Yorkshire Derbyshire Trip

Went over to see our old chum Dave in Yorkshire last week for a couple of days. Hazel bravely drove over the Peaks via Glossop where we stopped off for some lunch and wander around the charity shops. Then on to Marsden via that village where Foggy and Nora Batty live. It's a bit of a tourist trap though so avoided the crowds of geriatrics having cream teas at Cleg's Cafe or whatever its called. Last Of The Summer Wine country. Didn't see any old codgers sliding down the cobbles in an old bath - most suprising!

Dave introduced us to his new neighbour who had bought his barn and converted it into a very nice little cottage - with three bathrooms no less! Amazed at the transformation. Walked round the village and popped into the only charity shop open. Bought some snacks at the health food shop.
In the evening had a nice walk along the Huddersfield canal just behind the B&B we were staying in. Had a delicious and filling meal in the swanky restaurant before retiring. Very warm though and when in night by Hazel trying to wedge open the broken sash window with a pile of paperbacks ( see her blog )!
The next day we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with dave driving. It was supposed to be 40 minutes but Dave forget his sat nav and we drove around Wakefield for 45 mins trying to spot a sign to it. Found it eventually and managed to park despite the place being choc-a-block. I didn't realise modern sculpture was so popular! Beautiful grounds and so much to see including Jaume Plensa, Mel Brimfield and Andy Goldsworthy etc. You needed a whole day to see it all really and we just had a few hours.

Stand By Me - Playing For Change

Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

This is great - thanks to Roger for pointing this out on Friendface.

Spring Has Sprung

Enjoying a few days out into the Cheshire countryside. Yesterday to Frodsham and the Lady Hayes crafty junk emporiums. The lanes still had quite few daffodils along the verges which was nice to see although some were passed their best.
Not mush cop at Lady Hayes which seems to have gone down hill - now full of expensive modern repro and tat. Hazel managed to find a few jokes and a sheet of old buttons. Also a nice brass magnifying thingy on three legs for looking at fleas.
I didnt get anythings. Hazel's sister Audrey came too and got a few nick nacks.

The big car boot at Chelford was a bit of a marathon last Sunday. Hundreds of stalls to look round and a bouncy castle shaped like Noah's Ark. I managed to resist taking of my shoes and going for a bounce!
Got a few films including The Crazies, The Road, and Nathan Barley, Hazel got a few things but I forget what. Tins? A nice one of Southend Pier and another with a squirrel on the inside of the lid, Good for keeping your nuts (or bolts ) in.

Every Day Is Like Sunday

My mother would probably have preferred a bit of Frankie Vaughn or Robert Earl but Morrisey is my choice for a rainy Sunday.
Went to two indoor boot sales - one in Tarporley and the other in Winsford. Both were very quiet and more pleasant than usual - not having to squeeze through the crowds to see any bargains. Didnt find much though- some cheap frames and a DVD. Hazel got a few plants for her Mom who came over later for a slice of cake and some tea. Archie showed them his new tin whistles and animations which they hadn't seen. The rain came down.

Knit Yourself A Badger Day

I seem to be a little behind in my bloggage as Stanley might have said. Two legends here on the Parkinson show sometime back in the 70's I imagine.
No boot sales last week and the one before that was a complete wash out. We did try the new antique place in Barnton though which used to be an old pub called the Red Lion - it has a lovely view of the chemical works by the River Weaver. Quite expensive and really not much of interest. Afterwards a walk around Marbury and Hazel bought some herbs in the garden centre - Thyme, French parsley and Rosemary. For pots by the back door.
Malcolm the PC bloke came round the other day to delete lots of temp files from our ailing computer. I could have done that myself if I'd known where they were! He added some AntiSpyWare app. and charged 60 quid. Gulp! I shall try and fix it myself next time. It seems a little better now but not 60 quids worth better!

Not much else to report. The usual shopping trips into town - no real bargloaders to speak of. Don't forget to knit yourself a badger!

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. "

The King's Peach

Not been to see it yet. Archie has and said it was OK. Too hyped up for my liking. All the cinemas near us have closed now so have to go miles to see films anyway. Quite happy to watch DVD's. Have quite a pile to get through as it is.
Still, it's nearly Spring and the sparrows are twitterpated or high on sunflower seeds - one or the other.
Nice weekend of trips out to Chester on Saturday and Tarporley on Sunday.
Met up with Hazel's chum Alex, who used to work at Manchester Art Gallery, She lives in Sheffield so quite a train journey to get to Chester. She'd never been though so a treat for her to see the Roman Wall and the River Dee ( Hazel and Alex went on a boat trip ) and the shops ofcourse. Plenty of buskers out in force. A would be Jimmy Page playing Led Zeppelin riffs and a violinist with backing track that is cheating a bit I always think. Also various folkies and a tiny tot duo on guitars.
I went off on my own to scour the charity shops but didnt find any bargains. We met up at lunchtine at Spud-U-Like ( Spudoolickay as Victoria Wood once said ) and ha d a very boring spud with a mountain of cheese and tuna on top with horrible plastic cutlery! Wont go there again! Mind you it did give us a chance to see the Roman ruins in the basement.
Later we wandered around some more until my feet ached and met up again for a coffee in a posher coffee shop with proper cups and spoons. Then back to the bus stop and the park and ride- waved Alex off to the station and her train home.
The indoor boot sale at Tarporley was much like previous sales - I seemed to be looking through the saem piles of books and records! I did buy some films though including Galaxy Quest ( an old favourite), Once Upon A Time In Mexico and Bill Bailey in Concert double disc set. Hazel bought some embroidery for her friend and a tin pencil box.

Knutsford

Nice day out to Knutsford to meet up with Tony and Penny. First we did a tour of the charity shops and suchlike. Hazel popped in a clothes shop whilst me and Archie looked in the crafty art/card shop. Didnt find any bargains. Archie bought a china pig with a slot. Some project he has in mind.
Then we met up with Tony and Penny at a pizza place which was incredibly noisy being half term - full of toddlers and kids making a racket. Could hardly hear yourself think!

Nice pizza though . I had the goats cheese and spinach.
Afterwards we wandered around for a while trying to find out where to have a coffee. Penny Farthing was packed also so went in the Visitors Centre to see the tapestry that 3,000 locals made. A helpful lady volunteer told us all about it.
Back to the Penny Farthing Museum Cafe which was not so crowded now and we found a seat next to some rusty boneshakers.
Waiting in today for the gasman again. Seems to be an ongoing saga! Hope he arrives soon - I hate waiting around for people to turn up.
Out for a walk this morning in the sunshine - lovely springlike weather, Felt very overdressed in my duffle coat. Had to turn the central heating off as it was so hot indoors.
Ideal day to put a new roof on the shed - nevermind. Hopefully it will nice again tomorrow.

Teddy Bare

New animation from Archie he made today on Flash.

Bum Diddy Bum Bum!

A new "ish" artistamp sheet for Mary Anne who mentioned his stamp book and the possibility of a Yoko Ono page to got with the Fluxus page and Ray Johnson pages etc. Ken Friedman? Those others who were artistamp pioneers. So inspired I made this for him. Used some old "Cult Mail" frames and some bottoms (Yoko made a film called "Bottoms" - I think John Lennon's bottom was imortalised in it ) Anyway seemed like an obvious thing to try - having found some bottoms in an old book by Alas Smith and Jones annual.

The last few days have been a bit frustrating with the broadband playing up and finally going off altogether. The engineer who came today said it was the old Netgear router. So gave us a BT home hub version which worked straight away and got up to 14 megs. Even the engineer was impressed who only gets 4megs where he lives. he says its because we live about 500 yards from the telephone exchange!

We had a nice chat about the how far computers have come over the last twenty years - getting all nostalgic for the Atari, NES and Megadrive etc. The trouble is it all goes out of date so quickly. Even two year old computers are considered old hat and rubbish now- things moving apace! Its hard to keep up with technology.

Thankfully the gas men have gone and taken their piles of rubble and traffic lights with them. Hazel is still waiting for them to return and paint her white line again which had tow holes drilled into it and big tarmac patches turning it into a couple of hyphens.

Liverpool Trip

Another week or two has flown by and I'm lagging behind with my bloggage.
I've forgotten most of it but last week we went to Liverpool , all three of us and met Adela and Will at Hartford station. No room on the car park so had to park down a side street. A nice sunny day after all the rain and wind. A and W took us to a nice tea place they knew called Brew close to Oxfam- where all the trendy shops are. Had time for a chat and a croissant and coffee before heading round the corner to FACT where the first part of the Nam June Paik was on. Mostly videos alas but some interesting rooms - one with a big cone you could lie underneath as spirals of multicoloured light were projected upon it from above - rather like falling down a rabbit hole . Most alarming so had to get out of the room quite quickly before I was sick! The chap sitting in there looking after it said he found it very relaxing! Hah!
Then to the Bluecoat to see a nice mixed show with general theme of "Underwater" and included a Bill Viola video and a huge submarine propped up on one end made of wood and frottaged paper ( see above ). Also a nice sub automata attached to wriggly squid. Also nice were several trumpet shaped fog horns with sounds of the sea playing through them suspended in mid air. Went for lunch in greasy spoon type cafe nearby and had cheese toasties.
Then to the Tate to see earlier Nam June Paik stuff which had some nice robots made of piled up old televisions. Lots of old TV's with new innards playing Fluxus type videos of jangled image bank stuff. Starting to get a headache after all this and all arted out! So we made our way home soon after W & A headed back to station. Popped in a few shops first including the Pound Shop but didn't buy anything.

Today I am waiting in for the gas men to dig up our old pipes and replace with new plastic ones. They are doing the whole of Northwich it seems. have been noting their progress - getting closer and closer - with much trepidation for months now. Finally in our road and making a right mess - traffic chaos and parking chaos too. Hazel luckily found a spot over the road on a neighbours frontage while they were away on holiday. Now they are back and she is still there - so don't know where she'll be parking next. Hoping the pipe would be fixed today but doesn't seem likely what with the holes full of water and slow progress generally.

In the meantime making some collaged and rubber stamped pages for Issue 21- an assembling book thing for a friend of a friend. Only 14 pages so quite manageable. Have found a few old camera adverts and finished it off this morning - enveloped and ready to post.

Dials (New Improved)

Latest version with 8 dials that Archie has been making for his "A" level art project.

DIY

We bought some Spring Green emulsion for the front room recently at B&Q so the other day I did the first couple of walls and moved half the furniture around so I could get paint onto the walls and not on the pictures, objets d'arts and nick nackery etc. The process of moving all the clutter and collections took longer than the actual painting!
Today I did the second half of the remaining walls which if anything was even harder as I have to move all the stuff from the mantlepiece and the big mirror that is above it- not to mention the toys, candles, gew-gaws and whatnots! Also had to move part of our DVD collection so I could access the shelves round the back of the telly and toy cabinet. It took a while and uncovered lots of spiders , fluff and dust. So had to hoover and dust a bit which isn't my favourite occupation. Then who DOES enjoy it?

It does look a lot better now its done ofcourse so well worth the time and effort.

We have a new cooker now and still trying to figure out it's various knobs and dials. I managed to burn the lasagne the other evening but it tasted fine if a little crunchy! I have a newly rebuilt tooth so was wary of crunching too hard and breaking it again! Yesterday the brussel sprouts were a bit underdone so still trying to get it right. It is a better oven than the one we used for 12 years though which was the cheapest we could afford at the time. This one has extra thick glass doors and you hardly know its on - which is part of the problem!

Dials

Archie's latest art project made from recycled biscuit tins mostly - for his "A" level course.

Happy New Year!

A relative of Key Hole Kate ( remember her?) that Hazel found at the antique place at the Crafts Centre the other day when she took Audrey over to do some shopping. She also got a big bag of candles from the candle shop. Audrey got some blue and white china so she was happy.
So that's Xmas and New year's over for another year - another decade zipped by at quite alarming speed! We have new toys to play with and more inches around the waste to loose. I'm not making any New Years resolutions though as I know from past experience they don't last past January. One collage a day maybe? We shall see.
Archie is home from his party at a friends and catching up with some sleep on the sofa. Hazel is making some bread in the bread machine. We intended on going for a walk but it's raining and murky. Catching up with some bloggage. Set recorder for Bee Story and Wall-E this afternoon. We had fakey bacon and scrambled egg sarnies for lunch. New Scrapiteria blog theme is "House" so off now to cut out some likely bits from the old mags that Will and Adela gave us for Crimble.

Crimble Mess

I bit behind in my blogging. Very cold here still and even a bit of snow as you can see. We have been let off lightly though as some parts are up to their armpits in the stuff!

Not much to tell really - the usual shopping trips and collaging. The sniffles have abated and left with a tickly cough that refuses to go away.
Will and Adela came for lunch yesterday which was nice. Had some crackers to pull. Inside were the usual tat- plastic shoe horn ( Will made into a dogs tongue ), small playing cards, metal puzzle, pink heart thing to hang on your phone? Adela put it on her camera. Just a simple lunch of home made vegetable soup and crusty bread followed by shop bought mince pies and cream.

Sent off all out cards and packets so at the mercy of the postal service and the weather.

A bit more shopping to do. Glad we are not travelling this Xmas - sounds like hell!

Sniffle!

Still laid low with colds, viruses, sneezles, snuffles and bugs of all shapes and sizes. No lobster men from outer space yet though, but still time. This old collage (above) was picked for a booklet that Artists Newsletter did a few years back when the Millenium Bug was all the rage. I did a few buggy collages back then for a travelling show that did the rounds in the North West. I rarely get invited to them anymore or maybe I cant be bothered to take part - too much of a faff.

Still freezing but no snow like they've had down South and East. Amazing really that we have escaped so lightly. better not speak too soon though - I expect we shall be up to our armpits in it next week!

Managed to trudge into town a few times for a bit of shopping - posting parcels etc.
Ordered a new washing machine and fridge/freezer as the old ones ( bought when we first moved to Cheshire ) are clapped out. The washing machine pump has stopped pumping so a big pile of dirty washing is piling up. Hopefully the new one will arrive Sunday and we can get some clean clothes for next week.

Time for a hot crumpet.

The Secret Life Of The Collagist

The virus or whatever it is still refuses to relinquish it's grasp of my being. Man Flu permeates my vitals. Sneezoids, choughing , snuffling are the order of the day - not to mention the fneedling.
Appetite isn't affected though thankfully so was able to make a dirty great binful of broccoli bake on Monday and a trough of Macaroni Cheese on Tuesday. I cant remember much about Wednesdays meals but Thursday I made a nut roast with fresh chestnuts that Hazel's Mom and Sister gave us. Jolly nice it was too.
Broke the key on Hazel's workshop so Northwich Glass came round to fix it. The guarentee had run out but they didn't charge as we are such good customers. That's what we thought anyway. Only took a few ticks of wonky clock.
Archie has taken it over just lately - making stuff for his art A level - tin things, influenced by Andy Hazell. They look pretty good too for a beginner. he even has the sticky plastered fingers to prove it!

Hazel came down with the same virus and had to have two days off college on Thurs and Friday.
My flu or cold or whatever it is hasnt gone away. Just when you think has it pops up again as bad as before. First thing in the morning is worst.
Went to the college to talk to Archie's teachers. He seems to be doing OK although the art tutor has no idea how hard Archie works at home. He's rather baffled by the control panels I think.
More prostate checks at docs which wasn't much fun. Blood test OK so he put me on some tablets but they make me feel dizzy so stopped taking them after one day. I have decided not to drink tea anymore after 7 o'clock at night and stick to cocoa or a milky drink of some kind. This seems to help quite alot and I only woke up once last night so was able to get some kip for a change.

And now a poem -

What is that smells like glue?
Is it the macaroni cheese or you?
I cant seem to stick to the things I do
So going back to the old UHU.

The collages here are quite old I made for Hazel's birthday and our anniversary.

One Hour Photo

Archie has made a remake of One Hour Photo that originally starred Robin Williams for a college project.

Another Weakly Snet

Did I mention it was our 27th Bear Feeding anniversary? No flies with rucksacks but some chocs and the usual enigmatic cards. I gave Hazel a Blurb book of collages which seemed like a good idea to try. I somehow managed to duplicate tow of the pages- whether through miopia or dyslexia or just excitement I don't know!

Sneezing and sniggling all day long. Sniffing too. A nasty cold which lasted for days - still have it in fact as I write this. Archie has it too and had a day off college.
managed to drag ourselves out to celebrate anyway - a nice meal at the Crafts Centre posh restuarant. Looked round the antiques afterwards. Hazel bought some postcards.
Up all night with coughing and calls of nature. Not sure if its the cold or the prostate. I was due another check up anyway so went to the docs the next day and he sent me to the Infirmary for the usual blood test etc.
Not heard anything yet.
Archie went to London on a college trip. Had to get up and the crack of dawn with Hazel and get a train to Stockport and another to Crewe to join party. Hazel had to drive to Crewe later to fetch him. Luckily she had no college the next day so was able to get some sleep.

Not sure why these photos of Southend's old bandstand are here. I could not find anything else.
Missed the annual charity market due to feeling awful and full of cold. It could even me Man flu - never quite sure of the difference.
Catching up with DVD's Ive bought recently as felt too lethargic to do anything else. Watched a good Orson Welles film "The Stranger" which I'd not seen before - a film noirish thriller about a nazi hunter played by Edward G. Robinson. Also an amusing animation called "Planet 51" and another "Rain With A Chance Of Meatballs".