Recent content by Forest Freda

Well Paul, my dad Norman was also a scholarship boy about 15 years earlier than your dad, and prefered the company of his ragged-arsed Aston mates from his Charles Arthur St school: Fatty Furnace, Jimmy Craythorne, Sidney Radford and Joey Bandage and the lovely Vera White who was 'an attractive...

Thank you Lyn, I didn't say enough at his funeral so promised I would do something for his 111st. He always referred to my mum as 'Precious' which was a little wicked of him, as had she read The Lord of the Rings she would have crowned him!

March 5th 2025 would have been my father, Norman Gabriel Ballinger’s Eleventy-first birthday, which as we all know, would have been a very good age for a hobbit, had he been able to reach it. He had been rereading The Lord of the Rings just before his hospital admission, and his copy was found...

I believe my dad Norman Ballinger must have started at Fordrough Lane in 1936. He left King Edward's Grammar School after 2 years as he 'had not made sufficient progress as a scholarship boy' but he did his electrical engineering HNCs and City and Guilds at the Central Technical College. He...