This also included getting another “Holiday Shirt”. You may remember last year’s rather surprising effort. It looked like something growing out of a cannabis patch.

Unfortunately, I appear to have lost that shirt. It must have been thrown away in the great clothing purge of 2007. Secretly, I mourn its passing. Some of the best photos of me taken on holiday were taken with me in that shirt. In fact, the majority of photos were taken with me in that shirt, due to my accident with an entire bottle of Lynx shower gel. I’ll not be making that mistake again.

You’d think it it wasn’t possible to purchase a shirt as bad as that again. Think again…

Now that’s what I call a shit shirt. Expect to see me in it. A lot.

Technorati Tags: bright, crap, holiday, rubbish, shirt

Eventually, she said that she was the worst person I’d met. In the end, I challenged her to a game of I Spy, while Glen stared out of the window and began counting a jar full of loose change.

Just before I woke up, I dreamt I’d left the house just in time to see her turquoise Volvo be towed away.

That’s it, I’m officially weird.

In other news, the demolition of Steetley Magenesite is resuming. The large oil container that has remained on the site is about to be pulled down. This means that there’s very little left remaining on the site still standing. Thanks to a series of amazing coincidences, I was able to take a trip around there.

It started off yesterday, as a Flickr user posted to my Steetley group stating that work had recommenced on the site.

The following day was a lovely summers day. The sun eventually managed to break through the clouds, and I was itching to go for a walk. I haven’t done any of my stupidly long walks for a while, as I’d lost the headset for my phone, but seeing as it turned up in the washer a few days ago, I decided to go on one.

A stiff breeze was blowing, which made visibility excellent, therefore I decided to head down to the Headland and collect a few more photos.

While I was taking this photo, a car pulled alongside me. By sheer coincidence, it was Phil! You may remember him being mentioned on the trip to Rievaulx Abbey last year.

He was down the headland too, dropping someone off. We both went our separate ways, and I carried on walking. Just as I headed onto Durham Street to take a stunningly interesting photo of my doctors’ surgery, Phil pulled alongside me again…

“I’ve got my camera with me, fancy going up to Steetley?”

Wild horses wouldn’t have stopped me. Despite the amount I talk about the place, I’ve never actually been up there and had a really good look round. Most of the photos I have of the place are actually from Chris, and not me. Also, seeing as they were pulling more of it down, it was probably one of my last opportunities to get up there.

The first thing clearly visible were the large chunks missing from the oil drum…

We then explored the site in detail, taking photos of the desolation and decay left behind. I found it highly amusing to see some of the stuff left behind in there, including parts of an old Dell 316SX

The specs of this machine make interesting reading. It dates from 1991ish.

I took pleasre in photographing all of the old, smashed up concrete streetlight columns that would have once illuminated the roadway through the complex.

It was at that point we headed back to the car. Phil dropped me off at home, and I began the process of uploading all of the photos I’ve yet to see his photos, but they’ll probably be better than mine!

Technorati Tags: dream, flickr, hartlepool, headland, Photos, steetley, walk

I can’t remember when it started. I just remember being informed of a large, white bucket placed on the garden bench. This bucket contained several potatoes which were long past their use-by date, and already had the little white sprouts coming from it. Naturally, these potatoes were covered in soil. He wanted to see if they’d actually grow. Of course, thanks to the laws set by Mother Nature, any root vegetable placed in enough soil to sufficiently feed the plant, will grow.

And it did.

I took photos of the plant during the whole growing pictures. Unfortunately, thanks to my utter incompetence, I appear to have deleted all photos I took of it, so you won’t be able to see them. They were awesome. Well, actually, they weren’t that good, but I have to keep the suspense.

The plants grew and grew, and unfortunately, thanks to the utterly shit weather we’ve had so far this “summer”, the plants themsevles became damaged and started to die off.

Daddykins announced this afternoon that he’d be interested in seeing how his experiment went, and that we would empty the afore-mentioned bucket of its vegetable matter.

Unfortunately, the first one picked out wasn’t exactly going to feed a starving family.

Delicious as it may have been, it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing we were hoping for. It ended up being discarded. My heart sank, I was hoping for a crop of golden potatoes. Instead, it looked like we’d grown a bag of slightly soft and mushy marbles. Groan.

It only took a short dig of a few centimetres before we began to get potatoes of slightly higher value, and they actually looked quite nice.

Occasionally, we’d discover the mushy remains of the “parent” potato, which had degraded to a soft paste. These were also discarded, though the dogs seemed to take a great interest in them before I shooed them away.

The more we dug, the more the potatoes kept coming. From a small experiment, we gathered enough to be actually useful.

Now that’s some good eatin’.

Originally, the plan was to boil them, with the skins on. A simple enough affair, until the idea of making them into chips (or at least the biggest ones) came into the mind of Daddykins. I simply laughed at the idea, thinking that no matter how large the crop was, there’d be no potato big enough to be a “chippy” potato.

I disappear upstairs, and download the photos off the camera card, or do something equally as inane. Several minutes later, I am summonsed to the kitchen, to see a great big pile of chips in the fryer. I am awestruck.

Needless to say, I piled the whole lot on the plate, slapped on a small amount of salt, and enjoyed them like I’ve never enjoyed a plate of chips in my whole life. They were just awesome.

Damn. It almost makes me want to take up gardening.

Technorati Tags: awesome, chips, Food, home grown, potato

Technorati Tags: asleep wather, blog, crap, dog, glen, lewis hamilton, update, wordpress

I probably wouldn’t recommend this technique for only lightly soiled records, but when it comes to neglect + nicotine + dog, this procedure worked remarkably well.

Your mileage may vary with this one…

Technorati Tags: cleaning, cleansing, detergent, fingerprints, fix, groove, Music, record, tip, vinyl, washing up liquid

The navigation bar looks a little different. That’s all I can see for now. If that’s the only change they’ve made after all this, I’ll be really pissed off.

Technorati Tags: firefox, latest version, mozilla, updated

Enough of this bullshit, I’m off to play Sonic 2.

Technorati Tags: crash, delayed, download, firefox, launch, server, update

Instead now, I’m getting…

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

You may recall this was the exact same message that appeared when Amazon went down a couple of weeks back.

I’ll keep you informed, I’m *that* bored tonight.

Technorati Tags: browser, cannot download, crash, firefox 3, mozilla, not responding, safari, screenshot, server, unavailable

Technorati Tags: browser, download, firefox 3, mozilla

For the rest of you, hello! I’ve been on another one of my silly walks again. Yes, I’m quite aware that all I seem to be blogging about these days are these walks I often do, but to be quite honest, it’s the only thing that’s keeping my mind occupied. I’m pretty much obsessed with taking photograps at the minute. This was why I was out, at 4AM, taking photos.

I have always wanted to lay down in the middle of Easington Road. I had a thought when I was about 6, if it was possible to lay down in this particular dual carriageway and not get ran over.

The other morning, I proved it could be done.

No, I didn’t just run out of the house to take that photo, I decided that I wanted to see the sunrise again. There is no better place to view most of Hartlepool than on the Hart Bypass.

I walked through the new estate, through the land which is currently unoccupied by nothing except a footpath. There was something which caught my eye. Excuse me if I drip into “rather odd reminiscing” mode for a few moments.

Back when I was a small child, there was a weed that used to grow in the cracks of the tarmac. It was a spiny, horrible looking thing with dark yellow flowers. Now, I have always had a sense of smell which was much better than any other sense I had. I always remember this particular weed had a strong scent of pineapple, therefore it was particularly interesting to me. Chad Phillips, who you may recall, is currently on a world tour (assuming you read the comments) used to mock me for such an interest, expecially when it caused a neighbour (and ultimately my mother) to almost have a fit when the neighbour saw me smelling clover flowers which had recently been sprayed with weedkiller. Er, anyway, I digress…

Yes, anyway, those pineapple-scented weeds. They seemed to disappear at some point during my adolecense. I was growing up, and didn’t really pay attention to the disappearance of a simple weed. It was about 5 years ago, however, I had a dream about said plant, and suddenly realised, it had TOTALLY disappared.

For five years, I’d tried to locate at least a small sample of it. I remember it grew in the shittest soil known to man.

Imagine my delight when, at 4:17 that very morning, I’d located some…

At this point, I still knew nothing about it. I loaded the photo up to flickr, and within 2 days, I had an answer. Its name is… wait for it… Pineapple weed.

What’s just struck me as odd, is my lack of internet searching regarding this. I knew two things about it… it was a weed, and it smelled of pineapple. a quick google reveals everything I needed to know about it. Bah.

Er, anyway. I’ll leave the horticulture to one side, and continue my walk.

It was, as you can imagine for 4AM in the morning, very uneventful. I had my headset on, and after deleting every trace of Jive Bunny off my phone, it turned out to be a pleasant walk.

I took this photo next…

After the walk up to the Hart Bypass, I thought I’d relax for a few minutes, and a row of handily-placed hay bails made a very comfortable sofa.

The music at this point, was once again, “Angel” by The Quest Project. I’m struggling to think of a better song to watch the sun rise with.

Unfortunately, after the song finished this was pretty much the end of the sunrise. The sun drifted behind those clouds, and that was it. Of course, by this point, I was exactly half way between my current location and home, therefore I completed the journey via the rest of the Hart Bypass.

The photos kept coming, however.

This one of a nettle got me thinking… is there any purpose to this sodding plant / weed / whatever? It’s whole design is to hurt and cause discomfort. It is clearly the chav of the hedgerow.

I did film myself getting stung by said nettle. It must have been at least 10 years since I last felt the sting of a nettle. Therefore, I grabbed my camera, and filmed my hand going through said weed.

Turns out, it didn’t hurt at all, except for a mild irritation, and a very slight itch later on. Maybe years of washing up protects your hands from organic enemies. The video turned out totally uninteresting,by the way, so you’ll never get to see it.

I continued my journey home, occasionally stopping off to take photos…

I liked this image, though one of the next ones made the trip for me…

I adore pointless, meaningless, and yes, slightly mischievous graffiti, in the same way I can’t go past a statue with a traffic cone on its head without smiling. I don’t like tagging, and I don’t really like the trend of “stencil” graffiti, unless it’s really clever and well done.

Eventually, I returned home after the 5-mile walk, only to find that Sam had “marked his territory” up the bloody sofa. Not his fault, however, as Senta has been in heat..

Technorati Tags: flickr, foal, hartlepool, horse, nettle, photograph, road, signpost, sunderland, sunrise, walk

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.

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

Well, this turned out to be a bit of a redundant post, as I never actually got round to typing about it during the course of the programme. Therefore, there will be no further information about this show posted on these pages. I think the blind one will win it, however.

Technorati Tags: big brother, davina macoll, runnish, television

http://www.mercuryvapour.co.uk/gallery/index.php?/category/steetley

You can also find them on flickr if you prefer that.

Technorati Tags: demolition, old, Photos, scanned, steetley

Well, OK, this isn’t so much of a blog, more a “coming soon” thing. Shortly, I’ll be adding some more scans to the Steetley gallery, both on flickr and on here. Chris has had a roll of film developed from 2003, and the photos are excellent. Unfortunatrly, my scanner is being an absolute tosser tonight, so this is going to take longer than expected.

Technorati Tags: chris, Photos, scanner, steetley

Last night, I returned home from the pub (says it all really), and was absolutely famished. I raided the cupboard, only to find it was bare. I raised the freezer, and pulled out two Morrison’s frozen curries. Awesome! Well, it was actually one chicken madras, and one normal chicken curry. I was starving, so I thought “What the hell”, and threw them both into the pan, surrounded by lots of water.

I left them to simmer, whlst watching the clock. It would be 35 minutes until the golden curries were ready to be consumed. This momentous event would take place at precisely 1:01AM.

In the meantime, on went the telly. I had a good old flick around, eventually settling for Inspector Morse. Unfortunately, by the time I’d thought “Bloody hell, Kevin Whately looks young there”, I was sound asleep

I awoke, in time to see the clock switch to… 4AM. Ahem. The air was filled with the musty smell of burned rice, and all I could do is sigh at my lost meal. Indeed, the pans were bone dry, the plastic bags were shadows of their former selves, and the bottom of the pan was lined with thick, black mush…

Out into the yard it went. It was raining, so I laid the pan in the small puddle which always forms when it rains…. “whhoooOOoooosh”. Up went a great plume of steam.

Tsk. So, not only was my supper completely ruined, there has been an overwhelming smell of burned curry in the kitchen ever since. Delicious!

Technorati Tags: burned, cooking, curry, disaster, morrisons, pan