Keith Sanders the Storyman Podcast

With the Mayor and Lynn were Dennis McCarthy the local presenter from BBC Radio Nottingham who was giving their support to Lynn's efforts.  Dennis was also a well-respected dog breeder from Nottinghamshire.  We traveled to Butterwick with our ancient BMC lorry with trailer and Victoria Carriage.  In the box,  we had Juno and her son Jupiter who was to become an equine “celebrity” of some note...

These silver teaspoons with the crest of the RNLI have prompted this story which takes us back as far as 1950. We will begin the saga here, this was in fact the year that the chap who I assume is my father took his escape from my mother to seek his “fortune” in pastures new. BACKGROUND I should explain to avoid further complications that my father is not my father on my birth certificate. The cert...

I asked Sid for his help and explained what it was all about. He very kindly loaned us a proper towable shellfish ‘food sales trailer’.  Permission was granted for us to sell our produce at the rally and then we had to decide what it was we were actually going to try and sell? It was left entirely in my hands as our Hall committee only amounted to four or five who included Les Langstaff's fat...

This story has an unfortunate ending for those of you with as they say  “ a nervous disposition! “ There was a violent hammering on the side door of our house and we opened it to behold an accident right on our doorstep. Parked on the road and just a few feet from our driveway entrance was a Reliant Robin three-wheel car.  Some way in front and on the same side of the road was a small normal four-...

This time I was carrying animal feed in half hundredweight sacks. Feed Nuts we called them. A concentrated product was put through a machine in an animal feed factory, that made it all come out in short dry lengths suitable for animals to chew.  This load was to go to two farms, 5 tons to each which meant that each farm had a delivery of 200 bags of feed. That is 40 half hundredweight bags to a to...

The following is my recollections of the situation as I saw it at the time. We can not delve into the more intricate company details of Fossitt and Thorne as I was never prithy to that kind of information. Here we are looking from the outside, the way I saw it! The high times of ECYB the tyre distribution business set up and run by Ruth and I was when we were appointed the very first “entrepot” fo...

THE RISE AND FALL OF A GOOD IDEA! If I did not mention the fact before, the sole reason Ruth and I were appointed as the very first Uniroyal tyre stocking point in the UK was that Uniroyal wanted Harry Thorne’s business.  Firestone were now totally out of the way and the door was open for a manufacturer of premium tyres to take their place in supplying Fossitt and Thorne with their retail outlets...

WE ACTUALLY GAVE TYRES AWAY.............I BECAME AN “EDUCATOR” All kinds of ideas were floated from head office management to try and combat this resistance to a new product. In the end it all came down to the men at the sharp end like myself who did their best to ‘educate’ the tractor drivers and tractor owners.  Replacement sales of this new design of tyre was also hit hard and in the Lincoln ar...

The next part of his life is a little sketchy as we came on the scene after he had experienced a bad accident. Goliath was by now just over 12 years old and retired earlier than would have been normal due to his unfortunate upbringing. Remember his muscles were not what they should have been, they were underdeveloped and had a fraction of the strength and endurance they should have had. Goliath fe...

NOW WE TRULY STOPPED ALL THE TRAFFIC Cars were parked on both sides of the long straight thoroughfare. The pavements were packed with pedestrians and traffic was passing in both directions, until we arrived on the scene.  As we appeared quite suddenly out of the freezing fog, everything came to a standstill which I suppose is right and proper for a funeral. Buses and lorries, cars and pedestrians...

The First wedding should be called "A FIRE ENGINE CAME TO THIS WEDDING"  the Second could be called an"INCIDENT WITH A MILITARY POLICE SERGEANT AND A MOTOR CYCLE!" Both very memorable and amusing....after the event! Thank you for listening to our Buzzsprout audio stories. You can follow many of these with added film and photographs as videos and slide shows on our YouTube Chann...

A noisy, bright yellow forklift truck burst out of a yard immediately to our front and began to roar down the road towards us. The road was not wide by any imagination and we had nowhere to go and avoid this “monster” which had immediately caught “Hebe’s” attention and set all our hearts to our mouths. To our right side, behind and ahead of us, we were contained by the churchyard wall which contin...

I then went on to explain that the car was from the Uk and consequently right-hand drive. I also mentioned that Ruth was in the back because of the new little dog and the necessity to keep him happy and quiet. As we talked I noticed he glanced at the “tickets” on our windscreen, one is for the MOT certificate and the other is for current insurance for the vehicle. Both have to be displayed and of...

The phone rang and it was the Estate Manager from the Revesby Estates, he had his home and office at Revesby Bridge and could see the bank at the end of the Medlam Drain out of his front window. It was on this bank that our three horses were kept at the present. I had been down to see them earlier and thought them settled for the night to come. Not on your life, something had got into them and the...

Arriving at the town (Boston) I watched the buildings in all the streets to make sure the auger did not go through any windows or catch any lamp standards. Just by the Odeon Cinema, I arrived at some traffic lights at the approach to the river bridge. As I was slowing gradually, eyes in all directions at once, someone hooted their horn. My eyes were diverted for just a second or two and in that in...

The time came to load and our queue began to mount the ramp, at the bottom I lagged behind a little to leave space between our car and the line in front, I needed a run at it. I knew that if there was a hold-up and we had to stop partway up the incline we would not restart. The attendant at the bottom became agitated and jumped up and down in his insistence that we did not hold up the loading proc...

I BECAME AN “EDUCATOR” All kinds of ideas were floated from head office management to try and combat this resistance to a new product. In the end, it all came down to the men at the sharp end like myself who did their best to ‘educate’ the tractor drivers and tractor owners.  Replacement sales of this new design of tyre were also hit hard and in the Lincoln area in conjunction with our main tyre d...

For the first few moments, all I could think of was the situation encountered by a colleague on the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company initial training course with me, who had later used his Company car to assist with a rallycross event. The result had been a dented roof and caved-in doors. He consequently had to leave the company! Surely my problem was nothing like that? Could I be accused of abus...

“It was about 5 pm on the Saturday before Christmas in the centre of Boston UK. The football team from the 1st Boston Sea Scout Cubs managed to stop the local Salvation Army band who had been happily playing Christmas music outside the White Hart Hotel!”  The year was 1964 …... on with he story............. Thank you for listening to our Buzzsprout audio stories. You can follow many of these with...

It so happened then, that towards the end of that year we had a ‘surplus’ number of young soay type sheep and had to move them on. An advert was placed in the local paper and a young lady from Boston came to see them with a view of buying several as a surprise Christmas Gift for her ex-butcher father. She knew her father had a large garden and they could serve a dual purpose of entertainment and m...

You can guess the answer, can’t you…….Ruth almost ran back to that bin with a small step ladder… she is not very tall you see. On arriving, there was no one else around to see her antics, she breathed a sigh of relief. Lifted the lid she had used and dropped it back, climbed up her steps and into the bin itself. Thank you for listening to our Buzzsprout audio stories. You can follow many of these...

It was that very night after Geoffrey Coleman and his good lady wife had departed. Whether this was significant, stuck in my mind for weeks afterwards. We went to bed as usual but very soon after midnight I was woken by the whole room shaking. It is a very strange feeling, to see furniture beginning to move although it is normally well anchored. Your head begins to spin as the very air is shaking...

It was one morning before daylight when I unintentionally created something of an incident, it was very cold and damp, so cold the house needed a boost of heat. I opened the garage doors and grabbed three bales of straw, stuffed them into the boiler and opened all the air intakes. Nothing unusual in that, or so I thought, but the wind was from the east. I watched the thick yellow smoke emerging fr...

I have worn spectacles for long vision and reading for over 14 years now, but a couple of years ago.     I found that I no longer needed glasses for long vision. I could see brilliantly into the distance. At the same time, when driving I could see the instruments in the car and the view ahead equally well. “My goodness”, I thought, “my eyes have become bionic”,....or something along those lines! T...

Not one of those interspacial things that gobble up anti-matter and anything else that goes its way but something much more simple. A place in your garden where all the bad things happen. All the accidents, incidents and calamities, all in one place! I really did not think such a thing was possible until just the other week. I was walking a bit too fast to get back to a job, having retrieved a pip...