Well, as mentioned in an earlier posting, I’ve managed to get that Dag Kolsrud record converted to MP3. Took me about a week, but I’ve finally done it. It wasn’t easy, thanks to the fact my laptop wanted to play around with its sound devices, meaning that it didn’t recognise the signal format given from my record deck. A minor annoyance, and one I never experienced with XP in any way, shape or form.

Anyway, onto the record itself. If “synthtastic” isn’t a word, it really should be. The backing track really could have been taken from an unreleased “One 2 Many” track, with the same synthy drums, bass and “trumpets”. The version I have is mostly instrumental, with different sections of xmas songs thrown in for good measure. Well, I say good measure, it all seems a little haphazard, not quite sure whether it wants to be a generic “pop” song, or an even more generic “xmas” number.

It’s not bad, but I doubt whether I’d give it a second glance, or second play, if it wasn’t One 2 Many related.

In other news, I did continue to trawl fkickr to see if I could find any more pictures of myself.

If you thought the sunburn was bad on the last one, take a look at this…

Technorati Tags: dag kolsrud, flickr, jingle bells, photo, sunburn

Ok, this is a slightly late post, rather shutting the stable door after the man dressed up as a horse has bolted.

I didn’t stay long on the 2nd day. I ‘d pretty much seen everything I’d needed to see, and most of the stuff going on was a repeat of the first day. Still, I stayed for a couple of hours, snapping away as usual…

After I’d taken these photographs of the 2009 Hartlepool Beauty Pageant (giggle), I moved slightly to my left, and took photos of the juggler, whose name escapes me now (Defying Gravity, perhaps?).

Well, that’s what is says on that sail thing anyway. Unfortunately, that particular act only gripped me for the same amount of time as it took for me to focus the camera lens and take about 3 shots.

Off we went for a walk over to the food tent. Once again, they’d been cooking something with fish in, but they were about to demonstrate the “smoothie bikes”. A clever conception. Strap a blender to the back of a normal bike. Stick a dynamo to the back wheel, and connect the dynamo to the blender. You can then pedal your way to a healthy, if slighty disgusting looking drink! Of course, the slight drawback is that you have to get someone to hold the lid on the blender whilst you pedal like fuck, mashing the fruit into oblivion.

I was hoping, at the end of the demonstration, the ‘chef’ would remove the lid and say “Smoothie Smoke, don’t breathe this!” Unfortunately, there was no smoke and so, no hilarious end to the demonstration.

We left the tent in time to see an amusing spectacle. Apparently, we’ve “grown out” of hanging monkeys here, instead, in the 21st century, we prefer to hang dogs…

Well OK, hang a bloke in a dog suit. This particular character was Barry The Beagle from Real Radio. And, apparently, he wasn’t any worse off for his ordeal…

I was hungry, and thirsty by this point, so it was time to refuel from one of the eatery vans dotted around. After having a (rather disappointing) tray of curry and chips the previous day, I decided to have a jacket potato, with a choice of topping. Naturally, I went for the chicken curry. This set me back £3.50 but I must admit it was one of the nicest things I’ve ever had from a mobile eatery establishment.

So, at this point Andrew decided he could hold off no more, and headed off to the sweetie stall. You see, placed right in the middle of the main area was a tent selling sweets, sort of a pick ‘n’ mix, but in a tent. While I waited, Andrew chose come confectionery. I asked him the price it came to.

£5.30

I thought he was joking, but clearly wasn’t. Five pounds, thirty pence. I almost fell backwards off the chair I wasn’t sitting on at the time.

At this point, there wasn’t anything else going on. Everyone was getting prepared for the big show in the main tent. This was of aboslutely no interest to me, so I phoned Daddykins to pick me up. This was one of the very rare occasions where he hadn’t had a drink on a Sunday. The phone call was interrupted by some people on stilts. I would class that as being one of the more peculiar moments of the two days.

So, as I disappeared off into the distance, Andrew stayed down to watch whatever was going on in the main tent. I got home, and laid on the couch whilst watching Wimbledon. Predictably, I drifted off on the couch, only to be awoken at approximately 5:30 by a thunderstorm. Wooo. I was hoping it would blow over by the time I’d planned to set off for the night’s festivities, which I’d planned to set off for at 6:30.

Thankfully it did, but I decided not to take my chances walking over, and instead got the bus down. Turned out, it would have been quicker for me to actually walk than to get the sodding bus.

By the time I got there, the queue was about half a mile long. Joy. Thankfully, Andrew had got there early, and was about 6ft away from the entrance. I “tagged alongside”. We were guaranteed awesome seats, and we got those. Second row, just left of centre.

In fact, I can be clearly seen in this picture. Obviously, it’s not my photo, so there’s only a link. Just look for a huge slaphead on the right hand side.

Unlike the music night, I was overjoyed with the three acts that performed on the main stage that night. The host himself was awesome, very quick witted. After some heckler shouted out something random, he replied with “Shall we get you some crayons? Do you want the blue ones because they taste like the sky?” Oh, man, I really did think I was going to fall off the chair at that point.

Sean Lock was predictably brilliant. I did get photos. Obviously, you weren’t supposed to take cameras in, but nobody said anything about cameraphones. Sadly, the images are currently “locked” into my phone, as I have no way to transfer them over. I’ve lost everything to do with my phone’s data transfer abilities. Whoops.

So, anyway, another brilliant night took place, and I can personally hail the 2009 Hartlepool CockDockfest an absolute success.

Technorati Tags: 2009, dockfest, hartlepool, hartlepool dockfest, ivan brackenbury, marina, me, Photos, sean lock

Well, there’s three days off work, which have disappeared quicker than the analogy I originally thought of when I started typing this sentence. It’s actually been a good few days off.

Firstly, it’s not been wasted, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, the bad things include being incinerated to a crisp. You’d have thought that I’d have built up some immunity to the sun as a child, seeing as I was only ever allowed to “play out” until 6PM, before my mother appeared at the door, screaming my name at the top of her lungs, ordering me to come in. Hence Chad’s recent comment-posing name of “6-O Clock Curfew”.

Don’t worry, it took me a while to work it out too!

Er, anyway. Back to what has been going on recently.

Monday, unfortunately was a day that can just be scrubbed off the calendar altogether. After finishing a nightshift, I decided to just stay in bed until about 8PM. I don’t like doing that, but sometimes it’s necessary to get a few good hours of sleep inside of me. Therefore, the day was entirely wasted. Unless you count sleep, in that case, it was pretty much perfect.

So, Tuesday was the day when I began to get things done. The weather was ideal. Daddykins left Mercuryvapour Towers at approximately 11, in order to get the car MOT’d. I was kicking things around the house, when I decided that the grass out of the front needs mowing. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d done it. In fact, I blogged about it in here, thanks to the fact the mower shedded two blades.

Surely, the same thing couldn’t happen again.

After completing the majority of the garden, I ran over a piece of innocent looking grass…

“BANG! BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Sigh. Another blade gone. I can only apologise for this piece of deja-vu, but… I replaced the blade, and once again began to cut the grass.

“BANG! BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Christ almighty. Two blades, shattered in less than 15 seconds. Only this time, this came from a different piece of grass. Four blades in 2 mowings. I’m beginning to think our mower is fucked.

During my time shredding turf, I took a look at the front piece of the garden. There is a small portion at the top of the garden which normally “houses” daffodils in the spring, but the rest of the year, it’s a weed trap. Now, I’ve been paying more attention to this bit of the garden than what I’ve let on, and had recently de-weeded it, meaning it actually looked just like a bare piece of land.

Daddykins was home by this point, and helped remove some freshly sprouted weeds. Mostly dandelions, thanks to the state it was in last year. At this point, I said something in jest, about going to Focus and getting some plants. I also wanted to get my hair cut. The two things weren’t connected, but what was left of my hair, was a mess.

Daddykins drove me to the barbers. Turns out the temperature on the long gravel driveway of Mercuryvapour Towers was 29 degrees. It wasn’t until I sat in the barbers chair that I realised just how much sun I’d caught. As the lovely lady combed my hair, it felt like 10,000 white-hot needles were beng scraped across my scalp. Oh yes, I was sunburned, and sunburned good. Bugger.

I left the barbers, devoid of hair, and returned back to the car.

“So, do you want to go to Focus, then?”

After realising that I’d known nothing about gardening, I suddenly wondered if this was a good idea after all. I decided against it, but seeing as Focus was on the way home anyway, we decided to call in. A lighter wallet, 6 fuschia plants and a marigold plant later, we returned home. Whilst Daddykins cooked some eggs for the “Twat Cup” taking place later that evening, I went out of the front, and planted the afore mentioned plants.

The Twat Cup itself, went off without much of an incident, except I was almost “accused” of cheating at dominoes, because I didn’t let the other player pick first after it was my “shuffle”. Tsk. I explained that it was the first time I’d literally versed anyone at dominoes that wasn’t over the internet, and wasn’t aware of the finer, physical rules of the game, but was totally aware now, should I ever verse another human being at the afore-mentioned bar game. It’s unlikely, but it may happen. Remember, kids! After you shuffle, allow the other player to pick their dominoes first! Trust me, it’ll save you earache in the future. Honestly.

Chris was missing for the Twat Cup, so when I returned home I texted him to see where he was. Unfortunately, I don’t have my phone to hand, so can’t tell you exactly how the conversation went, and thanks to winning £15 and having plenty of free whisky, I was slightly the worse for wear.

So, off went Tuesday, and onto Wednesday. I awoke, in a funny position on the sofa, early enough to consider a trip to the flea market. After it was apparent that the quality of the previous nights’ ale had resorted my anus to the role of “shite fountain”, I was hesitant. Considering the sun was, once again cracking the pavements, I deicded to head off in the general direction of the flea market. It was, unfortunately, pathetic.

Eric had replaced his 50p CDs with another load of cheap, shitty DVDs. I ended up spending one, whole British pound on a “Best of T’Pau” CD. This was a CD I’d owned back in the early 1990s, but got destroyed in what I would claim was the worst week of my life, back in summer 1995.

Either way, I have a copy of it again. And, you’ll have to thank Chad once again for my T’pau interest. If he hadn’t had sold me this cassette tape back in 1988/1989, I’d have less of a knowledge of Carol Decker and the rest of the band, and their overly distorted percussion.

So, I returned home from the flea market. I decided to go out the front and begin documenting the life of my plants, whic were only planted yesterday. This involved some pretty graphic closeups…

Whilst taking photos, I returned to the alley, to view my images. It was the only place dark enough to be able to see the camera screen. I happened to look down the gravel driveway. At the end of it was a figure, clad in a high-viz vest, bicycle and camera. It could only be one person. Yes, it was Andy The Iridium Fan. I wanved, making him aware of my presence, and he cycled up the gravel driveway, and explained his prescence. Apparently, there wasn’t an actual reason, except for getting his picture taken on the “windowcam”.

Considering both of us had the rest of the day free, there was a little discussion on where to go, or what to do. I think I mentioned Durham, before quickly putting that idea on the back burner, seeing as that the only things burning would be me, on the bus to Durham. After the trip with Chris, earlier on in the year, I decided that public transport wouldn’t be the best idea, considering I’d be cooking all of the way there.

Andrew did mention the “Then and Now” exhibition on at the art gallery in Church Square, taken by Mail photographer Tom Collins. He had visited it at the weekend, and said it was great. And, considering I love stuff like that, I decided that this was the best idea ever. And for the paltry price of 50p, you could get to the top of Christchurch’s tower too. Something that I’d seen hundreds of pictures of, but never had any to climb up and call my own…

It’s around now that the photoblog starts, so for all of you who have scrolled this far, you’ll get your first pictures.

After paying your 50p, you can escalate the stairs that takes you up to the clock tower. After many dodgy experiences with climbing monuments, such as the Arc D’ Triomphe, the Scott Monument and more recently, York Minster, I was happy to find that the staircase was perfectly acceptable. You can even stop off on the way and take photos….

When you reach the top, it’s entirely different to what I thought it would be like. After seeing the few hundred pictures on sites such as flickr taken from the top of it, actually going up there and taking your own personal view of the location adds a hell of a lot to it. Since I was a kid, the Transporter Bridge is one of those things I’ve always wondered if it was visible from Hartlepool. I have never received any photographic evidence to say whether this was the case, until today….

Click the image, as you might have to zoom in a little to view it!

I’ve noticed, on flickr, that there’s normally only a couple of photos taken from Christchurch. Here’s approximately 56 of the fuckers… http://www.flickr.com/photos/mercuryvapour/archives/date-taken/2009/06/24/

Technorati Tags: christchurch, church, flickr, gardening, hartlepool, Photos, plants, sunburn, t'pau

I don’t normally blog about adding individual items to my collection, but this time I find it necessary, as I now have a UK promo copy of “Downtown” in my possession. Wooo!

I’ve been collecting as many different versions of this song, and I think now I’m coming to the end of my search…

This one has the catalogue number of AMY 476, the same as the released version, but the label is different. As with most promos, instead of being printed on the company standard labels, it’s printed on a plain white logo, with black text…

The tracklisting, however is exactly the same. The A side is the Adam Moseley mix, and the B side is the instrumental version, coupled with “Welcome To My City”, the only original track released by them which isn’t on the album “Mirror”. It’s a pretty weak track if I’m honest.

The best thing about it is the misprinted label on the cover itself…

One Two Many, eh? Wrong.

Cor. It seems that all I’m talking about in here is records, plus my long walks, complete with taking hundreds of photos of said pointless journey. This post is no exception, as I shall now blabber on about the walk I took the other night.

It had been a beautiful late-spring day. It started off with a trip tyo the flea market. As usual, I spent far too much on records, but I did pick up a Billy Joel double CD for 50p. 36 tracks. That’s less than a penny a song! I’d also received a parcel of 30+ LPs from ebay earlier in the morning. That means, throughout the day I’d been collecting a lot of music. In fact, my purchases for the week looked something like this…

I’d got back from the flea market, itching for stuff to do while the weather was nice. The answer came in the form of record cleaning. Not the ones I’d just received, but some of the ones I’d been given a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t in a blogging mood when they arrived, so I don’t think I mentioned their arrival.

Anyway, most of the day was spent in the back garden, sploding big gloops of lemon washing up liquid on them, and gasping in awe as 50 years of dust, grime and nicotine were lifted off. It also allowed me to sort the really damaged ones (they weren’t in good nick) from the ones just about playable.

I tried to stay in and watch the telly. I just couldn’t do it. It was at that point I decided that I was going to make use of this weather, and go out to Hart Village and photograph the sunset.

It was a walk that would consist of 114 photos, 5.41 miles, and another visit to Sainsbury’s.

I tried to time it nicely so I wasn’t waiting too long for the sun to go down. Therefore, I set off at about 7:30 I decided to go the long way round, through the new estate and along the Hart Road. Basically, the reverse of the journey I took the other week.

It gave me the chance to photograph the construction of the carehome which is STILL being built. It must have been at least 18 months now…

After a power-walk (or rather, it looked like I was having a strop), I made it out of the estate, and continued along the Hart road…

At this point, somebody ran past me. It was either Coatesy, or someone who looks the exact spitting image of him.Nothing was said, it either wasn’t him, or he’s forgotten what I look like. After all, it’s been nearly six months since the last contact with him. I also noticed he’s deleted me from his MSN Messenger list.

Anyway, I arrived at Hart Village, and the sun was just reaching the point where it was starting to get low enough to make everything look orange.

After a road called “Nine Acres”, the footpath ends. After all, there are no more houses. This didn’t stop me, however, and I kept walking for another few hundred yards when I came to an opening in the hedgerow, leading to a field.

By this point, I was steaming, literally. The power-strop and the full walk uphill caused me to have the appearance of a racehorse after a particularly gruelling steeplechase. I decided to have a sit down in this field for a bit to recover, cool down, and watch the sun going down.

Er, that was the field. It;’s quite interesting the fact that I’ve managed to type all of this about going to see the sunset, yet I’ve not actually managed to post one image of it yet…

There, that’s better. Now, I was listening to music this entire journey. You’d think I’d be listening to something “sunsetty” at this point. You know, something chilled out. Something mood-setting. Mike oldfield, maybe? Enya? Both good choices, and both artists I had on my MP3 player at the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was listening to Jive Bunny. I found this rather amusing, and a reflection of my awful (to everyone else) taste in music.

Eventually, the sun disappeared behind the cloud in the above picture, and there was no more to see. I began to walk home. The sunset pictures kept disappearing, and although the sun was no longer visible, the sky was still dramatic enough to allow for possibly my favourite photo of the evening.

There were still photo opportunities to be had despite the fact that the sun had long gone. Something Hartlepool (or rather, Hart) is famous for, is its disused windmill, and the wind turbine near it. I noticed two runners on the path behind me. For a bit of an experiment, I wanted to see if they’d say anything to me if I obviously stopped off to take a photo. The result was this…

The female runner was passing me just as I turned around to rejoin the path. She looked at me as if I was mad. I just smiled and nodded politely. After all, I have something to show for it. And what do YOU have, missus? Aching muscles and worn out trainers. I win that one. The walk home was slightly diverted by a visit to Sainsbury’s, where I picked up a kitkat, carton of orange juice, packet of own-brand chicken curry noodles, and a jumbo sausage roll. Bugger, the amount of calories I’d burned off on this walk were about to be instantly put back on.

Saying that, I haven’t eaten the noodles yet and have only partially drank the orange juice.

Technorati Tags: flickr, hart village, hartlepool, Music, one 2 many, orange, photographs, record, sainsburys, springtime, sunset, walk