A bit of web building

I updated Jo's site this morning. And that's about the limit of my creative output this week :)

and Linzi, if you're reading this. . .
DON'T GIVE UP! You know how good you are, you know you can make it work, if you really want it bad enough!



Links: Joanne Roberts Photography - Studio Silver

I wanna do more paintings

I'm in the mood to do some painting again. I can feel a creative spurt coming on. . .

Gigs, Birds and My Magic Bag

I know i should have been Blogging more, but I have had a bit of a mental block. So here's a biggun to tide me over until next time.
Last week i went to see The Bangles at the Carling. They were great. They were all pushing 50 but looked fantastic and the sound was spectacular. The bass player was a bit on the scary side though. A proper Stepford Wife. The fixed grin was almost as stiff as her boobs, which didn't move at all, even when she was really going for it. Well when i say going for it. I mean she actually took a couple of steps forward from her mark on the stage. The support was Stephen Langstaff and he was great as usual. He was hoping to be signed up by the manager of the Kooks but he never turned up at the gig. Hopefully he'll realise the error of his ways. . . If you're reading this Ste, I'll send you the cash I owe you next Friday (payday) as I'm skint until then :) Afterwards We strolled down to the Cavern to see some Beatles tribute band The Mersey Beatles. They were beatle-tastic.

On Saturday Jo was on TV in "Last Choir Standing" There was only one choir really in the same league as Sense of Sound so I think it will end up with a "Sing Off" between Sense of Sound and Revelation. Watch em this Saturday BBC1 Saturday at 7PM.

Back in 1992, when i was sleeping on my mates floor in his spare room I used to go to sleep to the sounds of birds tweeting. There was a test signal for ClassicFM which was a recording of birds tweeting and other country sounds. I loved it. I'm a bit of an insomniac and there's many a time I've gone to bed and got back up again without a wink of sleep, Only to fall asleep after about 2 pints in a pub. . . When I used to listen to this tweety radio show back in 92 I  had no problem dropping off. It was just so soothing. To cut a long story short, I couldn't sleep on Sunday night. So I turned on my DAB radio and did a bit of a trawl, I tried Radio3 at first but It was too depressing so I just  carried on searching for something soothing. And suddenly there were birds singing. Yay! The DAB people have given a whole station to my favourite birdy sounds. I listened for about 10 mins and i was off. The next morning I woke up to the same birdy sounds and some real ones from outside my window. It's worked every night this week. They'd better keep broadcasting it. It's my second favourite radio station . LINK

I had to take Tuesday off work because of a reallly weird incident. I'm either going mad or I've got a ghost in my flat.
I got home from work on Monday night and put my bag, phone and keys on top of a holdall, in my living room. The holdall has got a load of clean washing in it, socks, undies and the like. . . Well the next morning. I was getting ready to go to work and I picked up my bag and phone but my keys weren't there. I looked in my bag, coat pocket and kecks but I couldn't find them. So I emptied all the washing out of the holdall and they weren't there either. But here's a weird thing. In amongst the washing was a part used ream of printer paper???? How that got there is a mystery. It got weirder than that though. I felt something inside the ream. I found a Wacom Pen, that I had lost about 3 years ago. SEE LINK How did this ream of paper get inside my clean washing bag??? There was also a screwdriver.

So the search carried on. . . No keys on the desk, chairs, couch, fridge, sink, oven, toilet, bed, telly or any of the other 1000 places I looked. Then I thought that I must have left them in the door. Nope! My van was still on the drive and the keys are all on the same bunch, so surely, if anyone had seen them in my door, they would have taken the opportunity to nick my van. There was nothing I could do. I was already late. so i phoned work and explained my predicament and booked the day off. Afterall I couldn't leave my flat without my keys. The search went on for another couple of hours. Nowt was found.

So I started looking for my spares. I found a spare key for my van and i found a spare key for the mortice lock, but no spare for the Yale. My only option was to buy a new Yale lock. . . So I put my Yale on the snip and locked the door with my mortice lock. And it was off to B&Q. Sixty five quid later I was back home with a replacement lock. It's a simple job to replace a Yale lock, you only need a screwdriver. I'd spotted one in my holdall earlier on so I popped upstairs to get it. I put my hand in the holdall and rummaged round and found it. As i pulled it out I felt something else. I pulled out a sock. And INSIDE my sock were my keys!?! How did that happen? I can see how they could have slipped into the holdall, but INSIDE a sock INSIDE the holdall is a bit weird. . . Or have I got a magic bag, that helps me find lost things??? I haven't seen my driving license for a while, I afraid to look. . .

Anyhoo, luckily I hadn't opened the the packaging for the lock, so I took it back to the shop for a refund :) I drove straight to Tesco's and bought a load of food. It's got to last until a week on friday. . . skint again.

Sense of Sound

My mate Jo is currently at Glastonbury, with the Sense of Sound Choir. She'll be performing on the Jazz stage sometime now. . .

(edit:- The coach never turned up which meant Jo didn't get there. . . Only about 5 of the choir made it :(.. . )

Sense of Sound, have also got through to the finals of BBC's Last Choir Standing. It's a sort of Pop Idol for Choirs, if you know what I mean?
You check out the BBC page HERE The show will air every Saturday night from 5th of July, That's next Saturday. The show is hosted by Myleene Klass and Nick Knowles, So tune in to BBC1 at 19.45. It's not all Hymns and religious standards. . .
I've just taken a look at the audition & application videos and to be honest, I think Sense of Sound will walk it, they will change the way you think about choirs.

Links:- Sense of Sound on Myspace - Joanne Roberts Photography - Last Choir Standing

Shiverpool

I went on a ghost walk on Friday night. The tour, entitled "The Hope Street Shivers" is one of three ghost walks, run by the Shiverpool Tours company, based at The Albert Dock.
We met at The Philharmonic Pub and were taken on a walk by two masked characters, who entertained us with tales of tragedy and murder from Liverpool's darker past. The whole thing was really well done. Both tour guides were actors and never came out of character for the whole tour, which lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. There were a few surprises thrown in for good measure.
It was a lot better than the tour, i was expecting. I'm not giving anything away cos i don't want to spoil it for you.

They also do two other tours; The Auld City Shivers, which is based in the business quarter and starts and ends at The Slaughterhouse Pub and the Shiver Me Timbers tour which starts from Anchor Courtyard at the Albert Dock.

Prices are £8.50 for adults and £7.00 for kids.

Shiverpool Tours

What's been happening . . .

Last week was a bit crap.

I still can't believe that Derek has gone! It's weird, I was just talking about him a few days before it happened. I got the news by text, which is not the way you want to be informed about a friends death. (thanks Phil). I found a christmas card that he had sent me, but i never received until March or April. He asked me why I didn't turn up to his wedding, I felt really guilty, I kept meaning to phone him, but i never did. It's his funeral tomorrow. Maybe it will hit home, then?

I went back to work after having a week off. I'd spent all week in "night mode". My body clock is back to front. I'm sleeping during the day and I'm wide awake every night. Anyway, when i returned to work at 10 pm, on Tuesday, to start another week of nights. I found someone else sitting in my chair.
While I was off work, the powers that be, decided to transfer me to a completely different job in a different building. So much for communication. I start my new job today at 2 pm. I also applied for another position, I applied for the same job last year. Maybe this time I'll be lucky.

To get myself out of my weird sleep pattern, i stayed up when I got home from work on Saturday morning at 7 am. I decided to spend the day fiddling with my website. I added a new "gallery" page. You can access it from the sidebar of my photo blog page. There will be more gallery pages added in the future.

By about 2 pm i was knackered and had to go to bed., but I forced myself to get back up at about 8 that night. It seems to have worked. Sunday was the same as Saturday. I was washing my mini at 6 am. I got up at 5 am today and added another page to my site. It's a downloads page. I've decided to make some of my photo's available as desktop wallpapers. And that's that really. I might go out for a walk. The weather's fantastic today.

Derek Hannah R.I.P.

My mate Degsy - Col de la Faucille - Friday 4th November 1995 - Here he is, with probably his third or fourth Grolsch of the day.

I did the Italian Job charity run three times. The second time I did it I took Degs as my co-driver. It was the most memorable of the three. He was the worst navigator, in the world. Although he did manage to direct us out of Paris using a street map of Milan!!! He also managed to save my life quite literally. . . But that's another story.

We left the Dieppe ferry at midnight to drive through the night via Paris. We stopped in a rest area on the motorway for a kip and then set off, in the rain at 6.30am for Switzerland. By about 9 we were descending the Col de la Faucille and the sun was shining. We pulled over, by the side of the road, to take in the view of Lake Geneva, below us. All was going well and we spent a leisurely day driving the Swiss alpine roads. We shared a ski lodge with the rest of our convoy and got smashed in a little alpine bar. I was feeling generous and got everyone's meal on my credit card. By the time we reached Italy, the following morning, we had both run out of money and my credit card bounced at an Italian service station. Derek had spent the last of his cash on beer. We were both banking on our wages being paid in, the Thursday before, but they hadn't been. Either that, or we were both completely overdrawn. (This is more likely).
We borrowed about £20 off Phil Sullivan to pay for our tank of fuel (I'm still not sure if I paid you back Phil?) So we were without cash until Monday. But on Monday we discovered that we couldn't use a British switch card abroad. Luckily for us we were staying B&B in our pre-booked hotels. We were guaranteed at least one meal a day. But we needed money for drinks in the bar and fuel. I phoned up my credit card company and got my limit upped to £1500. When I got home, 10 days later, I had lost about a stone and had a credit card bill for about £900. Most of it was for hotel bar tabs. It took me another couple of years to pay it off.

Everyone who met Degsy on the Italian Job in '95 has never forgotten him. As Tony Fidoe put it; "Degsy's a star!".

I'll miss you Matey! You're a Star. . .