It was Polio Fellowship meeting at Ellesmere Port plus hair cut, shopping, salt for icy paths etc, on the PMP front I'm battling my way through the most tricky patch which is Cardiff trams, all in colour and HD although I keep playing the balloon game and chucking out the worst material until there is little left. The remainder of the editing won't take quite so long but generally speaking they take about 4 days of work so can never be prolific. We'll still be going out as weather permits. The post situation means everything is going out but when it gets delivered is another thing.

I'm brassed off that people are still ordering via EBay, I'm happy to take the knock on business getting rid of Amazon, EBay will be next to go. Everything is on the PMP shop, Ebay just has a few and when we delete 10-1500 in the New Year I've no idea what is on Ebay so people will have to chance it that I've an old copy around. I'll start putting more of the old rally stock in the bin again as the Lucky Dip box orders are very sparse now.

Thanks to everyone who is sending kind words about the service and friendship through the past year, any positive feed back is welcome believe me. We will attend few rallies with the stand next year, the season will starts with Detling then Brooklands then it depends on our film trips although I'd like to attend Alton and Wythall at Gaydon. We will also be filming a lot of running days which are very popular now.

Here are some shots from the Isle of Man perhaps we'll get there in 2023, anyone ever look at these pictures?

Yes we are pleased to introduce the next Down Your Way which features South Wales, some wonderful old footage which has been cleaned and tidied to sparkle in HD, rock steady and 60 fps! Today we were in Leamington Spa, saw the new Nat Express Electrics on the 11 but had already put my camera etc away in the car when the Stagecoach demonstrator turned up. Anyway I got what I could and even in the winter sun at nearly freezing point the shots looked well particularly down near the Pump Room.

I'm editing away and putting clips on Youtube, lots more downloaded and ready to process just doing the four things at the same time is ok for me but the internet feels the strain after one task, looking forward to getting full fibre, we have been promised it for 2023. Lets just wait and see on that one. I'm scanning cine at the same time but feel like a break and a brew. We had bacon sandwiches for dinner. Not that busy on the DVD front so orders are being turned around within 24 hours. Please don't let your loved ones buy your DVD present on EBay they take most of the profit and we don't actually make anything as it all gets eaten up in the costs. Here are some Leamington scenes taken this morning.

I'm putting a series of London bus clips on Youtube this evening which show the development of the processes that get is to be of much higher quality than it starts off. This means de-interlacing, raising to 60 fps and then treating it with NEAT software. The result is pretty good although I'm using Mini Dv from 1999 which was good quality at that time. I'm also going to put on a film at Immingham of trucks from the same week with just the resultant images. The whole process does add a lot of time but I'm doing it on Youtube uploads and archive DVD / Download features. The new download from analogue sources is going very well, the clips certainly look good at hundreds of gigabytes, they are still good HD when reduced to around 8gb for storage. I haven't put the new DVDs on the shop as I forgot! I've put some recent DVDs on as downloads on the plus side. Tomorrow we are at Leamington Spa filming and hopefully visiting the Portuguese cafe, To whet our appetite past visits from this location.

I've at last set up the technology to resume downloads of analogue film although they seem to be very high quality and gobbling up bytes. Still it is nice to be back on track although the disc burner seems to have gone on strike but it might be to do with downloading the scanned files to create space on the drive, fingers crossed on that. We have a little flurry of DVD orders catching up, they will go out tomorrow morning. The IQ has its 100,000 service tomorrow then in Feb 2023 it will have its make over. Mandy had a tumble on the way to the post office, her legs cut out as often happens, thankfully no harm done although it was her new jumper which was giving most concern. I'm also carrying on with the cine scanning. I've now got two DVD covers done and one DVD complete, see above. I'll get them on the shop when the computer has had a rest. Not sure what to bring you tonight, lets have a rummage in the files - yes that looks exotic on a grey winters day in Cheshire, some shots from one of our Banladesh trips.

I think we may have to park events mid winter as the cold in museum sheds is usually close to freezing and when the gas bottles were exhausted today it was very uncomfortable. We had some more pleasant conversations with those on stalls around us but it was deadly quiet as regards visitors and even the visiting buses was nothing like as plentiful as on previous occasions.  I am now catching up with DVD orders received over the weekend which will go in the post Monday morning. I'm also playing with the new Black Magic format converter we received today although I cannot find muck about it as yet and as ever these day instructions are buried on the internet.

The great Boyle St atmosphere prevails from the lads giving us a hand in with the stock through to those running the feeder buses, the entrance, the stalls etc and the large number of friends many of whom we haven't seen for quite some time. getting there is a bit of a struggle for some folk but we hope they have found the journey's end rewarding. Many of our archive films have gone along with regular stock, I've filled in all the gaps so all material released in the last couple of years will be there. Lots of work going on at the museum and interesting selection of buses in service today. Sunday is usually a bigger showing of visiting buses so why not come along. Here are shots of the buses outside, the stalls and restoration underway on the old 1946 Mancunian.

Once more it is Christmas Cracker time at Boyle St we went and set up this afternoon. I'm afraid these days we cannot card around the huge stock we once did. No pre orders this time so anything you want get it early. We will replenish any sold stock Saturday night for the Sunday session.

It has been an uphill struggle getting the gadgets to load analogue tape material to the editing computer, after a few false starts we have contacted a pro camera company in Herts who had one remaining second hand but unused Canopus box which is an external plug in so no ripping the case off the computer. It will be here Monday so fingers crossed this will do the job. It is a very sad fact that it is now easier to scan cine to digital than get analogue tape into digital.

I've got three bus DVDs to edit. I'm saving the files I've scanned this week, it all gobbles up the time but there is nothing on TV so even Mandy is having a read, with the sales stock gone out and will go back to the shed it is looking much tidier in the offices.

A good trip down to Gloucester and Cheltenham. The old bus station is now a huge building site with adjacent areas being built on as well. Most buses other than the local services use the bus station, it got clogged up once in the morning peak  but I think full would not happen that often. Difficult to get the schools services as well as the bus station but the trip to Cheltenham more than made up for that. I'll just give you the Gloucester shots for now but Cheltenham was really good with a big schools outing, perhaps the panto or something else at the theatre, really good bash, no hassles and friendly drivers. Note it was cold and misty.

I've made sure that the boxes of DVDs are right up to date for the Christmas Cracker event at Boyle street this weekend. Although only 10% of our stock it is the best we can do as shifting boxes about is getting a bit beyond us now. Tomorrow we shall be filming at Cheltenham and Gloucester. We had the village Christmas tree lighting and carols this evening.  I've struggled with getting anything sorted for downloading the analogue films to the computer. The way around it seems to be that I am buying a fire wide card to be put inside the box which can be used to select from heritage devices on Windows as otherwise as pre set Windows 10 and 11 no longer support fire wire. Then I can plug in the Canopus gizmo which I've got second-hand and then plug devices into that to download. It is frightening to think that tapes are now harder to digitise than old cine films, who would have seen that one coming.

Anyway some shots from Grimsby early yesterday morning.

Horrendous journey back from North Lincs, the weather was a bit cold but no wind and no shadows from unwanted winter sunshine. I did some more scanning of cine yesterday and await the latest downloader for analogue (tapes) which was coming from a neighbouring town ( slowly?) So no apologies as some of the scenes were dark, it works better with video than a still camera.