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I have known two men called Peter yet neither of them had Peter among their names.

Dead Eye Dick was a character in the poem Eskimo Nell which A P Herbert, the writer and MP, always denied that he wrote.

Did you know that Mary Jane in Spanish is Maria Juana which became a slang term for canabis.

Thanks. Yes it was Red Star I was dealing with. I used them when I had to send parcels between our London and Birmingham 0ffices back in the 1970s

Truck is a word I have heard many times. I think, but I cannot say authroitively, that it has the same meaning as is used in the laws know as the Truck Acts. These laws forbid the payment of wages to workers other than in cash. This was because many employers were paying in goods such as food or...

I don't remember that block of offices in the centre of the Midland Station and it was only in seeing photos of the demolition work that I know about them. I remember driving into a parcels bay off Station Street to collect and send parcels which wasnext to platform 12 in the 1960s station.

Could be that Sue learned to drive and objected to being called Ken.

Suff is a word perculiar to the West Midlands meaning the drain. Shakespeare used it in Troilius and Cressida Act 5 Scene 1 when one servant insults the master of another servant. Except that in most copies of the play it now says south instead of suff because some printer made a typo which...

Molly Coddled appears to be universal. These are the lyrics to an American song called Molly Coddled Not exactly in the lap of luxury You were not quite of blue blood But you know you went to bed With a belly full of supper You were safe as a bug in a rug You were swaddled and jolly molly...

My interest in doing that walk was that if I spent a Sunday afternoon on Snow Hill as a boy, then I would get a train to Smethwick West and a bus home from there as I have always preferred circular journeys rather than out and back so I knew the line before it closed. After several house moves I...

I did the walk but I do not remember that queue. Perhaps I was there either early or late and fortunately missed that. I also did the later walk to Handsworth and a few months ago came across my ticket for Snow Hill to New Street. The only time they have ever issued such a ticket. For that...

I knew the cinema as the Monument after the name of the road, then like a lot of others it was just called ABC. Only went there once. Learned a lot in the back rows, No further comment

This is the today view. You can see that the wall and the gate posts are still there. Nowhere near such an imposing building there today. If travelling into Birmingham, this is on your left before the first block of shops at the Ivy Bush. The present Church of the Redeemer is in Monument Road...

Effectively the government merged all the area boards and the CEGB in to one then split it up again into separate companies which were all floated on the stock exchange. Some of the split seemed quite arbitrary as Nuclear Power got some coal fired power stations that they could sell off as a...

Has been discussed, possibly on Facebook, when it was miss-identified as a chapel south of Broad Street. You show the correct view but I know that there is a reversed photo floating around. This could be a Phyllis Nicklin photo.

My recollection of singing in primary school was D'ye ken John Peel (probably not politically correct today) The British Grenadiers The Bonnets of Bonny Dundee The Men of Harlech (we had a Welsh teacher) Nymphs and Shepherds (I hated that one, it seemed so stupid to me as I just did not...

The word Difficult was a word that I shall never forget because of the way that the teacher humiliated me in class over the spelling of that word. In modern terminology I would have been in Year 5. I don't remember why but I was standing at the front of the class and the teacher was at the back...

Sorry John, I had to look that up Zoopla estimate of current average house price Westlands Newcastle £258.881 Rosemary Hill Road £1,174,122

I have enlarged the picture on screen and I can see shadowy buildings behind which makes me think that the ink from the reverse of the page is showing through. I can't see an architectural magazine publishing mock ups as surely they would be showing the finished work.

Thanks Mike. As I was writing, I thought I had not got it right. I was sure there was an earlier date. The date of 1936 was the date of the formation of the Birmingham Town & District Bank with offices in Colmore Row. So the date 1836 was the date of the formation of the bank not the date of...