Willow wilson

I've been revisiting S&G on YT recently and still impressed by the quality of their output. Paul Simon being one of my seriously-listen-to writers. This starts with youthful optimism and then doubt creeps in.

Cobblers I remember. Alfreton road opposite Gagg's motorbike shop (near Newdigate st) This was our regular cobbler. West side of Broad street, opposite Lord Roberts. Bottom of Hucknall road. A small lockup between the bank on the corner of Mansfield Rd and a row of shops on Hucknall rd. Nuthall Rd between Whitemoor Avenue and Western Blvd. This was a stand alone lock-up wooden shop. Aspley lane near Amersham rise, this business relocated from the Commodore shops when the commodore was refurbished and the local bank closed.

We'll tackle those after lunch, Margie.

Another great leap forward for mankind, this week somebody calculated the value of pi to 31 trillion decimal places.

This is a kiosk which looks similar.

My guess is that it's on North Circus street opposite Albert Hall and facing Derby road (going left to right across the picture where the horse is). The east end of Nottingham St Barnabas Cathedral on the left behind the wall. Those buildings across Derby Rd were all demolished when Tollhouse Hill was developed. The buildings far in the distance were demolished when Wollaton st was developed. The kiosk; there is a modern phone kiosk there now.

It might have closed earlier than 1960, Ben, I'll have a net-browse for some maps or photos.

My first car (in the early 60s) was a 1946 Riley RMA. The engine design was that of a 1935 Kestrel and which stayed in production until 1957. I polished the paintwork with Brasso. I learned a lot about cars with that vehicle. I cringe when I think of how I much I paid, it turned out it was in very poor condition. My neighbour at that time was a qualified mechanical engineer and he stood looking at it, shaking his head and tut-tutting.

There was a Marsden shop on Basford road at the bottom of Saxby's twitchell, opposite Hayling road. I nearly went for a Saturday job there but instead got a newspaper round. It must have closed early 60s.

True LL, it works on a real pipe organ with no colouration or distortion I agree but I think for me chasing it down with huge contraptions in my home will be frustrating, apart from Mrs WW's veto. Sometime in the 80s I went to a concert in the Albert Hall Nottm. This was before they inserted that floor which cut the main auditorium in 2. I got a seat in the middle, the huge space went from ground level below the pulpit to that large curved ceiling. The highlight of the concert was this..(this clip is of a different organ but the Albert Hall Binns did a fabulous job) This was the real McCoy surround sound, through the seat anorl. I realised at the time, I'll never reproduce this through speakers so I made do with what I had. ps it's not bad on decent headphones.

No problem Col, glad to share a natter with other audiophiles.

I know what you mean LL, the first I experienced them was in an auditorium with a pipe organ. Also I could just about make them out when in the 60s I built a couple of 30 litre bass reflex Wharefdale enclosures driven by an amplifier in which I'd tweaked the tone ccts. The most satisfying was through Sennheiser headphones; my room is not big enough to accommodate the full effect acoustically. Keep playing LL, I'm playing my Korg right now, in between checking out NS.!

Thank you for your comments Col. We acquired this radio new when I was about 5 or 6 (1949 ish) so didn't appreciate the finer points of audio reproduction then. But as you related the ideal is to isolate front from back. Still listening to music on it in 1959/60 it was a good quality general listening radio, 10" speaker. For instance I can remember 'Jailhouse Rock' when it was first broadcast and the opening bars which included a raunchy bass walk-up (pitched about E2 I think) sounded impressively rounded, smooth and even; that's one feature I remember in my early audio learning curve but that's all that was required of a radio those days, no sub fundamentals, I can't remember those physical notes from a 16'/32' organ pipe music. Bearing in mind that it was Long Wave and am medium wave, it was top-end which was weak compared with later FM. I understand Murphy experimented with infinite baffles but didn't include them in this level (£28/19s/9d) of domestic radio but made the baffle work. There were 8" deep side cheeks to the main top-to-bottom support structure at the rear, further baffling the speaker back, which extended the audio path a bit, the space between them (where the electrics and speaker were) was finished with a perforated cover which may have damped things a bit. Granted it was stylish but I'm convinced there was a fair bit of science in the design. Having said that, it was fine for us in the domestic setting for music for over 20 years.

An evocative choice Col, I remember them all. My parents didn't have a TV in our house until about 1967. But we always had a good radio (Murphy 146 being the latest) which was always on whenever someone was awake in the house. In those days I learned by much listening how and why music 'works'. It seems to me there was such a wide variety of music broadcast in the 50s (which was mainly on BBC) the memory of which remains with me to this day. Wayward Wind and Little Things are amongst those instant recalled memories. Edit to add.. Murphy 146

Display in the Square, 100th anniversary of NCT 2018. Nottingham's bendy bus.