Yoghurt Update

It was our worst case scenario.

The missing yoghurt (see the previous entry for details) has been spotted heading south on the M6 hard shoulder by fitness trainer Aileen Sedwaighs who at the time was crossing a motorway footbridge with her own pack of active yoghurts that were, fortunately, leashed.

"My heart went out to it," she said in an email a few moments ago, "it had indeed got it's entire belongings in a red spotted hanky. I hope it doesn't get run over..."

Motorists should keep an eye open for the bright green coated yoghurt but should approach only with caution as it is somewhat pro-biotic.

We'll keep you informed...

Have You Seen This Yoghurt?

Great excitement in the library at work where I rent my modest little office.

One of the Library Assistants, normally such a diligent person, has misplaced her yoghurt. She tells me she has retraced all her steps of the morning in case she had carried it about as she undertook her duties and inadvertantly left it somewhere, perhaps marking a recently visited page in a book on one of the shelves. She has also checked her boots, in case it had fallen in - I started to get a little confused at this point...

Ah - after she had taken them off, she meant... It's pro-biotic so it may just have jumped in...

Apparently the yoghurt is an active yoghurt too, so it may just have taken it into its head to wander off for a bit. A photofit picture is shown here. If anyone sees it walking along the hard shoulder of the M6 with a red spotted hanky on a stick, please send it back.

Venus - Your Strings Are Showing...

Every now and then my screensaver throws this one up at me from all the thousands of images I have on the computer.

I always think you can judge someone's age by the earliest Gerry Anderson show they remember. I'm a Four Feather Falls man myself...

That was preceded (apparently) by Torchy the Battery Boy and Twizzle but they mean nothing to me other than having seen photos of them.

Four Feather Falls was a western, in an era when both childrens' and adults' TV was dominated by American western series - The Lone Ranger, Bronco Lane, Cheyenne Body, Tenderfoot, Champion the Wonder Horse, Laramie, The Rifleman, Waggon Train, My Friend Flicker, the list is almost endless! I can still remember the theme tunes from the first five of those!!!

Anyway Four Feather Falls was followed by Supercar, then Fireball XL5 which is shown, during which colour TV came out which led to the first Gerry Anderson colour series, Stingray. The hugely popular Thunderbirds followed that and then I was getting less interested in things like Joe 90, The Secret Service, Captain Scarlet etc. Interest revived with live action series like UFO and Space 1999 and Space Precinct which was quite a bit later.

Right: me with the man himself - Gerry Anderson at Memorabilia in 2006.

Newcastle Trip

Just back from a two-day trip to the Newcastle office.

One of my colleagues who lives even further away than me was there too but in a different hotel so we met up last night and went for a meal. A little bizarre in that a waiter came up to the table at about 8 minutes to 7 and said "If you are still here after 7 o'clock it will cost you more..."

Apparently it was a badly worded attempt to say there was a discount for early diners! However what happened in practice was that plates were cleared and we were at the till in 2 minutes flat...

Gynn Square Trams

This postcard shows trams turning from the Promenade into Dickson Road at Gynn Square Blackpool. The route, to Blackpool North Station closed on 27 October 1963 and there is no trace of rails left anywhere along the route today.

At the same time the tram sheds at Bispham were closed along with the route to it down Red Bank Road. For another twenty years or so the rails to the sheds were visible in the car park of Alpic, a cash and carry that opened in the old sheds. Today the sheds have gone and the car park now serves a building on Red Bank Road itself - the Sainsburys store.

This being a John Hinde postcard (taken by John Hinde himself) it has several examples of the painted red coats, I mentioned in an earlier post! At time of writing the Gynn gardens are still there and have a colony of rabbits which can be seen quite often munching the grass and flowers!

Watercolour Blackpool Tram

If it's rare that I do any sketching, then it's a once in a blue moon event for me to attempt a watercolour painting.

Only about four or five of these exist at all. This was one of the best attempts, am image taken from a photograph I took of a Blackpool tram against a backdrop of some old cactus illuminations from the 1970s or early 1980s.

This one hangs in the hallway of David and Jeannie and I'm pleased (if a little confused) that they like it so much!

Return to Blackpool Tram and Bus Index Page

Road Racer

An early driving game from the 1950s or early 1960s by Williams. Road Racer had a small model car on a rolling drum which had a road painted onto it.

The car had to be steered along the road as the drum rotated, passing over the correct contact points to score highly on the speedometer-like scoreboard. "Accepted by every type of location" it says on the flyer - points don't mean prizes with this game so it could be placed in sites which did not have a gambling licence.

This was one of many driving games I remember from Blackpool arcades. Another simulated driving at 100mph at night where bends in the road ahead could only be seen at the last second, testing the driver's reactions. It was to be a while before they came with foot pedals, gear levers and seats!

Coin Slot Machines Index

Workshop Design

Yesterday saw me up in Penrith, meeting up with Clive whilst we discussed our latest workshop for JISC infoNet.

The Project Management Masterclass covers Portfolio and Programme Management, looking at where projects come from and how and why they are authorised. It concentrates on the senior management roles in directing projects and programmes and how they can empower project managers to act under their own initiatives whilst suggesting mechanisms for keeping information flowing and for involving senior decision makers where necessary.

The workshop is a one-day workshop and will be available to colleges and universities from January 2008.

Return to Work Index

Meccano Memories

When I was a nipper this was the must have expensive toy.

Most of the Meccano bits we had were originally my Uncle David's, though Mum and Dad added to it from time to time.

My best memories of it are not so much making models from it but using some of the angled pieces resting on piles of books to create marble runs. Where you put a marble at the top and it ran along the bits of Meccano, down allyways made from more books and onto other bits of Meccano.

Why did I not take any photos of those??? Probably because I was too busy playing with them!

Look at how the lad in the advert is dressed too. We did wear shirts, ties, pullovers and sometimes blazers too in the house. There was no central heating, only coal fires and until they got going and had been going for some time it was cold in winter!

Return to Toys Index Page

Dansette Destroyed by Cat

It is with sadness that I have to report the demise of this wonderful Regentone HandyGram record player.

It lived in a small suitcase-like container and played both 78s and 45s with equal wobble. This was due to wear on the bearing upon which the turntable rested and so it was possible to tilt the playing surface a little bit and just about impossible to get it to sit exactly flat. Anyway all that is of little moment now as in mid-record (Max Bygraves' Tulips From Amsterdam in case you're interested) one of the cats thought it would be a good idea to jump on top of the record.

Interestingly the motor coped with this quite well, however in turn this meant that the cat suddenly started to spin at 78rpm and he had a mild panic, crashing into the playing arm and managing to snap it completely off by breaking the Bakelite plastic. Max seemed to escape with relatively little damage other than a little excitement at being played in four separate grooves at once by curved claws... (Yes I know there's only one groove...) Ho hum, Dansette much missed, consigned to the tip...

Return to Record Players Index Page

John's Burkes

Yep, ok...

I've seen it now!

Sorted!

It was a mistake not a new collection...

Restored Tram out Tonight

Tram number 147, a Blackpool Standard, has been wonderfully restored and was out on Illuminations Tour duty tonight. We went out for a walk along the Promenade earlier tonight, braving the cold and the umpteen lightsabre sellers (£2.99 each or 2 for £5 from a pretty young girl or £2 each from a couple of blokes not as well blessed...)

Snatches of conversation along the Prom are always fun:

"Is that the North Pier do you think?"
"I don't know - which way are we facing?"

Blackpool is on the west coast - is that a clue???

"Mum, can I have a lightsabre?"
"No, you can have a burger..."

"No, I can't let you on this tram - you have to wait at that massive queue over there..."

or the old chestnut...

"Look at the Tower!"
"Yes I've seen it..."
"Look at that tram all lit up!"
"Yes I've seen it..."
"Look..."
"Yes! I've seen it!!!"
"Well what did you tread in it for then???"

Return to Blackpool Tram and Bus Index Page

A New Look and a New Name

Welcome to the first entry under the new blog name "John Burke's a-Musings".

I wanted the blog to be found a bit easier if anyone was searching for my name.

Besides there are hundreds and thousands of John Burkes. Bad enough coping with that never mind all the millions of Johns with any old surname. I'm obviously far more common than I thought...

A quick look on Google tells me there are about 4,760,000 entries listed under "John Burke". If you use google.co.uk I am the first of those with another 3 entries on the first page. I might slip down the ratings if you use any other country's google homepage!

There are a few noteables though - a lot of us John Burkes are musical and there is one after my own heart who performs with sea lions in Germany...! Good on you, me!

Hope you like the new look - the name will stay the look might change every now and then!

Belles of the Beach

A couple of people have expressed some surprise that my entry Leo's Lovelies about the French photographer from the 1920s featured a young lady only from the neck up! I mean - this is a family-friendly blog! Anyway I'm sure there are plenty of places elsewhere on the web where young maidens are featured with a little less modesty, ha ha!

But I shall bend a little and feature No.2 in the Cotman Color Series of postcards, entitled "Belles of the Beach" where, just to address a possible imbalance, one model is only featured from the neck down... Ok lads?

Toby The Tram Engine

A postcard commemorating the last steam tram to Heywood on 20 September 1905.

The small steam engines used to draw tram trailers were strange looking things, because regulations at the time required all moving parts to be covered.

This also meets the requirements of the challenge I lay down a while ago to find photographs of workers in uniform.

Trams started out as horse-drawn and were an efficient form of transport as two horses could draw a tram along smooth rails that would require three horses to pull over a cobbled street.

When steam trains started to become popular, steam was thought to be the answer to everything and so these steam locomotives started to pull trams. It was a similar engine that inspired the Reverend W Awdry to create Toby the Tram Engine to join Thomas and his friends.

Babbacombe by Numbers

In the old days postcards were a team effort.

First they sent out a photographer. Then they got someone with a brush and a few cans of Dulux to add a few splashes of colour - or a full blown work of art such as this one which looks like it started out as a black and white photo and finished as a bad LSD trip...

It's always fun to find a John Hinde postcard and spot the painted red jumper or yacht sails, but this one has been dabbed just everywhere! Even the rocks are glorious shades of red and gold!

Happy Birthday Jeannie!

Happy Birthday greetings to a roadie extraordinaire, diary keeper supremo, props finder, Creeping Bentgrass dedicated fan, wife to some singer or other and sometime tambourine basher, the ever youthful, glamourous, thoroughly lovely person...

...Jeannie!

Ah... 30 at last...!

We went round to whisk her and David out for lunch and the afternoon and we hope you enjoyed your day Jeannie!

Lots of love,
John and Fran xxx

World Cup Soccer Arcade Game

After the World Cup Rugby Final last night, it's timely to remember this old arcade game from 1968.

My brother Frank and I used to love this two-player game where players could be moved back and forth (but not sideways) by pushing or pulling on the appropriate toggle. The player twisted round to face the direction of travel and pushing the toggle switch down made him swivel, "kicking" the ball forward. In this example, the third red player from the right appears to have suffered a major injury...

Coin Slot Machines Index

Trial By Jury

Last night we went off to Garstang to see the Garstang Light Opera Group present "Love's Roundabout", a collection of songs about love and marriage, which led nicely to the second half which was Gilbert & Sullivan's "Trial by Jury".

I particularly enjoyed Phillip Bourne's rendition of "Girls Were Made To Love And Kiss", a song I hadn't heard for years and "The Rose" sung with excellent 3-part harmony by Marion Gaughan, Shelagh Cooney and Ann Johnston.

Trial by Jury is only a short opera lasting only 40 minutes but full of wit and humour.

Probably more so last night than normally as the jury had decided to "embellish" their parts for the last night of the show, with a few well chosen props helping to show their boredom and lack of interest in the case - puzzle books, newspapers, someone got out their knitting at one stage... Oh and a couple of hand puppets and Johnny Vegas's monkey puppet appeared a couple of times, though he, at least, appeared to take an interest in parts of the proceedings!

Then it was off to the Church Inn for the usual last night after-show party. David is a member of GLOG and the band have done several gigs for GLOG fund-raising evenings so we are almost honorary members. In fact it's only all the travelling associated with my job that stops me being a member of this excellent group!

So I ended the night playing guitar along with Peter Cooney for a good old fashioned sing-song. Fran had the camera. In her bag... You just can't get the staff...!

A Postcard from Great Yarmouth

Another postcard from my collection.

This one shows Great Yarmouth, Norfolk's premier holiday destination in the 1960s judging from the classic line-up of cars parked along the seafront.

We used to go to Great Yarmouth for holidays quite regularly as kids, the journey taking the best part of a day in Dad's old Ford Pop, or later in the Cortina.

We've been to many a show in the theatre at the end of Britannia Pier, shown in the background!