IT was more than the end of an era when the Willow closed its doors back in 2015. For die hard fans, York s night life never fully recovered after the Coney Street institution staged its last dance back in 2015. The Willow, accessed through a set of steep steps, was as unique a York experience as a walk on the bar walls or a visit to the Minster. Part Chinese restaurant, part late-night disco, generations had enjoyed a late night bop at the Willow alongside a bowl of chow mein or a dish of prawn crackers since 1973 when Tommy Fong took it over.
YORK Minster is falling down - that s a sentence sure to grab your attention. And it is one uttered in this BBC report from 1967 reporting on the launch of a £2 million appeal to save the York landmark. In the news report, first broadcast more than 50 years ago on April 7, 1967 (which you can view at the end of this article), the presenter reveals how £2 million is needed to stop the building from collapse. Urgent repairs are needed to the central tower, known as the lantern tower, to prevent the Minster from falling down in the next 15 years. Severe cracks had been detected in the foundations and in the arches of the adjoining crypt.
When a British businessman and his family are killed in Japan, James Bond suspects a mass assassination. Investigating with the help of beautiful Japanese agent Reiko Tamura and his old friend Tiger Tanaka, Bond discovers that two powerful factions controlled by the mysterious terrorist Goro Yoshida are playing God. Between them they have created the perfect weapon, one small and seemingly insignificant enough to strike anywhere, unnoticed.
With an emergency G7 summit meeting just days away, it s a race against time as Bond confronts both man and nature in a desperate bid to stop the release of a deadly virus that could destroy the Western world.
Pickering s toyshop at 28 High Ousegate. Picture: Derek Reed MOST of us are probably still wrapping up those last-minute Christmas presents or - the younger ones among us, at least - waiting with feverish impatience for December 25 to dawn so we can tear them all open and scatter the wrapping paper across the living room floor. One reader, however, has been casting his mind back to the 1940s and 1950s - the days when toys were toys, rather than digital gadgets or smartphone apps. When Derek Reed was a lad in the 1940s and 1950s, there was one place that children were always drawn to like bees to a honeypot as Christmas Day approached: Pickering s toyshop at 28 High Ousegate.