Skipping Rhymes

Many thanks to Moby of Laurie Avenue for sending this to us. She sourced it from an Evening Post Article dated 30th December 1996 by David McVay about children’s pavement rhymes. He was interviewing Reuben Carlisle and Dave Baldry, who worked with the Basford Bystander, a local History Magazine. Among the children’s rhymes:

Sheila Manners remembers a rhyme with a Radford or Basford bias:

Harry Ploppitt sells fish
Three halfpence a dish;
Don’t buy it, don’t buy it,
It stinks when you try it.

But the best one was submitted by T.W. Glover,Sandown Road, Toton:

My father is a sailor, he navigates the Leen
He has a wife in Radford – and two in Hyson Green
He takes exotic cargos to lots of foreign lands
And had an awful shipwreck
Upon the Lenton Sands.

 

Boulevard Gardens

Where do I hear you ponder?
Well, Boulevard Gardens is the official name for the pit (sunken garden) on the corner of Radford Road and Gregory Boulevard. I work over the road from thi pit and enjoy the frequent flash flood swimming pool that is created every time it rains heavily. The water streams down Radford Road and the pit acts as a flood break.
The land is owned by the Forest Group which is a holdings company based in Glasgow. It is leased to Clear Chanel for the advertising hoardings which apprently are in limited supply in and around Nottingham, making the spot a prime location.

Anyway, I’ve been taking pictures of the space as part of this blog project. Here is a picture taken March 2008.

Here is as close as I could take the shot today, 21st April 2008.

Well, Area 4 History fans, this looks like history in the making. If anyone knows what is happening to our beloved pit then please let me know.

On a side note, does the filling in of the flood break mean that my office will be periodically underwater? Should I pop my laptop on stilts? All these questions and more will be answered the next time there is a flash flood. I’d better build myself an ark…

Alan

Riots on the Streets of Radford? (1981)

Does anyone know anything about the Hyson Green riots in 1981? I have briefly heard about these, but I have no idea if they were a series of small scuffles or major riots.
Ruth of Gregory Boulevard