warrens all the way along. He would come back with at least a dozen, and sling a couple over the backyard fence for us.Still very partia

Ssshh! Don't tell. Mind you they've got to find me first and that would be no mean feat. Lived in more countries and cities than most have had hot dinners. Alison

Me. Alison

Fly2, as it has always been. Nothing's changed. In centuries long since passed knighthoods were doled out to those who consistently raised significant revenue for the King's purse. Couldn't get more commercial than that. As for being a royalist. Swore an oath of allegiance to Auntie Betty, her heirs and successors, fifty six years ago. Of a generation that considered oaths sworn on a Bible as something not easily ignored. Not that I would want to anyway. Not overly rapt in Charlie and Camel, but do like William, Harry and Catherine. Alison

We sure as hell took it seriously. When our crews took off, we had every expectation that they wouldn't be coming back, and they knew this. 1965 was a radio liney at RAF Finningley on Vulcans. Whilst we were an OCU, our aircraft were part of Bomber Commands fleet of nuclear armed aircraft and always took part in exercises - whether just that an exercise or the real thing. We had half a dozen B2's, and when a Mick or Mickey Finn was called crews would race up from Waddington to man our aircraft. At which time the station would go into lock down, and the service police and regiment would be iss

Across Wilford Rd from the top of Waterway Street there was a lane heading down into the railway shunting yards. In the basement of one of the large railway office blocks was a shooting range. Just .22 rifles now't special, with sandbags down one end.and some wooden stands to take targets. My Dad introduced me to the guy upstairs from whom you could get a rifle, and buy ammo and targets. There was never anyone else down in the basement when I would turn up after school. My Dad gave me a couple of lessons, and after that I was on my own. Growing up in the forties and fifties, just post WWII, b

No one has mentioned the smells of the fifties. Ingoldmills caravan park had small ditches between the individual vans, which used to stink. Reckon guys used to relieve themselves in them after a night out in the pubs. And then there were the fish wagons in Grimsby. An LMS train from Midland Station to Lincoln, where we changed to LNER, not just trains but stations, then up to Grimsby. They would park the Cleethorpes train alongside a fish train for ten minutes, so the holidaymakers could get into the spirit of things. Us kids always knew when we were close from the smell. Alison

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html There's a black hole coming your way. Watch the video on webcam.

If you paint a black hole with white paint is it still a black hole? And having crossed the event horizon and been reduced to a singularity, is the white paint still white?

Guarantee that whenever I have anything to do with Paypal within hours I will get a whole swag of spam emails. With many stating my account has been "locked" pending submission of all my account details via a link in the email. Which I NEVER do. I can only suspect that between my machine and the Paypal servers, someone is intercepting their non-encrypted traffic.

Pity the city fathers had so little imagination when they demolished the Meadows. Arkwright Street could have been a Champs Elysee of Nottingham, joining Slab Square to Trent Bridge and the Embankment. A wide tree-lined avenue that could have become the entertainment, art and cultural centre for the MIdlands. Instead they chose to do away with it entirely. I some how doubt that anything they could come up with will redress their previous stupidity. My memories of the Embankment were of a beautiful area, that should now be central to Nottingham's future. A North or South Bank tourist mecca, i

When I first tasted my home made pork sausage yesterday, I was initially quite shocked. They were so different to what I had got used to. But by the third or fourth bite memories came flooding back of what sausages used to taste like all those years ago. I do believe that people either don't know or forget what the real thing tastes like. There was a time when sausage and mash, or toad in the hole were firm family favourites. Nowadays I suspect sausages are something cheap to fill a hole, vaguely edible, but only repeatable by necessity. I do have recollections of a butchers on Arkwright st

My ability to buy decent pork sausages where I live is virtually nil. I can get good ones if I am willing to drive some distance, but don't want to do that everytime I fancy a nice sausage. Pre-minced meat, be it pork, lamb or beef is rubbish - bone scrapings, etc. So I recently bought myself one of these. Tried it out yesterday for the first time using some pork belly as the meat. Partially froze the pork to make it easier to mince, removed the skin and cut it into smallish chunks. Put it through the mincer using the large cutter, then mixed in some onion, sage, thyme, salt, cracked pepp