Best Overall Photograph

A bit of good news yesterday when I found one of my photos had won Best Overall Photograph in a photo competition at work.

This was the first such competition organised by the University of Northumbria and I suspect there may be more entries next time... But, having said that, I don't want you to get the impression that it was the best out of only three entries or anything! There were some excellent photos on display in the foyer of Northumbria's Ellison Building in Newcastle and I'd not have liked to have been the judge!

I like to think of myself as a serious photographer so it's perhaps a little embarrassing to have to admit that this was taken on my phone! It shows the Tyne Bridge silhouetted against the sunset and was taken as I crossed the river on the Millenium Bridge.

Thanks to Northumbria University and their judge for excellent taste and to Janette Hillicks for wielding the camera to take my photo with my photo for the photo ...er... at the top of the page!

Thanks also to Northumbria for the Boots gift voucher that was the prize. Miss Franny has now given me a list of things to buy with it... She has allowed me to spend some of it on myself too! The list includes razor blades...

Large view of the winning photo at Flickr (click "All Sizes")

Aughton Institute

Last night we played the Aughton Institute. With Bob we were back to a trio for the night.

And what a great night it was too. The organiser had started out by apologising that the audience would be smaller than normal because of half term, but there were plenty of folks there and we had a great night, with a few request, a full dance floor and a return invitation for 13 March next year!

So any of you in that area know where to find us next year!

Farewell to a Young Friend

We said goodbye to a young friend yesterday. Christian was only 24 and had been severely disabled all of his life. Unable to talk, to move independantly or even to eat easily because of a problem with swallowing, yet with a huge IQ that made his problems so much more a frustration.

His gift was in showing people how much reserve they had, how much patience and fortitude and capacity for love.

We got to know Christian and his sister Hollie, who suffers from the same syndrome a few years ago when we were asked to play a garden party for their birthday celebrations. We have played several such parties and have got to know many in the family. Indeed, we were always treated as family, rather than as paid entertainers and it has been a pleasure and privilege to go and entertain them at those events.

It introduced us to such things as wheelchair dancing, as Hollie and Christian have many friends from schools and care centres who are less fortunate than the majority of us.

We were immensely touched to be asked to sing at Christian's funeral and we found the service very moving. Christian's parents are two of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet and our thoughts were and are with them and the rest of the family last week and onwards.

Rest In Peace, Christian

It's Monday, It's Plymouth

It's the start of a new week and I'm in Plymouth. Not an easy place to get to from Blackpool either by car or train, so I'm afraid I added a bit to my carbon hoofprint and came down by plane from Manchester.

It meant a very early start to the morning but then again both the train and car would have meant that and by flying down I was in my hotel by lunchtime and able to get on with some work this afternoon.

Tonight I've been out briefly to walk around the Barbican area and found it a place full of all sorts of restaurants and interesting shops and galleries. There's a marina full of boats - all deserted of course! It can't be long before any would-be invader has to parachute in as the country will soon be ringed with marinas without a break and, as none of the boats ever move, the invading army would have to sail back and say "Sorry - we couldn't find anywhere to park..."

I was up not long after 5 o'clock, so I'm knackered! I settled for a plain simple fish and chips, choosing a chip shop and cafe that had a steady stream of locals queueing up and it was a good choice. I can recommend the Barbican Fish Bar.

And now I'm going to kick off my shoes and lie back on the bed with my book, waiting for Clive to get here. If I don't fall asleep, we'll grab a pint or two before we head for our beds. Then we have two days of running Project Management workshops at the university to come.

Return to Work Index

Happy Birthday Jeannie!

Last night was Jeannie's 60th Birthday Party. The band played (with Bob on stage with us). Fran did the catering - and picked up so many compliments for the wonderful buffet spread she put on.

It was a very busy and very full day but all the effort over the past few weeks came together to good effect and it was a brilliant night that seemed over almost as soon as we started! Jeannie's birthday is during the coming week, but we chose the weekend for the party to ensure as many people could come as possible - mainly me I think at the moment!

There's a few more celebratory events to come this week. Jeannie and Fran are going off for the day on Tuesday for an all-day pampering at a local beauty salon. David and I were turned down as the staff said they had to have a fighting chance... Couldn't understand that...

Then at the end of the week we're taking a couple of days off work to have a meal and perhaps fit in a trip out somewhere. On Saturday the band have a club date in Ormskirk.

Today we have been unloading the cars - last night we were so knackered that we left everything in the car. Although Fran just wanted one bag out of the back seat. This was so crowded I opened the door very carefully as it was around 1:30 in the morning. Unfortunately whilst I caught the bag that wanted to fall out, it didn't much matter as it was upside down... A large Quality Street tin, which had cup cakes or something in it, fell out with the loudest crash I've ever heard and trundled off down the once-silent street! Sorry neighbours...

Back in the Capital

Wherever I end up in all my travels for work, and that's a lot of places, I hardly ever get the chance to see anything of them. Waking up in a Premier Inn you know you're in a Premier Inn because they all look the same. But is it Nottingham? Cardiff? Edinburgh? But there's just something about London that makes me want to get out and walk miles. Too many miles.

In London I normally stay in the Tavistock - an art deco ground floor and a few staff who have got to know me over the years. But to eat I always trot (stroll/crawl...) out of the door and down to Leicester Square to see if there's a premiere about to happen or anyone famous knocking about, or just to soak up a bit of atmosphere.

There's so much close by. The Waterstones on the corner of Trafalgar Square is open late enough for a mooch and there's the pillock-of-the-hour on the fourth plinth at the moment too... Standing still whilst painted as a statue has always struck me as a moronic way to earn a living and the result of too many students allowed to choose theatrical studies as a main course, when we need engineers, entrepreneurs and (desperately) people who can think of things we can make that the rest of the world might want to buy. We need living statues like we need our eyeballs pecked out by crows...

Anyway, far too often these London walks leave me with sore feet. So last night I decided to hail a cab and return to the hotel in a slightly easier manner. I ended up with one of those brilliantly witty London cab drivers, who kept me entertained throughout the journey. He told me how his son was a water polo player of county standard. His wife was from Serbia and whilst on a visit there, their son had been invited to play with a Serbian water polo team. The lad's verdict was that not a single member of his county team would stand a chance of getting onto that team. They trained 6 nights a week for 3 hours, warming up by swimming at a pace for a full hour.

That's dedication to the exclusion of any other pursuits and an acceptance of pain of endurance that does away with what most of us would term "fun".

Then we got onto the subject of cab drivers and their knowledge and he told me tongue-in-cheek how it was all for the good of the public and not for financial gain. "We're a service for the good of the people, Sir, we don't do this for the remuneration..."

"Ah good," I said, "because I've got no money..."

"Ah well, Sir..." he said with a slight sigh, "You can f**k off and walk then..."

Return to Work Index

Confessions of a Studio Photographer

My very first job - as opposed to collecting football pools whilst still at college - was as a photographer, working in a small studio in a northern mill town.

I was 19. I'd been interested in photography for years, had bought all the relevant magazines on subscription and, as most teenagers would be, was easily self-persuaded that life as a professional photographer would be either hob-nobbing with the rich and famous, or an endless succession of naked or near-naked females parading in front of my lens, from which every now and then I would have to wipe the steam...

It was nothing like that. For a start, the studio owner, who was incredibly handsome and well coiffured, had a monopoly on the naked and near-naked females - and an incredible method for persuading even the reluctant ones that they should be... "Brought a change of clothes? Oh... well never mind we'll do some bare-shoulders shots..."

For seconds, as the junior of the establishment, my job was mainly being up to my elbows in foul-smelling chemicals and in either near or total pitch darkness, developing films and printing black and white prints by the hundred. Most of these were incredibly boring passport photos, interspersed with head and shoulders portraits of the town's new but large immigrant population, destined to be sent back to relatives overseas and once in a while something that made me perk up (sorry for the choice of words) and smile!

When the owner went out doing weddings or other work I was allowed into the studio to take passport photos or to make appointments for portraits. Only if it was a rush job was I allowed to take the photos myself. However, one Saturday afternoon an asian gentleman came in, adamant that he needed photos taken and delivered as soon as possible.

All went well until he started to strip off his clothes... "Er... what sort of photos did you have in mind?" I stammered, looking slightly aghast at the trouser belt being unbuckled.

It turned out he was a wrestler - it was very popular on Saturday afternoon TV at the time and he was wanting promotional photos. He had on his wrestling tunic underneath his clothes. I was very relieved at that.

Later that day when the owner came back and asked with a grin; "So did you get anyone's clothes off then?" I was able to look back at him, calmly and coolly, and nod sagely...

Introducing the Duo

Well it's now official that Bob will be leaving Creeping Bentgrass to concentrate on his work with The Old School Band.

David and I wish him every success in the ceilidh band which has become extremely successful and in demand for parties, making it difficult for him to perform with us on Saturday nights!

However David and I are well used to performing as a duo, having done so on and off since 2004 and that is how we are going to continue for the forseeable future. We have a few club bookings coming in and bookings for 2010 are looking as though it will be a good year again for us.

We'll be travelling about a bit too - February sees us up in the Lake District performing for a wedding reception and March sees us back in Northampton at the big Billy Fury gig of the year - Sunnyside. But we hope to see our regulars at the usual regular bookings at Myerscough, Witton Park, Garstang, Heskin Hall, Larbreck etc.

A return to Highfield Road is on the cards too, as apparently club members have been asking when we were to be booked again. Given that David had flu that night (and gave it me too, grrr...) we can't have been too bad! Also clubs in Eccleston and Ormskirk are in the calendar.

The new album will be completed as a duo - it's been a long time coming, but I've released a few tracks from it now - in the left hand column of the band's blog you can download The Gambler, Have You Ever Seen The Rain, Be My Baby, King For Tonight, Forever Autumn and 24 Hours From Tulsa.

The album will be a full hour of music and, of course, I'll let you know when it is available.

Incidentally, the music downloadable from this blog is of me on my own. Top download currently is the Christina Aguilera song The Voice Within which gets around 50 downloads a month with I'll Stand By You close behind.

The band's music is downloadable from the band's blog and I reckon the new tracks may alter the stats somewhat there!

A Brief Time in Fleetwood

Fran was crafting. Making cards until she left the room and I vaguely heard the unmistakeable sound of boxes, drawers and beds being flung about upstairs.

"I can't find something I was looking for," she said. I made the mistake of asking what it was - as if I'd know where it was for Heaven's sake! So I ended up offering to take her out to a craft shop to buy some more.

I picked the camera up and we headed to Fleetwood. It's been said that the trams will not be allowed down Fleetwood's streets after the close of the 2009 season so I thought I'd see if there were any trundling up and down as the chance of seeing them on the street if the reports are true will be just a touch zilch...

Fran went off towards the craft shop and I walked down towards the Ferry terminus. I took a photo of the Pharos lighthouse just in case Health & Safety decide the risk of it skipping sideways a few feet and bruising someone's shinbone cause it to be demolished...

I mean - it's downright dangerous right there in the middle of the road. A driver with his eyes shut might run in it...

In fact the road only goes round one side of it these days because they've made the tram tracks into a tram only road which looks quite attractive I have to say. There's even one of the old original Victorian tram shelters at the stop there, looking really rather repulsive with no glass, some of the window frames missing and the whole in need of a coat of paint, preferably in some brighter colour than the multiple shades of dull matt black-and-chewing-gum that is its present state.

The road is in fact shared by buses which can whiz up unexpectedly behind you when your ears are attuned to warn you of the clanking noise of metal wheels shrieking on a track... I wonder if Health & Safety are aware of this?

Down at the Ferry terminus the restored Standard tram 147, Michael Airey, was looking wonderfully nostalgic whilst a new driver received training in trolley turning. He completed the task without any mishap, but a fat lot of good it did him because it's a one-way loop on the track at that point so he had to turn the trolley again. They've fitted the restored tram with a beeper alarm that goes off as soon as the trolley leaves the wire. Now call me stupid if you like, but surely if the trolley came off the overhead wire the driver would know about it because the tram would lose its electric supply and stop??? Must be a Health & Safety thing...

Fran caught me up. The craft shop was shut. We ended up having to go to (ugh!) Freeport.

I'm never quite sure what it is that women see in such places. How many clothes can you look at for Heaven's sake? There should be a law that for every 2 clothes shops there should be a shop of interest to men. Let's see... there could be a toy shop, a musical instruments shop, a DVD/CD shop, a book shop, a shop with naked women in the window... The fact is that most retail villages, malls and wherever else shops tend to gather, only have one such shop to 100 clothes shops and the only place I've ever seen naked or semi-naked women in a shop window was round the Amsterdam red light district on a guided tour. And then my complaints that it must surely be rude to look and not buy were ignored by Fran who kept me safe by way of grasping my ear throughout the half hour we were there...

Anyway the craft shop at Freeport didn't have what she wanted either. I had a look at the marina at the boats that rich people buy and thereafter ignore and then went into the cheap book shop and bought three books for a fiver. I had no money with me so I had to wait for Fran to catch up with me and pay... heh heh heh...

Blackpool's Historic Trams, 1985

1985 was a great year for tram enthusiasts in Blackpool. It was the centenary year of electric trams. Whilst other places had displayed electric trams, Blackpool was the first town in the world to run them on public streets and, of course, the only English town to have kept its trams in service to the present day.

The year was marked with the visits of several restored tramcars from different parts of the UK.

This one was a Blackpool Standard and stayed in Blackpool for quite a while, becoming a favourite sight on the Promenade. It is not the same car as the current Standard restoration 147 now named Michael Airey.

The Manchester single decker originally ran between Cheetham Hill and Belle Vue, where there was a large Amusement Park.

Glasgow was represented by one of their trams in its distinctive livery of cream, green and brown.

Not to be outdone, Edinburgh had one of its trams at Blackpool too. As I write, they are about to get them back! The last time I was in Edinburgh they were cordoning off Princes Street ready for tracks to be laid. I'll be interested to see developments when I go again!

But what about Blackpool's own historic trams? Well, they don't come any older than this. This orange tramcar was one of Blackpool's original fleet. It doesn't have a pole or a pantograph to pick up current from the overhead lines because Blackpool's original trams used a conduit system and picked up their electricity from a slot in the ground running between the wheels.

This, of course, used to fill with blown sand from the beach and every now and then there would be a short and a burst of flame from the ground, which made crossing the tram tracks quite exciting. They soon switched to the overhead lines which, whilst far less pretty, were quite a bit safer...

"Will I get a shock if I stand on the line?" asked an early female visitor.
"Only if you hook your other foot over that line up there..." came the reply.

A Coronation tram had been restored for service. These trams were first brought into service in 1953 when the Queen had her coronation. They were heavy trams and fitted with the unreliable Vambac equipment. Most disappeared but one or two are still about, though the Vambacs have been replaced by railcoach equipment.

The number of "boat" trams has dwindled too, since then, though public outcry saved some of them. They are the oldest public sevice vehicles still in service, having been built in 1934 and never having been totally withdrawn from service.

The mighty Dreadnought tram was a Blackpool original and the first tram to have been conciously preserved. The conduit car was preserved only through the happy accident of having been drafted as a works car, which also accounts for the continued existence of Standard 147 and Marton Car 31, which you can find at Beamish in the North East...

This tramcar is of a design that first ran on the conduit system and remained in service until replaced by the familiar double decked balloon cars in 1934.

Blackpool OMO (One-Man-Only) car 11. They were dubbed "coffin" trams because of the elongated nose and - as they had been built from stretched railcoaches and brush cars and the bogies were still fairly close to the centre - they had a tendency to start breaking their backs. This is their second livery in red and cream, after a sort of sickly plum and custard livery was quickly withdrawn.

The year also saw the unveiling of Blackpool's first named tram, the Princess Alice, only saved from scrapping due to a well-worn upper deck saloon when someone said "Well... we could take the top off...?"

1985 saw a grand parade of the historic trams on the actual day of the centenary - but that will have to wait for another day... and for the slides and negatives to go through the scanner!

Return to Blackpool Tram and Bus Index Page

The Fairy Mound

When I was a teenager, I used to cycle to this mound and imagine it was the gateway to an underworld. That if you lay on the grass and listened hard enough you would hear unearthly music coming faintly from below.

Where elves and gnomes waited to ensnare the unwary or lovely elven maidens with large eyes and few clothes offered enticements to cast off a familiar and comfortable life... That on moonlit nights the crown of the mound would lift on columns for the creatures of mythology and wonder to come out, looking for those who strayed...

Then I'd think... "Nah!" But... what do you think?

Return to Legends, Lore and Superstition Index Page

Another Random Offering...

The slides are still going through the scanner slowly but surely. But still as mixed up as ever! So today's offering is a mixed one again!

Starting off with a visit to Blackpool Tower Circus sometime around 1979/1980. I'm not quite sure of the year. The photo is of an acrobatic troup who had the spot right at the end of the performance after the circus ring has sunk down to allow sea water to flood in.

It was always a spectacular end to the seasonal circus show but this troupe were quite spectacular themselves - semi-naked and coated in oil and glitter, they were almost as erotic as they were acrobatic - though you get some idea of the balance and strength required for their act in this photo... Try that with the missus, later tonight!

The next photo couldn't be much more different! St Chad's church, the Parish church of Rochdale, my birth town, taken again in 1979, several years after we had moved to Blackpool. Rochdale is an old town - mentioned in the Domesday Book and, of course, the place where Alan A'Dale comes from in the Robin Hood legends.

St Chads has a strange legend that it was to have been built at the foot of the high hilltop that it occupies, but that the collected building materials were moved each night to the top of the hill by supernatural means!

The next shot is from 1990 and one of Fleetwood's Tram Sunday events. These events invariably involve far more cars and buses than they do trams - in fact these days more than ever, due to Health & Safety rules keeping the trams from trundling slowly down Lord Street whilst visitors are wandering all over the road.

Back in 1990 we just used to push the crushed and dead bodies to the kerb with the side of a foot whilst we took our photos of the parked cars.

Like this 1950s Ford Popular. This was the last Ford "sit-up-and-beg" model before more modern styling gave them a flat boot that stuck out behind and a flatter shape to the bonnet that curved gently into the wings. Dad had one of these - his first car and I remember the great excitement when he came home with it. I must have been 5 or 6 at the time. I remember he spent as much time lying under it with a spanner in his hand as we did riding inside it...

And to finish with - a disdainful opening sentence with the word "and" at the front... and a shot of a 1940s London Routemaster bus on Blackpool's Golden Mile in (I think) 1985.

It was the start of the Routemasters disappearing from London streets and it was to the advantage of Blackpool as the Routemaster made a fabulous sight in its old Blackpool livery.

A Rummage in the Attic

Well that's the end of Summer for another year. Can't remember when (or if) it actually started this year. I suspect we went straight from Spring into Autumn...

Anyway after several nights shivering I was persuaded to climb up to the attic and bring down the heavier duvet.

It took ages. There's all sorts of interesting stuff up there, from old computer bits and books and magazines to my old stamp albums and 78rpm records and slide projectors, Super8 film projectors, old cameras etc.

There's stuff that would make people on Ebay slather with desire I'm sure...

Like 4 bound volumes of Film Review magazine from 1977-1980. Only the January 1978 issue is missing. What would that collection be worth now, covering Star Wars films, Close Encounters, Roger Moore as James Bond, Saturday Night Fever and Grease and ...er... Mary Millington, Bo Derek and The Muppet Movie... Plus more Joan Collins and Burt Reynolds than you could shake a stick at! Priceless!

Wading waist deep through a huge pile of empty boxes for Lilliput Lane cottages I came to several large record boxes containing my collection of 78rpm records - Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly vie with Doris Day, Teresa Brewer alongside Russ Conway, Winifred Atwell and Joe Loss. Not to mention Jack Hylton, Bing Crosby, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Sid Phillips, Ted Heath, Frank Sinatra, Guy Mitchell, Max Bygraves, Debbie Reynolds, Lena Horne, Les Paul & Mary Ford, Gracie Fields, Spike Jones & His City Slickers, Chris Barber, Anne Shelton, George Formby, The Platters, Bill Haley & the Comets, Louis Armstrong, Lita Roza, Frank Crumit and Enid Blyton reading her own Noddy stories... I wanted to bring them all downstairs and play them!

Then there was the Commodore 64 computer - almost directly responsible for the direction my career took after I bought it with my redundancy money in 1981 when the wholesale Cash & Carry warehouse I helped manage was merged with another following a takeover (no such thing as "mergers"...)

That computer and this book by Peter Gerrard (where is that man today? I want to shake his hand!) gave me the insight to take an old Commodore Pet at the first college I worked at and I wrote an accounting package to deal with orders and invoices. That led to work on Student Records systems, to managing departments and administration in colleges, then to networks and managing IT and the fledgling e-Learning, to a national award and then to working as Senior Adviser in a support organisation hosted by a university. That book was the kick start in all that.

Oh... and having brought the duvet down I'm too bloody hot at night now...

Scanning! I'm Scanning I'm Scanning I'm Scanning...

Yikes, I've taken a lot of photos over the years! I'm currently up to 13,750 files on my hard drive with 4,161 of them currently available from my Flickr account but with many more still to scan from years gone by!

I'm currently scanning slides of the Lake District and some of those are finding their way to Flickr. I'd collated lots of slides into collections of the same subject for projecting (remember those nights spent in the dark watching a big screen?) and that means they are jumbled up a bit so I can't easlily tell which were taken when.

So I'm having to cross reference with my black and white negatives and do some intelligent guesswork (that doesn't come easily!) as to when each one was taken.

I've gone through around 10 projector magazines each of 50 slides and am currently scanning through the albums of slides that I didn't have spare magazines for. I have 4 albums for slides each containing 20 sheets of storage pages each page with pockets for 20 slides. So that's 400 to an album and I'm on the third album.

Fans of the Blackpool photos may be interested to know that the fourth album is the one that contains most of the older Blackpool photos. And after that I've got four albums of black and white negatives to go at, each of which contains around 400 strips of 5 negatives - so around 8,000 black and white images! So a few months spare time still to go then...!

Slob-Around Day

Miss Franny has decided we are going to have a "slob around in PJs day" as this is the first day since getting back from holiday that we haven't had anything planned on the agenda.

Our slobbing around so far has included tidying up after the pots were left last night, emptying and repacking all the cables, foot pedals, microphones and spare guitar strings into the band's gig bag - I can actually shut it now! Also I've finally created the Recovery DVDs for my computer that is over a year old...

And now the Dyson is leaping up and down with excitement, waiting for me to help it fulfil its function...

Bloody knackering, these slob-around days...

Blackpool Zoo in the 1980s

It's been a busy few days and not only have I not been posting here but regular visitors will know even the Flickr account has been a bit quiet!

So I'm delving into the past here going back 28 years or so which is a little frightening because that only takes us back to 1981 - sheesh, I'm in danger of becoming a Crumbly!!!

I used to take a lot of black and white photos back then as I was freelancing to magazines quite a lot. However I did take a few colours as well - on a variety of film stock! I used to use Ektachrome 64 a lot for colour slides as I used to process the film myself with some rather nasty chemicals and a bath full of hot water to keep them at the right temperature! It was a finicky business, but I'd been processing my own black and whites for years and wanted to have a bash at colour too.

Blackpool Zoo had a couple of tigers at that point and they are seen above making the most of the sunshine!

The camels had a spot near the entrance - as the entrance to the zoo at that time was along the path past the elephant enclosure. The elephants in those days shared the outside enclosure with giraffes and rhinos. Indoors were three different pens and only one species was allowed out at any one time of course!

All these photos are from colour slides, but when it came to colour print film I experimented with all sorts of stuff! Technicolor, Kodak, Agfa, Barfen (which I bought in 100ft rolls and loaded 35mm cassettes myself), Sakura, and loads of other weird names produced film that I tried out. Some of them were really grainy, lots of them have now discoloured making scanning the negatives a nightmare!

Azimat was the name of the zoo's most popular orangutan at that time. She had her little baby, Victoria, in the very early 1980s and I was there to celebrate! Azimat gave me a set of pictures that I had published in She magazine and the American National Enquirer and so was a favourite of mine!

Sadly she is no longer with us but Vicky is still at Blackpool and is now the matriarch of the orangutans at the zoo.

Kumba was the star of the gorilla pen and was the male silverback gorilla with the haughty stare and a disquieting way of handling his own droppings as though considering lobbing them over the wall at you...

Lomie, one of his female companions was another favourite of mine. She and Azimat both got used to me, I used to visit that often and they would be quite unperturbed at me pointing a "long tom" at them. I had a 400mm lens that was around a foot long on the front of my camera!

Who would have thought then that not only would miniature cameras be able to zoom into such faraway details but that film would not be necessary and that you would be able to take photographs on a telephone that you could carry in your pocket!!!

What a strange place the world seems now if looked at from the perspective of 30 years ago!

Wedding Bells in Durham

Last night we stayed over in Durham, after joining in the wedding celebrations of one of my work colleagues, Andy Stewart who married Verity amidst the wonderful setting of Durham Castle.

We motored over from Blackpool yesterday afternoon and met up for a meal with other friends from work. We had an excellent meal then a quick drink in a packed and noisy pub where I expected to be called "Grandad" at any point and then climbed the hill to the castle.

The reception was being held in a hall worthy and remeniscent of Hogwarts dining room! In fact after a few glasses of wine, I wouldn't swear that the paintings weren't wandering about and trying to converse with us...

Verity looked beautiful, Andy, every inch the proud husband. It was a good night.

This morning Fran fancied a swift look around the shops before we came back. I made sure she knew where she was going and then went back towards the river and along the bank to a sheltered spot from where I could sketch the hill and castle from the river bank.

I was under the shade of overhanging trees which was quite lucky as at one point it was raining heavily - the splashes in the river before me showing just how heavy. I hardly got wet and was able to carry on sketching.

This took about an hour to do on an A5 size sketchpad. I left a few details of shrubbery blank to finish later when Fran had found the shops she had wanted to look around were either not open or hadn't got what she wanted. I finished them off once we got home.

A good weekend!

A Hot Morning in Corfu

Friday, 28 August 2009. The ship returns to Corfu and we must prepare to return to the UK. However, our flight is a late one. We are not due to leave the ship until 7:30pm and so we go out to walk into Corfu.

It is first thing in the morning and yet the temperature is soaring way into the 90s. By the time we reach the old - sorry make that the New - Fortress, we are hot, a little footsore and wanting a drink. We walked past and then up the side of the fortress. It was built between 1572 and 1645 by the Venetians, with further work done to the defences by both the British and the French. Above the gate that is behind the palm trees there was a carving of a winged lion that I found later to be the emblem of St Mark. In fact it's official name is the Fortress of St Mark, but everyone calls it the New Fortress because there is an older one that we saw on a previous cruise.

We reach the Old Town, a place of narrow streets, marble paving underfoot and full of character. Arcaded walkways shelter you from the sun and provide some cool against the glare and heat of the sun. We walk past a large pile of boxes on the pavement. A van has made a delivery to a shop and unloaded quickly and moved off. On roads of this width even one parked car means the road is blocked until it moves.

It's too early for there to be many tourists about. Almost everyone we see is a local, hurrying to get their shopping done before the heat of the day becomes too unbearable.

The old town of Corfu has some interesting corners - or perhaps I should say curves... Those shorts are miraculously defying gravity! The Old Town is full of little squares like this - if not all so splendidly adorned by near-naked maidens... In the centre is an old covered well.

A larger square gave us a chance to rest our legs and admire the scenery. From here we retraced our steps until we hit the edge of the more modern town where we sat on a corner and ordered drinks at a street cafe. Two other passengers, Robert and his grandson Ryan came past and joined us for a while. Having had our rest we walked slowly back to the ship, my shirt almost entirely darkened by sweat as the temperature was now over 100 degrees. Our cases had been taken from the cabin late the night before, ready for going to the airport so there was nothing we could do about getting changed. But once back into the air conditioning onboard we started to cool down and feel better.

We had lunch and then wandered the ship for a last look round before heading for our usual refuge in the Horizon bar. I read for most of the afternoon - finishing the book that I had meant to read on the flight home... Then the usual wait at the airport, enlivened for a moment as I walked through a cloud of what I thought was smoke, as I was walking behind a lady and her son. She dropped her "ciggy" in a bin and there was a shout of laughter from her family. She had been spraying deodorant to cool herself and then realised she shouldn't have still had it, having already passed through security! Christopher Biggins was waiting to fly back home and was incredibly patient with the queue of people who lined up for an autograph. No one asked for mine... Homeward bound!

Pearls of The Aegean Cruise Index