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Welcome to the Forum, blueboy77777. Were you trying to make a comment on nursesue's post? (I think she is no longer a member of the Forum. Neither is Langstraat. Their posts go back a long way!) Chris

OG 6698 Thanks, Jonathan. Just to say....that all reminds me of an article I wrote many years ago in which the image of the car (from the family archive) appears and which explains the circumstances surrounding the photograph. Whilst it DOES all take place in Berlin, nevertheless there is a...

3rd DECEMBER 1944...... was of course a rather special date in the mind of those of us who are interested in the Home Guard (even if nobody else!) And it was 80 years ago yesterday. I have just paid my little tribute to the blokes local to where I grew up in Streetly. If you want to glance at...

I think KW may have been wealthier even than that. Assuming that she owned a nice house in Edgbaston, the value of that, in today's money, would have been subject to a much higher rate of inflation than the overall average for 1945 to 2024. If you include a property of that sort, the equivalent...

Aircrew under training, I think, Viv. Chris

Definitely RAF from around that time. He also has a "VR" insignia. This would normally mean Volunteer Reserve. Worth researching this a bit further. The RAF Volunteer Reserve was an organisation established in the 1930s to train volunteers to become pilots - and, normally, officers. This means...

Have a very happy day, Lyn! Chris x

Forgive me if I have mentioned this previously, but Tom Fillery features significantly in an article I once wrote about one of his friends and neighbours, Geoffrey Cradock, when they were both members of the local Home Guard in WW2. It can be seen here...

Eric - I remember seeing one of those hurtling down a Barr Beacon slope with about four lads aboard. Must have been shortly after the war when the shelters were starting to be demolished. The thing came to grief in a hedge and the passengers were launched off it in all directions. My dad was...

Richard and Alan.....A word of warning. Mods are currently discussing this new member and the very intelligent sounding contribution to the thread. So intelligent, in fact, that there is every possibility that it's artificial! The advent of AI is causing us regular problems. And this thread...

Rather of-topic, I'm afraid, at least with regard to date. But still very much "In Our Garden...." I thought I would record, for the benefit of family, the history of my father's garden which he carved out of a ploughed field in Streetly from the early 1930s onwards. Hardly a Hidcote, but a...

Thanks, John. You are absolutely right. And when the Home Guard was formed in May 1940, those volunteers with previous military service were welcomed with open arms. Many of them were immediately appointed to positions of authority, as NCOs or officers. In that way my own father immediately...

Last seen 21 August 2024..... so fairly recent. Chris

Very best wishes, Janice. Chris

Thanks for that, Lloyd. The change is, in addition to the appearance of "modern life", mainly the sea defences. When my photo was taken, the fisherman could still walk out of their cottages, across the track and straight on to the shingle where their open boats had been hauled up on chains the...

A moment in Beesands, a crab-fishing village in the South Hams of Devon (the area of Kingsbridge, Salcombe, Dartmouth) - then, and probably still, a favourite of Birmingham holiday-makers. It's late July or August 1948. In the foreground is a man named Bert Ward. He is a "furriner" as the...

THE LADYWOOD EVACUEES AND ME. A memory from 1941. I will certainly have posted bits of this before. But I thought I would let you know that I have recently tidied it all up and put it online as a complete article. "...........By the summer of 1941 when Hitler’s attentions were focused firmly...

It looks as though Burnt_peanuts is one of those new members who came and went in the blink of an eye without waiting for responses, even after asking for help. Such a shame as we shall now probably never see that further picture of Tom Fillery. And frustrating for those who tried to assist. Chris

He was the sort of dog who probably had a bit of Westie in him - but an awful lot of other things as well, never to be identified. I think he appeared one day in 1935 or 1936, in the arms of our greengrocer on Kingstanding Circle when delivering in our road and was exchanged for a shiny...

All a question of context and the evident intention of the speaker/writer, I suppose. Many words could potentially be used as terms of insult or abuse and/or have been in the past. The trouble is that increasingly, these days, no shades of grey are permitted, everything has to be, well, you...