Greetings readers worldwide, if you call by our Youtube channel please disable any ad blockers and click on some adverts when you look sat our films it is the revenue from this which helps finance our future film trips and lets the channel exist in the first place, even Google has to make ends meet. I'm still thinking about when to launch our subscription channel and also about regular broadcasts as a mini tv station, really its a lot to do on my own and thats one of the problems I don't have any back up. Another issue facing us soon is that my pal John Bishop who looks after the PMP cine archive is moving home shortly and wants to return the majority of my films as he will have less space in his new home. Thus we have to look at the future of some of these cine films, there are black hole archives then there is the possibility of selling it, raising revenue and hoping the someone who is prepared to pay serious cash will want to look after and use the material. It would be good to see some of the overseas material returning to it's home country especially the Belgium, Swiss film not to mention Germany etc. Some films gifted to us/me will of course be retained until I finally pop my clogs.

Today we had a bit of a lay in bed, until gone 8am, we needed to catch up after the fairly gruelling day yesterday with the funeral on Teesside and then getting back for the launch of the Principle's circle at the RNCM in Manchester which brings me forward to late afternoon today when I had to pop down to the hardware shop at Holmes Chapel to get an allen key to tighten the legs on the chairs we got from John Lewis's, ridiculous that they only lasted weeks before coming loose. I met Anita Lockett from Clonter at the shop and I promised we were trying to work out  if one or two of us were coming to the Opera Gala later  this autumn, it seems possible that Mandy would be in Ireland. Anita offered me to join them for dinner that night rather than be alone, a kind gesture. Talking of overseas trips we have now booked our relaxation trip to La Macassar at Corbie near Amiens, our favourite retreat from the world for the end of October. I'm also working on the details for my Japan trip next year and have also figured out how to get registered and book the Indian rail tickets online getting from Mumbai to Kochi, I also will need to speak to BEST to arranged a visit to their DD depot.

Today I went to the docks at Seaforth, Liverpool and got an hour of great shots in sunshine, I phoned the 101 assistance police number before commencing and finally was able to advise I was there and let the local patrols aware and not to 'buzz' me! There was a road closure at one of the free port dock entry roads so the scrap lads were going in the other entrances but i did try at Cargills site but the weather closed in and it poured down, then relocated to Widnes Stobarts Port but again the weather was awful after a while but I did get a good look at the work on the roads to the new Mersey crossing, enormous amount of construction and i noticed what looked like a new roundabout before Widnes on the Liverpool side which was stacked out with trucks, one sunny day i'll take a closer look. I've loaded Loughborough and Leicester on our PMP shop page. Here are some shots from today's trip. Rotten weather tomorrow so I'll do indoor jobs.

We were up at 5 am and over to Teesside to beat the M62 rush hours traffic, we had breakfast in Guisborough and then to the crematorium near Redcar. Spent a lot of time chatting to Bill's lads and my old colleague Peter Bradley. I thought that there would have been a better showing from Bill's friends and colleagues but the humanist ceremony was pleasant and it was great to catch up on old times, lots of names sprang from the depths! We set off about 1.40 from Marske and arrived back in Manchester just as the rush was building up, had a coffee in the canteen then it was into the supporters reception which went very well with food, drink and entertainment plus of course company all spot on. Late now , bed time. Skipping Rugby trucks tomorrow as weather not certain, may try for Blackburn and Accrington new bus stations and do Rugby next week if weather is OK. Photos from Loughborough yesterday.
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A painful evening with the aftermath of my root canal excavation yesterday morning but I zapped it with a nice dolly mixture of one sleeping pill, 2 tramadol, and an Ibuprofen which all sent me to sleep very quickly and when the alarm went off the morning although a bit dazed I was and stayed pain free. We had swapped the cars around on the drive last night so I left Many in bed and set off through the early rush hour across the A50 to Leicester, I got there just after 9am and it was already sunny and almost warm, in fact it levelled out at 21C on the way back home.

I had to wait a while until I could do the new bus station until the sun had swung around but got some good shots early on, then finally a few at the out of town bus station. The city still has three bus stations despite rebuilding the Haymarket, all very confusing for anyone new there. No hassles in facr very friendly drivers all the way. Lots of photos as well as the video, yesterday I got under way pruning down the photos awaiting filming throwing out those which were unwanted duplicates or no destination screen showing. Tomorrow we are both up early to get over to Teesside, to Redcar for Bill Easby's funeral.  After covering Leicester I went on to Loughborough, I'm not really sure how I managed it but i did get an hour of film!

Possible projects coming up, putting all the old Showbus rallies on DVD and doing something y way of a compilation tweaker to get maximum quality for the Big Orange event at Boyle Street museum this month.

Busy ae ever, made a mistake and set the alarm as per Showbus Sunday last, woke us up 05.30 oops, then the bell on it started ringing an hour later, finally got up just past 8am. It was another wet day until late afteroon by which time I'd been to the dentist for round 2 of the root canal, he got all the old stuff out and then inserts to kill any infection are in and temporary filling, I go back for hopefully the final time next Tuesday.

Tomorrow it;'s Leicester and hopefully on to Loughborough later, I'll get away early, the light won't be any good if sunny first thing but i avoid the A50 crush a bit. It will bne good to get back to UK service buses,  there is a new bus station in Leicester and of course Showbus spurred me on as it was in that county and lots of people have been nagging me to do it. The list of to do locations is a mile long though but I hope to do trucks at Rugby on Friday and Saturday the new bus station in Accrington and Blackburn. I've got all the stock replenished after Sunday and also checked through and back filled any Scottish material ready for Bridgton running day( GVVT). Lets have a look at more photos from Showbus. I also got my family history software through, haven't loaded it yet as I was transferring the remainder of my photos to just the one file of waiting to file photos and then they go to another holding folder and finally get put in the archive and listed on Smugmug, all would be well if the weren't 100k waiting to be sorted.

A day of continuous rain, night to night with no cessation. What a miserable start to autumn and I'm glad I made a good start on getting the summer bedding out and replaced by pansies, violas and bulbs in the front, just more bulbs to put in the small spaces in the rear garden and then get some bedding and bulbs in when I do the autumn clean up at Southern Cemetery. I also cracked on with the covers for Showbus, both volumes run about 80 minutes each and are already on the PMP shop  East Midlands area. Then we had a rush trip down to the bank and butchers after the post office, two bags full went out today. Waitrose had no cakes at all which appealed ( nothing new there, I really don't rate Waitrose at all).

We called in at Yvonne Coates next to the garden centre and checked on her progress after her new knee, doing really very well even faster recovery than mine. Then it was back to the grind, I've got all the photos waiting to be progressed on my main computer and of course backed up, I'll try and make a resolution to get them sorted as there are nearly 100k waiting to be gone through, many are duplicates which need to be eliminated, then I tweak the best before filing. There are also many on the drive taken  out of the machine I used at work for my own files. We got a quote for India in Feb 2016, I managed to virtually halve it by booking it all myself, just one train ticket to sort, must ask Martin about his contacts on such matters, Indian railways require you to have an Indian mobile phone to book! How very bizarre. It took a bit to sort hotels out but they were getting very thin on the ground, the flights take us very Abu Dhabi to Mumbai then back from Kochi to Manchester with Mumbai to Kochi on the non stop twice weekly train which takes 24 hours and is we believe very scenic.

I've got all the replacement Scottish DVD stock ready to put in the cases for GVVT the weekend after next and also all the replacement stock for that sold at Donington yesterday. So a busy day, having a beer and Mandy a G&T, next two days back to fasting diet and tomorrow is the dreaded root canal treatment at the dentist, the infection has all gone along with pain, I do hope he manages to get it all done in the one 'hit'. Thursday we head up to teesside for Bill Easby's funeral then with a change of tie we head back to Manchester for the RNCM sponsors evening. Before the week is out I hope to have covered filming in Leicester and perhaps more at Rugby on the trucks. Lots of other locations on my list, would even consider Saturday outing if the weather is right. It was good having a lay in after Showbus but I woke again at 5.30, needless to say i went off to sleep again. I may start to progress my 2017 trip to Japan but I'd like to see what Intra Express are planning as often I seem to plan one year ahead of Thomas Fischer to the same places, ie he hits China Sept this year using my friend Zhang for his arrangements, just like our plucky group did. I hope that Japan has plenty of western coffee outlets whuich were my staple diet in China. On now with my coverage of Showbus, clips are on our Youtube Channel.

It's getting a bit late and we are just about to have our dinner. Today was Showbus and despite late afternoon rain which really closed the show a bit early it was quite a good one. Thoughts for next year which i understand will again be at Donington are that Martin would be better off abandoning the vehicles numbered places and go over to parking up in echelon as they arrive thereby speeding up the entrance and avoiding blocking the main road as happened for much of the morning. The signage could have been better and the catering seemed thin on the ground. Toilets were plentiful and well maintained and cleaned throughout the day and everything seemed a lot more compact than at Duxford. The vehicle content was spot on and avoided those ranks of coaches where an operator bring dozens of very similar machines.

​ There was a good spread from old to new and lots of regions covered with naturally a good shoeing from the East and east Midlands and Staffordshire. There could easily have been more of a presence from the North West and Yorkshire, even from the North East although of course these regions were represented and all power to those who travelled great distance with plenty of Scottish buses and my mate Stuart from deepest Swindon and thanks to Thamesdown for making a vehicle available for a non official entry at the event. I loved the entry road and how the buses had to work to come up the slope, it took a bit to get the passengers waving, perhaps they couldn't see me. I seem to have got a fair amount of film, two well endowed films I think. The light was changeable, ok for video mostly and photography at a push. Here is my first sample of early arrivals.

A harrowing day in some respects , I needed to rearrange the diary for both Mandy and myself as the funeral arrangements for a friend who has passed away changed and we'd already altered things to suit. Well a bit of rearranging and it should all fit. The weather has certainly turned to autumnal and its been cool and windy all day and promised sun failed to arrive. We went down to get some pansies and bulbs for the garden, we ended up at Fryers which probably has the better range around these parts. I managed to strip out the summer bedding from the front garden and put in everything ready for spring although I've yet to start on the back garden and we usually do something with the family plots at Southern cemetery.

The van is packed ready for Showbus right down to our food for the day. The weather looks as if it will hold out until mid afternoon when I suspect we'll be putting things away and reducing down to the recent stock but for the rest of the day we'll have almost the full range of our DVDs right up to the very latest releases. There were around 30 clips put on our Youtube channel over night and I've just 2 hous of film to process to Youtube and put stills on the EBay items of 16mm film which need seeing to. So to some extent a fruitful day although it really seemed that my mood had matched the autumnal aspects of reflection on times past and friends gone. We need to look at opportunities for filming over the next couple of weeks and are monitoring the weather to pick the best chances, I'm sure we'll manage a few good days out. Mandy is busy cooking Guinea Fowl for dinner, we are having ouer weekly roast tonight and then tomorrow when we get back from Showbus it's meatballs. Here are links to some of my latest Youtube uploads. The Yugoslavia film has a few interesting bus shots in it, two glimpses of ex UK deckers for instance.

We bade farewell to Yvonne and Graham this morning, an enjoyable week with attention far away from PMP and transport for much of the time which following our break in Ireland has made a welcome change from the usual grind although of course orders come in and must be attended to and with such a massive following these days we can't ignore our world wide audience. I've now uploaded screen shots on EBay for nearly all the ciine films we have on sale which have another week to run at auction. There are around 40 films uploading to Youtube at present although a few may turn out to be duplicates and there are usually some from cine origins which have copyright issues. There are a few more Irish trailers going on as well. I've run off the latest DVDs to take with us to Showbus. I looked today and there appears to be the usual 400 or so bus entries but as yet there aren't that many stalls although I'm sure that the total will suddenly rise.

Anyway we really do look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in the new venue and of course hope that there will be a shoeing of some different vehicles from the norm at what has for decades been the largest such bus event in the world. Yvonne and Graham called at the pottery factory shop and got some plates on the way home as well as taking in another National Trust property. The forcast for Sunday is showers so its back to Showerbus but fingers crossed it remains dry. I've a pile of minidv cassettes the contents of which need entering on our database and there remains the 100k photos which require filing. I'm linking the two computers but had to order a usb to usb as amongst the multitude of wiring we have there is not one to be found. I've had to reorder the family historian software we use as the old one vanished changing computer and wouldn't work with Windows 7 which we have on the new machine, very up to date you know! I'm not totally sure what I'll get filmed next week as weather permits, Leicester, Blackburn, Accrington, Rugby trucks, North East and many more beckon. A catch up with our tv favourites is ongoing but I must dah as Corrie will be back on in a mo ! Oh photos well lets see if we have any Showbus
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The day had a rather sombre start as I opened my emails while the kettle was boiling and thought oh that's great I've got an email from Bill but then I saw the title and the words funeral and regret etc. There are relatively few people I've kept up correspondence with from work and Bill Easby was one of them, with a shared interest in transport Bill had a great fondness for steam railways and his dad famously drove for the LNER. Bill had a few favourite anecdotes which passed many a dull winter afternoon huddled in the offices by the radiators over a coffee, many of the stories centred on the railways in North Yorkshire. The stories seemed to creep up on you and morphed into one another sometimes, I suppose many of us were considered characters and in management it was a delicate balancing act between keeping in with the 'lads', getting the job done and appeasing bosses and clients. I think many of us have a lot of foibles which we would shy away from but evoke gentle ribbing, Bill certainly wasn't one for giving way to going grey on top and dipped in to many a dye pot none so striking as the morning he emerged in Fleetwood with bright red hair - a case of the  emperor's new clothes - nobody was prepared to make comment. We did all have a laugh and we'd often retreat at lunch or after work to the pub and Bill would soon have the atmosphere relaxed as he restructured the company over some Guinness. Bill wasn't exactly into classical music and once stumped with a virtually teetotal client in Grangemouth who enjoyed choral singing was relieved when I volunteered to take the chap to the opera in Glasgow but got it straight in the ear from our director for letting me do it. I've quite a few photos ferreted away from on site events but could only locate a few from Fleetwood I think which feature Bill as site manager on overhaul projects, in particular presenting the loathed order of the toilet seat.. don't ask! As I said to Justin one of two brothers, sons of Bill who I worked with I couldn't really find that many words to say as I was a bit stunned all day but at least the funeral will draw together a fair old crowd of friends whom I haven't seen for many years now.

We've been out to Cheshire Oaks today and then an excellent meal at the Dog in Over Peover this evening. I think Yvonne and Graham have had a good time here and hopefully we'll be down in Hampshire around Christmas to catch up with family.

We had a day out with Yvonne and Graham taking in the National Trust property at Dunham Massey near home in Cheshire. The trust now adopts a more visitor friendly approach with more photography allowed at properties and the chance to get nearer the contents in a lot of rooms. There is also a trend towards events and story tell and this seemed to go down very well. Discussing things with room guides it seems that the increasing age of retirement may take it's toll on the number of trust volunteers who are in youthful retirement. I had an interesting chat but I was told by Mandy that it had been about 30 mins gone by. The restaurant was the weakest link, rather dry cakes and chaotic servery layout.  Lots of work on new shop cum cafe complex and on the gardens where most of the acres of rhododendrons have been hacked away. There is a herd of around 150 deer all looking suitably scenic. We bought next years calendar, a shopping bag, a few beers etc plus peanut brittle which everyone except Mandy likes.

Then we headed to the shopping centre at Trafford near the football ground, not really my usual cup of tea but we had a pleasant time and bought some useful things amongst us, personally I came away with some disposable razors for my travel bag, last of the big spenders. It's not been as bad for DVD and film orders today, I've got those to post off tomorrow ready and am busy loading clips on our Youtube channel.  I've got the Irish bus films done, the first order is already in, I'll add them to the shop i a minute. I've got all the monthly magazine adverts done. Mandy is at the church PCC meeting tonight and Yvonne and Graham have gone to see a friend in Manchester so a couple of hours to try and catch up. Tomorrow we may go down to the Potteries factory shops and maybe Shugborough house while we are in a NT frame of mind. Weather still very mild and little rain, the garden though looks as if autumn is fully upon us. Winter / spring planting will start soon. Some recent Youtube clips