........And do not let us forget the trams...........Can remember travelling down Narborough Road on one to my ballet class on Satuday mornings.   Can I also suggest another shop - Simpkin & James.   The cafe upstairs where my mother & I had a pot of tea for two & cream cakes on Satuday mornings in the 50s.   Such a special shop smelling of spices.     Have recently found that I am connected, be it through many marriages, to the Simpkins.   June     From: Nivard Ovington <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, 17 February 2012, 15:13 Subject: Re: [LEI] Midland Red Hi Brian You are quite correct re it becoming Midland Fox but try telling that to anyone of the time Midland Red it was and remained as long as I can recall, I moved many years after it changed name officially It was like renaming St James's Park , try as they might it will still be St James's Park until they knock it down and build somewhere else Then of course we had the "Corpo'" buses Those creamy beige buses with a burgundy stripe around them Ding-ding hold very tight please ! <vbg> Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) PS how come I can remember the bus number (L19) yet can't remember putting sugar in my tea 30 seconds after doing it ? > > By 1970 Midland Red had ceased to be a separate company. Along with other > BET owned bus companies - Trent, North Western, Ribble and many others, > Midland Red was Nationalised in 1969 and became part of the National Bus > Company, which had its own universal red, namely NBC Poppy Red, a pale > imitation of the original and distinctive Midland Red colour. The Leicester > division became Midland Fox, though still operating from their depot in > Southgates. > > > > Brian Binns ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Good grief, what a wonderful indulgence in nostalgia ! Has anyone mentioned Joseph Johnson's or the Mid Ed, suppliers of very nice pens and deckled-edged writing paper in Market Street (was it?) ?! Or the little music shop in Wellington Street where you could riffle through paper scores for anything from Clementi Sonatinas to Que Sera Sera? There was a great little drapers shop at 21 Mayfield Road run by two ladies who lived 'at the back' and who, despite their long occupational and domestic cohabitation only ever addressed each other as Miss Brown and Miss Goffey. It's some years since I mentioned this on the List, but I'm bringing it up again because as a child I knew Miss Elsie Goffey very well, spent many happy hours organising boxes of Silko behind the counter and mulling over the baffling uses for corsets and certain items mentioned only in whispers as "S.T"s, and I've carefully kept some bits and pieces relating to the Goffeys that I'd love to pass on to anyone connected to that family. When I ordered a 2nd-hand book on the history of Corah's over the internet some years ago, I called the dealer and found to my amazement that he was operating from Treasure Trove Books - a shop at that very address : 21 Mayfield Road. Needless to say, book business over, we carried on at some length about what had happened to Highfields during the past 40-odd years and I was delighted to hear that the Victorian outside lav at numero 21 that I'd visited as a 6-year-old was still there with its wooden seat and long metal chain. Re the trams (in which a small passenger could spend an entire twopenny ride poking her fingers into the elaborate arrangement of holes in the back of the seats) : I have a letter dated 15 December 1903 from my great grandfather at Berners Cottages to his daughter in Devon in which he writes - 'All trade is fearful for Lester. Old and young that have a bit of work are half timers there. Hundreds of navvies are breaking up the roads and streets for the new tramlines and putting up posts for electrical light. They are like scaffold poles and 40 feet in height.....' He executed the carving of 2 of the 4 statues on the Clock Tower and was responsible for the carved animal heads on the gates of the Cattle Market in Welford Road. I believe they're still there although these days, they usher the visitor somewhat ingloriously to a supermarket. Jill Subject: Re: [LEI] Midland Red ........And do not let us forget the trams...........Can remember travelling down Narborough Road on one to my ballet class on Satuday mornings.   Can I also suggest another shop - Simpkin & James.   The cafe upstairs where my mother & I had a pot of tea for two & cream cakes on Satuday mornings in the 50s.   Such a special shop smelling of spices.     Have recently found that I am connected, be it through many marriages, to the Simpkins.   June     e

In reply to Jill Grey, Would the 'little music shop' be 'Chamberlains'? I would go there when I couldn't get what I wanted at Evans' music shop in Coalville!