Chulla

I have always enjoyed watching the Railway Journey programmes. I think that Portillo presents them competently. I don't look at him and think - he is half Spanish, or that he was better educated than me, or that he used to be a good/bad/indifferent politician. I judge his 'performance' on screen, and he gives me the impression that he enjoys what he does, and his outlook/attitude helps to make the programmes interesting.

#15 Limey. The pinstripes you recall were actually called coachlines. They usually ran from the front of a car to the back. They were applied with a steady hand. The long-bristled brush was held near the bristles (perhaps did not have a long handle if brush was always used for this work) loaded with paint and with luck the line could be painted in one movement - the bristles length being used, not just the tip . Mistakes could always be removed with turps on a rag. An adjacent finger would supply the necessary support to keep the hand steady. As with all this kind of work, there was a knack ga

On his way to Newstead he would have passed through Bulwell Regis - and never mentioned the place!!!!

Is there a more stupid company than Virgin Media? They have a cable running down our road and for three years now they have inundated me with offers of TV, phone, email, internet services and access to countless crappy films. This time last year I decided to save the bumf that they send me - a total of twenty large packages were sent. It is obvious that they are charging too much for their goods if they have the money to waste on sending this junk mail to everyone who is not signed up with them. You would think that by now they should know that I am not interested, and will never ever have any

This one, katyjay?

Three examples (I have more)of dad's stencil work. The first is the only actual example of his stencilling. It is a cover that he made for our daughter's stamp album. The art of cutting stencils lies in having the tie-bars forming part of the design. They should not be stuck anywhere just to hold it all together. In this example dad has used wavy lines passing through the lettering as his tie-bars. Again, as with signwriting, a certain amount of flair is required to enable an artistic presentation. The second image is of a set of stencils that he cut, having copied them from a pre-war book i

#52. What! a photo for every decade. Mick has warned us not to overload the system!

#9 Malcolm - try playing on the black notes, see if that makes a difference.

Before dad cut stencils he drew the figures as plain outline and them transferred them on to stencil card. The three Disney characters below are two of Pluto, and Clarabelle Cow. If anyone would like copies of these to copy/paint or whatever, then PM me with your email address.

The Minnie and Mickey characters were used for a First Birthday card painted by dad for our daughter. This is a stick-on-the-wall birthday card - it is 5 feet 6 inches long and 3 feet high. The two characters were cut as stencils, so they could be reproduced any number of times. Each character required a few stencils to complete the image. More stencil work will follow. The other image shows a puzzle that dad made for our daughter. It comes to pieces and is a little tricky to assemble. Note Pluto's head in the pattern.

COLLECTION 5. This is the last one.

The Royal Borough of Bulwell Regis. I quite like that.

COLLECTION 4

Sorry Volly, it wasn't him. Further to my #21 above; note the long, spade-ended bristles. These were loaded with paint, but not flooded, and the bristles were pressed on to the surface until most of them were in contact. This made it easier to produce a straight line. Note the outline lettering in the MCAS sign. All that was freehand without the thickness of the line varying. A good signwriter, apart from being able to produce neat lettering, has to have flair; the ability to produce a pleasing presentation. Dad used to write the names of solicitors on their windows. These had the be written

Trev, I well remember going to the Odeon to see South Pacific in Todd AO. I remember the introductory short to demonstrate Todd AO. It ended with a fast ride up and down the San Francisco streets terminating in a head on crash into another vehicle. The instant that they collided was when the main title to South Pacific came on the screen. There was no break between the short and the main feature, it followed instantly. It was very impressive the way it was done. South Pacific is still the best of the Hollywood musicals.

For those interested, here is dad's easel that he used when signwriting at home, sitting on a low stool. His marl stick (also known as a morl stick) is placed on top of easel. I have stuck a sheet of gold leaf on to the lower stave. I have 48 of his brushes. Below are samples of the different sizes, the smallest being as thin as a whisker. The flat brushes are for painting lines. Some have chamfered ends to their bristles; some are blunt and some are knife-edged to enable thin lines to be painted. The big brushes either side are for stencilling. The small sign was written for the Nottingha

Three more pictures of the Shipstone's dray. All curves and circles were done freehand. View of Reg Watson's coachbuilder premises on Park Lane, Basford. Remember those invalide cars?

Six more. Top left is Weldon and Wilkinsons; UVAL is a Manchester company; the Players No.6 caravan was, I imagine, to do with travelling sales/promotions; Short's removals were at Kimberley; and George Dominic vans seemed to everywhere as I remember. Never knew what they did The piece of signwriting above (#9) is very nice, but those hands don't look like signwriter's hands. The brush is the wrong type, and there is no paint on it. His left hand should be holding the marl stick at its left end, with his right hand resting on it about half to three-quarter the way up. It should be realise

As promised, I am starting a new topic, to put in it photographs of my father's signwriting work on lories and vans. Because there are a lot of them and it would be tiresome to post them all separately, I have put them into five collections. If anyone would like to see them in a larger format then PM me with your email address and I will send them on to you. Hopefully, this thread will promote the placement of other pictures, the older the better, of lorries and vans taken in and around Nottingham bearing the names of firms and businesses. This selection has a van of G Smalley, florist, W

Well, blow me down; there you are then. HRH the Duke of Windsor - briefly King Edward the Eighth visited Bulwell. No reason now not to call it Bulwell Regis.

#40 Catz. The only picture that has the old Colliers Arms on it that I know of is the one below, from the Nuthall Local History Society, and published in the book The Great Northern Railway in the East Midlands, by Alfred Henshaw. It is not very clear, but better than nothing. I have scrawled an arrow at where it used to be. A chap I knew told be he remembered it, and said that it was just above the entrance to the pit looking towards Nuthall. Incidentally, the pit is in Nuthall not Cinder Hill - the old boundary marker used to be on the cross-roads. The photo is very interesting, and was

OK, we've all had a good laff at the expense of Bulwell. Perhaps it is time to give it a rest. Yes, there are some undesirables living there, but you can say the same for some other areas of Nottingham containing 25,000 people. 25,000 is a lot of people in one area - probably Lenton and Radford or St Anne's and Sneinton would be comparable. Maybe the problem with Bulwell stems from it being a town, not a district, within the City boundary, and this stands out more so than an area full of council houses. Is it the only such town; I cannot off-hand think of another? The town has a history

'ello, 'ello, ooz got a new avatar, then? Lizzie had a little lamb, She also had a bear. I've often seen her little lamb, But I've never seen her .... Well I have now.

Glad you liked the photo of Jackson and katyjay. It is a segment of a larger photo and expanded, hence not so sharp. What makes the picture for me is Jackson's eyes. Had she been looking forward it would still have been a nice picture, but with her being caught off-guard looking elsewhere out of the corner of her eyes has added that little something extra to image. Well, that's what I think.

Deeps' story of being in submarines and being away from civilisation for so long that things happened in his absence, reminded me of our first holiday abroad. It was in Paris in June 1967. Went there at that time so I could go the Paris Air Show. Whilst in Paris we never saw the TV and never read a newspaper - neither of us knew the lingo. When we got back to Nottingham a week later, we found out that the Seven-Days War had broken out, been fought and ended. First we knew about it.