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I've been having a chortle at a couple of advertisments on the television at the moment. One of them is for the "New Electric Mini". This puts me in mind of an old "Electric Mini" that I rode about in back in about 1967. This was a prototype made by AEI (Associated Electrical Industries) and was taken on a tour around AEI factories in the UK including the one I worked at. It comprises of a BMC Mini Van which had the petrol engine replaced by a AEI V66 milk float motor. The flat platform in the back of the van was loaded with large lead-acid batteries supplying 72 volts. The motor speed controller was a very low tech arrangement called a "Chopper Controller" which switched the power supply on and off rapidly. It used Thyristors which were the only high power semiconductors available at the time. This controller made a very loud high pitched whine in operation. I believe that the EU want electric vehicles to be fitted with artificial engine noise devices for safety reasons. This prototype could have been heard from a mile away. The other advert that causes me amusement is for an insurance company that specialised in agricultural cover and has now branched out into household cover. It makes a big thing about new for old cover and shows a chap bringing in a replacement telly, The box he carries it in is marked 42 inch OLED television. Unfortunately the box is only about 2 feet long. It must be an inflate-able model like some of these modern mattresses that come in a tiny box until you pull it out. Daft I know but I do think they ought to have thought that one out better. It doesn't take much to amuse me these days. hilldweller Postscript. Further to the above I've been Googling and found a reference to the car. My memory isn't as good as I thought and the car was a BMC Mini Traveller. (A minivan with windows). If you google AEI V66 vehicle motor there's a link to it. The motor was in fact a V67 and the top speed 41 mph. It was produced by BMC on some sort of research grant I think. There's even a photo of it. hilldweller. s

She's probably got four kids and an arse like a hippopotamus now....move on.

Wow, you must be reading my mind SteveHB as that was going to be my next pic which I took last week. The building was covered in scaffolding and was half gone when I cycled past today.

Ash Farm Contents up for Auction. Sheffield Independent 24 February 1883

41 mph. hilldweller , a bit slow but probably a bit safer than this one. Personally I doubt I will ever take to one, I can't help associating them with the milk floats I drove over 50 years ago, As for the TV I doubt a modern advertising executive knows what an inch is, ----------------------- La Jamais Contente “The car in which you travel seems to leave the ground and hurl itself forward like a projectile ricocheting along the ground. As for the driver, the muscles of his body and neck become rigid in resisting the pressure of the air; his gaze is steadfastly fixed about 200 yards ahead; his senses are on the alert.” That’s what inventor, racer, and pilot of La Jamais Contente (The Never Satisfied) said of the experience driving his creation to speeds in excess of 100 km/h (62 mph)—the first man-made machine to do so. And it is electric ------------------------------ A few more here ------ https://petrolicious.com/articles/unplug-and-hang-on-five-interesting-vintage-electric-cars

Ive walked over that bridge loads!

Hi all. Robin Porter here. It was great to hear from you. I was at tapton from 1964 to 1969. I just about remember you Dave -we were in the same class - all this has got me thinking about my school days. Looking at the old photo's with the names shown brought back so many memories. I'll be in touch soon. Cheers Rob Porter

HI all. I went to Tapton in the 60's. a lifetime ago. Rob Porter

The oldest directory I have access to which includes Brightside Lane is 1879. There are no odd-numbered properties on Brightside Lane. However, on maps from the 1850s and 1860s what is now Brightside Lane is named as Bent Lane, and there is a Brightside Lane which heads north-east from Brightside village alongside the river. This later became Meadow Hall Road. https://maps.nls.uk/view/102345199#zoom=5&lat=1356&lon=2504&layers=BT Pure guesswork, but i wonder if 5 Brightside Lane in the early 1870s was somewhere near Brightside Bridge, perhaps one of the row of houses seen in the map extract below next to Naseby Street. Later maps show this row as 1-11 Meadow Hall Road - were they 1-11 Brightside Lane before the roads were renamed? https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/438496/390523/12/100392

History is there to be learned from. Several million men, women, and children were abducted, killed tortured and raped in order to build Empires. To be able to escape from the obvious immorality, people have been taught that African people and others from colonies are not the same as us. Black women still have problems getting medical help because doctors have been taught that Black women feel pain differently. So it lives on. The lesson from the obscenity that was slavery is how easy it was for ordinary people to be comfortable and accepting about the unacceptable whether it be UK, USA, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Spain or Australia to name but a few. Till Racism is gone we cannot move on.

I wonder, did anyone read an article by a young Nigerian journalist the other week? She admitted that one of her ancestors had been very active in the slave trade...as were many other Africans who made money out of it and that slavery was a long established part of many of their cultures.She pleaded that times were very different in those days. Perhaps we should just admit that a great wrong was done and that the blame lay with our forefathers... but, out of the suffering, a multi-cultural Britain eventually began to be established...no matter how imperfectly and that it should be all of our aims to make it work, fairly and justly.

I have picked up in my studies another person involved in the slave trade who lived in Sheffield and became rich from it and that was Edward Bennet, who lived in Coal Pit Lane and who built a sugar refinery. His sugar came from Liverpool, but he is also listed as an investor in a slaving ship along with Thomas Staniforth. His became a preacher and built a Chapel at the same time he was importing sugar from Liverpool. His father was an early Methodist and friends with Whitefield one of the leading abolitionists. So one wonders what the conversations were like in their family. When Edward died his estate went to George Bennet who became a clergyman, a missionary and an abolitionist and was a founder member of the Sunday school movement in 1813 together with James Montgomery. It is said that George Bennet was a big influence on Mary Ann Rawson, of Attercliffe and Wincobank.