Sue J

There were some things that you always had to have at Goose Fair - a little dish of mushy peas with mint sauce, brandysnaps, Grantham gingerbread, candy floss, a cock on a stick. I often make mushy peas and have mint sauce on them. Remember the smell of the Fair? I never went on the helter skelter. I liked the cakewalk and that big boat thing that used to swing up high and you had to hang on to a sort of rope ladder. The coconut shy was rigged! Ping pong balls to catch a goldfish. Punch and Judy.

I remember my Godmother's father eating pobs. Bread with sugar sprinkled over and hot milk poured on. I must have been very young, but I remember watching him eat it and thinking it was because he had no teeth, and that was all he could have. He died when I was six, but I think this memory is earlier than six.

Re #2778 My Uncle Bill (Warren from Kimberley, known as Drummer) smoked a pipe. He was a miner. He was a belt and braces man and is very vivid in my memory. He would get what I thought was a stick of liquorice out of his pocket; cut about 3/4 inch off and rub it between his palms, then poke it into his pipe. Then he would get a coloured spill from a jar on the hearth and light it.

Liquorice was my favourite and still is. I remember the boxes with an assortment, but they were only received for Christmas. Any other time it was just a penny whatever. We used to go to Aspley Cinema on a Saturday morning to see Flash Gordon etc. There was a sweet shop, diagonally across from the library, and my sister always bought us cinder toffee. Not because we liked it, but because you got a lot for your pennies. It had that awful, cheap chocolate on it that stuck to the roof of your mouth. I never ate much - probably another reason why she bought it! lol Coats on the bed in winter B

We all had school dinners. They were good value at 2/6d per week. It meant Mum only had to do a cooked meal for herself and Dad, and he went home at lunchtime and had his then. I wasn't fond of the mash as it always seemed to have lumps in it. I loved the stew, which was so thick you could stand your spoon up in it, and it came with a triangle of fried bread. Favourite puddings were caramel tart, semolina with a blob of jam in it, tapioca (until someone told me it was frogspawn, then I just couldn't eat it) and fruit salad with cream that was made out of powdered milk. In high school, if y

Being a newbie, what happens if I want to start a thread that has already been flogged to death?? How will I know without having to read EVerything?

Thank you all for the welcome 😊

Roo meat would be the roadkill here, but if it hadn't just happened it would be fly-blown in no time at all! Hitting a kangaroo, unless you're driving a semi trailer, could mean you'd end up as the road kill

Thanks for adding the pic of the Almshouses I used to daydream about living there while waiting for the bus.

@ katyjay Lol, yes I used to! Now living in Western Australia and have been since 1970. You must enlighten me! How did you know? It's amazing! When I was visiting in '79 I was stood at the bus stop on Dulverton Vale - and we'd moved to Strelley in '58 - and a lady at the bus stop looked at me and said, "You're Ethel's daughter, aren't you? How's yer mum? It made me giggle.

Bill Haley and the Comets at the Palais in 1956?? My neighbour's mother took me. She was in her seventies and I was 9 or ten. I also went to see Cliff Richard - can't remember the name of the venue, but it was up near Mount St bus station somewhere. I was a bit older, but annoyed that I couldn't hear much of Cliff for all the screaming going on.

There was a newspaper seller at the bottom of Hanley Street that my dad swore blind used to shout, "pork pie and vinegar"! lol

I remember catching the 22 on Dulverton Vale every day with my Godmother, until I started school. She would go into town every day to shop. The bus fare was 4d! The first stop would be the sweet shop at the top of the twitchel that went past the Co-op down to Parliament street. She would buy me a penny liquorice. We had set shops we went to depending on what she needed and I knew my way around - all the various short-cuts - before I was five. When my older sister started work at Boots on Station St. I had to take her the first day as she didn't know how to get there 😳 I would have been