25th October 2019.

Friday 9.30am.

Crossing the River Calder on the station approach road. A new house is under construction on the site of the former mill water wheel.

Arriving at the station:

Leaf sweeping operations are in progress today. Very important. So important a red shovel is needed.

Now then, what’s all this? :

Lots of delays. ‘Congestion of the line’. That’s a new one!

The delayed Leeds train never turned up. I end up catching the 10.42 York train. While waiting for it one of the new trains arrived at the opposite platform. You can now travel direct to Chester from Hebden Bridge on trains like this! :

This is the York (via Leeds) train:

Arriving at Leeds. Platform 9d:

The platform is now overlooked by this new (to me) image. I found it rather creepy, suggesting that there are cats with wings and they only come out when there’s a full moon. But at least it’s an improvement on the blank concrete that was there before.

The exit is a trek to the ticket gate via the main station shed:

Work is going on to rebuild and refurbish the concourse building at the front of the station:

One day this black hole will be transformed into an impressive new gateway for Leeds railway users.

Journeys end is an office within sight of the station. It’s that spooky image again. Behind the camera is this, a more pleasing view of the changing face of Leeds:

End.

I went to Blackpool on Saturday with my music and dancing chum Linda. We went to the ’60th Anniversary of Motown’ event at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom organised by Goldsoul.   https://www.goldsoul.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=97

The music started at 8.30pm, the dancing got going about 9.30, and carried on until 2.00am. The huge dance floor was full for the whole evening thanks to the skill of the DJs, especially Ginger Taylor on the run up to midnight.

As the music is generally from the 60’s the age of the crowd is generally in its 60s too, but but there were many much younger people there as well. People are there for the dancing, there was drinking but no drunkeness. At various points in the evening we noted that there were actually more men dancing than women. A guy dancing near me was doing some great moves, and was smiling to himself all the time. He was enjoying himself so much he occasionally laughed with pleasure. (He was a big chap btw and in appearance you might have thought he had arrived by tractor!). This is what it’s all about to me. And this is what part of the dancefloor looked like:

I’d like to share some of the music being played from Apple Music, but I don’t think it’s possible, so these are screenshots of two tracks that we particularly enjoyed:

If you’ve never been to Blackpool, this what it looks like at night. The ballroom is directly underneath the tower:

If you go for a walk on ‘the prom’ the morning after, the tower might look someting like this:

Todays weather forecast for Blackpool, 15th July 2019:

End.

It was my niece, Claires, 40th birthday party last weekend. She lives in Cambridge with husband Scott and her 6 year old daughter, Ellie. To mark the occasion she invited family and friends to a party at University Centre, Cambridge:

It was great to meet and chat pre disco, and then to watch the revels on the dance floor until 11.30. I don’t have any pictures of the party, but this is myself and Claire pre-party:

It being June it was light outside until after 9pm. This is what it looked like outside. The University Centre is the modern building on the right.

Or, if you want a more traditional view, this what it looked like behind the camera. The river is the River Cam.

Cambridge is a pretty expensive place to stay if you want stay in the centre. For example, the hotel nearest to this spot (The Hilton) would cost you £318.00 for this Saturday night. One night. No breakfast. So I stayed at the IBIS hotel next to the station, just over a mile away at £144.00 for a Saturday night. Bargain!

The IBIS hotel is a new building and overlooks a newly built Station Square with lots of other new buildings all around it. The only old building is the station building itself, a modest nineteenth century building with arches, which looks like this when you are looking across the square out of the window of Pret a Manger:

The next day, Sunday, I took the train into London to visit an open studio occasion of Gail Brodholt, print maker. Her studio is in Woolwich where she creates her lino cut prints. The trains from Cambridge to London are hourly on Sundays and it takes 45 minutes to cover a 60 mile journey. To drive, the same journey would take twice as long at about 90 minutes. The trains are typically 12 carriages long, and on this particular Sunday both of the trains I travelled on, there and back, were full. Just the odd unfortunate traveller standing.

Everywhere I went on this jaunt was very busy. I still half expect the UK to be like it used to be into the 1970’s when everything closed down on Sundays and people stayed at home. Definitely not anymore.

My trip from Central London to Woolwich took me via North Greenwich tube station concourse where I snapped this unlikely event. It was well underway, with diners listening to music and shouting with delight while suspended from some enormous cranes. Crackers. Imagine if had started to rain! (It didn’t).

Print buying done I returned to the IBIS hotel. This is part of the hotel facade looking onto to the Station Square. I took the picture on Monday morning to show the unassuming pedestrian entrance to the station bicycle park. The black sqaure on the bottom right hand side of the building is actually the entrance to a large cycle parking facility.

Intrigued, I entered, and was amazed to find there were two levels of parking for bikes. Each level has a mezannine level, so four levels,  and it accomodates almost 3,000 bikes.

The Station bike facility appears to have been hugely successful. The old bike parking facility could only accommodate about 850 bikes when it was replaced by this in 2016. A quick assessment at 9.30 on Monday morning concluded that the place was already almost full. This is a wonderful thing. Fewer cars and more bikes make cities much more liveable.

On Monday I met an old friend in London for a luchtime saunter around old haunts when we lived in and around Balham and Clapham in the 1970’s. A wonderful nostalgia trip with an unexpected 20 degrees and sunshine to top it off. No more information or pictures available about this!

Then this: The 15.33 LNER service from London Kings Cross Station to Leeds on one of the new Hitachi Azuma trains that are gradually replacing the 40 year old Inter City trains on the East Coast Main Line.

Isn’t that station roof just ‘the business’?!!

The End.

It’s Easter 2019 and I thought I’d write short illustrated blog for anyone looking in from outside the UK.

The weather at Easter can be cold with snow, wet and windy, mild and sunny, or anything in between. This year sunny weather is forecast with temperatures of up to 24 degrees predicted in this part of Yorkshire, and even higher in Southern England. This is unexpected and unusual but very welcome. We will be enjoying better weather in many parts of the UK this Easter than they are having in the Canary Islands.

Hebden Bridge is a popular destination for visitors as a day out, especially on good weather days like today (Good Friday), as it is within easy travel distance of all the major Northern population centres. For example, four trains arrive here from Leeds every hour.

Living where I do I always have the options of visiting the towns cafes and bars, taking a walk in the surrounding countryside, taking the train somewhere, or just staying at home and enjoying the garden.

Today is going to be a garden day. Here are some random photos just taken in the garden:

 

 

 

It only means a trip from Hebden Bridge to Manchester, so why take a trip to visit David John Lighting?

http://www.davidjohnlighting.co.uk.

Well, it was actually a very enjoyable thing to do, and here’s two good reasons why. First off, it’s a characterful and interesting ‘proper’ lighting shop (an endangered species), and then secondly, there’s the area of Manchester where it’s located which is really interesting.

To get there it’s a short walk from my house to the railway station, then there’s a 35 minute train journey from Hebden Bridge to Manchester Victoria, and finally another short walk from there to the lighting shop.

At the back of Manchester Victoria Station, off Cheetham Hill Road, is an extensive inner city area of small workshops and factories laid out on a nineteenth century grid pattern of roads and streets. David John Lighting is located in one of these streets, Empire Street, and this is what it looks like. (That tower in the background is Strangeways Prison):

The building in the picture contains a showroom, a workshop, and the offices from which David John runs his small family business making light fittings. Thankfully, it’s not the glitzy city centre showroom you might normally go to to buy your lighting. Here you have to ring the doorbell and wait for someone to let you in.

It was an internet search which lead me here. I’d been looking for ready made picture lights to buy online, but couldn’t find the very small type I wanted.  The David John web site showed an amazing choice of lights, but still not the type I wanted. Surely, I thought, if I called in they would be able to find what I was looking for.

Once inside you can look around the showroom and, amazingly, a real person is there who will actually talk knowledgeably to you about your lighting requirements.

Eventually, having established they didn’t have what I wanted on a shelf somewhere I was ushered into the office to discuss what I needed. There was David John himself sat at a desk with a computer and, in amongst quite a lot of chat, he began to ask details, like:

What is the size of the picture you are lighting? (I didn’t know exactly),

What colour of light fitting and material do you want it made from? (the choices were many, different metals, shiny, dull, painted etc. I couldn’t decide on the spot).

What is the colour of the frame your picture is in? (there was a frame in one colour, and a mount in another colour, so difficult to explain).

It rapidly became clear that I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted. Mr John was completely unfazed by this, like it was normal. He said, “we can make any sort of light you want, really. Take a photo of the picture you want to light and send it to me with the exact measurements and we’ll take it from there”.

He was able to offer all sorts of additional advice such as to think about the thickness of the picture frame so as to get the length of the arm of the light correct. Also, how to make sure the picture is fixed flat against the wall, etc.

During our conversation he picked up a large metal lampshade and said “I’ve got to make twelve of these, and four bulkhead lamps, for a film company who are filming a war time tv series in Manchester”.

Mr John then had to let me out. On the way out I asked if I could take his picture, and I took this:

He’s a character. Always chatting. One thing he said was that his wife had heated some stew up for him the previous evening in the microwave and as he bit into a potato it had exploded and burnt his mouth.  “I’d never experienced anything like it before”, he said, “it just went ‘woomf’ in my mouth and now I’ve got blisters”!

So back out into the streets of Manchester. Across the street from the lighting shop you are confronted with this nineteenth century establishment on the opposite side of the road:

The picture of Joseph Holts brewery serves to illustrate that the area here is not just a run down inner city area, and has a rich history.  I’ll write a bit about that another time.

 

Ends.

 

 

 

I’ve just discovered that someone called Geoff Marshall makes short video blogs about railways which are actually quite entertaining. This video is especially interesting to anyone who has lived in London, or has had to use the London Underground network.

You’ll need about 13 minutes to watch the whole video. Go on. Give it a go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBTvmrRGlbE&feature=share

What do you do on New Years Eve? When you’re young it’s party until after midnight. When you’re 68 it’s have an early night. That was the plan this year and has been for many years now.

As my house is still chaotic due to various renovations taking place, I travelled by train on the afternoon of New Years Eve to Manchester to stay with Tom. The intention was for us to have an early night, but being in Manchester there was a temptation to travel as the Manchester Metro Link tram network runs all over the city until 1pm on New Years Day.

Friends David and Tony texted to say they would be having a NYE drink in the pub early evening until about 8pm in Bury. Bury benefits from a frequent tram service from Manchester which actually runs right past the front of Toms flats. The temptation was too great. Tom wanted to stay home, so at about 4pm I set off on my own for an early evening drink. For overseas readers Bury is a satellite town to Manchester about 10 miles north of the city centre. The tram journey takes about 30 minutes.

So the three of us enjoyed our drinks in a couple of pubs in Bury until the pubs started to get busy. Soon after 8pm bouncers appreared on the door and they started charging for entry. This seems to be the norm now in town centres everywhere on New Years Eve. To me, the old days when you could roam around freely were much better. Our time was up, so we headed for the tram and home. David and Tony got off at Crumpsall. I was staying on until Piccadilly, only I never got there. Not by tram at least. I had to walk it.

The tram was very busy. Standing room only, but everyone was very good natured, and surprisingly still very good natured even after it had stopped outside Queens Road tram stop and didn’t move for about twenty minutes. The tram eventually drew in to the platform at Queens Road where it was announced that it would not be going any further. No explanation given as to why. We all got off, the doors shut behind us and the tram disappeared into the night back in the direction of Bury. The indicator board said that the next tram for Piccadilly would be in 28 minutes time. It was at this point we all began to realise that something was wrong. People began phoning for taxis and trying to find out what was going on. The next station down the line from Queens Road in the direction of Piccadilly is Victoria.

We were eventually advised there had been an incident (staff would emphatically not say what sort of incident) at Victoria Station and there would be no more trams through Victoria that evening. As all the buses had stopped running at 6pm and by now it was about 9.30 the alternatives were either taxi or walk. Everyone will now have heard about the stabbing incident that took place on the tram platform at Victoria Station that night when three people were attacked and seriously injured, by a man with a 12 inch kitchen knife. At this point however no-one knew anything about this. With hindsight, the tram we had been on could quite easily have ended up on the tram platform at Victoria at about 9pm just when this incident was unfolding.

It’s about three miles from Queens Road to Piccadilly and it took about 45 minutes to walk it. It was only when Tom and I were listening to the tv news later in the evening that the nature of the incident became known. It immediately allowed the feelings felt at the time of the Manchester Arena bombing, (also at Victoria Station) when 20 people were killed, to resurface. What a depressing end to what had been, up until then, an enjoyable evening.

But let me leave you with this:

The three mile walk from Queens Road was actually quite enjoyable. The weather was mild and fine, and I fell into occasional conversations along the way with a fellow traveller who had been on the same tram as me. We were walking the same route and we had about the same walking pace. He was trying to get to Cornbrook to meet his girl friend. We speculated about what was going on, the prices of taxis on New Years Eve, and other chit chat that made the walk seem much shorter. He was about 20, Asian, and had his hair fashionably short with a top knot. Had this situation not happened we would never have spoken to each other. In the event, what could have been a grim inconvenience turned out to be an enjoyable interlude. In future, when I think of New Years Eve 2018, I’ll prefer to think of this.

 

Dear Followers,

I spent time writing this blog post partly on my lap top and partly on my iPad. It was originally much longer and contained more pictures of the Tower Ballroom and some music links.

However, in attempting to update the blog on one device, it seems I ended up deleting it from another and all we’re left with now is this truncated draft version. I’ll try to add to it again later.

This blogging journey really is one of discovery and pitfalls!

 

It was with some trepidation that Linda and I set off to Blackpool on Saturday as this is what the weather was like for Saturday into Sunday:

Many people will know what it’s like to walk along the sea front at Blackpool on a cold, gusty, rainy night, but for those who don’t, you don’t know what you’re missing! (and it’s just as well)! As it happened the forecast was wrong. I can personally testify that, as it turned out, there were no ‘gusty winds’. Instead there was literally a howling gale!!

The reason for this polar expedition was the lure of a whole evening of music and dancing at Blackpool Tower Ballroom with good friend Linda. It’s the little known annual Soul and Motown Party night. It’s so obscure this is the best the internet can come up with to publicise it:

If you’re a Northerner of a certain age, you would almost certainly have grown up hearing your parents talking in awed terms about nights out at Blackpool Tower Ballroom. This is one of the reasons why:

It’s huge, and so impressive it features on the perennially successful bbc tv show Strictly Come Dancing.

So while Blackpool doesn’t have the weather it does have the Tower Ballroom and we went to it!

To be continued.

I’m homeless at the moment due to some work being carried out on my house, so I’ve become something of a nomad, travelling around Hebden Bridge staying here and there. Being nomadic makes it difficult to keep in touch with friends as frequently as I would like. I hope this Blog post explains why I might be slow replying.

Last week I stayed at Sharon’s B & B in Hebden. She was away on holiday and needed someone to look after her two cats. I’ve been looking after Reggie and Rosie, and enjoying staying in one of Sharon’s two double bedrooms in her lovely large house, until she returned.

She hails from Liverpool and has this great poster on her kitchen wall:

I’m fascinated by Liverpool’s overhead railway. If it hadn’t been demolished in the 1960s it would surely be a huge tourist attraction today.

The cats were good as gold. Meet the cats. This is Reggie:

And this is Rosie in her favourite spot:

Sharons house is right in the centre of Hebden and was great for popping back home to check on the work, and handy for shops and cafes.

She also has good WiFi .

Her kitchen has a high ceiling, and has allowed her to create this brilliant light feature:

When asked where I’d been staying last week I had to decide whether to say I’d been staying at Garnett B & B, or Chez Shaz. This, spotted on the landing table, helped:

Sharon is very much a people person, with a welcoming personality, well suited for running a B & B. Probably why Garnett B & B is currently #3 for B&B on TripAdvisor for Hebden Bridge.

Thanks to Sharon for a great stay.

Where am I going to end up next?

Look out. I might be knocking on YOUR door!

END.