[Hyson Green and Basford]

This is a request for help from anyone who lives in the Hyson Green/Bobbers Mill area - does anyone remember Berridge Engineering in Berridge Road? My dad worked there as their buyer in the early 60s - they made paint spraying equipment.

[colwick loop road]

I remember when this was a railway - I spent from the mid 50s to mid 60s living in New Vale Road. This was a cul-de-sac leading to the pair of lines running into Victoria station. The end of the road was just blocked off with old sleepers.

When the road went over the railway, the bridge was a nasty sharp turn. Still, Victoria station should not have been shut and demolished.

[Growing up in Bilborough]

Hello MargieH #389:- I got in touch with Susan Fowler direct via Amazon when I learned via U3A that she had had her first book published. This was about a school in the east end of London which was evacuated to Cornwall during the war. Most of the kids were Jewish. Lots of them stayed in Cornwall - they were well received by the locals, and some intermarried. The U3A said that Susan lived in Penzance - I asked her this, and she said she planned to, but was still living in the Arnold area. I seem to recall she did play netball, but I'm not the best person to ask - I have the sport gene missing.

This book also had a picture of her, taken not so long ago. I thought she looked rather old, but then my bathroom mirror tells me the same thing, even though I know I'm actually 23!!

[Growing up in Bilborough]

Hello LizzieM #387: Yes I did get your PM, but only discovered it this evening, after I'd written you the above reply #386! Duh! You'd never believe I spent 20 years in the IT industry, would you??

[Likes/Post Ratio]

LizzieM #24: Was Carlton-le-Willows Grammar School such a prestigious educational establishment? I know I was always thought to be "posh" by my Colwick friends, but honestly I detested the place! We got off to a bad start - on the very first day, when the first lesson started, the teacher came in the room, and said something on the lines of "I know you're new here, but when a teacher comes into the classroom, you're meant to stand up"!! That, and referring to us boys by our surnames. ClW was run up on the cheap to house us baby-boomers, and yet it was run as if it were a minor public school. No wonder I wanted to leave at 16, but I stayed on reluctantly and did my A levels. Then I couldn't wait to escape. To get off the treadmill, I didn't want to go to uni either. When I did a year later, it was another 3 years of treadmill!

BTW I see you are online at 00:30 like me - are you another night person?

[Growing up in Bilborough]

MargieH #385: I was a real boy scientist, but happily I found languages easy as well - made it hard when you had to choose! I remember "Basher" Bates well - he and I didn't really like each other personally, but we had a grudging professional respect for each other. He taught me French very well, so that I can still speak it. In fact, I made a friend a few years back at a WEA class in Exeter, simply because she is French, and I was willing to talk to her in French! How easy is that?

Another little anecdote that might amuse you - a couple of years ago, I was having lunch in the Christian bookshop/cafe in Tiverton Devon, where I live. I heard a little white-haired lady ask for a magazine she had ordered, and gave her name as "Scorer". Me being cheeky-daft, I asked her if she had been a German teacher at ClW, and indeed she had!!! She was my German teacher between '59 and '62, for O level. Mind you, German is hard, hard, hard. That's why they don't teach it so much in schools these days - it brings the ratings down. Spanish is easy-peasy, I bet, so it's popular nowadays.

I'm afraid I don't go to the reunions - a lot of the people who organise them used to be the sort who were always made prefects. No-one I recognise goes.

Do you remember a girl called Susan Fowler? She and I were in the same class all the way through ClW. I discovered by accident that she had married a Nigerian, brother to the prize-winning novellist Wole Soyinka. As Susan Soyinka, she has written a couple of books about the side of her family she didn't know about at school - her mother was Jewish, and only just got out of Vienna ahead of the Nazis. Susan and I also share the same birthday - 27 October 1945. She reckons that she must have been conceived on 27 January 1945 - the day that Auschwitz was liberated.

[Colwick cheese]

I think "Sluice Gates Road" was just what we called it in the family. It could be River Road. Anyway, it's the road that leads from the Loop Road junction, to the sluices gates themselves, through the former gravel workings that are now the lakes of Colwick Park.

If anyone knows Trevor Shuttleworth, say hello to him from me - he won't remember me!

Re banjo48's link in #22, apart from the fact that I can't make the link work, no these were not the cottages. Trevor's were definitely demolished to make way for the car park. The houses over the road belonged to a family called Bagguley. They were quite posh, compared to we sn*t-nosed Colwick kids! I once acted as a teller for them in an election - I regret their candidate was of the same persuasion as the present government. "Won't get fooled again" - The Who.

[Growing up in Bilborough]

Hello LizzieM #20 - I was at Carlton-le-Willows GS between '57 and '64. I remember a Mr Wombwell the chemistry teacher. I was a real boff, and loved chemistry, but he made it seem hard!

I went back to ClW a few years back, and got treated like royalty. Everyone kept saying "He was here between 57 and 64" as if I was out of the Dark Ages!

[Colwick cheese]

When I lived in Colwick (about 1962), I used to knock about on motorbikes with a lad called Trevor Shuttleworth. He lived in one of a group of really ancient looking tumbledown cottages. They are long gone, but they used to be on the site of the car park, situated where Sluice Gates Road meets the loop road. He had a rumour (no more than that), that Colwick cheese used to be made in those cottages. I give you this for what it's worth!

[geo sands colwick]

Thanks for the welcome in #9-12. I have been looking at the Transport thread - obviously lots of people on this site who remember far more about railways than me!!

[geo sands colwick]

I have only just found this site: I used to live about 2/3 along New Vale Road Colwick during my teenage years (1955-64), so we saw the 3 cranes trundling around the (appalling quality) track in Sands' yard. I now live in mid Devon, and I'm secretary of my local model engineering society. The other day I was round at the house of one of our members, who is Devon born and bred. I was admiring his freelance model of a steam crane, which he is hoping to display in Bristol in the summer at BSMEE in Thornbury. He fished an old video tape from a drawer: he had recorded the Salvage Squad programme which showed the Sands crane being restored. I nearly fell off my chair!! Does anyone know where the programme can be found on line? Is it on YouTube?

While on the topic of steam, does anyone who lived in Colwick earlier than me remember Colwick loco? It was pretty rundown by the mid 50s.