woody

If I remember right ,Phil, the houses at Mellish were McEwan, Barber, Bulkely and Baulk. The usual colours applied to ties and rugby shirt bands, McEwan was red, Barber was green, Bulkely was blue and Baulk was yellow. Of course if you went into the sixth form the ties changed again to denote senior students.

The modern generation are supposed to be clever but whenever I hear like several times in quick succession or innit at the end of a sentence, usually in a peculiar accent, I can't help thinking we are raising a generation of morons and halfwits. What happened to them being taught the Queen's English?.

Lockes went on to be Locke & Morton and had a shop on Watnall Road just before Hansons Undertakers.

Can't help but think that Nottingham has lost a lot of it's character over the years due to modernisation. The history of the city could have been more sympathetically treated, look at Chester for a good example of how it can be done .

If the plates were fitted to a car old enough to need an m o t the car would automatically fail the test but a lot of cars they are fitted to are not old enough to need the test, as in the earlier photo taken at JTF. Officially they are classed as show plates, not road plates. They should also carry a manufacturers logo. No legitimate manufacturer would lay themselves open to prosecution so another answer is to only allow registered dealers to make plates.

If the rest of us mere mortals can see these illegal plates on cars as we go about our daily business why can't the police?. Surely a quiet warning in the first instance and a requirement for the car to be presented for inspection with a proper plate fitted within seven days would stop a lot of it. Failure to comply or a second offence however would mean much more severe penalty. It's like the pitiful penalty for driving whilst using a mobile phone, not taken seriously as it rarely hurts when the offender gets caught. Perhaps a six month ban and a £1000 fine might concentrate their thoughts. N

I can remember Peters on Arkwright Street back in the late 60's when I worked on Bell Street. As first year apprentices it was our job to go round the factory and get orders just before lunch. It was done on a rota basis so the people in the shop soon got used to a young lad with a cardboard box coming in at about 11.45. The quality was excellent and volume was good as well. I always thought Peter was Greek but I could have been wrong. As far as the one at Mablethorpe is concerned I recall it was called Monty's and it was extremely popular. The guy who did most of the frying was called Gi

I was subjected to some bullying when I first started at Mellish as I was a fair bit bigger than average. As time went by and my interest in rugby grew the opportunity to deal with the bullies started to become apparent. Sooner or later we came face to face on the pitch and they discovered that despite my extra size I could run as fast as them and when I caught them it hurt. A well placed elbow or knee got the message over quickly and, as others have said, a bully does not do well in public. It didn't take long for things to settle down using this tactic. This was all down to a quiet word from

Seem to remember a similar product in the sixties called Plus Gas. There were two types , one in a blue can and one in a red can. I can't remember what the difference was but it was good stuff for freeing seized nuts.

I can remember Bob McCandless from my days at Mellish. He never taught me but he was generally recognised as a nice man. He stood head and shoulders in respect over the likes of "Ena" Bonsall and "Pig " Hutchinson who seemed intent of humiliating those of a weaker character. I seem to remember a chap named Bailey who taught metalwork who was calm and even tempered at all times. "Shad" Adams was another one who got respect because of his calm nature and confidence in his own ability. It didn't seem to dawn on some that if the teacher was calm and positive then the response from the pupil was

I also had a bit of luck simply by going to Mellish, Stan. I went for an interview for a job as an engineering apprentice early one morning before school. When I got there I found that there were five lads chasing two positions so the odds were not brilliant I thought. As soon as I went into the office the guy doing the interviews looked up, saw the badge on my blazer pocket and set me on! Mind you, it was the princely sum of one shilling and tenpence ha'penny an hour, but it was a start and in 1967 it wasn't too bad.

Yes Stan all the names you mention were in the same year as me along with the likes of Mick Adams, Stan Leivers, Ian Cooke and the Conway brothers. Another face from the past was Dave "Bomber" Lancaster who was several years in front of me along with the likes of Roger Titman, Roger Beharall and David Cale. Bomber stood out because not only was he a big lad he had a distinctive walk. I bumped into him about four years ago as I was dog walking in Papplewick. I realised it was him from some distance as he still has the distinctive walk. Another face that appeared after some years was Roy P

My dad was a knitting machine mechanic at Reynolds for many years. He started there after the war and that was where he met my mother who worked as a mender. She left when I came along but my dad was there up to his death in 1969.

I can remember catching the 44 from Bulwell Hall as a kid when I went to school. It used to meet up with the 43 in Bulwell at the marketplace which was an island in those days. There was a system on the wires similar to railway points. It wasn't unknown for the poles to detach from the wires when crossing this system and this would lead to the conductor pulling a long pole from under the bus to reconnect things. Once through the city centre the 44 went to Colwick Road and the 43 went to Trent Bridge. Happy days.

If I remember rightly the barber next to Walker and Chapells was Harry Keating. I had many a haircut there. There is a new barber at the other end of the block now, does a good job but charges a bit more than Harry did all those years ago.

Anybody remember Beechdale Engineering that was on Beechdale Road until the late eighties and then moved to Blenheim Estate at Bulwell ?

The Moorgreen show ended a few years back as it didn't make enough to keep it going. Shame as it was a good day out.

Did my apprenticeship at Monks in the late sixties and finished just as the Nottingham factories were closed. I started at Deering Street under the watchful eye of Frank Walker in a training centre above the foundry. After nine months we were let loose on the shop floor and I moved over to Bell Street, just off Arkwright Street. It was a friendly place with several real characters working there. There was a good chip shop just round the corner and a pub next door so most were happy one way or another. The first bit of kit we got was a feeler gauge measuring one and a half thousands of an inch

Living in Hucknall all my life I enjoyed the air displays of years gone by but as our house lay almost in a direct line with the runway we got a look at all the planes arriving in advance of the display. This meant a lot of noise at times, especially when the Vulcan came over (painted white in those days) and we always had a Red Arrow at low level when they performed the bomb burst manoeuvre . The biggest fright we got was when a fuel tank that had detached itself from an English Electric Lightening landed in the middle of the road near our gate and drenched everywhere in kerosene. This m

I was at Henry Mellish in the early sixties and well remember Blackie as I was in the same class. I also remember many of the teachers mentioned, some more favourably than others. There was the ritual of going to see "Froggy" Marshall if you needed to be off the premises during the day and getting an "exeat" that protected you from any loitering prefect. As I was a lot bigger than most of the kids in my year Dave Impey decided I would be an asset to the rugby team, a view I did not like to start with. I made several attempts to get away from the "first game" that was played on the pitch neare

Hucknall high street is nothing these days compared to when I was a kid. All the shops were run on a very different basis and there were plenty of shoppers. Probably due to the fact that fewer people had cars and shopped locally with none of this late night opening business and the fact that the pit was still open. Saturday afternoons were busy, not as now with most shops closing early. One shop not mentioned so far was Bullocks toy shop, a real treasure trove for models, bikes and the like. You could also get films developed there as well.