BilboroughShirley

We are constantly reminded about clean air and pollution. We have congestion charges and now there is talk about fining people for keeping car engines running in traffic queues. All important issues needing to be addressed but why do they just hammer the car drivers? On two consecutive days at the same railway station a train that was not next to a platform was running its engine for about 20 minutes and making a great deal of noise, particulate pollution and carbon dioxide. It is one rule for public transport and another for us.

I now use Ancestry and Findmypast. Ancestry is good for West Yorkshire. Findmypast is better for East Yorkshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Findmypast is good for newspaper archives, and using it avoids paying a separate subscription for this archive. In the 1939 register in Findmypast I like the maps they give. These are not given in Ancestry and they are useful. Findmypast has a lot of transcriptions and I approach these with care. In the 1939 register transcription they have my mum being born back in the 1800s! I emailed them about this mistake, giving the correct date, but I guess they will

On Saturday at the Family History Fair at the NEC I had a long and interesting talk to members of Nottingham Family History Society. They have recorded the monument inscriptions for the Rock Cemetery and will do a search for you for a small fee. They also said that there is a plan of all the graves at Nottingham Archives. The Nottingham Archives staff are very helpful. Nice place.

Thanks Ian. Unions have done much good and these things seem to get overlooked when the strikes and conflicts fill the news. Before the days of the welfare state some unions ran their own pension and sick pay schemes. The Typographical society did. At the Warwick University Modern Records Centre you can read about their pension scheme, sick pay scheme and also in their quarterly magazines there are lists of new members of the union in different towns and cities. In there I found my grandfather's name in a list of those who were retiring and also a notice of when he died. There is a sense of un

Enjoy!

Good day. Now listening to Manx am radio and the TT practice with a spectator sending me video clips on messenger.

Thanks for all the responses. Interesting to hear about Sneinton market pot man. My dad was born in Sneinton. If anyone is going to the family history event at the NEC on 7th and 8th June the Nottingham Family History Society will be there with lots of books! I believe they used to have a shop in Nottingham.

Last weekend I was at the Chesterfield Family History Fair. The Nottinghamshire Family History Society has a stand there and they were selling some excellent books. I bought 3: Nottingham city centre on old picture postcards, Nottingham's lost landmarks on old picture postcards and Nottingham events and disasters on old picture postcards. The postcards cover the years when my grandparents and parents lived there. In the city centre book is a photo of the Market Square showing "an informal pot market" at the top end of the square, near the statue of Victoria. People did buy pots from markets in

It is good to read the post about failing English Literature. I am in good company on this site! I failed Literature. Thankfully Miss Thompson said there was no point in me retaking it as I was doing all three sciences at A level! I would have refused anyway. I have always loved reading but the literature at BGS was dire! Hated it. Having to read deadly books just to answer exam questions was a pointless exercise for me. Last year we visited the St John's Museum in London. An amazing place and on the guided tour we were shown the room where Shakespeare an writers of his time had to go and have

Yes. This was Bilborough Grammar School. Looking at the car registration letters this was taken about 1977 so it would have been the Bilborough College by then.

Thanks for the great photo of the hall and its organ pipes radfordred. Loppylugs I agree with you about the modern consoles being movable. In some churches that have had their organ upgraded a movable console is put in complete with all the stops, manuals and pedals. These can have an on-board computer facility so the organist can set their stops in advance and just press a button for each new piece. It also allows the Director of Music to allocate a channel to visiting organists so everyone does not get into a muddle! I am not an organist, our son is. When I see him play using two hands, two

Thanks radfordred. It is good to see that they have a big pipe organ in the hall!

Recently had a great holiday, outside the UK, outside the EU, an excellent exit from BREXIT! The discussions on BBC Question Time are quite entertaining. Last night it was from Nottingham. Most of my attention was focused on where it was being filmed! Was that the Albert Hall? It it was it is not as I remember it from the days of school prize giving events. I looked online and could not find an answer. I am sure that members of this forum will be able to tell me!

Thanks for posting these details of stores in Nottingham. It is good to hear that Jessops was taken over by John Lewis. I find John Lewis stores excellent having shopped there in Birmingham, Tamworth and Aberdeen. It is good to deal with staff who know what they are talking about and the people who have delivered goods to us are so professional and know what they are doing.

Enjoyed Lucy Worsley's series on American history's biggest fibs. Well presented and amusing in places but with some real eye-openers. I had not realised that Martin Luther King did not include women activists as speakers in his rallies or meetings. He had a big enough task fighting for race equality I guess.

In the episode this week they talked about the "open air school". I remember my mum talking about an "open air school in Nottingham" and someone she knew whose child went there. Where was it? I had not heard of "forest schools" before. Now we have the rash of academies and free schools a Wildlife Trust is setting up a free school based on outdoor learning and nature. Looks like we are going back in time!

Thanks Steve. This is very helpful. On this site we learn so much from discussions with members. I have found out so many things about Nottingham that I had no idea about before I joined.

I have fond memories of the hours of fun with friends in the sandy banks! In about 1956 my grandfather was out walking with his friends. They went up the lane towards Strelley and then across a field. Grandfather had a massive heart attack. His friend had to go to a farm to phone for an ambulance and the ambulance had difficulty getting across the field. They had to carry grandfather. I am guessing that it may have been Catstone Hill Farm. From your description Steve I wonder if they had a phone at that time. When it was getting close to bonfire night my friends and I used to go up Sandy

I agree with you Eileen, Watership Down was good. It follows the book very well and I like the animation. It is a book that children read, however there are concepts in there that can be appreciated by all age groups. The rabbit farm reminds me of a job interview I went to some years ago. The place seemed perfect and well equipped but I spotted an undercurrent in the way certain managers spoke to some staff. I withdrew. Later I did a lot of union case work there. People found it amusing when I likened the establishment to the rabbit farm in Watership Down! The last time I saw the head before h

So pleased Stacey won. She did so well and made such progress. Brilliant. This is the first time I have watched Strictly. I could not watch it with Len Goodman as a judge. His old fashioned style made me cringe. Much better now.

Found "Reach For The Sky" on Freeview channel 81. Brilliant. This was the first film I ever saw at the cinema. I went with my mum, dad and granddad. Another vintage gem on this channel: "Every Home Should Have One", the 1970 Marty Feldman slapstick comedy. Mum loved the cinema. She met me when I finished work at Farmers store and we went to see this film. We were both helpless with laughing all the way through! Happy memories. Seeing it again after all these years I still laughed and this time I appreciated the clever send up of product marketing and advertising.

With the range of different delivery services and different people delivering the mail I have not known tipping for many years. My mum told me the story about my grandmother in the 1930's. She always gave the bin men a Christmas box as it was called in that part of Yorkshire. One year the bin man knocked on her door and said " compliments of the season, I'm the man who empties your bin". She replied " and the same to you, I'm the lady who fills it". He would have got a tip if he had not asked!

How times have changed! Reading the posts about teachers coming into the job from the forces all those years ago, behaviour was very different then. Recently I had an interesting conversation with someone who had left the armed forces and trained as a teacher. He said there were 15 in his group doing the training. All of them completed it but after a year only 2 had remained in the job!

The idiot who was reversing their car on the inside lane of the M6! I was driving south through the roadworks in the early hours of Sunday amd making steady progress within the speed limit. In front I saw hazard lights flashing so I pulled out into the middle lane in plenty of time/distance feeling sorry for the poor driver who had broken down. As I got closer no more sympathy as I saw reversing lights on and the car was reversing! A shame I do not have a dashcam. Checking the online news when I got home there was no report of an accident on that part of the motorway and I was hugely relieved.

Dark Heart on ITV 1. A bit grim. They caught the bad guy. Killing Eve on BBC. Another grim tale and I hope they catch the psychopath. I prefer to watch the episodes week by week rather than going down the box set route in iPlayer.