Sunday 30 September 2007

It's Been That Sort of Day...

And this is before I opened it...

I started the day full of good intentions to strip the remaining wood board panelling from the entrance hall, the stairs and the landing.

Once I gathered all the tools, I realised that the battens that the panelling is fastened to go all the way up to the ceiling, which is a bloody long way up above the bottom of the stairs. My stepladders don't do stairs...

I could tear and twist at the bottom I thought, but then the battens are only 1/2 inch square and would probably break off leaving a bit at the top. In any case there would be huge holes ripped out of the plaster where the rawl plugs are fixed...

So I abandoned the idea and resigned myself to a day of fun...

"You can plaster the holes you left in the hallway then," Fran said logically. I hate logic. I hate D-I-Y too but I did have some plaster in the outhouse.

So I spent a couple of hours filling up holes, smoothing out cracks and knocking out a load of loose plaster in the ceiling corner near the door. I actually managed to replaster that too. I was quite impressed with myself...

Not quite sure how I'll deal with all the lumps and bumps yet but plenty of time for that next week or the week after.

So thought I'd open a bottle of wine to celebrate my success and felt drunk before any of it passed my lips...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lois Maxwell - the Miss Moneypenny. R.I.P.

Saturday 29 September 2007

A Wizard Encounter

There's a story behind this one.

This is my daughter, Gill, with actor Chris Rankin who plays Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter films. We were at a Memorabilia show at the NEC and it was 24 July 2003.

Too shy to ask him for an autograph she got me to do it. However Chris's manager phoned her up and said she had to come herself and they were holding her dad hostage until she came!

She turned up with a very red face and then, when he realised it wasn't a child they were teasing, Chris too went very red!

However the photograph made up for Gill's embarrassment!

Bayko Building Toy

Out of all the toys I remember from being a child, this has to be one of the favourites.

Before the Danes took off their horned helmets and stopped pillaging long enough to think up Lego (and Danepak bacon), this was the building toy.

You had a green base plate with holes in it and you stuck thin metal rods (oh my word, how dangerous!) into the holes and then slid the plastic bricks down between the rods.

I must have spent hours and hours playing with my Bayko set.

Apart from bricks there were the usual array of other building bits - doors, windows etc. It has to be said that the buildings you could make with Bayko tended not to be the terraced houses most of us lived in at the time but still...

In fact it was only the bigger sets that you could build more than one design of house if I remember rightly. I think I had three different types of roof - one house-sized roof, one L-shaped roof for bungalows - well I can't remember seeing an L-shaped two storey house anywhere round us so always built bungalows L-shaped. Then there were two flat pieces that you could build shed roofs with.

I gather the sets are much in demand now and I do remember reading about some enthusiast who was trying to make a model of Buckingham Palace with Bayko pieces! Hope he doesn't poke his eye out...

Return to Toys Index Page

Coin Slot Mini-Golf

The other day I mentioned a 1959 tenpin bowling game housed in a pinball cabinet.

Today it's the turn of golf to come under the playfield glass. Again, this is a game made by Williams, one of the big three pinball manufacturers. It was released in 1964. The player turned the mini golfer towards the intended hole by twisting a golf ball shaped knob on top of the cabinet. The 9 holes had to be shot in order and the game ended when all 9 had been sunk, or the player had used up the 27 balls allowed. Two buttons allowed the player to decide to play a hard or an easy putt. It was a two-player game. We take them for granted now. With electronics it's easy to remember all the current scores and settings for two or more players but on these electro-mechanical games the electricity merely moved reels or shot solenoids and the ability to play against someone else during the same game was novel at the time and required real ingenuity on the part of Williams' designers and engineers.

Coin Slot Machines Index

Thursday 27 September 2007

Blackpool's New Prom Last Time

No I don't mean I'm not going to talk about it again. I mean it's not the first time Blackpool has had a new promenade. Also not the first time that having decided to build a new promenade that they took the opportunity to build out to sea, reclaiming land back from the beach.

It's just over a hundred years since the last time the Promenade was widened. Most of it was opened in 1906. The final part around the Metropole to Cocker Street was completed 1910-1911. The postcard shown above has the middle circle segment labelled "New Promenade". The five photographs used for the postcard have been hand-coloured.

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Ring Pull Technology

I really can't remember why I took this particular photo - it must have been on some extremely boring afternoon in or around 1980.

The cans of drink have a new-fangled thing (probably not all that new by then actually) called ring-pulls. As can be seen clearly, they pulled totally clear of the can. To avoid dropping litter, the usual method of disposal was to drop the detached ring-pull into the can and then drink from it. Two minutes later your friends could practice the kiss of life (or CPR as the Ladies Over The Water might have it) as you stopped breathing due to "drinking" the ring-pull. Many an amateur tonsillectomy was performed accidentally during the act of removing one of these from the back of someone's throat...

Earlier drinks cans had no ring-pull or self-contained opening mechanism at all and required one of these fearsome weapons which hooked over the rim of the can so the pointy end could be levered down to puncture the tin. This, for any fizzy can of drink, caused a huge geyser of sticky sugary drink to fall all over the person standing opposite who up until that point had been enjoying the sight of you wrestling with it. The other, blunter, end is for taking the crimped caps off bottles of coke and other similar bottles. Sterilised milk used to come with such caps in pint glass bottles. I remember it tasted horrible and I could never understand as a kid why anyone's Mum would torture them so...

Return to Technology Index Page

Pinball At Home

I became interested in pinball during the sixties. I grew up with games like Gigi, Ice Parade, and Cross Town. After a lifetime's devotion in the arcades I decided in 1990 that I wanted to own a machine of my own. Living in Blackpool, I started looking in the obvious places - the arcades. I quickly found that not many arcades are manned by the owners these days and that, even if you find an owner, the likelihood that he has been waiting for you to go in to make him an offer is pretty slim.

I did find several people who said things like; "Old pinballs? Oh we smash them up!" I even found one who agreed to look out some old non-players for me only to have him ring the following day to say that his partner had been wielding the sledge hammer even as we had been speaking. The reason for all this violence towards pinballs? They are "always going wrong," or "nobody wants to play the old machines and they're not worth anything." It's the old story: "You're the hundredth person I've told... there's no demand!" Finally I found a firm who rented amusement machines to the licensing trade.

They had a stack of five pinballs in their warehouse, dismantled and left in an untidy heap in the midst of video innards and cabinets. They had been in the same place and position for at least five years. At long-distance glance (because you couldn't get near them for the videos) I could see two Flash machines and the backflash of a Gulfstream. There was no chance of any of the games being in a working condition the firm told me. "You might get one Flash working out of the two..." I made an offer for the five machines as a job lot.

The offer was accepted and we returned later with a Transit van. We left with six machines not five - I think the owner felt sorry for us. "They're nothing but trouble, you know..." I did not even know which machines I had until we got home and unloaded. Of the two Flash, one had been re-wired by a maniac, probably with vertically-standing smoking hair, and the other had been er… on fire... It had even been attacked by the Fire Brigade. It turned out that someone in a pub had pushed a cigarette end through a hole in the back of the backflash. When the smoke appeared the Fire Brigade were called and the fastest way into a smoking pinball machine is to use a hatchet, right?

Besides the two Flash pins, I also had a Tri-Zone, a Time Warp (with banana-shaped flippers), and two electro-mechanicals. One was a Lucky Ace, the single-player version of the better-known Dealer's Choice and the other, with the Gulfstream backglass turned out in reality to be a Spanish Eyes. "Ah yes," the firm responded, "I seem to remember someone breaking a glass and that one was a spare!" So, sadly, no pub had a Gulfstream with a Spanish Eyes glass!

The mechanics from the firm (once they could stop laughing) advised us to try to mend the electro-mechs first. So Spanish Eyes was placed on legs, the pins on the connecting plugs given a loving rub down with a bit of wet & dry paper and with a fire extinguisher handy we switched on. Nothing! Switch off and re-clean all contacts which had spent five years apart from their sockets. Re-check for the tenth time the fuses and for loose or dangling wires under the playfield. Switch on again. Nothing! Ok, so it's time for a brew and to wonder what we were going to do with six coffins, six display cabinets and 24 rusty metal legs. I mean, apart from anything else, they stank! Mildew was growing inside them from five years of damp and the musty smell was making Fran think twice about having one in the living room.

Now I work with computers. So the last thing you ever do is read an instruction book! But with a brew in one hand and an offspring asking when she can have a go on the other, the idea of hiding behind a manual seemed a good idea. Spanish Eyes, it transpired, does not automatically light up when plugged in and switched on. It remains dead until the left flipper button is depressed, upon which the attract mode (lights only) is activated. Having finished the coffee I pressed the button. Lights! I tried the replay button. Action! The game reset, and the ball was ejected into the plunger lane. The flippers worked. The plunger was weak but the spirit was willing. The ball entered the playfield via one of the five roll-overs. We had lights and action, but no music. The chime bar was not working. The game targets and bumpers worked but there was something wrong with both ball counter and the small reel which counted off the replays given.

Both these turned out to be purely mechanical problems. Parts that the beers had obviously reached had been where they should have left well enough alone! The game was a first-night success. It needed a good cleaning and lots of new bulbs and the odd bit of soldering to get it to work properly. The chime solenoid was replaced by one from the burnt-out Flash and we had music!

Cleaning was a delicate operation. Get a backglass damp for any length of time and the paint starts to flake. Spanish Eyes was made in 1972. If it had been laid up since 1985 then it could have been out on site for 13 years. From the amount of nicotine on the back surface of the backglass it looked as though it had spent all 13 years in the smokiest tap room imaginable. For overseas readers, a tap room is where men in flat-caps drink beer and show each other their ferrets and play dominoes etc. Sometimes they shove them down their trousers. The ferrets I mean - to shove dominoes down your trousers would be silly wouldn't it?

The playfield was in a similar condition to the backglass and the paint had worn down with years of neglect and rusty balls running over it. In places the bare wood showed through. We had been warned against soap, and abrasives were out of the question. The remaining paint would have just come off.

Water alone, in the form of a damp cloth, made little difference and almost in desperation I tried a drop of saliva on a cloth. (This was the most genteel way I could think of to say that!) It worked a treat, the nicotine disappeared layer by layer and muddy colours became brighter. One or two extra tiny spots of bare wood appeared. Some sacrifices have to be made... The game now plays very well and just needs a new plunger spring and nylon sleeve to bring the playing up to top notch.

The playfield still needs some work, though, and is waiting for me to pluck up enough courage to start colour matching. I have sought advice on which types of paint and the best methods to employ. The answer to all requests has been the same - "It's impossible, you can't do it!" I'm afraid I take the view that if it was not possible then Williams couldn't have done it in the first place. (We were later to find out that a screen printing process was involved which was a bit beyond us.) I would think twice about tackling a complicated design or a playfield where colours faded into one another but, surely, in these days of airbrushes, masking tape and a blob of Dulux on a two inch brush it must be worth having a go! If I get brave enough I'll tell you how I get on. (Several years later we were to achieve some success with those small Humbrol tins of paint that you use to mess up your Airfix kits!)

Oh yes - and as you can see - the cat was very appreciative of a silver ball to chase around after!

This blog entry started life as an article in the Pinball Owners' Association newsletter, 1990.

Coin Slot Machines Index

Tuesday 25 September 2007

Beeping Reversals!

Conversation between the women in the library at work this morning. One had been off for the day and her husband was expecting a delivery of gravel or something. They hear a loud beeping outside.

"Grab the dogs and shut them up, " cries the husband, "my gravel must be here!" Frenetic activity for a couple of minutes then hubby comes back into dishevelled and exhausted wife.

"No... it's Lily next door, reversing her disabled person's scooter..."

Leo's Lovelies

Whilst I'm in a postcard mood...

This is No.139 of a series of postcards, photographed in France sometime around the 1920s. Now Leo did have an eye for a pretty girl, unlike our previous postcard photographer! He was also not averse to the girls removing some clothing, it has to be said... This must be one of those series with which the French were supposed to sidle up to you in the street and say "Would you like to buy some postcards, M'sieur?".

"Get away, filthy postcard seller!" you would cry. But then when the wife wasn't looking, "Mais oui! Combien?"

Monday 24 September 2007

Blackpool Postcard

One of several old postcards of Blackpool from my collection. I can't claim to be a serious postcard collector, although I have several hundreds of them in albums and scanned onto the computer. At one point I used to make a point of buying postcards everywhere we went and I've bought several vintage ones at collectors' fairs and car boots. This one shows some saucy minxes lifting their skirts up to paddle at Blackpool in the early 1900s. Probably very racy at the time...! Has to be seen to be believed particularly for the sheer ugliness of the women chosen to pose... Ye gods, that photographer needed glasses...

Golden Wedding Gig

Creeping Bentgrass were out at Garstang Golf Club last night, playing for a Golden Wedding party.

It all went down very well, though I had a couple of small mishaps - the keyboard refused to work at one point and it was one of those songs where I play a guitar intro first so we had to play the entire song without any help from the keyboard so no drums or backing fill, but no worries!

Thankfully the keyboard worked after pretending it was a Spectrum ZX and switching it off and on again! Then the guitar went silent until I fiddled with the cable at the guitar end. That cable has now been ditched!

And after all that I started to play the intro for I Will Love You on the keyboard and totally forgot the tune. The old befuddled mind went blank and I busked a fairly nondescript but compatable intro, trying to ignore David killing himself next to me whispering between the laughter "You've forgotten the tune haven't you?" I remembered it once he started singing the first verse...!

If we didn't make mistakes, how would you know it was live? Ha ha! Anyway I don't think anyone else noticed apart from us.

Sunday 23 September 2007

Young Pops!

Hey, groovy, Man!

I love playing vinyl and have a saddening and somewhat scary ability to splash out on old decrepit record players so when I came across this old album cover on Flickr I sort of empathised with it straight away.

Although this couple do seem to have several day's worth of records stacked around them totally devoid of covers and protective sleeves... Probably not the best way to keep them in pristine condition!

Come to think of it if any girlfriend of mine had grasped a handful of records and ground them together I'd have done my nut... And what is she wearing for Pete's Sake - is that a travelling rug she's wrapped round her to cover her knees?

My Dansettes are currently up in the attic, as we had a bit of a space crisis at the Burke household. Not a space crisis as in Buck Rogers racing around the living room firing ray gun blasts but more of an ultimatum from Fran that she needed to see a minimum square footage of carpet in the spare room.

Question: how can it be spare if it's full to the brim???

I must get them down and have a play sometime soon...

My Cortina RIP

Still sorting through several thousand old photographic negatives and came across this one.

This was my 1972 MkIII Ford Cortina, bought second-hand in 1985 for a mere £250 when I was working at my first college, the Nautical College in Fleetwood.

The photograph was taken shortly after I bought the car, which had been resprayed in these colours which were then current Ford colours. The colour scheme made the car unique and everyone who knew me would pip their horn and wave as we passed them.

We'd park it somewhere and come back to find notes under the windscreen saying "Hello John, missed you but found the car!"

It was one of the best cars I've ever had. Even MOT mechanics would drool over it whilst tapping the sills energetically to see if they caved in.

It was a trifle under-powered though as it was the 1300cc basic model and sadly this contributed to it being written off in a collision some three years later.

WFV 970K RIP

Williams' Ten Strike

Carrying on the series of entries on coin slot machines from Blackpool and other seaside town amusement arcades of the 1950s-60s.

This is a 1959 Ten Strike, made by Williams who were one of the big three pinball manufacturers (the others being Bally and Gottlieb). Based on a pinball style cabinet this game featured a small mannikin figure which could be swivelled to aim his bowling ball. A push on a lever caused his arm to bowl the large steel ball (coincidentally the same size as a pinball!) towards the miniature pins at the far end of the playfield. These were attached by strings to the mechanism above allowing them to be hoisted up and dropped back down ready for the next frame.

Ten Pin bowling was never quite as big in the UK as it had been in America although for a while it featured on TV every week during the main Saturday afternoon sports programmes. At a time when the only available channels were BBC and ITV (no numbers necessary as they only had one channel each) this made it quite a popular sport!

Coin Slot Machines Index

Friday 21 September 2007

Motorway Idiots

I spent yesterday evening driving back from Glasgow in a tropical rainstorm.

It never ceases to amaze me how suicidal some drivers are. I must drive 35,000-40,000 miles a year and doing that sort of mileage you see your fair share of smashes, upside-down cars and even cars/lorries on fire.

Unfortunately they are not always the ones who deserve it.

I'm not a slow driver but if you are driving fast then you have to look a long way ahead and react to what is happening. At one point 60-65 was as fast as it was safe to go in the weather conditions. The road was absolutely covered in water and anyone on worn tyres is straight away at more risk of aquaplaning.

Yet people were zooming past me, doing the odd thing like heading off to overtake a lorry who was in the centre lane then slamming on brakes when they suddenly couldn't see anything because of the spray from its wheels. Or driving up at 80-90 behind someone doing 60-70 overtaking in the fast lane and leaving it until the last minute to brake instead of slowing down gradually. Or forcing a driver in the central lane to suddenly brake down 20mph because they were unwilling to slow down 5mph themselves.

As far as I'm concerned if you're are doing more than 70, you should be watching for people needing to pull out into your lane and it should be you that slows down if necessary.

Consideration - that's what it's all about.

Still, all in all it was a quiet night. 193 miles and I only saw two accidents... There again, from those 4 cars that probably left at least 8-16 disgruntled or frightened or hurt people, counting occupants and immediate family at home wondering where someone was.

Wednesday 19 September 2007

Glasgow City

As the new academic year starts, I'm back travelling the roads and rail networks of Britain again.

Tonight I'm in Glasgow, overlooking Glasgow Central Station - not an imposing view as these things go, but the double glazing is doing a good job of keeping the noise out!

Tomorrow Clive and I are delivering one of JISC infoNet's Project Management workshops to an audience of librarians. It's a while since we saw each other actually and at the moment he's still negotiating the M8 so who knows where he might end up.

My satellite navigation system needs a serious talking to, as it has a totally different idea than do Glasgow's city planners as to where the one-way streets are or which way you drive down them. It would have had me down three bus-and-taxi-only streets had I stuck to it rigidly...

Return to Work Index

Monday 17 September 2007

The Blackpool Belle

Ah, the Blackpool Belle! An illuminated tram, one of several built in the first half of the 1960s, this was a paddle steamer with the lights in the paddle wheels simulating movement.

For some reason it was sold off to America in the later 1970s, leaving Blackpool with a rocket, a ship, the hovertram and the wild west train as its illuminated fleet. Prior to these there had been a couple of standard trams, trimmed up with sets of external lights. One of these could be found at the transport museum at Carlton Colville near Lowestoft in Norfolk, where I last saw and rode on it in 1995.

Why Pinball is Pinball

Every now and then someone will read my pinball articles and email to ask "why are they called pinballs then?". I hope the photographs will help make the answer clear!

The pinball shown is a German Rodello that I saw for sale at a 1998 event. Pinball started out as an extension to the small bagatelle games where the balls where propelled up the side ramp with a short cue, like a miniature snooker cue. For the coin slot version this cue became a spring-loaded plunger that you had to draw back against the spring and release. This same mechanism in use in the 1920s and 1930s is still the same mechanism used on today's pinball machines.

The early machines did not use electricity and were generally smaller than the games we know today. They used ball bearings the size of small marbles. In some cases they did use marbles! Scoring was done by the ball falling into holding places made from hoops or baskets of small nails - the pins of the pinball.

Early electric machines had coils of wire large enough to leave a space in the middle of the coil so it avoided touching a central nail attached to a circuit. When the ball hit the coil the coil touched the nail and completed the circuit to advance the score. There wasn't much the player could do to keep a ball in play. There were no flippers until 1947 when Gottlieb employee Harry Mabs invented them for a game called Humpty Dumpty. There had been mechanical bats on baseball games before but these were the first electro-mechanical flippers.

They weren't the most powerful of flippers. Humpty Dumpty had three sets of flippers and you had to relay the ball from the bottom set up to the middle and then up to the top - a feat calling for not a little skill and practice! It was the start of things to come!

Coin Slot Machines Index

Sunday 16 September 2007

A Winter's Tale

Yes I know it's only September!

That's the title of the second Christmas song we are doing for the Billy Fury web site this December.

A Winter's Tale was a hit for David Essex in the days when he had hair on his shoulders. Well... so did I! None on my head, but there was some on my shoulders...

I've used the Korg keyboard on this one and it will be our first track using the Korg rather than the Yamaha. Very orchestral and quite different to our normal stuff. Moya! Have you got your Billy alerts tuned in? It will be BILLYant!!!

Saturday 15 September 2007

Blackpool's Illuminated Tram

This is Blackpool's illuminated tram. Well, I suppose I should say it is Blackpool's only illuminated tram still in service. If you visit the Rigby Road tram sheds and peer in (they won't let you in these days in case you fall and sue them - have I mentioned I hate the Compensation Industry?) then you can make out the rest of the illuminated fleet mostly if not totally from the 1960s, each of which looked superb.

The current one looks like what it actually seems to be - a normal tram with the top cut off in a fancy shape and a bit more fancy stuck on top. Sigh… There was talk a few months ago in the paper of the Wild West Train tram being restored and brought back into service. I hope so, but my favourite was the 1950s style rocketship! I wait in hope.

My Jukebox

I'm feeling mellow this morning... I'm sitting here at the computer with my jukebox playing 1960s sounds (Good Vibrations at the moment).

It's a Rowe Ami RI-2 and dates from 1979, although I usually have it loaded with 1960s records. Currently (I've just noted with a twinge of guilt) half of it seems to be loaded with Christmas songs... It does take a while to reload it to be honest. Well it does if, like me, you keep your records in specific boxes so they can be easily found again. Changing the 60 records that the Rowe Ami holds means getting out all the boxes, and then finding the sleeve, removing the title strip from the jukebox display and filing the record away in the correct place in the correct box.

Then you find another 60 and start to fill it again. If I had any sense I'd put all the records from a single box (they only hold 50 but let's not quibble) as this would make it much easier. I could then swap one box for another. At one time I used to swap them every fortnight. Now... well it was obviously Christmas the last time... I'm trying to remember which one...

Coin Slot Machines Index

Friday 14 September 2007

The Virgin Festival

Well that's enough to make my ears prick up... It was last week when Evy, one of the Ladies Over The Water, made a tiny comment in an email:
"I also received a weekend pass to our Virgin Festival here on Toronto Island."

Blimey, I thought, because I know she has a string of children, 5 ex-husbands, 3 or 4 lovers and a steady stream of workmen - although she's gone quiet about those recently... (I may have exaggerated here...)
"Evy - do you qualify???"

Then I got to thinking - what would the activities be at a Virgin Festival??? Hey! You!!! Keep it clean!!! But you see what I mean?

Then it got worse. She said, "I think I have decided to go to the Virgin Festival for just the one day. They are suppose to have a goody bag for me." Ok - now your minds are working overtime - a goody bag for virgins... What would be in... whoops - there's more:
"Anyway, I don't plan on staying long but I've never been and want to see what it's all about."

See I told you she didn't qualify! She's forgotten what it's all about!!!

And then afterwards:
"I went to the Virgin Festival yesterday at Toronto Island. Yes John, they did let me in. LOL It was a pretty good day. My daughter went with me."

Now that's just taking the mickey!!

"We didn't get to see all that there was to see but that's okay." Well yes, being a virgin you wouldn't know what you were missing I suppose?

The mind boggles...

Walking Race Up The Lights

Ow, ouch, oh my bones, agh, need hip replacements...

We walked the entire length of Blackpool Illuminations. Over 5 miles according to the map but either it is more or the average speed of walkers is nothing like the 4 miles an hour they say it is... We were with a group of women (hmm, yes I was the only bloke!) from Sainsburys where Fran works and as some of them were seasoned walkers we set off at the boggart. (translation - we were walking bloody fast!)

We had tagged on to a party from some ramblers' association and we took a tram down from Bispham to Starr Gate near the airport and almost as soon as we set off with some of the ramblers in front someone said "I'm not going so slow..." and we moved up eighteen gears. I had taken the camera but there was little chance of taking photos if I wasn't to fall way behind. As it was, I nipped to the loo when we reached the North Pier and then had to step up until I looked as though I was in a speeded up film to catch everyone up!!!

I took just one photo of the Illuminations and had to run to catch up with the ladies who were by then just little orange dots in the distance... "Do you want a jelly baby?" one asked. So who's got extra energy for chewing??? It took us just less than two hours to walk all the way back to Bispham by which time my shoes were smoking... Someone said they must be new because they had been squeaking... That was my joints for Pete's Sake!!!

Sore feet, sore back, hip joints telling me they do actually exist and I should be aware of that... Sheesh, I can't wait to do it again... groan...!

Return to Blackpool Illuminations Index Page

Thursday 13 September 2007

I've Not Been Well, You Know...

I've had a bit of a bug...

Apparently there's one going about that gives you headaches, sore throats and ties your guts in knots.

It's had me for two days and whilst I'm now back at work, I'm still croaking and losing my voice so I'm working from home so as not to spread it about. Uncommonly non-generous, I know, but there you are.

I must have looked bad on the first day because Fran was actually sympathetic. I think...
"You look a bit queer..." is what she actually said...

By day two when I lost my voice she had changed to: "That's good!".

Our daughter, Gill, came round to visit after work yesterday and said something like "Are you being pathetic?"

I croaked indignantly that I couldn't talk properly, which evoked the response: "Ooh - that's an improvement...!"

Huh! Women just don't understand how we men suffer with illness...

Sunday 9 September 2007

Christmas Comes Early

I've spent the best part of the day putting together a backing track for our contribution to the Billy Fury website's Christmas Sounds Special.

We are committed to do a couple of Christmas songs for December and today I've been putting together the song "I Believe In Father Christmas" which was a hit in the 1970s for Greg Lake.

It only sounds a little like the original because that's the way I like to do music. I would hate to be thought of as sounding "just like" anyone else!

Anyway it's been a full day. I did a full four tracks just doing the jingle bells! Then there was a backing track of drums, two of piano, two of accoustic guitar, one of glockenspiel, one of trumpets, one of french horns, one of a brass section, two electric guitars - sheesh, I'm getting sick of that song... ha ha!

It now needs one more accoustic guitar, David's singing which I'll double-track, then Bob to put bass and a bit of mandolin on it and hey presto - 4 minutes of Christmas!

Saturday 8 September 2007

Coin-Slot Hockey

Before the advent of video games, Blackpool's amusement arcades were still places where you could get very competitive as there were many games available for two players.

We have looked previously at racing games and the Sega basketball game. This one was based on hockey and each player had a simple knob to twist that in turn twisted the batsman and his bat. It looks and is a simple game, but very fast and very addictive.

Coin Slot Machines Index

Thursday 6 September 2007

The Drifters at Sainsburys

Fran works as a supervisor at our local Sainsburys and seldom comes home with tales of superstars dropping in for a packet of washing powder.

In July though (we've only just got the photo) the Drifters were appearing in Blackpool and (complete with guitar) dropped in to see Anne who was a big fan and who was retiring from the store.

Fran managed to get an autograph and has promised to try to get our band, Creeping Bentgrass, a high-profile gig at Sainsburys...

Wednesday 5 September 2007

Grease Is The Word

Stop that drooling, girls!

This is Theo Spies (it rhymes with kiss). He's one of Marlene's sons and I remember him as a 7-year-old, so to find he's now 5 feet 10 inches and in his final year at school is causing me to think that maybe I too am ten years older... ohhhh noooo!

Anyway, Marlene reports he is getting interested in showbiz - he's done some catwalk modelling and last night...well, let his proud Mom tell the tale!

'So I took Theo to the audition for Grease last night. We got there with his resume and comp cards in hand, and the whole cast started arriving. We watched and waited. Our appointment was at 7pm.

Finally by around 7.20 Sue came and took Theo for an audition. The stage manager or someone went along. I waited and listened to the first run-through of "
Summer Nights". (By the way, the girl playing Sandy is utterly GORR-GEOUS! And a great voice too.)'
So where's my photo of her??? Dear me, so inconsiderate!

'Here they came back from the audition, and I push away from the wall so we can leave. But she hands Theo a script and sends him in with the others.

I said, "
So --- you mean you are using him???" Jaw dropped and all that.
"
Of course!" she said and looked at me like I had two heads.

Rehearsals are lots - 3 hours on Mondays and Thursday nights, and 3-5 hours on Sunday afternoons. Stepping up rehearsals and run-through in late Oct, and the show starts on Nov. 14 - Nov. 17. He has to get out of school early on Nov. 14 for a Matinee. Shows will be at the Rose Theatre
(Toronto, Canada).'
Excellent stuff - you go for it Theo!

Tuesday 4 September 2007

Sega Basketball

Another in the series of entries about Coin-operated machines from seaside arcades, this was the first machine I saw with the Sega name.

>It came out in the mid 1960s, a green playfield under a clear plastic dome. The playfield was filled with deep craters, each of which had two solenoids capable of throwing the ball resting in the crater upwards and towards one of the two baskets at either end. The craters were all numbered and the player to press the correct button first caused his solenoid to fire and the ball to go off towards his opponent's basket. Only the front row of craters were aimed to actually score - the craters further back just sent the ball bouncing about to fall into a different crater so you had to identify which one and press your numbered button first. It was great fun and my brother Frank and I must have spent a fortune on these machines at 6d (2.5 pence in today's money) a go!

Coin Slot Machines Index

Monday 3 September 2007

Billy Fury Tribute

We have a new song on the Billy Fury web site for the month of September.

Last Night Was Made For Love was one of Billy's best remembered hits and my personal favourite and it also happens to be the opening track from our soon-to-be released third album.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Billy Fury was billed as England's answer to Elvis. Born Ronald Wycherley on 17 April 1940 in Liverpool, he became one of the Larry Parnes stable of artists, appearing on TV shows such as "Oh Boy". During the 1960s he had 24 chart entries, clocking up an impressive 258 weeks on the Top 50.

The website keeps Billy's name and music alive through an excellent collection of sound and video resources, interactive forums and the monthly "Sounds Special" feature which contains an free album's worth of music recorded by artists from all around the world. A must for Billy Fury fans and we hope that our fans will have a listen to all the songs not just our own. There is a facility to comment on the "Sounds Special".

Sunday 2 September 2007

The Tell-Tale Heart

I was talking to the two ladies featured on the previous post when a familiar figure thrust a hand out to shake mine and said "Is it John?"

It was the American actor and director Mark Redfield, one of whose latest and current projects is a film called "The Tell-Tale Heart" which I have mentioned before as it stars Ingrid Pitt, pairing this great horror film actress with none other than Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry.

Whilst we had only ever met online before, we were soon happily engrossed in a conversation about the new movie which is set in the dark times just after America's Civil War. Ingrid is set to head off to America for filming in October, then she has a very important birthday coming up. It sounds like there will be lots of famous people at that party! Then it's back to the USA for a bit more work on the film and with fingers crossed we should be able to watch it some time next year!

More as I get to hear it!

Festival of Fantastic Films

I'm sorry - I can't help the grin!

But, be honest, if you were sitting with two famous movie stars from both Hammer Horrors and James Bond then I rather think a grin might come over your face too! On the left is Martine Beswick, one of the fighting gypsies from "From Russia With Love", a helping agent in "Thunderball", star of "Prehistoric Women", "Dr Jeckyl and Sister Hyde", Raquel Welch's rival in "One Million Years BC" and many more.

On the right is Caroline Munro, a friend for an incredible ten years, the helicopter girl from "The Spy Who Loved Me", star of "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad", "Captain Kronus, Vampire Hunter", "Starcrash", Dracula victim from "Dracula AD 1972", the model from the Lamb's Navy Rum posters of the 1970s and 80s, and though she looks far too young, the "Face of 1966", the competition that started her career.

It has been a rather wonderful day...!

What? What do you talk about with such people? Er... dreaming of flying was one of the topics... Oh come on - yes you do...!

A Quick Catch-Up

This remains the last time I saw my car. (See Ouch! My Car!!!)

We haven't got it back yet from the body shop as the last estimate for it being ready, before we went away, was 31 August. I've not had chance to get in touch with the body shop yet so I don't know whether it will return triumphantly or not tomorrow.

The other guy's insurance have been paying for a hire car for me, so a conservative estimate for his little prang so far will be at least £1000 GBP.

There are 312 photos from the holiday so you just sit tight and they (not all obviously!) will appear bit by bit here or at Flickr.

We are off to see actresses Caroline Munro and Martine Beswick at a film festival in Manchester today so there'll be a few from that too!

Oh and we really do know we are back home - it's raining!