Cassette Tapes - Why Do I Still Have So Many?

A bit of a rant from earlier this year . . .

Okay. It’s official – I am a hoarder.

I decided this morning to have a bit of a sort out of the tape cassettes that are kept in a sideboard behind the settee. I seemed to recall that I had one or two. I got them all out to have a look at:

I have 182 tape cassettes

(that’s in addition to my 800 CDs and 300 vinyl albums).

And you know what?

I don’t feel I want to let go of any of them.

If we look specifically at the cassettes (which, I know, I never play any more, what with CDs and my iPod being the currency of the day) . . . we find many of these have strong sentimental value (and some are simply priceless, as opposed to valueless).

There is, for example, a whole bunch of compilation cassettes made for me by Tone for various birthdays, with titles like:

None Taken I’m Sure

Tinted Foundation Eye Shadow

Devastating To Colours

I Was Surprised That Phil Hadn’t Rung

and

(most poignant of all)

Time Isn’t On Our Side: I’m Getting Horribly Ancient.

Then there are gems which ought to be in the British Museum, like

Two Evenings by Solid Water

Sgt Kipper’s Loony Parts’ Club Land

Treasure Island

and

Administrative Gardening.

Sorry Tone. I think I borrowed these off you in eighteen-fast-asleep and forgot completely to return them. (Along with your book on the Quakers). And, yes, I know, the two editions of Slightly Foxed.

Anyway, I just hope my brother is taking care of those copies of Target magazine as well as I am taking care of these tapes!

Meanwhile, if any of you out there have any ideas which will help me reduce the size of my cassette collection or (alternatively) suggestions as to how I can store them somewhere else other than behind the settee . . . please get in touch. Or if you have a philosophical outlook or any advice at all, email me back. I would be delighted to hear from you.

The Mystery of the Bowling Green Pub

A letter to the Shrewsbury Chronicle.

August 2010.

Re: The Bowling Green Pub at Meole Village.

People always used to believe that The Wrekin was an extinct volcano. I'm quite sure that for years even geography teachers used to pass on this misinformation to their pupils. Funny how these myths can solidify into 'facts'.

By the same token, an article in your Home and Property supplement about an absolutely gorgeous (wish I could afford it) townhouse on Hereford Road, may have contained a tiny myth.

It suggested Brook House was at one time a public house by the name of The Bowling Green Inn. This sounded a bit unlikely. I looked up The Bowling Green in Derek Row's painstakingly researched book, Shrewsbury: A Heritage of Old Inns and Taverns.

Mr Row gives the address of the pub as Hereford Road, Meole Brace, but other information recorded here suggests that the townhouse currently for sale and the Bowling Green Inn are not one and the same place. Firstly, Mr Row's book has it that the pub was rebuilt about 1850 (much too late to be the elegant Georgian building now on the market). The book also says the pub was between Meole Road and the Rea Brook in Meole Village. Well, Brook House may well be near the Rea Brook but it certainly isn't in Meole Village. Mr Row goes on to say that the inn stood on the site where the Leagrove House is now (which must mean that the building that was the inn no longer exists).

Can anyone out there shed any light on this?