Winter is starting to bite already, first sleet came down this morning. We shot stills of two classics yesterday this was actually the first and is at Carlisle. That also forms our slide show for today. I entered several thousands of photos yesterday and today on our Smugmug ( owners of Flckr). I have also edited two of the three DVDs and started putting trailers on our Youtube channel. I am also about to embark on construction of buildings for my urban diorama based 1940s-60s, which is the first of three epochs on the 12 foot layout in the new cupboards. Chris Cotton's new London bus model arrived, he has done a good job getting the Chinese to put right errors before going to construction. The weather on BBC and Accu all turned out to be wrong and I think I was on plan c when I decided to carry on up the M6 and hope for more of the sunshine which covered West Lans coast. It was still a bit too cloudy up at Penrith but looked cleaer ahead so I ended up in Carlisle the furthest north I have filmed during the pandemic. I managed to get two hours at Carlisle then the clouds gathered and I hurried down to Penrith which was still mostly sunny and managed an hour there at one spot that I always have appreciated over many years by the community fire station roundabout and at the start of the road to Shap. High lorry credentials indeed. Here are some shots from Penrith, always spot on in the afternoon and so many great trucks. The latest DVD releases are now on the shop and DVDs ready to be sent out tomorrow. I am hoping to get more filming done tomorrow, weather dependent as usual. We had a trip to Ellesmere Port this morning, hair cut, shopping at M&S, Boots checking if more powerful Voltorol rub for my knee, the one I got on prescription was the lowest doe painkiller of three levels, after all its saving the NHS a replacement knee job and I don't plan going near a NHS hospital in the next year or two. Making the covers for the new archive features I took several screen shots which viewed as small images looked fine, they are only screen shots and represent images on tiny Standard 8 film taken nearly 70 years ago. Here are some to whet your appetite. I was rather diverted from the best of intentions to get the DVD cover done for the latest release including the archive features but the first lump of time was carrying on with the slide scanner that i got some time back and the results were not very good but with another go and finally figuring out the adjustments to quality and exposure even half good shots come out well. These relate to a short era of taking slides in the early to mid 1980s and we got several of our pre video trips on that media plus stills on negative. This cover Ireland, Malta, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and others. We had to pop out to get the PMP DVD orders away and then carried on to Waitrose in Northwich saw D&G now have an all over advert from the usual vaping advert source they promote. Next diversion was a huge one, I got the bulk of my crested Goss giftware now well over 100 years old out from the boxes long time stashed in the greenhouse unpacked and washed then dried and just getting all the packing ready for bin day took a while. I finally received my cutting mat so I am almost ready to take my first shot at the card models which hopefully will populate my street scene diorama which will be 202 deep by 12 foot long and will travel through time from three eras, wartime to 1960s, then 1970s to end of 20thC and finally modern although it might not be until I get some work done on it. After a really tiring day Mandy and myself will have a relaxing TV evening and resume work in the morning. Tonights slide show covers the second part of Mondays outing to Rotherham, not as much of interest and I battled with the weather but here we go. Although this time it is just an office chair at £90 it joins the other things which have gone up the spout since the Corona virus has made traders desperate. We used a previously highly regarded office furniture company but when goods never arrived and we couldn't get to speak to anyone I looked at the latest Trust Pilot reviews, they have plummeted from 5 stars to 1 all round and for months haven't been supplying the goods paid for. The police won't even look at a scam until it is over 40k so all the little bits that add up are supporting these robbers and chance is they won't get their collar felt. Today I went over to Barnsley and although the promised light cloud wasn't in evidence it was a blue sky the temporary overbridge looks straight down on the bus station and provides an ideal position to film and there were quite a few in new Stagecoach livery to see. Then I carried on to Rotherham, now it was sunshine and cloud, using mostly automatic settings which cope better in these conditions I did get enough film. On the way back home over the Peninnes it was cloudy and then over towards Manchester the heavens opened and it was torrential at home. I've downloaded the material and will start editing, also I shall get the covers done for the two archive Down Your Way features on Scotland and Kent. In the mean time I am still getting a bit of hassle over EBay and Amazon purchases by people, please use our own shop which is just as secure. If anything goes wrong ring us and we'll try and sort it out. Why would someone wait a month to say something hasn't arrived or send messages about delivery when they are already posted. Frustrating isn't in it and by the end of Corona we shall be poorer in our family budget and I will be deciding if we persevere with PMP, especially rallies. I've now started using the DVD stock that was put in ready for the new season in April this year, I also put additions ready to be added. All these are now being used to fulfill orders. Put bluntly will it be worth running any business after the virus and leaving the EU, there economy is in pieces and Johnson is ready to severe links and break existing legal agreements. The slide show tonight is from Barnsley this morning. I thought it would be nice to get some more archive productions ready for Christmas presents, many of our more 'mature' viewers are fans of old film if not old age, I can vouch for that. Anyway other than church this morning which surprise surprise almost came into modern language at times. The sun did show its face though and I've my fingers crossed that either Monday or Tuesday I'll get out filming. Things can and do change at the last minute. I've got the boxes of my crested giftware 'Eastbourne' back in the house ready to get a wash before placement in our museum section of the display room. I'm hoping to receive my cutting mat by Thursday and start on the buildings for my diorama. I've downloaded a few views which may come in handy for designing the bus station, it will be of concrete bus shelter era and not branded too obviously for any particular location but if you can keep a secret the stands will have some affinity with old Wrexham. I've taken some screen shots of the new Down Your Way - Kent so it gives you ataste, these are not photos remember but stills from the old cine film. A very long day, heavy rain for the most part but we went to Middlewich sewing supplies warehouse and got blue velvet for the base of the display cabinet and got Mandy's mothers tea spoon collection laid out. I also got the DVD Down your way - Scotland finished, a Tickety Boo production which means that all the old cine is HD scanned, here are some screen shots from the film. Ready for a sit down and watch TV for a while. I think I did well to get the whole DVD made in a day, the next will cover Kent. All the latest releases were put on the PMP shop this afternoon and list on site updated to 2nd Oct 2020. After getting todays orders away in the post we carried on the Handforth dean near Manchester airport and got the shopping done. It was lunch time and I started getting the DVD covers made and putting clips on Youtube and of course finishing the editing. We now need to look ahead, the heavy rain for today never happened so I expect we shall get double tomorrow. I've got the next Down Your Way programme figured out there will be one on Scotland and another on Kent so a nice spread around the country, they will certainly stretch the content of our DVDs to new modes of transport. As promised here i a slide show based on the Chesterfield visit yesterday The weather wasn't looking promising with clear blue sky over Mansfield but I had a feeling it could cloud over so I had a wander around and popped into M&S , no cafe though but got some marzipan balls and retreated back to the car. I was going to park on the new shopping centre, sort of out of town but in the middle, it is the site of the old bus station. There was a Costa which I didn't fancy, these days the Costa, Startrek and Nero more or less throw your drink at you and stuff any food in a bag, you end up with an arm full and can't carry it. I think I'm feeling a boycott coming on, how I wish there were decent coffee shops around instead of the cess pits we have have. I couldn't have parked my car there as the brand new parking payment machines were 100% super saturated with moisture so you could see nothing inside, I used the messy old waste site car park above the bus station. It did cloud over eventually ad that got me through Mansfield, quite a lot of new branding buses about but nowhere as near as Chesterfield where Tracky seems to be getting a new suite of clothes very quickly. When it was lunch time about a thousand yobs came charging into the town, en masse, not a hint of social distancing, some were throwing projectiles, I image filed down coins and other crowded around the buses trying to make progress and brought them to a standstill, I think I could read the drivers minds as to what they would have liked to have done. No idea where they came from but a cage would be too good for them - I'm sure that midday some establishment has still got nominal control over the behaviour. I've now edited the Cambridge film and will try and get a clip on Youtube before we walk down the pub for our Friday night mingle, really it isn't an issue, we usually end up with landlady Janet and any other randoms by 9pm have meandered off. I'll leave you with Mansfield then we can have a Chesterfield bus feast tomorrow. |
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