What an awful week it has been, it only stopped raining in the early hours this morning and has left many roads and even entire communities flooded in our part of Cheshire. The bags are all packed and we'll be up at 3.30 am in the early hours of Friday. We meet up with several people we know on this trip who are also in Malta at this time. We did our best to get every DVD order away including three trips to the post office one after the last post had gone using pre-purchased stamps. IT has tied in with the magazine all appearing this week which is a bit of a pain. The kitchen is a lot further progressed, we were without water for most of the day but now everything works from new sink to dishwasher. I've arranged with the kitchen people to get the decorator back after they've done all they can and it will be a nice surprise to find that all is ready for occupancy once we return. Not a lot I can now report on, Sue is here with us and the sun is shining, the water subsiding. I've tidied the garden post deluge and put in the plants which were waiting in pots. One last mow didn't go amiss. A couple of sponsorships for my walk, one came from the practice manager for Prof Jari who did the knee op, I've offered them my testimonial in return, well it can't be a bad job notching up 14 miles at a time and then carrying on to do a huge chunk of the 190 miles. To get us in the mood for Malta lets have a look back at days past. If the blogs from Malta fail to come through blame Weebly not me more yankee crap service. What a week this has been, two hot days and a thunderstorm is the catch phrase for a British summer but uit was two hot weeks and then a week of storms this year. It has never relented, the time of day may have changed by eventually any hope of sun or dryness has been washed away by torrents and it is a wonder that we aren't reading about floods up and down the country. Thus it was this morning that the kitchen installation meant we had no water from the taps save that from on high. The missing piece of work top today arrived from Germany, still two hours late but no doubt that was down to the weather. I'm getting all my camera gear ready now for the trip to Malta on Saturday, Mandy is busy packing the clothes. We retreated to the Colonial Cafe today as there was no chance of brewing up at lunch time, accompanied by a very nice walnut cake for me and lemon tart for Mandy. I've also got the posters ready for the film night in September but not the film, the tickets are also done. I've got all the magazine adverts covered and I've now uploaded all the new DVD releases on to our EBay shop and Amazon as well as the first port of call our own shop where you pay no postage wherever you may be, why not make that your first choice. I've been gleaning some material for the film evening and will trawl through my database to get some interesting and I hope topical clips from the past. Hopefully i'll find a few minutes to make small inroads in the mass of still images which need filing and uploading on our shop's Smugmug pages. Today I'm including scenes from Fareham and Portsmouth from last weeks visits. After the Malta trip I hope to be visiting Hampshire for Basingstoke and Winchester after we have made our official visit to record Swindon Thamesdown, their archive we have made for many years. After that I have a trip scheduled for East Anglia and Essex possibly whilst Mandy is in Ireland. Herne Bay rally in August should see us do more in London and later in the summer we'll be tackling the North East. If I can bring myself to face it we'll do a bit of filming in Scotland around Lathalmond and later GVVT, Glasgow. I'm still on the look out for good weather days for Isle of Man and Channel Islands. Isle of Wight was abandoned as it was the festival when we were in Hampshire, once experienced while I tried to film, never again worse than scooter weekend. Preparations for the charity walk continued today when we visited a major specialist outlet in Manchester and I selected boots and other apparel better suited to the challenges ahead for after the soaking on Monday i wouldn't want a repeat. If I can do this tough first challenge other walks should be easy in comparison. I like to go at my own pace and have my camera handy all the time although on Monday it stayed firmly in it's case. There were quite a few DVD orders to get sorted this morning and today's post and internet has produced a pile to be tackled in the morning. We did pop into Didsbury after getting the walking gear and found a superb British tea shop and had home made Eccles cake and Mandy had a superb lemon drizzle slice. Yes it is a dieting day but with the trauma of the kitchen ongoing the occasional treat is essential. I've now got all the DVDs finished including covers from last weeks trip to Hampshire and Dorset. They are all on our shop page and if I get enough energy they will also go on EBay and Amazon before the weekend. Saturday of course sees us fly out to Malta and there I will cover the latest incarnation of bus operator as well as intense coverage of the lorries and vans particularly at the quarries and if busy the harbour plus the inevitable industrial area shots. I'll take a nosey at the docks and see if anything remains of the old bus fleet. Tonight a couple of things to show you, the covers of the latest DVDs and a look at Southampton last Saturday. An earlier start more than getting up for the kitchen chaps as we had to get Mandy's Honda Jazz over to Ellesmere Port for them to fix the scratch we got going up to cousin Marks last month and some other minor chipsd on the front. It wasn't too bad at that stage and it stayed dry for a while as I went to get my hair cut before we left the port and has an Eccles cake and coffee at Marks & Spencers , Mandy bought a new top. Then back home where the builders were banging away in the kitchen, the missing piece of the jigsaw should turn up from Germany tomorrow. When we got home i got stuck int listing the remainder of the 16mm films, there is about 130 of them scheduled to go live at auction on Ebay next Saturday which should be sold or not by the time we return from Malta. We leave here Saturday. I've also made a start on outstanding DVDs with covers and discs now done and on our shop page for the two Nottingham albums. I'm starting on Bournemouth next. We are also having short rests watching the soaps on catch up. When we returned to Ellesmere Port this afternoon to pick up the Honda all hell broke loose with the weather and there was lightening as well, huge patches of flooded motorway and multiple pile ups around Chester. Back home more rain but not too heavy, tomorrow I'll put the still sodden walking boots in the green house and see if that speeds up the dry out. I've had a look on the net for better waterproof kits for the charity walk. Last night we agreed on the film night which takes place at Plumley village hall on 8th September. I need to get a poster sorted out for that and start the process of assembling the programme to last two sessions of 45 minutes. Continuing the look back at last week I have put up some images of Poole. Training for the long distance walk continues with a walk our with four of us this morning despite torrential rain. Arrived back after lunch time bedraggled and in desperate need of a shower. The garden would be grate if there hadn't been quite so much rain, the flowers are looking great and some warmth will help but they have all shot up in the moist atmosphere but so have the slugs. I did a bit of a tidy up teatime when I topped up the bird feeders. I've made a start on loading the next batch of 16mm films all scheduled to go on auction next weekend when I've gone to Malta they should be ending when we get back. We had quite a large post bag to shift this morning, it was the largest batch for a few weeks, must be the change in weather. I'm hoping to make a start on editing the latest bus films, I also need to get the magazine ads in this week. The kitchen progresses slowly, the missing section of the kitchen work surface went adrift on its way from Germany and has had to be replaced again, expected Wednesday! Lets have a few photos from last weeks explorations starting with my first visit down south which saw me in Bournemouth. Sorry that once more Weebly failed to deliver the blogs in full while we were away in Hampshire. I'll do my best to catch up, it just shows that with the best will in the world all this modern technology can fail as much as a broken pencil. Today it was the rally at Southsea, a revival of the Southsea spectaculars which we attended for many year. Looking at the history of the event we weren't that many years int it when we first went. The only thing I could question on the history was that there was just one year after the move to the common that it returned to the castle which wasn't a double booking but the Common had been churned up by military vehicles. It was a great atmosphere that time around and the best trading day we ever had there. Rain and sun shine seemed to alternate but it was really one of the main events in the rally year and the spot never really went to any other local events although there were obvious candidates such as Stokes Bay or Worthing. Alton is probably the nearest in size today to the Southsea specatacular in it's heyday. The weather wasn't going top be great, that we knew and of course so did enthusiasts, families and vehicle owners but despite all that there were about 60 buses in attendance with a good span of ages. The team lead by Mark and Julian did a stalwart task up against the weather and the obvious lack of buses early on but they all came together as buses often do and the Common soon started to look its old Spectacular self. We sat it out while the heavy rain persisted and then put up the rest of the stand after it laid off and by the afternoon the sau was out. We had a good run back home and the traffic seemed lighter than usual. Some pictures from today and over the next few days I'll cover Portsmouth, Fareham, Southampton, Bournemouth and Poole all of which we visited as well as a family day out on Friday. |
PMP Sponsors the North West Vehicle Restoration Trust at Kirkby.
Categories |