NO NOT DUDLEY ZOO BUT LIONS AND ELEPHANTS ALL CAME TOO

I stuck with the plan so at least I had something to aim for, the weather was cloudy when I left home and as the forecast said that Birmingham would be cloudy it seemed at first that the whole country was perhaps shrouded in cloud but would you believe it as I got through the third set of road works on the M6 motorway it started to snow quite steadily. So was Birmingham all white, no not at all, the sun had come out and the sky was blue which basically is just what you don't really want with low sunshine and shadows. Anyway Birmingham isn't a complete disaster with cloud and I used some of my regular spots and some different to accumulate enough footage.

The next planned stop was Dudley and I seemed to get there with little fuss, I'd parked at Birmingham within feet of where I wanted to be and it turned out that I'd done the same in Dudley although a good job that I asked directions as I was about to stroll off in the wrong direction for the bus station. By this time it was snowing again, little pellet sized stuff but it put down a fair amount of moisture which then melted. There was a broken down Nat Express bus in the Dudley bus station, getting it hitched up and out of the way seemed to take a lot of trouble and made for some interesting scenes.

My back which  I'd hurt doing the weeding Friday afternoon isn't getting any better and the sciatic pains were running from my waist down my legs and it was difficult standing up unaided, thank goodness for the tripod.  I did have it in mind to make a third stop but as I travelled back up the M6 through the many sets of road works it yes you've guessed, started to snow yet again. This time I decided to call in at Waitrose at Sandbach and treat myself to a nice pudding, they don't really have much to compare with Marks though and the melt in the middle chocolate puddings were leaden even with lots of cream, not at alll nice, really I'm not keen on Waitrose, Booths is better but Marks & Spencers best for food even if a bit hit or miss with clothes and shoe sized these days.


Very little in the post, a couple of DVD orders on the net but I've cracked on with getting the films downloaded and am just about to burn the Birmingham master, I'll need to get the covers done and load them on to our shop. I've had another bash at the models which needed housing, there are now very few left that aren't under cover, getting the bases off a lot of the stuff required a hack saw and stanley knife plus pliers, even the Oxford models can be that difficult to unpack, goodness knows how anyone with hands a little more arthritic than mine copes with it. Lets start with Dudley, actually it beat Birmingham hands down.