A Derann Story

I didn’t have long to wait for a new position as Les, a former student pal, quickly got me a job at Birminghams’ New Street Station, working as one of four second chefs in their very busy Taurus Restaurant & Bar. Hours were of the shift type, 7am-2.30pm and 2.30pm-10pm, and during that winter, the…

It was 1967, I was 19 and my days at University had come to an end, so with my City & Guilds qualifications in hand, I found a temporary position as second chef, while ‘Mad Jimmy’ took a months leave to tour Northern Europe. The Talbot Hotel, was a 17th century coaching inn, complete with…

With my days at Secondary Modern School at an end, I decided on a career in  catering, which meant three years training; one year on a pre-catering course at the Wulfrun  College, followed by two years at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, now niftily renamed the Wolverhampton University. The final two years were filled with lessons on housekeeping,…

I’ve always enjoyed the pleasure of reading, with my earliest memories being that of Nevil Shutes’ ‘A Town Like Alice’, however once I’d read ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ I was primarily interested in Science Fiction for the remainder of my erly teen years, reading nearly all of Wells’ fantasy output as…

By now my brother could be found regularly strumming a guitar, but I don’t think that any of us really thought that we had a budding Hank Marvin or Bert Weedon in the house. In a few years he would soon be walking around in a Kaftan, with a brass medal or bell on a…

In the 1950s and early 60’s, films on TV were still relatively few  and far between, and when they did turn up they were usually so old that even my dad would grumble. I don’t remember any horrors and I’m sure that even if there were my father would have made sure I was in…

Posts numberd 8 , 9, 10, 11 contained the main cinemas that both entertained and educated me for nearly ten years, while posts 12, 13 & 14 show my early excursions, but there were others… The ABCs Stourbridge, Edgbaston, Bristol Road and New Street Birmingahm. Odeons Stourbridge, Dudley, Walsall, Worcester, Queensway and New Street Birmingham.…

I’m sorry if these posts are seemingly just a list of cinemas and films, but virtually most, if not all of these visits to the cinema during the years 1963 to 1973, along with my magazines where really my cinematic education, one that would eventually enable me to take a job that would last for…

The Futurist in Birmingham city centre began its life in 1919. It was the first cinema in Birmingham to have screen curtains, was decorated with wall murals and seated 1,400. It presented talkies from 1929 and by the late 60’s was part of the S & K circuit. Twinned in 1981, It became a Cannon…

After the first couple of years had passed I’d found that I had to widen my parameters, in in order to find new goodies to watch. The Imperial cinema felt like Walsall’s answer to The Clifton in Wolverhampton and I began to take a bus into Walsall at least once week. This building had a…