Nicks` Cabinet of Curios

This can be found in the churchyard at Attenborough. The Chilwell Factory Explosion killed 134 munitions workers and injured a further 250*.   Because of the scale of the explosion only 32 of the dead could be positively identified, the rest were buried in a mass grave at St Marys Church, Attenborough and this blue plaque marks the spot. There is a second memorial, but that is on MOD property and is only accessible to the public on special occasions. With most young men away fighting in the war, many women worked in the factory - in fact one of the reasons for choosing the location (though not necessarily the main one) was that there was an existing local tradition of women working in factories, which was not the case elsewhere. The women were nicknamed Canary Girls as over time their skin would turn yellow/orange due to exposure to TNT.  I can`t hope to do justice to the subject in this short post, but would urge you to visit the many other sites with info...

Richard Dalby (ed) - The Virago Book of Ghost Stories - Virago - 1991 I bought this from  a charity shop near my home  recently and a key part of my decision to buy it was that it cost a mere 40 pence ! That said, it was 40 pence well spent. My own personal preference runs to rather old-fashioned ghost stories  but there again half the fun of a collection like this lies in trying stories one might never otherwise have come across. For me the best of the more modern efforts has to be Penelope Lively`s Black Dog. For the best of the older stories I would turn to Ann Bridge (The Station Road), Margaret Irwin (The Book) and Edith Nesbit (Number 17). Inevitably there were a couple I was not so keen on, but the only one I really couldn`t get on with was Elinor Mordaunts` The Landlady. There is an interesting contrast in the approaches taken by different writers. Ann Bridge in The Station Road leaves much unexplained and ambiguous whereas Ruth Rendell in her ...