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Slightly off-topic : I am reminded of a military friend who, whilst serving in Germany, advised his non-German speaking wife to ask for a 'shtopemfloppen' when out shopping for a new bra! Apparently they complied without hesitation, and my friend's wife remained blithely unaware for some time! :D

Good God, really??? It certainly doesn't 'do it' for me....trust the Yanks to wreck a thing of beauty with a daft name. ;)

Braces - but I believe that Americans call them 'suspenders' ....which begs the question: what do they call the 'feminine' variety so dear to British male hearts??? :tongue2:

Astonite - I recently bought several sticks of 'liquorice wood' (50p a stick!) .....my daughter, who had never seen it before, couldn't believe that every child used to go about chewing a bit of old dried stick. :) I've now taken to 'chowing on it' when I drive; it is admittedly, something...

Sings: ...''There's a plaice for us somewhere a plaice for us Peace and quiet and open air wait for us somewhere'' Now that really IS sole music...no codding!

lindyloo - Lye was just like one of those places I mentioned, or would have done if my memory was better than it is! Although I never went ther myself, I do recall my mother mentioning 'Lye Waste' (whatever that was?). It often gets a mention in the Black Country Bugle. This subject has...

lindyloo .....since writing the above I've been wondering about it all; it seems absurd that anyone would be wearing clothes like that in the 1950's ... and it certaily wasn't due to fashions reappearing again. Perhaps my gran had taken to wearing her mother's clothes, so as not to waste them...

lindyloo what a redoubtable lady; a real Victorian matriarch! I don't know if a time-warp existed in the Great Bridge/Tipton area, in the mid 1950's; but my maternal grandmother STILL dressed in the same fashion...full-length black bombazine and little frills of white lace...even the headress...

It's a bit of a bugger when the cartridge-case ejects into your face though! :)

Silver fox - thanks for that! I still sing this at odd moments; but there seems to a few differing versions amongst the middle verses : ''Remember the vows that you made to me truly, remember how tenderly you nestled close to me. Gay is the garland, fresh are the roses I've culled from the...

Chuka - I played in these ruins a few times as a child in the sixties. As far as I can recall, there was a similar emplacement north-west of there, on a hill/ridge, somewhere towards Wigmore.

Children in the past must have been rather more dextrous than they are now; the things we were allowed to do (if we survived them!) must have improved our abilities, surely? All that tree-climbing/tunneling/rope-climbing/swinging/whirling about etc must have improved our sense of...

Arkrite - were you a G.A. Henty fan too by any chance??? I grew-up reading Victorian and Edwardian literature too. I don't think our family had any money to spare for book-buying after about 1920.....thankfully my great grand parents left a lot of gently mouldering books for me to plough...

I've not come across these before. When were they published?

Oh dear, so many who did not enjoy their school-days. On the whole, my teachers were fair but firm; most were genuinely interested in helping the kids to get the most from their education; and a few were simply superb. I can recall only a very few who were disinterested 'jobs-worths' or...

Whoa, scrub that! He didn't thrash me for wearing a monacle....it was for accidentally head-butting him in the groin-area, whilst illegally running in the coridor! He was quite tall you see, and I was just a first-former...just the wrong sort of height, when running head-down; if you see what...

Mr. Mansell, our dear old Headmaster at HillTop, always used to say :''we have but one rule in this school, and that is 'DON'T'! '' Another being: ''my purpose is to thwart your every instinct!'' Our maths teacher, Mr. Blakemore (a brilliant bloke!) used to bang his head, slowly and with...

You can't really do an 'historical monetry comparison' here, as other factors are at play: almost every village, of any worthwhile size, would once have had a mason off some description; most of whom would have been able to make a head-stone. Thus, a very competitive market existed, unlike to...

How about St.Chad, first Bishop of Mercia, in Lichfield?

Our local pork-butcher makes his own haslet, and it is superb!