When my brother purchased his house in Forest Fields in the late 90’s the Nottingham Express Transit (NET) system was still in the early planning stage. It subsequently opened in March 2004 and provided a station stop at the Forest which was five minutes’ walk away from his lodgings.
The line either traversed out one way to terminals at Phoenix Park and Hucknall, I have progressed in this direction as far as the penultimate station Butlers Hill where you can go rambling. The other way took you through the centre of the city and the Lace Market to the main train station, handy for onboard commuting.
For many years there was talk of extending the line out to the suburb of Beeston and this finally came to fruition in April 2015. It resulted in doubling the size of the network to 20 miles and 50 stations. To achieve this, the designers were rather novel and inventive by taking the line over the top instead of through the train station.
Beeston lies 3.5 miles southwest of Nottingham and the national Boots headquarters is located there and the introduction of the metro boosted the town’s status as it added to their existing train station and their hourly trains to London St Pancras.
We had always promised ourselves at trip out when the link was completed so we finally achieved that ambition by taking the 45-minute metro ride out on Friday 2nd December 2016.
Our first port of call was the Crown Inn where an alehouse has stood on the Grade II listed site since 1830. The most recent incarnation is now owned by the Everard’s brewery so any pub that serves Everard Tiger is fine by me. Whilst playing pool we noticed the live game that night was Nottingham Forest v Newcastle, it was a dramatic match as the visitors finished with nine men and Forest recovered to grab a late winner in a 2-1 victory.
Another traditional beamed pub with fireplaces called the Hop Pole was next on the list followed by the obligatory Wetherspoons the Last Post. We had a gig lined up at the end of the evening but were intrigued to see what other musical offerings were available in the meantime.
The next pub Bottle of Slues provided the first answer. In a small thin bottle bar, there was a duo called the Sunday Blues Club playing who comprised of drums and acoustic guitar. If my memory serves me correctly, I am sure they did a very gentle cover of an AC/DC track.
In the Malt and Shovel, there was a grizzled four piece called Airborne on stage. My abiding memory is them playing a methodically slow version of the Eurythmics dark anthem ‘Sweet Dreams’.
The unhurried style of the track brought my mind the speed settings on my record player when I was growing up. Alongside the standard 33 and 45, it had 78 to play some of my dad’s old records, but it also inexplicably had a 16 setting.
The 16rpm setting was introduced in 1953 and had a very singular market as it was available in very limited formats. The main usage was talking books and speeches and reputably the most popular was a talking bible. The pro was the longer playing time and they were generally used as elevator music or by restaurants and the con was a poorer song quality as they were often pressed as monaural (one-track) instead of the standard stereo (two-track). The setting was phased out in the early 1970’s.
The scheduled gig was at the Greyhound on 85 High Road, the venue having a reputation as a local live music haunt. To be fair, on our visit the pub was teetering on its last legs and the final show there was a band called Smoking Gun who played there in November 2017 before the pub permanently closed. The band we saw there was the unmemorable Skeleton Crew.
We headed off for the metro and travelled all the way back to the Forest and the night as many more before it ended in the legendary Frog and Onion hostelry in Hyson Green.