Merthyr Imp
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Posts posted by Merthyr Imp
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Only Lieutenant Churchill in 1899 Red,but you will note his correct title was noted later. Wonder why he never went to the Lords.
I may have got this wrong, but I seem to remember hearing or reading that he was actually offered a dukedom after the war but turned it down.
My guess is that he preferred to remain an MP rather than go to the House of Lords (at whatever rank).
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I had a cousin who worked there about the same time I think. It was an interesting time. All kinds of strange aeroplanes.
I seem to remember they had an Avro Lincoln which was used as some sort flying testbed - we used to see it going over High Pavement in the early 1960s.
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I'd merely comment that just because something's in the Bible it doesn't mean it's the gospel truth.
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The last day of operation of West Bridgford's buses was Saturday 28th September 1968. On that day my friend and I went to the Commercial Motor Show at Earl's Court in London (travelling by United Counties MX1 of course), and on return we went to the Market Square to witness the last departures to West Bridgford prior to the takeover by NCT. I'm afraid these photos are not very good, mainly due to the limited range of the flash cubes on my Instamatic camera but I thought they might be of some interest.
Below is the last no. 15 departure from the Square.
The last no. 21 is seen below, with one of the handful of other bus enthusiasts who'd turned out to see the last West Bridgford-operated departures attaching a streamer to the handrail.
Now according to this website - http://www.petergould.co.uk/local_transport_history/fleetlists/westbridgford.htm - the 21 seen above was the last departure from the Square. But my memory is that the 12 seen below was the last of all. Anyway, here it is:
Rightly or wrongly, it was also said at the time that the last West Bridgford-operated departure of all would be on the Clifton route from Broad Marsh, but we didn't bother going to see that. For one thing we had to get the last Arnold route bus home from the other side of the Square (11.30pm if I remember right in those days).
One boring fact for 'anoraks' is that the name of the organisation - West Bridgford Urban District Council Passenger Transport Department - was the second longest name of any bus company in Britain. If you must know, the longer one was Stalybridge, Hyde Mossley and Dukinfield Joint Transport and Electricity Board.
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Below is a photo of West Bridgford AEC Regent V no. 30 on South Parade.
Lowbridge AEC Regent no. 31 at Broad Marsh under a threatening sky. This would have been in 1968.
No. 32 at Broad Marsh.
Sorry for the poor quality of these.
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And don't forget "Have a Go" with Wilfred Pickles......
With Mabel at the table.
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To remember Two Way Family Favourites, you also have remember the joint cooking and the smells coming from the kitchen. And it wasn't a poxy chicken either! It was good old beef, pork and lamb. Chicken was for posh folks, how times have changed.
You're right there - chicken was a treat for Christmas Day. Now beef is!
And corned beef was a cheap substitute for 'real' meat - now I can hardly afford it.
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As I remember it - in my day at least - The Billy Cotton Band Show was always on first, at 1.30pm, following Family Favourites. Then it would be the two comedy shows at 2pm and 2.30pm (a couple of my own favourutes were The Navy Lark and The Clitheroe Kid. At 3pm it would be Movie-Go-Round (I think) - the film news and review programme introduced by Peter Haigh. I think it was 4pm when Pick of the Pops was on for an hour.
Re Workers Playtime, at High Pavement in the early 1960s for the boys who took sandwiches rather than have school dinners a classroom was set aside for you to eat them in during the lunch break from 12.30 to 2pm. The radio (through Rediffusion speakers) would be switched on, tuned to the Light Programme, and Workers Playtime would be on at least one day a week (may have been more) so very likely would have started at 1230pm. There must have been singers on the programme but I only remember the comedians, such as Cardew 'The Cad' Robinson and 'Mrs Shufflewick'.
On at least one other day of the week there would be Mid-Day Music Hall - another variety show - and I think there was also an early pop music programme called Go, Man, Go!
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'Do that again and you'll get what for!'
And something my father used to irritate me with, was when I was feeling aggrieved about something and said; 'It's not fair!', he would come out with: 'Well, it's not raining'.
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Listen With Mother was still on into the 1960s. Was it on the Light Programme of the Home Service? - can't remember.
And people have mentioned Round the Horne, but I always preferred its predecessor Beyond Our Ken - the same cast, with the addition of the recently-deceased Bill Pertwee.
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Although the second picture on #426 shows the West Bridgford colours, it actually has the NCT crest on the side, which must date it to shortly after the takeover in 1968. Buses of this age (built 1949), were not retained by NCT for long, and only the newer WB stock was repainted in green and cream. The lowbridge bus in the background appears to have a blank destination screen, and I wonder if it was on the way empty to become a works service - I think they were used on some of the Boots and Players specials for example.
Below is a photo I took of a lineup in the yard at Lower Parliament Street depot at what must have been about the same time showing a similar vehicle (probably not the same one as the advert on the side is different) behind two ex West Bridgford vehicles and ahead of what I think is an NCT AEC Regent lll and definitely a Leyland Titan. At the rear it looks like another ex West Bridgford Regent V of the same type as the first two.
I've got a few more West Bridgford bus photos which I'll put on here when I get the chance.
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Yes - Waddington, sorry.
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This is the one they used during the Falklands War. You can see it at RAF Cranwell. If I remember right it was used to bomb an airfield in Argentina itself.
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Merthyr Imp re #47
22 Oct was a Tuesday in 1963 and 1968.
Definitely 1963 then - must have been half term! (We used to get 3 days for autumn half term, not a whole week like they do now)
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i got a pk chocolate raisins they will do
Ah - Sun-Pat chocolate raisins! They used to be in a yellow and red box with a paper packet inside containing the rasins.
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Fry's Chocolate Sandwich bars - you could get two kinds: either two layers of milk chocolate with a plain chocolate layer between them or the other way around.
Then there was Fry's Five Boys as well.
Probably all cost 6d - everything did in those days, except Kit-Kat which was 5d.
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Here's the Co-op advert from the back of the High Pavement school magazine ('The Pavior') dated June 1965:
If I remember right you could identify who'd got their blazers from the Co-op as they were a lighter brown than the other shops. Another one - Steeples?? - by contrast were such a dark brown as to look almost black from a distance.
Here's some more adverts from the mag':
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I have a vague recollection of seeing a yellow cancelling machine on one of the old rear entrance vehicles, or am I dreaming?
You could be right. I've no recollection of that myself, but those tickets were in use from 1970 to 1972 and the last of the old 'open back' buses weren't withdrawn until a few years after that.
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I think Nottingham was just about the furthest north that Midland Red services reached, but they did run to Grantham from Leicester.
In my bus-spotting days my friend and I, or sometimes on my own, used to get a Midland Red 'Day Anywhere' ticket for 12/6 which gave you unlimited travel for the day on any of their buses. In earlier days it was a thing like a playing card, and you had to buy it what I think was the Trent booking office at the bus station. I think I've still got one somewhere, but I can't lay my hands on it at the moment.
These are the tickets I mentioned. First is a half fare one - can't read the year on it, but must have been 1963. (Adult fare was 10 shillings):
These two are from when the fares went up, which must have been 1964 as the right hand one which I have shown the back of is dated 15 February 1964 and the fare was then 6/3 for junior (12/6 adult). I'm not sure, but I think adult fare was payable when you were 14. The one on the left shows there had been no fare increase in over two years, as it's dated 8 August 1966.
Some conductors would punch holes in the tickets but some wouldn't bother.
I think the 12/6 was the last one for which these playing card type tickets were issued. After that it was an ordinary ticket which you bought from the conductor.
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There were some NCT tickets on earlier in this thread, but here's some more from me: 8d, 1s, 9d, 4d and 7d. Some printed by Hunt & Colley, some by Bell Punch, who were the makers of the ticket machines.
And here is a South Notts ticket of the Insert Setright type. Possibly for a journey to/from Loughborough sometime in the mid/late 1960s:
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With those Twelve Journey tickets, the cancelling machine would chop a piece off at the side each time, similar to those Felix tickets shown on an earlier post. There was space for 12 bits to be snipped off, but if you were careful about inserting the ticket into the machine and only did so barely enough for it to operate you could squeeze a 13th journey out of it!
I thought I'd still got a couple of those Twelve Journey tickets somewhere (used to use them as bookmarks!) and I've dug them out:
If the column of figures furthest left was supposed to show the route number - which was probably the 17, as I would have used them to and from work - it seems they often didn't bother putting the correct number into the machine.
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I've actually got a photo of what i was doing for at least part of Coronation Day. This is me, aged 3, in the right foreground of the picture below. Next to me in black is my grandmother, with my grandfather on her other side. I don't remember who the lady is nearer the camera. This was at a tea in the village hall in Caythorpe (Lincolnshire) for over-60s and children under 16 and is mentioned in the leaflet (as 'Buffet Tea') which I've scanned and put in three pictures below.
I can just about remember that tea, although the memory has faded over the years, but nothing else about the day.
I'm not certain what an 'Ankle Competition' (5 to 6pm along with the Tug of War) involved, and I assume that 'The Queen Speaks' at 9pm meant over the radio - I mean wireless - rather than in person.
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I had Stan Middleton for English one year at High Pavement (1960s). Everyone liked him (which couldn't be said about all the teachers) because of his sense of fun - although he allowed no nonsense. And although we weren't so much aware of it at the time, due him not writing children's fiction, it was pretty good being taught by a published author. I don't know if his books are still in print, but they were quite popular at one time.
Then there was Eric Shepherd for Geography who was full of entertaining anecdotes, with a rather dry sense of humour. For instance he would ask a question of the class and try and elicit a response; 'How about one of you strong, silent Englishmen on the back row?' He was also noted for his old cars (old even for the mid-60s) which he came to school in - a pre-war 'baby Austin' and a similar-vintage larger car - can't remember if it was another Austin or a Morris. If he was going past a bus stop and seeing High Pavement boys waiting he would usually stop and give you a lift.
That reminds me of a Chemistry teacher we had (although his name escapes me) who would normally instruct the class: 'Right, gentlemen, what we do is this...' That gave him the opportunity, if there was any general rowdiness or misbehavious going on to come out deflatingly with: 'All right, children...'
One of the most effective teachers I remember was Mr Wass, who came from People's College in about 1965 and who I had for French in O Level year. He did away completely with the easy French to English translation exercises we'd been used to (where you could use guesswork for half of it), and with him it was exclusively English to French - much harder to get right, and it meant you had to really learn it. I can't remember if he was another Stan or not - we used to call him 'Wassimodo' for reasons which I won't go into here. In fact there's scope for a whole thread devoted to the nicknames of teachers at High Pavement in the 1960s!
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Merthyr Imp, knew someone would know which railway, nearly all the station buildings are still standing and are in private hands, the platforms are still intact as well, do you have any pics of these before closure?, I can get some pics for you as they are now if interested
Rog
Was it Harmston or Waddington station? Very few photos were taken of that line, and most of those that were are of Leadenham or Caythorpe. The only ones I've got of Harmston or Waddington are in a paperback book ('The Lincoln to Grantham Line via Honington' by Stewart E. Squires) and so are difficult to scan - but it would be interesting to see photos of the present day. I know several of the A607 road bridges over that line are still standing.
In Which Fictitious Place Would You Live?
in Owt' Abaaht Nowt !
Posted
On the Island of Sodor near Thomas's branch line.