Mercuryvapour Towers is currently without electricity, just like the other mansions nearby. The gravel driveway is in complete darkness. I thought it would be interesting to update my blog when I can’t even defrost a curry.

A little bit of local news for those of you who care, but Hart Lodge, known to the locals (well me, anyway) as “The Old Folks’ home” on Jones Road, is currently being pulled down.

I wouldn’t say it’s a pretty exciting landmark or anything, as it was a dull example of late 60s / early 70s functional architecture, but for me, it’ll always remain one of my childhood playgrounds. Even more so when they built the car park. Shots of the building (taken by ATIF in February 2010) are located here…

I’ll be adding some more pictures of my own to that same page throughout the day…

EDIT: And, as if by magic, my first photos appear.

EDIT 2: You’re probably wondering what the “big issue” I was having with the gallery entailed (if you read facebook, that is)… well, it wasn’t reading the tags or descriptions from the images. In the past, I’d gotten away with just changing the settings in the config to read the EXIF data. Now, for some unknown reason, it needed to read it from the ITPC data instead, so I had to switch that on. Anyway It’s just gone 9AM, I’m about to nip out and see if they’ve started any further demolition. If so, new photies coming soon.

Apparently, there’s been an earthquake between Newcastle and York. I didn’t feel a thing, and Ilive pretty much between the two…

Sky News have reported it now, claiming it was inNorth Yorkshire. I am happy to report, however, that it didn’t disturb my dart watching / beer drinking. I’ll keep updating, but it apparently is all over.

Now the BBC are all over Twitter, asking if anyone wants to talk to the radio in the morning. No.

Although I could say that it knocked the froth off my beer, and Gary Anderson missed a double because of it.

Welcome to the readers of CycleChat also!

Her’e a link to Sky News with the story…

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201009115879004 (Uh, would have helped if I’d actually made it a link)

UPDATE: It is now RAINING in Hartlepool, and my feet are cold. Everything’s back to normal, then. I’ll let this post rot.

UPDATE 2: Would have helped if I’d closed my tags properly too. What an arsehole I am.

Okay, it’s mid-way through December when I’m typing this. We’ve had snow, but it’s all-but melted now,. I’m munching on Roast Beef Monster Munch (85g packets from Home Bargains – 39p each. Awesome), and I’m almost ready to go to bed. You may remember in the previous post, it was… erm, June.

JULY 2010

Mercuryvapour Towers was greeted by another new visitor, a rather frosty one at that. Our old chest freezer, which we’d had for roughly 20 years, was showing signs of giving up the ghost. It leaked terribly, and always had a coating of mould on it, thanks to the seals perishing, and the hinges snapping. They were held on by a small piece of trouser belt.

This month, for some reason, saw me doing day shifts, meaning I actually got to see some daylight. Unfortunately, the daylight also brought with it stupidly heavy rain, with rain showers almost as heavy as the August 2003 deluge. I can’t remember the exact date, but it was a Tuesday, as Daddykins bought us both a Blossom Garden Special. I also had a loan of ATIF’s zoom lens for a few days. Shiny.

AUGUST 2010

A month of fun and frolics, and by that, I mean that the Tall Ships visited Hartlepool. It was a busy month for me when it comes to photos, with the tall ships, a night-time visit to Hart with ATIF, and the last ever performance of Accidents By Design, at the Seaton Carew Cricket Club.

We also deadified another mouse.

Not much else happened.

SEPTEMBER 2010

New stuff dominated September. And sunflowers. After finally giving up on my ancient phone, I went out and got myself a HTC Desire. It is still a shiny piece of kit. I also talked extensively about my purchases on Steam. It seems strange, but I started getting into gaming in a big way. Sucky weather and pure laziness meant that very little happened in this month. even the photo archive dried up after the well-documented sunflower walks.

Mercuryvapour Towers received a new heating system late-on in the month, and although we were without hot water for a day and a bit, it was a small price to pay for the warmth that we’d experience during the coming months…

OCTOBER 2010

Unfortunately, Employment Palace took quite a hold on me in this month, so I didn’t really accomplish anything. I missed a bus, that’s about it. There was the trip to Newcastle with ATIF, where I managed to take some 300 photos.

… not all of them great.

NOVEMBER 2010

Something happened in this month, which normally doesn’t happen. It snowed, and plenty of it too. In fact, it would appear that every photo I’ve taken since then has resulted in a “snow” tag being added to it. Some other stuff did happen, I started 15 days off work, interupted by a night with the people from work for a few hours of bowling… I won’t bother linking to an individual photo, instead the flickr set is, erm.. there.

DECEMBER 2010

I’m sat here, flipping my way wearily though a spindle of CDRs, for no reason other than I don’t know where to start with this particular month. It just passed me by. I had a lot of time off work, thanks to leftover holidays (and my first full day of sickness since 2008, bloody chest), but thanks to the snow which dominated the month, saw me hardly leaving the house. I’m too old to enjoy the snow now!

Though, saying that, I’m not tired of taking pictures of it – each time the sky clouded over, I was rushing around with the camera, taking as many shots as I could. One of them even ended up in the Dec 30th edition of the Hartlepool Mail. Cor, I quite clearly rule!

So, erm. That’s it, except for the bits I’ve missed out. 2010 in a nutshell.I can assure you it’s not really been as dull as I’ve made out on here…. actually, that’s a lie, it really, really has.

2011 hopefully will be different, I’m going to try and do stuff worth blogging about more often. which means I’ll be wasting more time sat in front of the PC, which, in itself is counter-productive to doing stuff worth blogging about… ah, it’s a vicious circle.

If you couldn’t tell, that subject is supposed to be the sound of my internet connection initializing itself, and bringing me back from the dark ages before the internet became an integral part of my life… it has been an awful few days without it. A couple of readers may want to know what happened, especially as this caused the house phone to also go down. If you don’t, that’s fine.

They day is Tuesday, November 09th, 2010. I’m sat in the pub, celebrating the win of £15 on the pub’s version of “Play Your Cards Right”. I feel my phone vibrating, as if to say I’ve received an email. Indeed, I had. It was informing me that one of the websites I host on my home connection had gone offline. Oh well, shit happens, and I continue to pour my winnings down my neck. I’d sort it when I get home.

Later on in the evening, I get a lift home from Chris’s dad, and I notice one of the cable companies’ vans attending to one of the boxes a few streets from Mercuryvapour Towers. Well, that was the problem, and surely the interwebs shall start flowing like beer from a keg. Several hours later, and still no internet, I hit the sack, expecting everything to be rectified in the morning.

I awake, and inspect the modem’s diagnostic lights. Still nothing. Still dead. Daddykins had to go out on Wednesday morning to run an errand. He phoned me to inform me that there were 4 vans around the box where our connection fed into. It did seem a bit odd to have that many vans attending to what I thought was a simple fault with the box. I don some clothes, and head off to the shops. This was also so I could have a quick look at what was going on. I walked past, and noticed that the workmen had removed the entire guts of the cabinet At this point, I didn’t actually know the reason why they removed it.

Later on in the afternoon, I went out to grab the local paper, and also to attempt to get a photo of the affected cabinet.

At this point, I didn’t actually know what had happened. It wasn’t until I got back inside and took a closer look at the photo that I noticed something… the privet around the top of the cabinet was burnt…

It turned out that the issue was caused by a catastrophic failure in the cabinet’s electrics that caused it to burst into flames. Unfortunately, the particular cabinet was out of range of the windowcam, though you do see the fence over the road reflecting some of the fire’s light, a load of smoke, and a fire engine attend the scene some 6 minutes later. I’d do a timelapse, but I can’t be arsed.

If it wasn’t for my mobile, there is a very strong chance I could have went insane.