For the first time in the 51 year history of the society, the publication will not have a paper edition but will be published exclusively online. Just another sign of the times.
Yesterday I popped another video of our VE Day celebrations onto You Tube. It's a string quartet playing "We'll Meet Again". You can find it at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-JIjZOWxm8
I quite like this You Tube lark and am just wondering whether I can put together a tour of the village. Now there's something to think about.
I have heard that Ketteringham Lane will be closed next week for five days. Not sure why, but it seems a strange decision in light of the scheduled re-opening of the Ketteringham household tip tomorrow.
Once the family history mag has been completed it will be time to get stuck into the June edition of Hethersett Herald. I'm afraid I have rather neglected it over the past week or so, but I'm sure it will soon take shape and gather momentum and be ready in time for the beginning of June.
Many of you reading this will know that two of my loves are sport and music. Was sad to hear that Little Richard has died. The name probably won't mean that much to many but he was a gold plated rocker. Real name Richard Penniman. He was 87 but even that surprised me as I thought he would be a lot older.
I say that because as a young slip of a lad living with my parents in Reepham Road, Hellesdon, I had a wind up gramophone. A what I hear you cry? These played 78 rpm discs which were made out of shellac which meant that if you dropped them they smashed into pieces. You had to wind the gramophone up and change the needle that played the records on a very regular basis. I remember having a small tin with these needles in it.
Sometimes looking back at those days it seems hard to believe that just over 50 years on we are now downloading pristine sounding music down a telephone line to our mobiles - something the modern day generation probably just take for granted because they have never known anything different.
I still remember the excitement and joy when those 78s became 45 rpm vinyl singles and 12 inch LPs which didn't break if you dropped them but made strange crackly noises and stuck if you scratched them.
Then there was the excitement of CDs which were difficult to scratch short of taking a penknife to them.
Anyway back to Little Richard who is the reason I have been talking about a wind up gramophone which was kept in the conservatory. There were a number of discs. I had no idea where they came from. I seem to remember one was Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March Number 1 (better known as Land of Hope and Glory). Incidentally No 6 is also worth a listen. One of the other discs was Good "Golly Miss Molly" by Little Richard which had "Hey Hey Hey Hey" on the other side. I have learnt that this was issued in January 1958. So I would probably have been about seven by the time I was listening to it!
I thought it was kind of wonderful in a strange shouty sort of way. My grandmother obviously thought it was the spawn of the devil as she instructed that it shouldn't be played because "that noise will break the record player." I did play it when she had gone home though. Now when I hear Good Golly it immediately transports me back to those days in the late fifties in that conservatory in Hellesdon. So thank you Richard Penniman for the memories.