Blackpool in the Mid 1970s

More photos from 1975 have been going through the scanner. In fact there's quite a few photos been going up to my Flickr account (no longer active) where you can have a look at them in large versions.

We'll start off with this one of a "Boat" tram of 1934 on the Promenade. Blackpool is due to get some new trams next year. The artists' impressions I've seen fill me with dismay. Blackpool was the first town to have electric trams running down it's streets in 1885 and the only town in England to have continuous tram operation since the heyday of trams. It must require Herculean effort to keep a fleet of public service vehicles running after 70+ years of service, but if they required replacing surely you would want the replacements to still look like the distinctive originals? Instead Blackpool is set to order sleek, multi-carriage "anywhere" trams. I despair. The London Docklands Light Railway will be more exciting.

The Boats had replaced earlier open decked trams called Toastracks - because they had minimal body work and the rows of seats on a moving platform looked like a moving toast rack... "Toastrack" was the original official name for these, but the elegant prow suggested a boat and "Boats" they became.

Mr B's on the Golden Mile was almost the first purpose-built amusement arcade as opposed to canopies or glorified sheds built onto the front of what had once been hotels or houses. It was modern, it was two-storied, it contained rides such as waltzers and dodgems as well as slot machines and pinball. And at the time this photograph was taken part of the upper floor had been given over to a display of puppets and vehicles from Gerry Anderson TV programmes. From Supercar to Thunderbirds and beyond to live action programmes such as UFO and Space 1999 this was a fabulous attraction. I can't remember how many times I went in to look at Lady Penelope, Mike Mercury, Steve Zodiac, Troy Tempest etc. But it was a lot!

There was one earlier purpose-built edifice on the corner opposite the Central Pier that was partly demolished to make it possible to widen Chapel Street. This led to the loss of Fairyland, a children's dark ride full of elves and fairies that I remember from my own childhood. Another part of the building housed a cinema that showed a continually repeated hour's programme of cartoons. If we were on holiday as kids in Blackpool we always wished for one day of rain so we could watch the cartoons in the morning and go in the Tower in the afternoon!

And of course we used to throng on the beach, struggling to find a tiny spot of sand where we could set up Mum and Dad's deck chairs hired from a great pile on the Promenade. Canvas or raffia windbreak was added if it was windy. Buckets and spades and a ball and that was us set for hours. We built sand pies, sand castles, great mounds containing chutes, tunnels and dips that we could roll the ball down. Kids on beaches these days? Pah! They wouldn't have a clue what to do. "But it doesn't plug in!" they would wail... And the ice cream vans of the day kept their wares frozen with nothing more than insulation and huge chunks of ice that rapidly turned to water. Ice cream was frozen so much at the start of the day that a gob full of crunchy ice cream was often what you got! Oh, the nostalgia!

And the railings along the edge of the Promenade would groan under the weight of pensioners, looking out to sea as though sighting a whale were a regular occurrence. Overheard conversations would be along the lines of "Eeh, she might just as well have not got anything on at all! Look at that bit of string she calls a cossie, Elsie! Bert! Bert! You takes your eyes off her!"

The massive waste bins were necessary to contain all the rubbish generated by the tens of thousands of people on the beach and Promenade on a sunny day. Even then, piles of waste would surround them once they became full. Wasps would come on their own holidays just to hover around them! Happy days... I wonder what the next few negatives will bring?

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Bygone Blackpool

Negatives from 1976 were going through the scanner last night. It was the year Fran and I were married and moved to Blackpool and I can't believe how long ago it is now. Blackpool has changed a lot since then and the change continues and will forever continue.

Here's an image that illustrates that point very well. It was taken in May 1976, probably over the Spring Bank Holiday, though I'm not certain of the exact date. There's a fair number of poeple on the Promenade though!

The pedestrian footbridge was built towards the end of the 1960s, the only one of a planned number of bridges to be built. It looked ok on the Promenade side but led to a grotty dingy platform of concrete on the other side that was isolated and not pleasant to walk past in order to get down to street level. The bridge was finally demolished earlier this year. Gone is the wonderful viewpoint for taking photos of the Illuminations, trams, parades, storm waves...

However progress continues - it is Blackpool's official motto, let's not forget! And so the sea wall curves that caused those fantastically high smashing waves during stormy high tides are now in the process of disappearing themselves and Blackpool's seafront will be a graceful sweep of steps that for some reason the Corporation want to call the Spanish Steps, as though Blackpool has any reason to feel fondly for our European cousin that has taken so mch trade away from the town's hotels and guest houses!

Once they are in place the high smashing waves soaring up to wet the tops of the lamp posts will be things of the past. Storms will be a lot less spectacular - but perhaps will cause less loss of life. I hope so. Far too many people have been swept out by a wave they were dodging...

On the left of the photo is something that was to disappear from Blackpool not all that long after the photo was taken. The pleasure boats and the ancient World War II vintage lorries that towed the boats to the sea and then ferried passengers to them from the beach.

Boat trips from Blackpool were not spectacular I'm afraid. It's a long straight piece of coast. No rocks, no seals, no dolphins or sharks, no corners to go round for a different view. Just the long line of Blackpool that for 15 minutes got thinner between sea and sky and then got fatter as the half hour trip returned. "That were nice!" someone would say. But it was just the boatman trying to cheer passengers up...

Blackpool - as a borough with a Corporation - was 100 years old in 1976. Visitors had been going to Blackpool for a bit o' fun since before 1876, but some semblance of order, things like sewers and stuff, started to be seen in Blackpool from then. Well... started to not be seen in the case of sewers...

The tram was duly decorated for the year. The following year the words "Blackpool Centenary" were removed and the words "Silver Jubilee" were installed in their place. Progress moves onwards - but don't miss a trick!

Snow On Them Thar Hills!

At the end of last week I found myself travelling up to Edinburgh, to run a Project Management workshop to one of the local education institutions.

There had been snow up in Edinburgh. Flipping heck, there had been snow in Blackpool! In April!

In Blackpool of course, it was 5 minutes in the air and then after an hour all traces of it had disappeared, but up in Scotland there were all sorts of problems. I was on the train, however rather than driving up so I set off wondering whether I would see any snow or whether, as has happened so many times, it would be all "further up" and I'd be disappointed.

I wasn't disappointed. Up to Carlisle I'd not seen any white stuff at all and then settled my nose into a book. By the time I looked up again it was to behold a totally winter landscape of unbroken white fields and full raging streams and rivers.

Even looking down from the train window the rails beside our train were invisible - there were just lines cut like a white gorge into the snow! It looked wonderful - it always does from comparitive warmth and comfort...!

By the time I got to Edinburgh, the city itself was snow-free, though as this view shows, taken early the following morning, the hills around Edinburgh bore evidence that there had been quite a bit of the white stuff!

After just one day, as I travelled back down to Blackpool, the once white fields were now patched with random white splotches amongst the green. My nose went back to my book...

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Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1974

The last few negatives to go through the scanner have been from 1974 and were taken on Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

It's fascinating going through the old negatives for several reasons. One because they show a world that has gone now.

Many of the rides and architecture shown on these photos have disappeared, or were soon to disappear like the round globe on top of the Big Dipper shown here. Others were destined to disappear twenty years later, like the Log Flume.

Access to rides for photographers seemed easier then - before the shops and businesses of Ocean Boulevard were built, there was an open sight line onto the front of the southern half of the park overlooking the Log Flume and Big Dipper.

This was the Tom Sawyer ride - a gentle ride on a raft that followed a pre-determined path on the lake underneath the Log Flume.

What could be more romantic than gliding along between the concrete pillars and getting dripped on whenever you went under the Log Flume track?

The photos are also interesting for the people. The fashions of the day, the fact that so many of the photos are aimed at pretty girls (I was only 20 and single at the time!) and the fact that you can now look back and think "how did people manage before mobile phones, computers, texting, Rubik's Cube...?"

And it's worth thinking about the habits and what more modern habits have cost. The pretty girl behind the counter sells a small bag of popcorn. These days she would hand you a bucket full. But look at the size of most of the people in these photos - and not just the pretty young girls! In 1974 if you wanted a cup of coffee you bought a cup of coffee. Not a mug. Certainly not a pint or more. These days when fast food operators ask "Do you want to go large with that?" they unwittingly are asking the exact correct question. Not "Do you want that to go large?" but "Do you want to go large with that?" It's a strange world.

Many of the rides featured in the photos still exist on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. They date back a long way in fact. The Big Dipper was built in 1924. The Grand National of 1936 was always my personal favourite ride, even after the Big One was built. The Derby Racer, shown here was a simple large-scale carousel, but fast enough that the centrifugal force meant you had to have strength in your knees to stop you flying off the outside horses! I wonder which of the two young gentlemen she favoured... Surely that's one of the Osmonds on the right...? Who??? Yes, alright, I'm getting on in age you know...

And did you know that the Pleasure Beach used to build its own dodgem cars? They had workshops where the cars were designed and moulded out of fibreglass... Dodgems were at first flimsy things. The idea was to dodge other cars, hence the name. The early examples in the 1920s had little or no protection for the rider but the ride changed over time so that the main aim by the 1950s was to continually ram other cars. Happy days.

And none of these people were worrying about what their friends were doing or wanting to phone them - which would have meant finding a public telephone box and hoping they were at home - and were blissfully unaware of what an email was never mind a text.

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Billy Fury Weekend

Friday 19 March. We bundled keyboard, guitar, bag of cables, microphone stands into the car boot and then took it all out again to get the suitcase in before setting off to pick up David and Jeannie. All the stuff had to come out again whilst we rearranged the jigsaw in the boot and then we were off, throwing money with wild abandon and using the M6 toll road to save a bit of time, then stopping at the services to use it up again... The sandwiches we had brought from home went down better with a few chips and then we were off again towards Northampton.

It was the weekend of the Sunnyside meeting where Billy Fury fans and many artists come together over the weekend to celebrate the life of one of England's first rock and roll stars and greatest singers. The Sunnyside club was the last venue ever played by Billy before his death at far too young an age in 1983.

One of the first people we met was Macclesfield artist, Dave Jay. We'd spoken on the phone many moons ago but it was the first time we'd met. We found a few people in the function room, but organiser Harry was getting nervous as top Billy tribute artist, Rob Dee was running late and couldn't be contacted. As Rob was providing the sound equipment for Friday night this could have led to a problem! We needn't have worried though, as Rob and wife Chris had been sitting in the car listening to a horse called A Thousand Stars (the title of one of Billy's hits) romping home at 20 to 1!!! "I should have had money on it!" said Rob.

We set up the gear and played a couple of songs to practice then Miss Franny and Jeannie firmly grasped our ears and led us off to the restaurant. Fed and watered we changed, David and I into matching red shirts. "We look like we've had the operation to separate us and are too tight to buy new shirts..." I said.

Harry had asked us to prepare an hour's set for the Friday night and we sat watching the other artists, loving every minute, but hearing many of the songs we had planned on singing. During one of the breaks I swapped a few files about on the keyboard so we wouldn't play all duplicates! Colin Paul who was the headline act for Saturday and who we had met at a Billy event in Blackpool sat next to us and said "I can't wait to hear you two!" "Why?" I asked. "I've heard so much about you!" he said. Well it isn't true Colin, it was an accident and anyway we were miles away...

There were a few singers we hadn't heard before. Last year was our first Sunnyside anyway, but this year we were impressed by the standards set by newcomers Dave Wilcox and Paul Ritchie along with singers we met last year such as Geoff Howlett, Phil Jennings, Frank Bucknall and more. Rob Dee gave us a few songs. He's a superb artist and as nice a man as you could care to meet. We were sitting with his wife Chris. Dave Jay sang and we mentally crossed Cliff's The Young Ones off our set list... but when we came out the audience were nicely warmed up and immediately started to sing along. Whether this was to drown us out or just because they were enjoying themselves wasn't clear...

We played a somewhat eclectic mix... I'd bet no-one has ever played Justin Hayward's Forever Autumn at Sunnyside before but it seemed to go down well! Then we got into a run of Billy songs, When Will You Say I Love You, Like I've Never Been Gone, Somebody Else's Girl, A Thousand Stars, King For Tonight, and the first public airing of a new arrangement of I'm Lost Without You.

At some point Rob Dee slapped a couple of wigs on our heads. By heck, I came over all nostalgic... Looking at the photos we look complete prats, but perhaps that's an improvement! Perhaps I shouldn't have made this photo clearer - we probably looked better half hidden by the smoke of Rob's smoke machine!

The following day we were at Sunnyside early and had lunch there. Very good it was too. We set up the gear, did a sound check and then sat down to enjoy the singers. Harry dropped the wonderful bombshell that Jean Wycherley was here. We all stood to welcome Billy Fury's mum. Paul Ritchie had the unenviable task of singing in front of her first, but handled it with what appeared to be ease and confidence.

Our slot came closer and we got changed into black suits, black shirts and sequinned cerise ties... The things I do... David and I went together into the disabled toilet to get changed - God knows what anyone outside might have thought, there was a great deal of hilarity ...

The ties looked as though our tongues were hanging out but across the room Jean Wycherley had noticed us and gave me a nod of approval - or perhaps she was laughing, I'm not sure... Yes I am, she's far too lovely a person to laugh at someone!

There wasn't a single ropey act that evening, they were all brilliant. Snowy gave us a rock 'n' roll set last year but gave us a few ballads this year. He looks the biz with his long hair and moves! Dave Jay had been roped in to act as MC for the evening as the booked MC had had to pull out. Two young sisters, Laura and Emily came on and sang Like I've Never Been Gone as a gentle ballad - the effect was stunning. By the time Laura had got halfway through the first line my eyes were just filling up...

We were following Geoff Howlett so we knew we had to be good. We played four of Billy's and a couple of other songs, David cracked a joke about The Night Has 1000 Eyes being about speed cameras. Well that's because late one night we were coming home from a gig at which he'd drunk a fair amount of liquid and I had to stop so he could relieve himself at the side of the road. I stopped next to a gatso and was dying for a speeding car to come past but... alas. Heh heh!

6 songs, 20 minutes, it is amazing how fast that goes. We came off and enjoyed the last few acts. Rob Dee closed the first half.

Then, what a superb headlining act in Colin Paul and The Persuaders. Total class. And a great guy aswell. He brought Billy's mum onto the stage and one week before her 89th birthday she sang In Thoughts of You, I joined some of the regulars from the billyfury.com website forum to join hands and dance at the front of the stage. We had an absolute ball.

Others have said what a great weekend it was and I absolutely agree. Ours wasn't over yet because once we got back to the hotel we ended up all four of us in our bedroom with a huge bag of chocolate and a bottle of cava plus the remains of a bottle of wine that Miss Franny and Jeannie had been glugging all night. It still had some in because it wasn't the first...

David half opened the bottle of bubbly then stood it on the window sill whilst he helped Jeannie take her boots off. Whilst this was going on the cork shot from the bottle with a sound louder than a sonic boom. It was gone midnight so sorry to anyone in the hotel who may have thought their time had come...

A huge vote of thanks to Harry Whitehouse and his lovely wife Maureen. Harry is the instigator and driving force behind billyfury.com and the Sunnyside weekends. He wasn't committing himself to arrange another but it was a superb weekend full of good humour, great friends both old and new and some fabulous live entertainment. What more could you want?

Large versions of the photos: there's a full set (or half a set at the moment but I'm working on it!) so rather than link each photo you'll find many photos at my Flickr account.

St Patrick's Evening at Aughton Institute

Last night we had an excellent time entertaining the folks at Aughton Institute.

It was a night of silly hats, green balloons and an entire run of our Irish repertoire - though for some reason David refused to allow me to play Delaney Had a Donkey...

Then once we had taken a break whilst the supper was served - well, we weren't missing out! - we carried on through the sixties and onto line dancing and then rock and roll. The ballads went down well last night too with couples getting up to dance to Billy Fury's A Thousand Stars, The Bee Gees' Words and Ronan's When You Say Nothing At All.

Nice to see Christine and Brian and several other people who have come to see us before and in response to a number of queries, yes we will be at Witton Park, Blackburn again this year on Sunday the 9th of May from 12:00 noon until 4:00pm as usual.

Large versions of the photos: top photo, bottom photo

HMS Pinafore

All sorts of memories come back when you start scanning old photographs.

As I flicked through the old albums of stored black and white negatives I came a cross a set of photographs from December 1971. At the time I was in the Upper 6th Form at Heywood Senior High School - now called Siddal Moor I believe.

The music teacher, Gerald Fish, had suggested the school stage a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera, HMS Pinafore. It was the first musical production I can remember. Before that productions were plays - I remember watching Sheridan's The Rivals one year as a young boy in the lower forms and thinking how grown up the 6th formers looked...

The school was only around 3 years old, having been a merger of Heywood Grammar School and some other schools when secondary schools went comprehensive. For us grammar school pupils it meant being subjected to fire alarms and fire extinguishers being set off every now and then. Our japes had been a touch more intellectual. A bit more of your serious pursuit of scientific knowledge in the laboratories to make fireworks, rockets and such... The fact that they burnt all the paint off the window sill and ended up having to be jettisoned out of the second storey window didn't detract from the intellectual nature of it...

Anyway Gerald wanted me to play the male romantic lead. I was a bit aghast at this as the female lead was taller than me... So to his disappointment (and in retrospect to mine probably) I refused and ended up helping with the lighting and special effects which consisted of a thunderflash in a metal dustbin in the gymnasium behind the stage. A bit of magnesium powder in the cannon made a flash and the gigantic KABOOM! of the thunderflash meant that it was a wise decision to have St Johns Ambulance on hand as it took the audience a good 5 minutes to settle down after that went off!

The school gained some musical instruments out of the production, bought specially for the orchestra, some of which were pupils augmented by some of Gerald's contacts from the musical world.

I remember him particularly for the tremendous support he gave me at the time as a guitarist, encouraging, prompting me to try lead runs that challenged and stretched me, giving a few of us the confidence to go out and sing in front of an audience for the first time.

I remember many of the people shown here but can only remember names of those from my year or of those who I had regular contact with.

The full set of 27 photos, which were taken at the dress rehearsal, can be viewed up to 1440x900 pixels at this Flickr set. If you are featured, or you know any of the names I either never knew or have forgotten, please add a comment to the relevant photo.

A Cold Day by the Canal

I've reverted to black and white. I have loads of black and white negatives and as I came to the end of scanning a file of colour negs I thought I'd have a change and whittle a few out of the black and white collection.

These go back to a cold day in November 1978 when we had gone visiting Fran's parents and took her mother out for a ride in the car. We ended up at Marple in Cheshire where I wanted to take some photos of the canal. The canals of England have a special interest and affection in the hearts of fishermen, walkers, countryside lovers and boating enthusiasts these days but their original purpose was to provide a quick method of transporting goods during the Industrial Revolution. As towns turned into larger cities not only was there need to move goods out of the city, but food and raw materials needed to be brought into the cities.

The canals changed the shape and nature of the country. Not only was England now criss-crossed by canals but it had to cope with large numbers of immigrants who had come into the country as cheap labour to help dig the canals - which of course, in those days meant digging with spades. You can imagine the freedom of movement it opened up. Journeys that took days over rough ground, bumping along over rutted roads on the unsympathetic springs of a stagecoach could now be taken in the comfort of a barge travelling over the calm smoothness of water.

Some innovative ways were thought up to solve some of the problems. Here the canal comes to a T-junction. The tow path - for horses towing a barge on a long rope - approaches the junction on the right but the horse of any barge wanting to turn left needs to cross the canal. If the horse were to cross a bridge and then carry on in the same direction the rope would pass over the bridge whilst the barge needed to pass under. So the path over the bridge was built into a spiral so that the horse could cross the canal and then pass under the bridge with the barge in tow without the rope getting snarled. The building of the canals was an undoubted engineering marvel. Yet within less than a lifespan, they were obsolete. As steam power was discovered, the coming of the railways meant that the movement of goods in bulk soon became possible by rail and the canals were already in decline.

Here from that same day and canal path are Fran and Gillian, who was just 19 months old!

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Queens' College, Cambridge

On Wednesday Clive and I gave a workshop on Project Management to an audience of learning providers - colleges, universities, local authorities and one private provider - in the wonderful setting of the Old Kitchens of Queens' College, one of the colleges of Cambridge University.

Queens' rather than Queen's because it was founded originally by the Queen of Henry VI, Margaret d'Anjou in 1448. For some reason it was refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen of Edward IV and therefore the placing of the apostrophe in Queens' College is correct.

Above is seen the Cloister Court. There is a modern and a medieval "side" to the college, with each being separated by the River Cam. We were in the medieval side, or the Dark Side as it is known affectionately. The Cloister Court was built in the 1490s, though the President's Lodgings, facing onto the river, is 30 years earlier.

It was raining quite heavily that day but I couldn't let that put me off whizzing round with the camera for a couple of minutes at lunchtime.

Leading from the Cloisters up through a corridor with the Old Kitchens on the right and a sumptuous Banqueting Hall on the left are these well-worn stone steps. Walking straight through brings you to a second, earlier courtyard, the Old Court. First however we'll have a peek through that door on the left into the Banqueting Hall.

I've seldom been in a more impressive room, even walking through the likes of Windsor Castle. This room is awe inspiring with its ceiling guarded by gilded angels projecting from beams, the gold leaf decorations and the age-blackened panelling. And this in an education establishment! How different from the canteen to where I was marched in a long crocodile in Form 2 at Heywood Grammar... Do the diners here have to put up with lumpy tapioca and semolina, haricot baked beans served without the saving grace of a tomato flavoured sauce...

I left the room only with reluctance and turned left to the Old Court with this magnificent Gatehouse at the opposite side. It was a brilliant venue to give one of our workshops and I'd like to thank both the Queens' College and the JISC Regional Support Centre, Eastern for making such a splendid venue available to us.

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Birds in the Snow

I can't remember a winter where we had so much snow in Blackpool on so many different occasions before since we moved here in the mid 1970s. We woke up to another 1-inch covering of snow this morning. So it was no surprise to see the pheasant wandering around the garden looking for bread.

He only seems to come when it has snowed and has only ever once brought his partner along to share in the goodies. What a feathered meanie! In fact since Fran started putting bread out regularly we now seem to get a good range of birds in the garden every morning.

Thrushes and blackbirds are the most numerous, but we get starlings, and this year the sparrows are back in decent numbers after several years during which they all but disappeared altogether. We get magpies, including one poor soul who has lost his mate. They mate for life and she must have met with an accident as for a few years he has been on his own.

Yesterday I noticed two male robins in the garden at the same time - not something you see a lot as they are fiercely territorial. One stayed well away from the pile of breadcrumbs until the other had flown off with a piece of bread in his beak!

We have a container of nuts swinging on the washing line too and that attracts bluetits as well as some of the other birds.

We haven't had anything larger than the pheasant to date. The pond was dug out and grassed over last year. It had been a while since we had had fish in it - they acted like bread to the herons that used to drop in despite our best efforts. And since the opportunity to swim has gone also the ducks have given over doing belly-flop landings in the garden!

Billy Fury Weekend

We weren't able to be at the whole event of course, due to the Saturday night gig out at Windermere, but the Billy Fury In Thoughts of You fan club held one of their Billy weekends at the Metropole Hotel in Blackpool over this weekend.

We met up David and Jeannie no more than 10 hours after dropping them off last night and went down this morning to meet up with the fabulous Rob Dee and the headlining act from the weekend, Colin Paul, with whom we will be sharing the bill at the Sunnyside weekend over 19-20 March in Northampton in just 5 weeks time.

It was also a chance to meet and chat to Billy's mum, Mrs Jean Wycherley who, at the age of 88, gave us a quite brilliant rendition of Billy's hit In Thoughts of You.

She is seen here on stage with Colin Paul and of course her perhformance earned her a huge round of applause and a standing ovation from the crowd who had obviously had a great time over the weekend.

It was great to see Rob and Chris, Pat and Mags as well. We are so looking forward to Sunnyside, where we are headlining the Friday evening of the event and we'll be just one of many acts supporting Colin Paul and the Persuaders on the Saturday night.

Wedding Gig at Windermere

Last night we played in Windermere. It was ages before anyone fished us out... No, we weren't in the lake, we were at the Lowood Hotel, up near Ambleside, playing for the wedding of Kelly and Steve in support of a rock band who took over from us later on.

An early night for us then but a great night none-the-less, as there were a few inflatable guitars being passed round the audience and we got people to come out with them to help us play some rock and roll numbers!

Afterwards we headed over to Kendal to visit David's sister, Elaine and her husband David. They had made a fabulous meal for us and we were in a great frame of mind as we set off back home around midnight!

Lording It Up in Scotland

I had a bit of a treat on Monday last week, as I got to stay the night in a castle, parts of which dated back to the 13th century.

Dalhousie Castle Hotel is indeed a genuine 100% real life castle, complete with big chunky stone walls, towers, battlements and suits of armour standing ready to chop you into bits as you pass.

After all my good intentions of using the camera this year, I'd left the thing at home, so all I have are some reather blurry photos taken on my phone I'm afraid. I found the castle easily enough after a trip up from Blackpool which included a rather hair-raising (ha! I wish!) trip over mountains covered in snow with long drops down to frozen bogs and pools at each side of the road. And at one point I was treated to a blizzard on a high unlit twisty road where only the occasional bear or wolf were the only living things besides myself. Oh - and the prat in a big 4x4, who zoomed past me in the white-out shrieking "Oot o' the way!"... As I rounded the next corner I could see that a band of nomads had set a similar vehicle on fire to keep warm at the foot of the hillside far below.

Once at the castle I met up with Clive who was running one of our workshops with me the following day. We went for a meal and both immediately decided on haggis for a starter - wonderful stuff! You vegetarians would love it if you only gave it a chance...

Having feasted and decided that there was no chance of a joust in the offing, we split up and went back to our rooms, feeling the walls carefully for any hint of secret passages. I lay in bed reading for a while, occasionally glancing up to see if any wild kilted ghosties were flitting through the walls... but it was all very quiet and free from any out of the ordinary happening.

The following morning I was up bright and early and once dressed, put a thick coat on to go outside to phone Fran as per usual. The thick walls of the castle, or perhaps just the remote location, mean that I had no signal inside. It didn't help perhaps that my room was at a very low level, but the shackle rings on the wall had kept me in a comfortable position for sleeping half upright and I soon got used to the glow of the brazier and the lack of windows and the drip of water running down the walls. Joke!!! The bedroom was very nice!

Anyway I was wandering about whilst talking to Fran - in an attempt to stay warm as much as anything else - and noticed a sign for a falconry.

They had some spectacular owls but it was still only just getting light and all I had was my phone so I just managed to take a photo of the snowy owl which was making little noises that I took to mean "You look tasty, stick your finger a bit closer..."

There was a huge owl in the next hutch (for want of a better word) that had beautiful orange eyes (I think it was trying to hypnotise me) but as soon as I turned away from it there was a bang, as though it had tried to rush me from behind and hit the wire of its hutch and when, startled, I looked round it had fallen off its perch and was pacing about on the floor, shaking its head and muttering "bloody hell!" in a dazed sort of way...

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Unseen Things No.1 - Petra

Of all the things I have never experienced in person, there are some I have a chance of seeing, some that it is unlikely I will see and some that I will never see.

In terms of those that I will never see, it could be because they no longer exist, or because seeing them would involve more stamina, effort or energy than I currently have. Or in some case perhaps because they involve more danger than I care to accept as would be the case with some ruins I recall seeing on TV where you had to abseil down a cliff and do various mountain goat-type things to reach them, or where going to see them might damage or be bad for the things being seen.

The first on my list is perhaps one of the latter as, since listed as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, it has been described as having "unsustainable levels of tourism" during a time when the monuments themselves are threatened by flood water damage, salt erosion and age.

This is Petra, in modern Jordan. The ancient capital of the Nabataeans, it was a fortress controlling ancient caravan trade routes to and from Gaza, Damascus, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

It was approached by the Siq, the shaft, a narrow gorge in the sandstone with this impressive structure carved from the rockface at the end of it.

It has been used in several films and the place features as the setting for many books. Indiana Jones, gallops down the Siq in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Macro and Cato visit the city in Simon Scarrow's Roman legionary series in the book The Eagle in the Sand.

There are so many sights to be seen in that vicinity though and to date I have never been to the Holy Land. If I was there and had the chance to visit, perhaps I couldn't and shouldn't resist!

The photograph comes with grateful thanks from the Flickr collection of Mahmood Al-Yousif

A Song for Christian

David and I spent most of yesterday completing the recording of the song we sang for our friend Christian's funeral in October.

The song, chosen by Christian's family is a Christian song, with very moving words and is a little different to our usual style in that we've tried to keep it to a simple arrangement. There are no drums or beat until after the first verse and chorus and that meant we had some "fun" recording and editing the various instrument parts!

On saying it is a "simple" arrangement we still ended up recording a total of 9 separate tracks of instruments and voices - these are different tracks not re-takes of the same. It was an afternoon of the computer throwing wobblies and crashing the software too, but in the end it did come together and after a few attempts at balancing the different tracks we ended up with this version of I Can Only Imagine which will be added to the The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass album as track 11.

Seen Things Item 1 - Roundabouts

What a cheat - I'm doing what I used to do aren't I? Talking about things I used to have or have now, things I've seen and places I've been to!

Anyway No.1 in a series of 100 seen things. Roundabouts may seem a strange subject, but I've been in Letchworth this week and came across this particular example...

It's Britain's first ever roundabout. It was built somewhere around 1909 and I suspect the amount of daily traffic has increased a little since then.

It is almost surrounded by signposts proudly showing its status as the first roundabout and a little further away one supposes is a heap of rusting wreckage that are the cars that collided whilst their drivers read the message...

It wasn't the first roundabout in the world however. That was built in 1905 or thereabouts somewhere in America. Roundabouts have however become much more of a familiar sight in the UK than they are across the pond where apparently the gameplay is to aim your vehicle at one already going round...

I made that up of course - but there is one roundabout that is so notorious for accidents that no insurance company will pay out for accidents that occur around it. It is in that land of the considerate - France. It holds in its centre one of Paris's great monuments and landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe.

Anyone who has ever walked around Paris will know that the local habit is to walk in as straight a line as possible and to push out of the way without apology or acknowledgement anyone who happens to be in their way. Fran and Gill were standing quite still in the Parisian Marks and Spencer on one visit and a French woman walked slap into them and recoiled with a very indignant "Ooh la la!" as though they should have seen her coming and got out of the way.

Drivers approach the roundabout in the same way.

It doesn't help that drivers must give way to traffic entering the roundabout rather than those entering giving way to those already on it. That means that if you drive at full speed right towards the middle of the roundabout, it is up to everyone else to avoid you!

It also doesn't help that it is wide enough for about 6 lanes of traffic - should they ever try to drive in lanes behind one another.

It also doesn't help that there are no less than 12 roads joined to the roundabout...

Needless to say, it lives up to its reputation as an accident waiting to happen. In fact you don't even have to wait all that long...

Roundabouts in the UK have become an everyday part of life. There are now tiny versions which are a painted spot in the centre of a junction - perhaps best thought of as an overbout... There are massive versions where gameplan seems to be to accelerate to such speeds that no one else no matter which approach road they are on dare venture out. There are new towns here where roundabouts are so common they are thought to spontaneously appear like dandelion weeds...

And they are celebrated on almost every episode of Traffic Cops and Police Stop!

Personal Item 1 - Cameras

First in a series of 100 (I just know I'm going to regret this...) of personal items.

The BBC series A History of the World is told through artifacts. Yesterday I told how the TV programme had given me the idea to tell a more personal history of personally owned items, things from places I had visited and things I have yet to see or missed because they no longer exist. I'll try to make them relevant to a wider world.

No.001 of the personal items is the camera.

The very first camera I owned was a VP Twin, bought by my Mum and Dad at an early age. In fact a bit of research says I must have been 5 at the most because Woolworths stopped selling them in 1959.

It took a roll of paper-backed film of the size 127 and took half the normal size of photograph so you got 16 photos to a roll instead of the 8 that you got with most 127 cameras.

The viewfinder was a simple curved oblong of metal that folded flat to the camera body when not in use. When it was in use - well... it may as well not have been. As a 5-year-old I fondly imagined I was taking a photo of whatever I saw through the oblong regardless of the fact you could look almost in any direction through it, not necessarily where the camera was pointing!

The shutter release was a springed opening that flicked from one side of the lens to the other. Theoretically how fast you flicked it had an effect on the shutter speed and the spring was to even out the speed of the finger. It was a system almost guaranteed to introduce camera shake.

But it introduced me to photography and I still have the odd photo taken on it, such as this one of Mum and Dad (down at the bottom) and the sky over Southport which I think is where it was taken!

A Kodak Instamatic 50 - Kodak's first camera using the much more user-friendly 126 film cartridge - was my second camera. No more tearing off the paper and risking exposing and ruining the entire film as you loaded the camera. These took a plastic cartridge and had a winder that actually stopped you from winding the entire film on after taking the first pic!

I still have the Instamatic 50 somewhere but I took this of a later (though practically the same) Instamatic camera in Bradford's museum of Photography a few years ago. It has a flash cube attached. In my youth taking photos by flash meant using flash bulbs which contained yards of thin magnesium wire that when it went off produced enough heat to melt the glass of the bulb, forming bubbles of molten glass. These cubes were marginally safer in that the melting glass couldn't drip through the plastic cube and you could take four photos and then throw it away.

My first 35mm camera was bought when I was 16. It was a Prinzflex B that I bought from Dixons for £25. Under the plastic Prinzflex badge that Dixons had stuck on, was the name of the manufacturer - Zenit. The photo shows a Zenit E which had a light meter. The Zenit (or as the English had it - Zenith) B had no light meter and the use of a separate meter - about the size of a thick Blackberry - was necessary to get your exposure right. Not many cameras at this point had automatic setting of shutter speed and aperture size.

So that takes you through my introduction to photography - a lifelong hobby and pleasure. But to mankind, photography has provided us with a record of the past that has outlived many of the objects, people and customs that photographs portray. We take so many photographs these days at such little cost that future historians will groan at the available choice.

In the early days of photography the film and print development processes used lots of silver - the cost was high and photographers rarely took more than one shot of anything. Today once we have bought the camera taking photos is free, if we store them as computer images. So judging by Flickr, people take hundreds of similar shots in the hope that luck and randomness will compensate for lack of technique and skill!

BBC - A History of the World

I watched A History of the World on BBC2 tonight. They are trying to tell the history of man on Earth by telling the stories of 100 historical items.

The project is due to last the entire year and involves not only TV but a Radio 4 programme. The TV programme tonight showed several quite well known artifacts from the British Museum and a number of less well known objects from museums around the British Isles.

The public are being encouraged to take part and it is possible to upload photos and stories of personal items. The badge above is a link to the BBC web site so you can read their greater detail about the project.

It did stir my imagination a bit. I could write about items that are or have been in my possession or my family's possession. I could write about things I have seen on travels around my home, around Britain or around the bits of the world I been to. I could write about things that have interested me, but which I haven't seen, either because they no longer exist or because I've just not got to them yet.

Or I could do all three. If I reach 100 of each then I have potentially 300 blog posts - or 100 blog posts featuring one of each of my three types!

I recommend the idea to the house. But I need to think about it rather than just rush at it randomly. So... coming to a blog near you soon...