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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!

It is said with some authority that Charlie Chaplin was born on the Black Patch.

Back in 1950 when I was 13 my Mom and Dad used to give me a "Saturday sixpence" each for doing errands and things, which funded me to take the 32 bus into town from Hall Green to go to the News Theatre at the bottom of Bull Street to watch their programme of cartoons, short interest films and...

The reason why Velocettes failed was the same as all the other great institutions - like Norton, Ariel, BSA Lucas Austin etc., in fact a pandemic which prevailed from Victorian times to eventually reduce this once great nation to one akin to a squabbling bannana republic. The Cause? In the...

I was 14 in 1951 and still at school when I entered a competition in the "Eagle" comic in which you had to name the five advantages and disadvantages of a helicopter in comparison with an aeroplane - and I was one of the three winners - the prize being a helicopter flight from Hay Mills to...

I'm Stan Thomas, now aged 86, and I was a mechanic at Churchill machine Tools maintaining the lorries and the manager's and rep's cars from 1959 until 1962. Len Pearce was the foreman mechanic, and George Walker was the "odd job man" as it were. The Chairman's name was Ralph Gabriel (but we...

I went to the news Theatre in High Street regularly every Saturday night for about a year when I was about 14, as there was no comprehension of it being "unsafe" to journey alone at that age - unlike today. I needed 1/1d (old money) which was three pence for the bus fare from Hall Green and back...

I'm Stan Thomas, and I'm over 87 now. I was a mechanic along with John Taviner from 1962 until 1966 and we serviced and repaired all the Morris LD2 delivery vans and manager's and rep's cars at the garage in Milk Street, and were paid £14 a week. The caretaker's name there was Harry Pride...

We still have a receipt in the family files dated April 1950 when my brother was taken to Steelhouse Lane and subsequently fined £1 for "causing a disturbance" (a quarter of his week's wages) - he was caught having a wee up an alley!