Recent content by Sten Thomas

When we lived in our back-to-back in Brighton Place just off Summer Lane our Sunday afternoon treat was to wait in great anticpation for a man who came into the yard with a basket selling what in those days we called "pykelets", which we toasted in front of our cast iron "Workwell" fireplace...

At the end of the programme, the did play the National Anthem, and most stood up and remained still until it ended - and yes - some did "scarpper" to avoid this nightly respect to the Monarchy. Then everyone started to file out, as they played that infernal music I cannot recall! What I also...

I lived in Arkley Road quite near to Pitmaston Road School where I went from 1942 to 1952. In those days they bussed chidren from the Baldwin Pub (*) to the school and back every day, and the fare was an "a'penny". I knew a chap named Michael Bithell who lived in Gracemere Crescent and...

I well remember Scribers Lane ford, as I often went there with my two elder brothers (now both long deceased) when I was about six years old. It was on the route to the "ackerdocks" as everyone called it - a favourite place to go during the six weeks summer holidays which seemed to last forever...

There is a Westland (Sikorsky) S51 on display at the RAF Cosford Aero museum. P.S. Igor Sikorsky did all the development of the helicopter in America.

A haunting childhood memory. ........................ Afer every evening's performance at the Robin Hood cinema for years they always played the same tune as we filed out. Any possibility someone knows what it was called ????

I well remember going on the tram to the Aston "Hip" on my own when I was only thirteen, so thirty years later and upon hearing the old place was being knocked down, I thought I should show my gratitude for all those wonderful nights 'sat up in the gods', soon to be gone forever. I therefore...

How sad about Ian. Anyone know exactly where in Birmingham he came from?

Recently I sent a valuable antique watch to be repaired anbd received a quote of £800, followed by an emailed pro-forma invoice to send the money. I rang the watch repairer who said he had not sent the request for payment and someone had hacked into my email account. Luckily I had not fallen...

My brother Tom worked for Geo Lewis a wholesales stationary warehouse in Dudley Street, and it was his first job at 14 - which was in 1944. He was paid 25 shillings a week (£1.25) and worked there as a packer. He gave mom a pound for his "keep" and had five bob pocket money. One of his jobs...

The puppets (actually the are Marionettes) were the idea of Mr. Rothera, the teacher of class 4:1 for Christmas 1950. My life-long pals John Taviner and Fred Raphael (now sadly both deceased) helped make the scenery. I did not get on at all with Mr. Rothera - he was obsessed with football and...

A very old tale of life on the road. .................... When I was a mechanic at Charles Churchilll in the early 1960's there was a man in his eighties who served petrol at Burgess & Garfield who told me he was a (steam) lorry drivers mate in his youth. They would fire up the lorry...

Back in the 1940s and 50's I lived in Arkley Road Hall Green - just a few houses from the Manning family who had a daughter named Shiela who went to Sparkhill Commercial School. Shiela married a man named Barry Thorns and in 1968 was the first woman in Britain to give birth to sextuplets...

Anyone remenber another by-gone delicacy - "cabbage-water" - the water you boiled the cabbage in? hot, and with plenty of pepper!