Showzam Central had an exhibition about P T Barnum, as well as the 50′s sideshows and a couple of interesting additions. We had arranged to finish off the evening with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performing Ukulelescope at the Grand, but in the meantime, there was a parade to catch and some street heating . The pictures tell the story.

Still pictures cannot convey the movement that flames produces. Fortunately, Showzam already have a Youtube up:

The funeral was well attended and there were flowers from the regulars at his watering hole, The Swan in the Rushes (arguably the best pub in Loughborough).

One of the Regulars has posted his thoughts on the service here- http://soundsandtexts.blogspot.com/2009/11/mervyn-gould-rip.html

Regrettably I couldn’t stay for the Wake (held in the Swan, of course) as I had to get back to Leeds, then onward to Manchester. Delays on the M1 North meant me diverting over the Snake Pass near Sheffieldand Karen & David heading to Manchester separately.

I arrived at Piccadilly by 7:50 (for an 8pm start) but then got stuck in Gridlock in the middle of Manchester which is absolute motoring chaos at the moment. (I only missed a couple of songs, fortunately).

Hazel’s Rebecca is a song for anyone missing a cherished friend, so this is for Mervyn.

I was asked to write this Obituary which might possibly appear in The Stage next week.

I knew him for more than twenty years and admired him without knowing him for nearly as long before that from his widely published writings on technical theatre.

Mervyn Stockbridge Gould (14/12/1946 – 29/10/2009)

Having  been fascinated in technical theatre from his early teens, Mervyn landed his first paid backstage job  aged 17 in 1963 as A.S.M. (& Props) for a two week run of Babes in the Wood at Boston Regal, touring into Crewe, Buxton and Leek. He remained a casual showman at the venue (and #2 Lime Boy) until moving to London in 1965 to study History at Marjons in Chelsea. Having had the foresight to join NATTKE he was able to get work in numerous West End theatres although it impacted on his Degree, just scraping through the Finals. After several years of touring, residences & even walking Schnorbitz (A period he described as “the painful death throes of Variety”), he spent three seasons at Sunderland Empire as CD Operator then a year as Deputy Chief Engineer at The Palace Theatre during the run of Jesus Christ Superstar.

He joined Loughborough University English & Drama Department in 1979 as technical tutor which gave him the opportunity to gain an M.A. and still work occasional summer seasons or Pantos. He remained there for seventeen years before taking early retirement due to ill health.

Mervyn was a Historian, researcher and avid collector of backstage ephemera; his doorbell was a house telephone and his dining chairs were former Box seats.

He was very active in the SMA whilst still working and in retirement became heavily involved in the Mercia Cinema Society.

As an author, he wrote four books on cinema history as well as numerous articles for the theatrical Press including Tabs, The Stage, Cue & Cueline.

In 2007, he was interviewed for the Theatre Archive Project and his colourful memories are online at http://www.bl.uk/projects/theatrearchive/gouldm.html

He died peacefully at home in Loughborough, aged 62.

Ian Grey, November 2009

Mervyn was a real character and I can’t believe how much I miss him despite only seeing him 2-3 times a year. I hope to expand this 300 word distillation into a longer blogpost worthy of his memory when I feel ready.

However, I got to hear about two people who I knew slightly having recently died.

The first is Mrs. Margaret Beatrice Millican, who died in March. I only met her for fifteen minutes but she made a big impression. I was involved doing technical stuff in a weekend conference in the Pavilion Gardens complex(The Octagon Room and the Paxton Suite) circa 1995 and noticed on Friday evening that the friends of the Buxton Opera House met every Saturday morning for coffee mornings with guided tours of the theatre. Sadly, that particular Saturday, they were short of volunteers and weren’t in a position to do any tours. Anyway, Karen and I chatted happily with her about the Trust, the Theatre and frank Matcham. Recognising a kindred spirit, she offered to give us a whistle-stop sneak into the Dress Circle which we gratefully accepted. (I was able to have a much more thorough visit last year). Googling her, it seems she was a pillar of the community, having been Mayoress of High Peaks in the 1970s, an MBE and eventually becoming one of the Theatre’s Patrons. I found out today when my copy of the Frank Matcham Society newsletter arrived.

A lot closer to home was a man known to most people as Kenny the Caretaker, the custodian of the building across the road from our Head Office where we lease some of the floors.  He was a small man, quiet, unassuming and of uncertain age but he did his work reliably and conscientiously. Once he felt comfortable with me he was happy to open up and chat but from what I could piece together it seemed that he lived a somewhat solitary life in a Council flat and his main companion was the Wireless.

He died at home whilst we were on holiday in America and I’m told that he was found in the bathroom, having filled a bath but then collapsing. He has died intestate and no relatives have been found yet. Apparently he will be buried in a pauper’s grave after twelve months and his estate (if any) will go to the State. The circumstances of his death are rather sad because he was a very dignified man in life.

I don’t want him to pass on unremembered so this a very small, probably ill informed tribute. Kenny, you were very trusting and helpful to me with access and keys when we did projects in the building over the years. I’ll miss you saying hello whilst sweeping the stairs, I’ll regret not being able to knock on the door of your “office” (the cupboard under the stairs with the gas meter in) and finding you inside. I’ll miss waving to you picking up litter if you saw me when walking or driving past.

Kenny, you may be gone, but you are not forgotten. I hope that the celestial Council have done a better job on your heavenly kitchen than yours did in real life. Hopefully the angelic buses are more reliable for you in the afterlife as well.
Whenever I hear this song, I’ll think of you.

When it is Mum’s turn she gets smiley pancakes and a song, I got toast, a mug of coffee and some assorted mild abuse.

I did get a card and a present though, David insisted this T shirt was me and I’m having to wear it all day.

(Image stolen from ASDA direct, You can buy them mail order here)

On our recent trip to America, we were deceived in various ways three times by enterprising Americans. Each one is worthy of closer analysis.

The first one I’ll call the plausible panhandler. A tall, black lady, smartly dressed, immediately offered to guide us in the right direction less than 10′ from the exit doors of the LAX Airport arrivals hall. Offering no more information than what we had already been given by a Virgin rep as we transitioned from airside (Purple bus stop 200 yards on your right) she floweringly and eloquently expressed it in a friendly and lively manner, seamlessly segueing into a spiel about collecting for a Los Angeles Mission that worked with homeless children, all currency accepted, receipts given. Knowing that we had been somewhat lined up but being polite Brits we reluctantly handed over a note (£10 if my memory serves me) and we were immediately given a receipt, or rather a printed card with the Mission details. On reflection, if she was a member of staff connected to the Airport in some way, the airport wouldn’t have approved of a sideline in chugging (charity mugging). If she wasn’t, then the airport wouldn’t have approved of her operating as a disguised chugger either. Whether she was chugging or simply panhandling, her verbose description of the purple bus stop certainly earned her £1 for entertainment value.

The second I’ll call the employee scammer. Pier 39 at San Francisco is a very entertaining collection of shops, attractions and street theatre, the best free entertainment of all being the resident sea lions honking nearby. There is a small 4D theatre near the end that had three 3D movies with added effects (moving chairs, mist, bubbles etc. hence the 4D). The movies are shown in sequence during the day and over the box office, countdown clocks showed the time to the desired feature. One of the three features was Spongebob Squarepants (a favourite of David’s) and it was only a few minutes away.

Now this show was fairly expensive for what it was ($12.95?) and we debated whether to get triple show offers or just David going in as he was gagging to do it and we knew that we probably had discount coupons back in the hotel room. Anyway, we decided to all three go on for the single show. On offering my Visa travellers debit card (Post office Dollar version) the counter clerk asked if we could possibly pay cash instead, as the credit card reader was playing up. I did so, he gave me three tickets, and in we went.

Now whilst we were waiting inside, I glanced down at the tickets we had been given, then noticing something odd, took a closer look. The top one was indeed for Spongebob Squareparts dated and timed for that showing, but the other two were a little more dog eared and were actually for other movies at earlier times. This appeared to be a scam where a third of the money goes to the business but the other two thirds gets re-distributed. (When the tickets were collected indoors they were simply pocketed rather than torn, after a cursory glance at them that suggested the guy inside may have been in on the scam as well).

Now I didn’t lose out personally on that one, but it did annoy me that they were ripping their Bosses off and it is hard to believe that fairly obvious (practically blatant) dishonesty would not come unstuck sooner or later. I imagine that the credit card reader worked fine, it was just a bit tricky for the ticket clerk to embezzle some of the proceeds when cash was not involved. Similarly, giving dodgy tickets to someone who is obviously a native english speaker is risky. What if I’d been a Cop?

(I’m reminded of a holiday I took to Greece back in 1988 during my transition from the Telecoms industry to the entertainment technology (cottage) industry. I visited a number of archaeology sites in walking distance of the Parthenon and at each one, I exchanged my Drachmas for a rather pleasant souvenir ticket with a coloured image of the treasures within. The last site I visited, however, was slightly different. A wrinkled old Greek man in the kiosk gave me an extremely non-pristine ticket in exchange for my money. Then, when I had finished looking round, he tried to blag it back off me on my way out!)

The third piece of stitching up was of the Corporate variety. Virgin holidays have a partnership with Dollar car hire which I personally feel that they should review as if my experience was typical it involves deception in so many small ways that I can comfortably call them swindlers. We had booked car hire for 11 days, one way rental, drop-off at the Sheraton Fishermans Wharf, SF. We were staying in the nearby Holiday Inn and last time we went to SF, the car stayed in the Hotel garage from the evening we arrived to the day we drove to the airport. As we had been made aware that the hotel charged $40 dollars a day for parking (now actually $41 plus tax) we saw little need to pay so much just to be able to drive to the airport. We pre-paid for something called the Platinum package, all of the death by a thousand cuts that makes sure that you are fully covered for every eventuality.

Whilst flying over, I’d dreamily suggested that an open top convertible would be great for the big drive we needed to do from San Diego up to San Francisco. It wasn’t a very practical suggestion, of course, because small convertables tend to have small luggage space and we had two large suitcases. Last time a Chrysler Neon with two of us and one case had been fine, but now there were three of us, although our “Frequent Virgin” status entitled us to a (minor) updrade. Anyway, on arrival at Dollar at their large off-airport depot, we were given the usual hard sell of paying for an upgrade. We were already a bit grumpy at that point because we had already queued at the counter with the large Virgin sign to be told we had to go to the other main counter which had a large queue (which had got even larger whilst we waited wrongly in the wrong queue). Anyway, we were spun a line about how the car we were allocated didn’t have a trunk so our luggage would be visible (a red herring of course, our luggage would be in the hotel room most of the time). The pictures of the various cars didn’t really indicate what they were like and we hadn’t heard of any of the models. Previously, we have generally just refused the hard sell then found we had a bigger car allocated anyway, as there is a certain amount of pot luck involved. Anyway, after him extolling the benefits of the next class up, I asked him what it would cost us. $9.99 a day, he said with a straight face. Knowing we would have two days with extensive driving, I decided that $110 bucks was probably reasonable for a bit of comfort. Of course, I forgot the cardinal rule of much of North America- the price you see is rarely the price you pay, unless the item is exempt from sales tax. (That probably only applies to Ice cream and Churros).

We then enquired about dropping off the car- would it be OK to terminate the hire one day early if we made good time to SF? Sure, no problem at all. What time would the office close? Airports are 24 hours, city Hotel ones close at round about 10:30pm, he advised. Bizarrely, he let us choose any car we wanted out of two nominated zones outside, and after picking something the size of a Range Rover (with three rows of seats, but the back row folded to form the boot bit) we were ready for the off. Just as I was about to pull off, the car chimed and put on the service light, which was annoying as you expect hire car companies to be on top of service intervals, but there again, most cars start reminding you of this a couple of thousand miles before it is actually due and we couldn’t be bothered to pick and repack another car. Another grumble was the lack of an operating manual in the glovebox, there were numerous dashboard controls which we had no idea what they actually did and had to work them out the hard way, or just not bother with them.

Anyway, the car was fine for the first ten days of the holiday, but after we had set off from San Diego for our long drive to San Francisco, the car chimed again and the engine icon lit orange. Having checked all the levels, we decided to detour slightly to a Dollar office we had noticed opposite our hotel in Anaheim. The guys there owned up that they couldn’t actually do anything for us because they were actually only a concession, but the light was likely to just mean the service was required and we only needed to worry if the icon flashed and it triple-chimed. If we were still concerned though, the office at LAX airport would change the car, or otherwise they highlighed the roadside assistance phone number.

Pressing on, we eventually arrived up in San francisco, but when we found the Dollar office there, it transpired that it closed at 5pm and they wouldn’t accept car drop-offs out of hours. As the parking was even more expensive there and we didn’t want to have to mess about to fit in with free on-street parking (meter hours were 7pm to 7am) we found the cheapest overnight car park nearby, still a substantial $28.

On returning the car in the morning, I was extremely miffed to find that my $9.99 a day charge totalled more than $280 dollars. It seems that they wanted to charge me 11 days of breakdown cover/personal protection at $11.44 a day, more than what the car was costing me, along with some minor taxes here and there. Anyway, I declared them to be charlatans and I’ll take it up with the holiday company first to see if it is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation or simply a legalised swindle.

I see no reason to willingly patrionise Dollar car rental again, along with KPMG and Capital One, my current short list of Companies who have pissed me off enough to stay on my boycott list.

Update: Now I have the bill in front of me, here were the “extras”

State Tax 9.25% $18.68
Tourism Surc 2.5% $2.75
apconrecfee 11.11% $26.19
Upgrade 11 days@ 9.99 $109.89
prsnlprotpla 11 days@ 5.45 $59.95
Roadsafe 11 days@ 5.99 $65.89
TOTAL CHARGES $283.35.

Harumph.

America has many joys, along with a few bummers as well, but I’ll save them for another time.

Anyway, visiting the San Frncisco Museum of Modern Art (known as SFMOMA), David asked me if I’d spotted Wally.  Now I didn’t expect to find Wally the children’s stripy jumpered bobble hatted specky geek in such a highbrow museum and it turned out that we were both right: Wally was on a nearby rooftop readily viewable from the corridor leading to SFMOMA’s new roof garden which had only opened a few days before.

Anyway, there are no doubt many children dragged along to the rather stuffy art gallery delighted to spot Wally (or in most cases, Waldo) for themselves.

(Actually, the museum isn’t stuffy at all, but much of the installations aren’t particularly child-centric. David was bemused by the Caravan and the child surrounded by hundreds of poodles though).

(Click for bigger pics)

Twenty more pictures illustrating the work of the late Morley photographer Leslie Overend will be added to his website this week to mark the 20^th anniversary of his death.

Leslie worked as a freelance photographer for the Morley Observer and other newspapers in the old West Riding of Yorkshire for almost 60 years.

His work and travels around the area made him one of the best-known people in the town.

Born in Eccleshill, Bradford, in 1905, Leslie took his first published photograph in 1918. After learning his trade working for two Bradford daily newspapers, Leslie and his father, a former teacher, set up the Overend Press Agency – freelancing for newspapers all over the country.

Leslie took his first pictures in Morley in 1926 when he visited the town to cover the mayor-making ceremony of Alderman T A Buttery. That event was to be the first of 46 such mayor-making ceremonies that Leslie was to cover in the town.

In 1955, Leslie married the former Doris Morse – the owner of the Rendezvous Café in Town Hall Buildings, Queen Street.

The couple made their home in the former Dinky Dyson’s chemist’s shop, also in Queen Street, which they ran as a newsagent’s. Doris died in 1960.

Although Leslie moved to live in Dewsbury soon after Doris’s death, he retained his close ties with Morley and the surrounding area, taking tens of thousands of pictures in a varied career that continued until ill-health forced his reluctant retirement in 1983. 

When he died, on May 16, 1989, Leslie left his archive of negatives to a former Morley Observer colleague, Stephen White.

Stephen, now deputy editor at the Bristol-based Western Daily Press, is keen to keep Leslie’s work in the public eye.

He said: “When Leslie died and I inherited a huge pile of old boxes full of glass and film negatives I thought I should try to do something with them. It seemed a real shame that they would otherwise have just remained in boxes, perhaps lost to the people of Morley for ever.

“In 1992, I published a book of 100 pictures from the 1960s, then last Christmas released a book of pictures from the 1970s. In between, I archived Les’s negatives and set up a website in his name (www.leslieoverend.com).

You can view the pictures by logging on to www.leslieoverend.com

“To mark the 20^th anniversary of his death, I thought it would be a good idea to post another 20 pictures from his archive on to the website, displaying a variety of his work in and around Morley.

“Choosing 20 pictures from such a vast archive was an almost impossible task, but I hope the ones I settled for will bring back some welcome memories for people who have lived in the town for some time.”

He included these two.

The reason for her call was that their old High School was celebrating it’s 80th birthday and they were inviting as many former pupils as possible.

Now Karen’s old school is surprisingly famous. No, it isn’t Eton, or Harrow, or even Rodean. It is Levenshume High School, otherwise known as Weatherfield Comp as it is regularly used by Granada TV for filming as part of Britain’s longest running Soap opera, Coronation Street. (Karen comments that the Wikipedia entry is spherically, plurally, incorrect, although the other school mentioned may have been the case some time back).

Karen keenly follows Corry and as I generally surf with a laptop on my lap in the lounge (or more accurately with a laptop on my belly) I am peripherally exposed to the Soap. Being a Mancunian by upbringing, she would regularly point out any OB scene that she recognised. The shots of the school intregued me as it looked somewhat like a grand old 19th century Arts and Crafts Country House.

Anyway, David and I came along to keep her company. She had told us a bit about the school- how it was an E shaped building with classrooms in the wings and the hall in the central strut along with Gyms beyond. She told us it had a posh entrance down the end of a long driveway that the pupils weren’t allowed to use. She recounted her three years there in the 3rd, 4th and 5th forms, pranks that had gone on and punishments, including her class being banished to a corridor for form registration for the entire 5th year. There had been a lower school in another building further down the road, now long gone.

On arrival at the school, marshalls directed us down the elegant tree lined drive and along the front of the building, past the dining hall onto the tennis courts. (“Hah! These were the netball courts”, interjected Karen.) The school is indeed still “E” shaped, but with much tweaking and extending so that there are various lumps and bumps on the structure, including some low grade 50s buildings and a brand new energy efficient community use sports facility called the Energy Box. (I christened it the sweat box).

When we arrived, we went into the main hall, where there were various displays about the school history and the future. There were extensive archive photographs as well as some old documents through the ages. (Apparently most of this was pulled together for the 75th anniversary celebrations five years ago so it was comparatively easy to restage).

Now a school that has no direct memories for me is relatively academic for interest so I was more attentive to the spatial arrangements and how it had evolved over the years. It turned out that this school had been built in 1928, officially opening in 1929. It had always been a Girls school and indeed had been a selective Grammar school until such time as the Trotskyists in the LEA abolished such elitism in the pursuit of mediocracy.

The building was light and spacious (apart from the basement), but not overly disabled friendly, being on three main levels (with a lift) and a few rooms on landings due to some of the quirky extensions built over the years. The original Gym block looked as though it had been built in the 60s with exposed concrete columns and window walls whilst the main building style was not too far removed from Victorian. The dining hall also looked like it dated from the 60s with exposed ceiling zig zag steel trusses and weetabix ceilings, all now painted shocking shades of green and yellow.

The main entrance area near the hall was smartly painted with extensive wall and floor tiling, although most other areas were rather utilitarian, with the original staircase blocks looking like their brickwork had been simply glossed over. I didn’t even see any of that local authority surface mainstay, speckled texture paint.

One striking thing in the main hall was the light fittings- very large and deep circular shades with translucent infills and sides in school green. Smaller matching shades were also found in the entrance hall and vestibule, whilst everywhere else florry lights (or CFL fittings) were the norm. The hall also had some additional decorative lighting- aircraft-like PAR fittings lit the bases of the ceiling beams as well with some wall up/downlighters on the stage proscenium. A neat little lighting controller at the back of the hall integrated the tungsten and discharge lighting for assembly and performance use.

Looking at the older photographs, they had quite a few whole-school panorama shots, some outside, some inside. The indoor ones were in the hall and I noticed that the original lighting fittings were large open bottomed circular frosted glass shades, one of which was missing, exposing the 500 Watt GES (Goliath Edison Screw)  GLS (General Lighting Service) clear lamp to view. A later photo showed that the original open bottom shades had been replaced with large spherical shades and yet again there was one missing. (My own school had flying saucer shades and two were missing in the main hall, an occupational hazard of either allowing sports in the hall, or possibly the precarious practice of relamping on large wobbly wooden ladders by the caretakers).

Whilst Karen enjoyed looking around, she felt that the event had not been as successful as my recent school trip, mainly because we were left to ourselves and there wasn’t any obvious programme. However, we were excellently fed with a huge buffet in the dining hall and many of the pupils acting as ambassadors kept bringing  trays into the main building.   There may have been speeches towards the end but we only stayed for the first couple of hours. The children were putting on various forms of entertainment on the stage but nobody was introduced or anything like that.

As for the uniform, we assumed it was still bottle green but most of the kids had a white T shirt on with some form of stylised picture, possibly of the school. We did see an old lady with a school scarf though, impressive that she saved it for forty years or so since she attended. (I still have my school prefect tie but I retained it more for fancy dress purposes, it has to be said).

One other comment Karen had (and her sister also made on seeing the pictures)- the buildings looked rather run down and tired. A new build is on the horizon though and a large set of complex plans were also on display, although I struggled to get a chance to study them, as ambassadors kept offering me sandwiches, vol-au-vents and samosas.

It was also reassuring to see that Karen’s memory is just as fallible as mine. She showed us three successive classroom doors that she recalls had been booby-trapped with a bucket to trick the teacher, each successive door she changed her mind and assured us it was this one. The last was a cupboard!

I did take a picture of it but someone walked in front of the camera and then it was gone so I lost interest.

Anyway, I had completely forgotten about it until I saw today’s Morley Obtiser where it was explained by a letter from our local elected patriot socialist.

It turns out it was a BNP Plant.

(boom boom tish…)

Speaking of shrubberies, here are the Knights who say Ni!

Here are a selection of snaps from earlier today.

David dressed up as a Keeper and there was a blatant clue with his hat that said Dudley Zoological Gardens. That still didn’t stop several people guessing that he was a gardener though, including one of the teachers.

I’m not sure that monkeys feature as horticultural tools though…

David doesn’t show any inclination to want to go and work in the mobile Telecommunications business, so O2 weren’t overly persuasive. 

I have no recollection as to what I wanted to be when I was at Primary school. Certainly once I became stage-struck in my early teens it was technical theatre that I wanted to do which became refined towards a Degree in Lighting (Engineering, not Theatre) which it was possible to do at South Bank Poly. However, when I went there as part of the milk round, I was stunned to find out that they had dumped the course, despite still being in the prospectus. 

My Dad was quite keen for me to consider the Navy and I did enquire down at the careers office about Officer Cadetships. However when I looked more closely into it, I was barred by nature of my myopia. I am hugely short-sighted after getting German Measles as an infant, with my uncorrected focal distance being about 3″-6″. Being a hormonal teenager, I also found it rather prurient that another possible reason for being barred was Fissure of Anus. 

I stumbled over the video below which is also rather prurient, hat tip Obnoxio for pointing me to the site and hat tip Canucklehead for the video buried deep within the motivational style pictures.

(Not very safe for work or family)

It did mean that David was unable to spring a trick on me and he possibly even suspected that my not being there may have been an April Fool…

Not having heard of the 12 Noon rule, the Wii Fit tried to trick us that the balance board wasn’t working earlier this evening.  Very droll the first time you see it and a hat tip to the programmers for a (rather small) easter egg there.

I’ve been trying to remember any really class previous April Fool tricks played on me or by me and disappointingly I have to say that none spring to mind, other than the trivial ones like changing a phone default language to Italian or Japanese. A colleague said they had one planned to spring on me but in view of the real problems they abandoned it. (A minor one today was the discovery that it is possible to change the “Ready” message on printer displays to something else, like “System Meltdown”.  A valid business use for this functionality was proposed, as well as the silly opportunities of the day).

Meanwhile, the flags are out in Morley, although I don’t think the Councillors have anything to celebrate about, other than our notorious Junction 27 roundabout works being nearly complete. I no longer feel the need to avoid that corner of the area now as the new traffic light timings seem to be working well.

As to the G20 and the protests, I think Counting Cats says it best:

The G20 protests in London today consist mainly of four columns advancing from different directions on The City.

Each is headed up by a (symbolic) horse and represents the Four Horsemen (in reality the four pedestrians looking like novelty runners in a marthon) of the Apocalypse of Capitalism.

The symbolism is delicious. These protests are organised by Greens, Anarchists, Anti-Capitalists and Comunists… Otherwise known as Pestilence, War, Famine and Death.

Needless to say, our planned sunday lunch small beef joint went into the freezer instead 

It was advertised as a Mothers day meal and it included a gift- some prettily wrapped sugar almonds (one heart shaped) and a 20% discount voucher for Chino Thai. 

I also had a treat- the plugging in of the Orrery power supply and the first planetary  motion. Just waiting for Saturn to show up…

Image courtesy of Jacci Howard Bear http://desktoppub.about.com/

With the temperature into double figures in Morley, today saw the first 2009 outing of Betsy, the Grey family grasscutter. Pleasingly, the petrol engined mower started without fuss and it only stalled once or twice when being asked to cut some particularly soggyclumpy  grass outside the #1 shed. (Betsy lives in #2 shed, along with a huge bale of Medi-bed, Gizmo’s cage bedding. (Horses get through 1-2 bales a week, whilst Gizmo’s lasts months).

(You can see a picture of Betsy being tried out by Karen here. Since then it has been categorised as “Men’s work”, that being the first and list time she fought mowed with it).

Betsy drinks unleaded petrol, but very slowly. (Betsy the Generator consumes more but she hasn’t had a proper outing since the radio station opened in July 2005 when a faulty transmitter power cable tripped the mains on the night before our first broadcast). The petrol can is now empty, Betsy might need her third canful after Easter at this rate.