philmayfield

You obviously lived to tell the tale. A friend of mine said he always had a stomach upset when he went waterskiing on the Trent. There is the occasional salmon spotted now so conditions have much improved. You don’t get the suds and foam and noxious smells at the weirs anymore.

You were very brave to swim the Trent in those days. It was not far off a sewer. Nowadays it’s very clean and you can stand on the bank and see the bottom. The ‘official’ way to get to Hazelford island some years ago was by boat. The means of propelling the boat was by grabbing a rope which was stretched from bank to bank to bank and moving it hand over fist. There is now a footbridge but you do need a waterway’s key to gain access. Someone does live in the lock house but the lock keeping duties on the Trent are now carried out by volunteers who attend on a daily basis. The only ‘officially’ m

Back in the 60’s I had a Mk 2 Healey Sprite, the key of which fitted both the door and ignition of my mother’s Wolsey Hornet. They were both BMC of course but two in one family must have been a rare coincidence.

It was indeed. The name never changed in all my 57 years in the area. Many a happy hour spent down there. Terry Wanless was the landlord. I think his wife is still alive and living in an old folks bungalow in Thurgarton.

Have you ever met a vegetarian cat?

Now you tell me!

We used to keep chickens in a pen in the back garden in the 40’s and 50’s. At Christmas we had to kill one for dinner which consisted of selecting the plumpest one and breaking its neck over a broom handle. It ran around the yard for a bit until it expired followed by the fascinating job of dressing and plucking it. The last time I ever plucked anything was a mallard which a friend had shot. I did the job on the greenhouse bench and seemed to end up with more feathers than when I started. Oven read is the way to go!

There's a care home not far away down by the river. It's full of old farts though. Not sure I'd fit in.

I've registered myself as a charity.

I do the lottery on a Saturday. Just one ticket which I buy online. I don’t count it as gambling of which I disapprove. I treat as a donation to charity!

I often wonder why we don’t eat roast beef for Christmas dinner. Fortunately we’ve not bought a whole turkey in years, just a breast and just enough for one meal. A whole turkey can go on for a week before it’s disappeared and eaten in many guises from cold to curried. For me Christmas is a pain in the backside but then I’m a miserable old git!

If turkey was that good we’d eat it a lot more often. There’s nothing worse than the ordeal of eating turkey at Christmas and saying how nice it is just because it’s traditional!

I’ve been extremely fortunate in my life. Strangely enough, the harder I worked, the more I studied, the more hours I put in, the fewer holidays I took, I became more fortunate. Luck never came into it.

At least you didn't have to guess where the decimal point went! I still have the slide rule sitting on top of the old laboratory chemical balance in my study. The Sinclair calculator is long gone.

Just checked on Wikipedia and there were ‘Boots Book Lovers Libraries’ in stores throughout the country. They closed them in 1966.

Didn’t Boots have their own lending library down there?

I bought a slide rule in the basement of that very Boots shop. It served me well for many years until Clive Sinclair brought out the pocket calculator.

On one of our earlier Shoguns you had to get out and rotate the front hub centres to select four wheel drive which wasn't very funny on a cold snowy morning. On both of our cars now the four wheel drive systems are totally automatic with no option to make a selection. As we don't do any serious off roading or tow pony or boat trailers we don't need things like low ratios and diff locks anymore.

I think it's used in Formula 1 but I don't know of any cars fitted with it. Mercedes cancelled the idea back in 2005. The accelerator usually operates a potentiometer and power steering is generally electric now.

I think electric handbrakes are the norm on all modern cars now. I’ve not examined one yet but I imagine they are brought on an off by a servo motor. Another complication to go wrong as the car gets older. No more handbrake turns sadly!

I think they used to be in Trinity Square.

I remember once arriving at Frankfurt airport late at night in the winter when it was snowing and I had a heavy cold. I collected a left hand drive manual hire car and then had to drive 100 miles sitting in the left hand seat changing gear with my right hand. What a nightmare of a journey! The next day, at the factory I was visiting, they gave me a small bottle of Klosterfrau to drink. It was was a herbal, alcoholic cure all. It certainly worked!

I think it was the Photo Centre.

I think everyone does that when they first drive an auto - but only once! I used to tuck my left foot well out of harm's way. It's amazing, on those rare occasions when I drive a manual, how easy it is with ultra smooth modern gear changers.

The fur shop was over the road from Skinner and Rook, wine merchants and grocers. That subsequently became the mens’ outfitters, Horne Brothers.