Jammin' With Hegley

Nice to see John Hegley yesterday who came over from Manchester on the train for lunch. We were hoping to go for a walk but he missed the earlier train so we only had a couple of hours to eat and discuss the things on the walls that John seemed interested in. Archie was encouraged to get his ukulele for a quick jam session after lunch of goats cheese quiche, salad and crusty bread etc. I managed to capture the last 90 seconds of it ( see above). Hazel was playing the old crunchy cornflake cluster box. We gave John a lift to Crewe station afterwards so he could get back to London. Off to Scotland next week for gigs he said so try and catch him if you can. While he was here he coloured in a copy of his latest little book on the Donut Press which is called The Adventures Of Monsieur Robinet which has 3 new line drawings added in this edition. He took from his pocket some tiny fragments of crayon which he carefully held in his fingertips and coloured in the illustrations. We lent him some coloured pencils but he seemed to prefer these crayon pellets. They smudge better apparently.

Previously..... did I mention the Fire Engine Museum in Tarporely? There is one indeed which looks like a large shed but has a big arched door filled with glass and inside is an old horse drawn fire engine ( without the horse ) surrounded by other fire fighting paraphenalia like brass helmets and stirrup pumps etc. It was closed being a Sunday but hope to go back sometime to look more closely although you can see it all quite well by looking through the front door!

"Tarporley first had an independent station in 1866 and there as been a fire station here ever since. At that time, 1866 - 1957, they were situated at Park Road.

The Park Road site has since become the location for the Fire Brigade Museum, housing various memorabilia plus a horse drawn Shand Mason pump owned now by Maurice Hunt, one of our retired firefighters. Maurice also acts as curator for the museum, opening up and closing the doors at each end of the day.

In 1957 the station moved to a new location in the centre of the High Street until 1993. This has since become a chocolate shop known as "The Old Fire Station Chocolate Shop". Whilst the fire engine was housed at High Street, the fire service Land Rover still resided in the old "hearse house", that should speak for itself, it's where the hearse used to be kept long ago, which is right next to the old fire station in Park Road.

In 1993 we moved to our present address in Birch Heath Road. "