Past Memories.

zyph wrote:

I can remember during WW11 as a very small kid...how danger wasn't part of my world.
 
My father was stationed at RAF Manby in Lincolnshire, we lived in a cul-de-sac of married quarters
 
At the end of the cul-de-sac was an Anderson style shelter that we all used, which was used very regularly....seeing we were under the Germans usual flight path to the midlands....Coventry etc.
 
My mother obviously got side tracked for a few moments....so I wandered outside to look at the bombers and the lovely searchlights in the sky.
 
It couldn't of been too long but mum got very upset when she couldn't find me....she wasn't too pleased when she did find me....and my feet didn't touch the ground as she yanked me back into the shelter.
 
I bet some of you older ones can remember air-raid stories in Plymouth ?

My Mum had a friend she grew up with in Gunnislake who was born during an air raid on Plymouth. Her second name was Araida!  

My Mum grew up near Redditch and she said that you could see Coventry burning at night for weeks and they could hear the bombers flying over them, scary as fook she said.
My dear old Gran and my Old man lived a couple hundred yards up the road towards Plymstock from the Broadway, they said that once they bombed the oil tanks at Coxside it lit up the whole of Plymouth for ages. They then used that as a marker to bomb the shit out of the rest of the city. They had neighbours in a bomb shelter about three doors up the road whose shelter took a direct hit and killed a whole family, my dads best mate amoungst the dead. He said that when the bomb hit they thought that it had hit them, absolutely terrifying for a kid to go through.

My mum's family must have been the only people who were evacuated INTO Plymouth. At the beginning of the war they lived out at Pensilva but then moved to Jennycliffe and then to houses just behind the Museum.

The last time I took my dad to a game before he died was a Good Friday.....12th April 1968.

We checked the programme and found that Man U had named a team with quite a few of their star players missing....disappointing.....but when they announced team changes just before kick-off....they where all playing......Denis Law had been out awhile injured.....so when he was named in the team the United fans went nuts.....chanting none stop that ' the king was back '.

A comfortable 4-0 win for Man U that day......the last game of football that my old man ever saw......I can also remember one year watching the boat race go by from the back of the terracing....can't remember which year....might of been the same day ?

Also remember standing on Tommy Trinders foot before one match in the general Melee outside the ground....he was in his usual camel hair coat.

Iggy wrote:

My Mum grew up near Redditch and she said that you could see Coventry burning at night for weeks and they could hear the bombers flying over them, scary as fook she said.
My dear old Gran and my Old man lived a couple hundred yards up the road towards Plymstock from the Broadway, they said that once they bombed the oil tanks at Coxside it lit up the whole of Plymouth for ages. They then used that as a marker to bomb the shit out of the rest of the city. They had neighbours in a bomb shelter about three doors up the road whose shelter took a direct hit and killed a whole family, my dads best mate amoungst the dead. He said that when the bomb hit they thought that it had hit them, absolutely terrifying for a kid to go through.

My Mum and Dad (although he was away in the army at the time) lived in Stonehouse and their place of refuge during an air raid was the "beach" at Devil's Point.

My Mum was sat on the beach and when the fuel dump at Turnchapel was bombed she watched it go up. It burned for days and acted as a beacon for further waves of bombing afterwards.

Iggy wrote:

My Mum grew up near Redditch and she said that you could see Coventry burning at night for weeks and they could hear the bombers flying over them, scary as fook she said.
My dear old Gran and my Old man lived a couple hundred yards up the road towards Plymstock from the Broadway, they said that once they bombed the oil tanks at Coxside it lit up the whole of Plymouth for ages. They then used that as a marker to bomb the shit out of the rest of the city. They had neighbours in a bomb shelter about three doors up the road whose shelter took a direct hit and killed a whole family, my dads best mate amoungst the dead. He said that when the bomb hit they thought that it had hit them, absolutely terrifying for a kid to go through.

My Grandad lived in Coventry through the war and told me the story of a large bomb landing two streets away - the blast ripped off the front door, sucked out the tablecloth and left every item still on the table. Just like a magic trick. Said the rest of the war was bloody horrible.

Didn't know which thread & it didn't deserve one of its own....

Does anyone know of a past pub in Honicknowle called "The Rob Roy"?

Wrong manor for me, if I was in Honicknowle I was generally running being a Crownhill boy.

knecht wrote:

Didn't know which thread & it didn't deserve one of its own....

Does anyone know of a past pub in Honicknowle called "The Rob Roy"?

 
 
 
Check website.....'Old Pubs of Plymouth'....no sign of a ...'The Rob Roy' or just 'Rob Roy' ever existing....other webpages on this same page that might be worth trawling through.

Rob Roy is probably a derivation of the word "robbery" a popular pastime in the environs of Honicknowle.

Iggy wrote:

Rob Roy is probably a derivation of the word "robbery" a popular pastime in the environs of Honicknowle.

Like home games at Home Park.....highway robbery.

How about this for memories of 'better' days?

Or this?

The name Ralph Reader popped up the other day on a programme.

I can remember meeting him as a kid in the scouts...whilst we were camping at Phasel Wood in Herts a well known Scouting camp.

Ralph Reader was a well known actor,producer,songwriter at that time about 1950, who was involved with the scouting movement.

The reason I remembered him was for his ability to write his signature in reverse...by that I mean starting with the last letter and writing right to left....and it looked identical to when he wrote it the proper way...as kids we tried it and found it impossible to do... and to make it look indentical to your normal signature.....just a silly thing that you remember as a kid.

Meh.... my wife could do that mirror writing with both hands & not just her signature. She wasn't a scout though.

knecht wrote:

Meh.... my wife could do that mirror writing with both hands & not just her signature. She wasn't a scout though.

Oh I don't know.....she rounded you up didn't she.

knecht wrote:

Or this?

40,000 at HP.What a sight. What an ongoing tragedy the last 50 years have been. I was there behind the goal at the BP end. Spurs made it look so easy, considering we'd beaten WHU 3 - 0 in the previous round.
Played golf with Peter Anderson at Staddon a few years later.

knecht wrote:

My mum's family must have been the only people who were evacuated INTO Plymouth. At the beginning of the war they lived out at Pensilva but then moved to Jennycliffe and then to houses just behind the Museum.

Not at all Knecht. At the start of the war thousands were moved to Plymouth to escape the South East, it was only when Germany occupied France that Plymouth became a focal point for the Luftwaffe as it could now be reached, along with all of the South coast. After the bombs started to drop the City's population fell by nearly half (110,000 I think!) as the evacuations got under way to escape the City.

My mum and gran moved to Looe from Plymouth, while grandad continued to work as a welder in the dockyard and stayed with them in Looe on his days off.

A couple of German soldiers were washed up dead on Looe beach and one of the locals turned to my grandad and spluttered, 'Theym comin Peter ! I'm taking my wife n kids up to Liskeard !'

Of course, they'd be quite safe there from the invading panzer divisions    

Tringreen wrote:

knecht wrote:

Or this?

40,000 at HP.What a sight. What an ongoing tragedy the last 50 years have been. I was there behind the goal at the BP end. Spurs made it look so easy, considering we'd beaten WHU 3 - 0 in the previous round.
Played golf with Peter Anderson at Staddon a few years later.

Peter Anderson was slightly before my time,i gather a was a pretty tasty winger with an eye for goal,certainly had a decent goal scoring record.Was he any good as a golfer? Saw a couple of ex pro footballers at Whitsand Bay golf club last year,namely Roy Carter and Reg Jenkins.Reg has sadly passed away since,he was [and still is] a cult hero at Rochdale,where i think he broke quite a few of the club scoring records.Roy played 500 odd league games for clubs like Swindon,Hereford and Newport.He told me that when he was at Newport,their manager [Ashurst i think] was astounded that Argyle didn't sign John Aldridge at the same time as Tynan-the deal had been set up at director level but Moncur wanted someone else instead.Bit of a mistake was that,to say the least.Roy has since also suffered ill fortune,he had a stroke which has curtailed his golfing activities,he was a very useful player apparently.

Can you remember as a kid when you first realized that your dad wasn't infallible and didn't know how to do everything.

My moment came when I was 6 or 7 yrs old.....we where on the beach and my dad had just paid for me to have a donkey ride.....so dad led this docile animal along the beach and back again.....well that was how it should of been.

Suddenly this docile beast somehow got spooked.....and broke into a trot ....straight towards the sea.....I can still remember the panic on my dads face as he unsuccessfully chased after us as we headed for the sea......I was scared stiff bouncing up and down like I was a yo-yo........dad couldn't catch up.....then suddenly the donkey stopped...and I tumbled off.....I sat there crying...and a very puffing dad arrived to pick me up.

Dad got a real earful from mum when we got back to where we had been sitting.....'why did you let that happen' she said to dad.....I got an ice cream out of that.