Ashby De La Zouch, Royal Hotel c.1965

Photo ref: A212033

Form 1a 1958 to 1962

The ruins of Ashby Castle also hold memories. Some are of sitting at school, gazing morosely out of the window while well-intentioned teachers attempted to impart the joys of adding up using letters. At the ripe old age of 10, I felt that algebra was an unreasonable confusion of reading letters and understanding mathematics to make incomprehensible jumble of otherwise meaningful ciphers. Another reason ...see more

Still on my travels on Memory Lane I browsed past St Helens. This was always a place of seasonal visits: Christmas, Easter and Harvest Festival. I must admit that Easter visits do not live long in my memory, and Harvest Festival seemed to be an exercise in pyramids of tins of things your mum didn’t need urgently. The Mayans would have been proud of our ironically, heathen ziggurats of Spam, tuna, ...see more

As a young lad in the “swingin 60’s”, the swingin’ rather passed me by … and no regrets there. But the word puts me in mind of the swinging we did do. Just down the lane from Allsopp’s garage – the hallowed source of petrol sold in gallons for shillings and pennies, and Shell’s collectibles such as Roman coins and football cards, was a playground and sports field. This playground was inevitable site of ...see more