Merthyr Imp

Looking through some of the old memorabilia I've got in the back of a cupboard I came across the leaflet for the 1972 Nottingham Festival - cover shown below. This would have been the third year the Festival was held, and seems to be the only one I kept a leaflet for. It's interesting to look at some of the events listed, and I thought I'd mention them here in case they brought back any memories. I haven't included everything, just what strike me as the highlights, with some distinguished names: The Festival ran from 8th to 23rd July 1972 At the Playhouse: 17th July - Emlyn Williams as 'D

So was it the local lad or Cliff Richard who you liked?

Charles 'as-no-voice as Robert Robinson used to call him.

At age 9 - Susan Banks In the Patrick Troughton era of Dr Who I always rather liked Zoe (Wendy Padbury)

Are you TYAFANS in disguise?

Nottingham Omnibuses wasn't it? Cream-liveried double deckers with blue bands. Was it sometime in the 1980s? I don't remember them lasting long and very few people seemed to use them - I never did.

I went to one at the Victoria Baths, and still have the catalogue (cover below). I think it was mainly models rather than railway layouts so that may have been the only time I went. Included in the catalogue is the following page showing the miniature/model railway at Valley Road which has featured on another thread here in the past;

Must be Skegness: http://www.visitoruk.com/skegness/fairy-dell-paddling-pool-1947-I738.html Oddly enough I didn't recognise the fountain, but the little bridge on the right looked familiar.

Basfordred, you seem to have everything there except an L1, B16 and O1 - are models of those available? How about a Hymek to send through occasionally light engine on delivery to the Western Region?? I'm the same as Smiffy49, and would have a model of Grantham station in the late 1950s/early 1960s if I had the money - and the space! Realistically, for me at any rate, a 'virtual model' is more likely to be the answer on Railworks or Train Simulator or whatever it's called now, like the re-creation of Nottingham Victoria that someone occasionally updates us with on another thread.

Yes - ours was a Church school at Leadenham. That meant an extra day's holiday every year on Ascension Day, although we had to go to church first thing. Also, on Ash Wednesday we had the church service but then had to go back to school for the rest of the day.

You mean pen and paper?

You were lucky - where I was it was 3.45 when the infants finished, after that it was 4pm right through until I was 16 at all the schools I went to.

This maybe doesn't count as NOTTStalgia as my first school was the village school at Caythorpe in Lincolnshire (not the 'other' Caythorpe in Notts). But I remember my first day as they made me take a bunch of flowers for the teacher - a Miss Picker, who had taught my mother at the same school over 35 years before. The school was at the other end of the village street - about 5 - 10 minutes walk, and as someone else has said, there was nothing thought of a 5-year-old going there and back on his own. Re the third of a pint bottle of milk freezing in cold weather, at the village school in Lead

Dim parcio!

Sorry - I thought you meant you were at Blue Bell Hill from 1962. You were well after my time then!

Hi Stevie I was at Blue Bell Hill school until I left, aged 11, in summer 1961, so I just missed you. I expect some of the same teachers were still there in your time - headmaster Mr. Leigh? My last year I was taught by Mr Lowe. Somewhere else on this site you'll find one or two memories of the school, including a class photo I posted taken in 1960.

When I was in school we were taught that rivers always flow downhill. Something else this thread reminds me of was listening to Dennis McCarthy once on Radio Nottingham (where else?) maintaining that south of the equator the sun rose in the west and set in the east.

The world's longest river - the Nile - flows from south to north. I say the 'world's longest', but when I was at school we were taught that was the Amazon. However, that's beside the point. This reminds of the film 'The Railway Children' when the boy asks Mr Perks why the 'express' to Scotland is going so slowly - 'well, it's all uphill to Scotland, in't it?'

Yes - and Cheesettes (not to be confused with Cheeselets) And the days when there were only two flavours of crisps (and you couldn't always get cheese & onion even then)

A variation on that was what my mother used to say: 'You're enough to make a parson swear!'

There was a Crown Street off Blue Bell Hill Road, but I can't think of one in Bulwell.

Our first TV, dating from 1953, had to have one of those plastic magnifying things on the screen because it was so small. We could only get the BBC on it (through one of those H-shaped aerials). In about 1958 or 1959 we got one which could pick up ITV (an additional, different-shaped, aerial was needed) - and which was big enough not to need the magnifying glass on the front! That set lasted us until 1967 after I started work and we could afford a new one - and it could pick up BBC2! There was a switch on the front for changing from 405 lines for the other two channels to 625 lines for BBC.

'Festival Market' in one of those pictures. Would that perhaps have been for one of the years when the Nottingham Festival was held? Maybe the first one - was that 1970?

It was MIKE Mercury (not Steve, and apparently no relation to Freddie) who was in Supercar. Fireball XL5 was Steve Zodiac. Before Supercar there was Four Feather Falls, but I don't remember watching it. I remember Twizzle, though, which was on even longer ago than that.

Only used to see it in black & white of course! Didn't that used to be on about 6pm/7pm?