Myerscough News Jan-Mar 2000

The year 2000 dawns. Everybody was raving about a new millenium. I was trying to say it was the final year of the old millenium. Nobody listened. At Myerscough College I was trying to make the website more interesting to prospective students and employers with staff who they might want to send on training courses.

At the same time I was creating for the first time an internal Intranet that could be accessed by both staff and students. Obviously the layers of public website, staff intranet and student intranet had to be kept secure from unauthorised access. Yet each had to have a consistent look and feel about them.

So I designed each page with a coloured strip down the left hand side. The public website had this brown strip, so beloved of my Deputy who said admiringly most days, "Can't you get rid of that sh***y brown stripe???" What? I was trying to use earth colours - it was a land-based college! Besides I thought it rather fetching...

The Student Intranet (also accessible by staff but not the public) had a green stripe - similar to the green on the college logo. Finally the Staff Intranet had a red stripe. Maybe not so much an earth colour, but the college's cars were mainly bright red so that's where that came from. And by looking at the colour of the stripe those people with access to all three levels could tell which one they were currently viewing.

I pestered all the departments for news and tried to put at least one new page up evey day on the public website.

The college had bought a second-hand Range Rover to use in training students how to safely tow horse boxes. These were the most favoured type of vehicles in use for that purpose and it was important to make courses as relevant to the out-of-college experience that most students would experience.

Also whilst on the topic of cars, this is the college's very own rally car. It was a Skoda Favorit and had been rebuilt to rally specification by the students in the college's Mechanisation Unit. They had won the Grizedale Rally a few weeks previously with it and BBC Radio Lancashire came to the college to interview one of the lecturing staff and to record the (rather disappointing) sound of the engine. Skoda Favorits don't generally have a throaty roar...

There was a period where the college seemed to be featuring regularly on TV and radio. The principal of the College, Professor John Moverley, was invited to participate in the 2020 Vision debate on issues affecting the North West region, which was part of the NWDA Regional Conference in Manchester. The debate was recorded by the BBC and was shown on the BBC2 Sunday political programme, North Westminster.

On February 8 2000 Professor Moverley was on BBC Radio Lancashire talking about issues facing rural communities and plugging the college's upcoming student careers advisory open days. The very next day he was at No.10 Downing Street for a meeting with the Prime Minister, Tony Blair and Minister of Agriculture, Nick Brown who later visited the college.

Later in February 2000 the college was featured on Granada TV's show Granada Tonight in a segment appropriately named Show Me the Ropes. Appropriate because reporter Simon O'Brien was shown ascending up into the canopy of one of the college's many trees to do a bit of pruning under the careful eye of Myerscough Arboriculture Instructor, Mick Cottam.

On 23 February 2000 presenter Rhodri Williams of TV's Animal Hospital came to film a segment about a rescued pot bellied pig called Rasher. Perhaps an unfortunate name for a pig, but she had been kept as a pet when small and cute, fed inumerable treats and then when she grew to adult size had been kept in less than ideal conditions in the garden of the house. Rasher, having been used to food treats whenever she wanted had grown a little belligerent at having a more suitable diet prescribed and entering her pen without a large board to keep between your legs and her teeth was something of a risk...

Early March 2000 and a number of bird cages appeared in the central corridor of the Plant Centre. They added movement and colour and interest to a visit, the Plant Centre being open to the public.

I kept thinking I must keep going in at dinner and attempt to teach them to say "Hello John!" Though to be honest I hadn't a clue as to whether they could learn to talk or not and remembering the choice language of a parrot in the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor one time I decided to leave well enough alone... The last thing I needed was someone saying "I've seen John Burke talking to them a lot!"

The grain store. Or that's what it was on this day... There were plans to turn this into an exhibition centre. The amount of grain stored in the barn had gone steadily down since I started in October 1999.

A group of riders alongside the Plant Centre. This was a Sunday and I had gone into college in order to take a few photos of a dressage event that was taking place in the Equine Arena.

This was one of the contestants in the dressage event. Horses seldom used the I.T. equipment of the college so I didn't come into contact with them all that much and would have run a mile had I been offereed to climb on the back of one! Actually I did get the offer and whilst I may not have run a mile, I didn't take them up on their kind offer...

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