Old Postcards
It took until 8th January for our first post of interest and it came from a teacher at Carlton Digby School who asked:
Does anyone have any old postcards (preferably written with an address and stamp) that I could use for a school project please? Even if it’s just a few to show as examples, I don’t need hundreds! Thank you so much in advance.
Here are a selection of the responses:
I have one from 1995 that a friend sent from Peru, but I would need it back please
There are loads in Hopkinson Antiques shop in town. There’s a whole section on the second floor. They are awesome.
It’s quite old fashioned isn’t it? Can’t imagine many children are familiar with postcards. When I was at school we sent them to school friends when we went on holiday.
The teacher got a selection of postcards to show her pupils how we used to keep in touch with friends and family. One of our followers supplied them with postcards from the 1940s which the pupils found very interesting.
One of the pupils named Tyler, even took the time to send a thank-you message, by postcard obviously.
Buried Treasure
On 14th January there was a community hedge planting event organised by the Friends of Breckhill Park🌳This park was created around 1980 after a section of the old clay quarry between Breck Hill Road and Woodthorpe Drive was filled in, levelled and grassed over creating a public park.
The event was a success and included children from Mapperley Plains Primary School who got involved.
They were excited about finding some buried treasure including an ink bottle and a dinky car!!! 🚗
Eurofighter
On 15th January, an eagle eyed resident spotted an unusual sight in the clear blue skies above Mapperley. The vapour trail or three jets flying completely in line, with the middle one slightly ahead of the others. Then one of them broke out of formation and veered away from the others.
Thanks to Peter James for the first photo of the planes (in line) above Mapperley and the editor for the second, showing one breaking off.
We posted:
Did anyone else see these three aircraft flying in formation over Mapperley this afternoon?
Apparently they were RAF Typhoons flying back to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. The post had over 80k views and hundreds of comments, including sightings from other parts of the country. Here’s a few helpful pieces of information
Chris Booth told us:
There was 15 flights yesterday on various training exercises in different parts of UK, couple in Wales and few down south.
Sue Owen-Bailey had this information:
Cobra 11, 12 and 13 on their way back from the Mach loop after some low level training to Coningsby. Formation was a three ship until one decided to break off and do some acrobatics. Cobra 13 is last years’ display jet, Blackjack
Beki Barratt added:
Flightradar said they were Warlord 61, 62 and 63 Euro-fighter Typhoons, flying at 40,000 ft and one of them at 745 mph!
Nick Shearstone described his experience to us:
As soon as they cleared the City and were over Holme Pierrepont, they decided to have a play. The Flightleader (A Flight Instructor no doubt of No 29 Squadron OCU) just put his aircraft into a spiraling drive and his wing-man had to chase him down. It was right above my head at the time. Awesome and totally unexpected especially on ‘The Litchfield Corridor’ a straight military transit flight-path. One of The Typhoons was The Display Jet ‘Blackjack’, its Union Jack undercarriage catching the sunlight… Jesus I don’t think I’d wanna be on board that diving straight down from over 40,000ft…😮 Must have informed Air Traffic Control at East Mids they were gonna have a ‘Play’ on the way back to Coningsby…
After all this excitement, the rest of the month went back to being quiet.