Above is how the Slab Square looked, even before my time.

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I’d like to offer this ‘different’ blog topic today. Most of the following photos, all connected to the Slab Square, chronologically (I hope), they show the changes made since 1929, when they started pulling down the old Exchange Building, to be replaced by the new look concrete Lions, and the Little John bell, that booms out every quarter of an hour. Sometimes when I’m in Sherwood, even I can hear it, and that’s two miles away! With the hearing aids in, naturally.

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Nottingham City Council House was officially opened by the Prince of Wales on 22nd May 1929. My Dad was there, as he frequently told me; stuck in traffic, held up by the police to let the Princes cars through, trying to deliver his load of British Railway Parcels to a shop on South Parade.

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♫ Memories Are Made of This… ♫

I wasn’t there, Dad wouldn’t let me go. (Hahaha!)

I was only an ankle snapper then.

I remember this fair. I was working at Tesco at the time, and had to from the Radford Road store to the Maid Marion Way one to take some cash… or it might be the other way around? Either way, I got a jolley good rollicking of manager Derek Down when I got back late on the motorbike, due to someone opening the fair and the roads being blocked off, as I recall. Humph!

Ah, my romantic period, this was. Not that I had a lot of success!

Look at those taxis on the right, South Parade. All Morris Oxfords or Austin Cambridges, very rarely any other model of car. The fair showing on the meter would start at 6d (2½p). Happy times, although the shared physical jerks were at a premium around this time! Bit of a blue period.

Got arrested at the football match at the City Ground. Thrown in a gigantic black maria, and let out at the end of the match.

Doing a bit better with gals now… Hehehe! Met Grizelda and had four weeks of rampant, beautiful, gorgeous, constant… I nearly got carried away there!

First time I’ve been late for work in my life. Not surprising!

Tsk! Young, middle-aged, mature ladies, lying around with hardly any clothes on! Showing things that old men like wot I am shouldn’t be looking at… Oh dearie me! I was so embarrassed… And my missing the bus home three times meant I was forced to sit there in ogling mode, for four hours! Ahem!

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So, there it is then.

If you want old buildings, a punch-up, be mugged, get arrested, or a face-full of cheap imitation Russian-supplied Parva-spray, the best place to visit, is Nottingham!

Bit, I must warn you, public toilets are thin on the ground here.

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♫ Robin Hood, Robin with his band of men… ♫