A magical day when we met family after family who watch our films which is great, please though follow through with DVDs or digital downloads. The mud was the biggest downside and both runs on Saturday and Sunday evenings were cancelled due to ground conditions.

After many decades in the transport hobby it now seems very strange to be taking regular trips to the local tip with the material; which it took nearly a lifetime to put together. I think that one has to know when the time has come, we had the heydays of the bus rally world, our best day ever was on the annual rally at Sandtoft, now wee are banned for putting out a DVD on a visit. Our best weekend ever was the RM50 do in London or was it RM40, Finsbury Park that I do remember. We could have sold everything twice over and a magical weekend when so many people became acquainted with the hobby. Now I'm felling my age a bit. Not entirely well today, hoping tomorrow I'm better, riski9ng the rain at Llandudno and that's it for the weekend. So loads of plastic covers that used to go over the market stall type stand , they have gone. The heavy duty trolley which I could barely lift into the van, that has gone to next door. More DVDs are go8ing to the tip every week. The next thing to consider is the many thousands of pictures, as we don't do many events now I think they too will end up in landfill or being paper, perhaps recycled. Hoping to feel better for tomorrow and hoping the weather is kinder that forecast.

It is going to take a few more trips to the tip to get rid of the old DVD video stock, much of it hasn't been on display for a decade or more. A shame as it took years but the peak of anything to do with rallies has well passed and even this year the London Brighton Commercial run is off just as is the Great Dorset. I'm just going to stick with Sunday at Llandudno even though the weather outlook seems quite grim with lots of rain around Llandudno often has its on micro climate thanks to the mountains behind it. As the majority of coverage there is usually lorries and vans it fills a hole in our recent coverage of commercials. I'm working on a Merseyside archive for release at the NWVRT open day after I get back from Slovakia. The time has flown by very quickly. It is looking as if we will be in Senegal in Feb 2024, Tui has some good offers and we can get the three of us with Sue there, all inclusive two weeks for £1500 each. I'll probably hire a car so I can get out and do some filming of lorries, Dakar is the port for a huge hinterland not just Senegal. Well I'm hoping to get some bunting up tomorrow, I can't find anything other the union flags the Ukraine and Commonwealth seem to be mislaid. I'll have a big sort out in the green house tomorrow, also if it is fine I'll get some gardening done, it was far too cold today.

My life time friend Dave Vaughan who grew up on the same estate as I did is revamping a 50 year old attic railway layout of Cornwall china clay pits. David like industrial modelling and is a regular writer for Old Glory magazine. He has asked for some more photos of my dioramas so I'll get the camera out at the weekend. Don't forget you brolly for Llandudno hope to see a lot of you there as long as it isn't a wash out!

I did get all the outstanding current round of DVDs and their covers sorted, all are on the PMP shop, please avoid EBay they only haver a small selection. As the risk of repeating myself, this is only a hobby and we actually make a loss on what we sell. I could put prices up , that may well happen but we enjoy all our friends around the world and the travelling. I'm not going to Truck Fest as such but may well end up filming the lorries leaving the site, they are now very anti anyone filming  or taking pictures. I also found that the visit to Beamish would be futile as they ban tripods. This attitude is very much a minority one and there are lots of wonderful venues  which are welcoming. I think when they are just a business that the heart is gone from it. The likes of the NWVRT, MTT, Wythall, Gaydon, Lathalmond  etc are just a few I draw quickly into my head but there are dozens more all over the country.

We are taking sacks full of old DVD stock and the boxes to our local skip which will clear space in our shed. I'll be eliminating hundreds of old DVDs especially on Ebay although so far I can find no way of deleting them, typical Ebay. All our overseas and pre 2000 truck films are going on to You tube to try and stop the slump in advertising revenue. When the fibre service gets to our village, the box is already sited we will be able to get digital downloads as well as Youtube clips on more swiftly. Our aim is to stop selling DVDs by 2030. By 2032 it will just be an archive online from which many thousands of films can be downloaded perhaps even streaming by then, Youtube started this then quickly pulled the plug after we spent masses of time getting it set up. I've just updated the archive listing and put it online near the DVD list. Most of the films are available for commercial use at sensible rates.

Meanwhile lots of archive features are planned and our usual round of visits continues. The CVC advert for lorry films ends in June when the subscription runs out. The shop will have them on board . Meanwhile here are some more shots from last week this time in Tunbridge Wells

Some mundane stuff like shopping then back to editing after I finished the lengthy transfer of film files for the OTA, thankfully nothing untoward happened, I'm always a bit worried transferring  material from extension drive to similar. The new 5TB drive arrived, I picked it up in Northwich. The town is covered in roadworks although I wish they were here, that's strange Dave you may ask, well they are putting in the fibre cables for the internet. We seem to have gained a cabinet nearby but nothing on getting it from there to the houses, they are looking for some land to put their camp on while they do Lower Peover. The carriage is back on the green and the guardsmen, no sentry boxes they were exhibited to destruction for the Queen's Platinum. We are discussing with our neighbours where our bunting should go, I saved it all from last year. So the last two DVDs from the past two weeks filming have just been made and I can now give you some photos, I can't remember what you have seen but lets give it a go.

THere you go a whole dollop of Chatham from last week, all the new DVD releases are on the shop, on the to do list is getting the archive list updated and getting the digital downloads updated.

Mandy and Sue arrived back from Spain this evening, I had a good crack at the garden and ordered up some new sealant for the rear paths which are looking a bit worn. I've also get some high strength weedkiller which will be enough for a few years, I do the surrounding ends of the estate road which already look awful, nobody else takes any initiative unless they have seen my efforts. The transfer of extension drive info is ongoing, all the DVD covers are made and just two films left to edit plus get everything on to the shop including digital downloads.With the computers in use copying files I can't get at the drives to finish off the work from the past two weeks. Next weekend sees lorries come to the front again with Llandudno and Truckfest  although the weather doesn't look that good, we had a hard frost this morning. I've got new Passion flowers  planted as we lost the huge one in an earlier hard frosty day. Same reasons I cannot add any pictures at present, we'll make up for it soon.

Getting drives backed up takes a while when they are 5TB drives, anyway the one that has taken nearly 2 days has just finished. I can take the copy to OTA the end of May when I next see Peter Waller at Shrewsbury. Practically all that going on meant I came to a standstill with the last couple of days material I was getting edited. As well as gardening, cleaning cars, cleaning paths, etc I need to get a few odds and ends in the right place on the next drive to be used but I still need to create a second back up so that I always have 2 at hand and OTA copies if everything goes belly up. They can last circa 5-10 years with great care. I need to create a listing of the files on the drive, that then goes into our master archive spreadsheet and makes creation of new archive productions a lot easier. Meanwhile all is turned off pending a good nights sleep and a fresh look at stuff in the morning. Mandy arrives back tomorrow evening. Here are some covers for the latest DVDs which have yet to go on the shop.

I need to add Brighton and Crawley covers, they are partly complete. DVDs edited up to Canterbury.

I've got the first batch of films edited and clips on Youtube, the covers for the whole batch will be produced in the coming days so I can get them on the shop.  The Lucky Dip boxes have been deleted from the shop and they are being sent to the tip and will get used in land fill or recycled although I doubt that. Shame more people didn't want to take advantage. When this is completed we will hold a small stock for the limited number of events we shall have a sales stall at. Next we must consider photos, there are many thousands and I can give it a try on the net with 'bundles' but I fear that these too will end up in the skip in the sky! Shots from our recent visits will carry on through the coming week. The television documentary will take up a bit of time as they want more material and info. Digitisation of old VHS images carries on as does scanning cine film. Here are shots from Crawley on Thursday

A great day at the North Western Road Car Company 100th at Manchester Boyle St, it takes a lot of effort to get a themed event off the ground. The addition for tomorrow will be the Hulleys heritage livery which we have recorded in service. A High Peak heritage bus is about two weeks away from completion. The Tracky bus was unexpected ( by me at least). I also met lots of our friends from all over the country and saw the work underway on the Crossley Mancunian which now has the PMP film running which shows a sister vehicle.

A long tiring day but I just about came out of it on schedule, looking forward to a sit down. It has been very cold and windy with some rain - Mandy and Sue report hot or very hot in Spain. I got the photos for the Channel 5 production sorted ready to load on a 'platform' for them. It looks like being a thorough job albeit with a lorry perspective but at least it is easier to focus on that if it were buses the material would escalate. I've got the first three of the recent recordings edited and Youtube clips are these to be loaded at some stage. Sorting out photos makes one quite reflective so here are a couple of look back scenes.