Current update on work

I can't believe its now six months since I last posted a Blog. The main problem is, I keep losing the passwords.  Google makes it VERY difficult to get in. Nightmare, and there is alwys something else to do that is easier to get into.  All the help and advice gurus say that we must NEVER use the same password twice, so I was faced with storing up a few hundred passwords for all the software, memberships and other pages I do actually NEED to access on a regular basis. 

Anyway, I think I have the solution now so shall give this another try.

I'm up to my ears with work right now. Several projects in hand:

• A new radio station we are in the middle of settling up, and it involves a ship !
• two new books, one of them with the full story of the MV Communicator
     (Laser 558, Laser Hot Hits,
       Holland FM, Veronica HitRadio, Q Radio and The Superstation)
• a web based business - TalentPages UK
• and a couple of other small projects. 

If only each day was twice as long!  Fortunately I'm only just over half way through my life, but I had promised myself I would have all these operational by Christmas, and its midsummer already.   New s of each of the projects will appear on this blog as soon as we are able to give details. Alternatively you might find details on the web sites below, but a lot of our work involves third parties, some of which are publicly quoted companies, so we are not able to release news which they can't, due to Stock Exchange restrictions. Please bear with me, and don't bombard me with questions that I can't answer without breaching Client Confidentiality.
 :
WorldwideBroadcast
TalentPagesUK.com

Saturdays are for Music

Saturdays are for my favourite music radio

I try to have a routine where I spend my Saturdays with great music - it takes me back to when i first got into music, aged about 10 and looked forward to spending Saturdays at the under age Disc Club, or whatever they called it, at the Locarno Ballroom in Hull.  Saturday was also the only day that I got to hear much daytime radio in the 60s, which is when it really happened !

Most Saturdays now I have a couple of radios going and listen to all kinds of stuff. My days starts with Louise Davies on Radio Seagull, a progressive rock station from a ship in Holland. Then maybe a bit of Radio 10, and Radio 192 - a tribute station in the style of Radio Veronica that is run by what it calls de oude medewerkers (old staff or colleagues).

Radio 192  runs old charts, jingles and have some of the best of the old DJs. Adje Bowman is the king, and there is even an hour of Joost de Draaijer, my dear old friend for many years now.  Most of their output on Saturday afternoons is a lengthy programme, called Zaterdag Middag Gebeurtenis - which translates as the Saturday Afternoon Happening. Right up my street! One of the shows majors on what I call NED-POP; it's crammed with the Dutch beat bands of the 1960s.

 

After a few hours of that I swap to the BBC local in Leeds, which has a guy called John Kane playing some excellent Northern Soul and a sprinkling of Motown. This is just the stuff I played in numerous clubs and similar venues in the 1960s (and in the noughts in the Triton Ballroom!). 

John spins some excellent stuff, that usually sends me running to the library to dig out tracks.  I believe the programme is also available on BBC Sheffield in the south of this illustrious county of Yorkshire, but not on BBC Radio Humberside, which is a bit more of the sort of station that John Reith wanted the BBC to remain forever: Lots of talk about religion and Rugby League, which quite a few in Hull think are one and the same thing! With a couple of notable exceptions, Radio Humberside is not what you would call 'hip'. 

If we are at home later in the evening (we do stop in sometimes!) the radio goes over to BBC Radio Sheffield where another good friend, Diana Luke enters her 'Diana Luke Loves the 60s'  mode for three hours. The strip invariably includes lots of RnB (the old style RnB - not 'lazy rap' crap)  as well as quite a bit of heavy rock too, so long as its from the 60s.

Diana has developed an interesting "instant feedback" relationship with a hard core of listeners, who even meet up and visit the studios. (I've not been on one of these jaunts yet, but I'm sure I shall one fine day!). The music is mainly chosen by the listeners, who first of all select a featured artist, and then after midnight every track is a listener 'free choice'. Diana's show has several features - a Beat the Intro, Cryptic Clue, with entries possible on text, email or a Facebook page, but the best are when she's joined by her partner Tim Hollingworth.  

Freelance photographer and film cameraman Tim selects three rare old tunes, including an instrumental, and astounds Diana and her listeners with some little known facets about, what are always cracking pieces of our music heritage.  There is also a rather surreal feature where Diana and Tim each hum a sixties hit and the listeners have to guess what it is. Well, Tim usually gorgets any melody at all, which makes it nigh on impossible. Most weeks Tim's tune is guessed by a solitary listener and you can almost hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth  all over Yorkshire as listeners cary out in unison "That was never any thing like . . ." 

Stylish music centre from Scandinavia

A music centre with style

In almost everyone's pocket these days is a smart phone - phone is a bit of a misnomer as it is far far more than just a phone, the limited conversation aid from which the device has grown.

Ive had mobile phones in my pocket since around 1987 (it was made by Excel, and replaced the huge 'brick',  a Motorola 8500 which cost us £1725 and is still in the garage somewhere, often brought out to amuse young children).  But about ten years before that I was pretty such in love with a huge Rigonda 'radiogram' which I had bought - when you pressed a pre-set button, two little motors inside whirred away, dragging the tuning ropes along the dial and (hopefully) to the station you were seeking. A magic eye to check it, and the most amazingly light and precise turntable - it was a work of art.

Or so I thought, until I saw this amazing Scandinavia style radio-gram with tape recorder AND TV on an American radio engineers chat site recently. Just look at those sleek lines, with dramatic plunging . . . . its just superb, and through I'd share it with you.

Now thats what I call a radiogram!

(If anyone has one they want rid of I would love to find room for it in my office!)

Calm Seas and tidal floods

Calm Seas ?

Radio Caroline on a calm sea. 

There has been a fair bit of excitement in the media the last few weeks about heavy seas, where these have been pounding the sea walls and coastline in general around the south and west of England.

Here in East Yorkshire we are no strangers to this sort of violence from Mother Nature - every year Yorkshire loses acres and acres of lamed to the North Sea between Flamborough and Spurn point as the mainly clay cliffs are undermined by buffeting waves, particularly in North Easterlies, and huge chunks of cliff end up in the sea. Often these cliffs have roads, homes, caravans etc on top, and unless these are taken away in time they too end up in the sea.

We also get our fair share of flooding too - a depression (area of low pressure) coming down the North Sea, if coinciding with a spring tide and even worse with the wind piling it up, can add a huge 'surge' onto the tide. As this travels down the North Sea, the area it has available to it gets ever narrower, and as it then travels up inlets like the River Humber, it can really pile up very high  There was 15 feet on top of some tides in December - at the height of this the main road through Hull was closed as it got covered, as did thousands of homes and businesses on both sides of the Humber.

NOTE  The BBC completely ignored this disastrous event and saturated its output with interviews with odd people who once met Nelson Mandela, who had died that evening. They even cancelled regular programmes on BBC 1 TV, and replace it with the output of BBC News, which was "wall to wall" Mandela stories.

The printed press are often no better and very prone to inaccuracy, using various descriptions of wind, waves and other weather items.   There is a well thought out and meaningful 'Beaufort Scale' for wind, where the sind force , numbered 1 to 12 describes accurately what the wind speed is.  The Met office describe this much better than I can HERE 

 http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/guide/beaufortscale.html

The BBC and newspapers often report Force 12 gales,  Storm force 6 - all utter nonsense - is it a gale (if so what force is it really?) or is it a storm. You just can't tell from our media weather folk,. many of whom seem to be not only unqualified but not having any understanding of what users might want to know it for!

It s a beautiful feeling sailing on very calm seas, when it is just like a mirror. I hope your next sailing is over such waters.

Approaching Christmas

 Maybe 2013 is a year best forgotten – but at last we seem to be turning the corner. Things are at last looking better. Hope everyone else is seeing the same too and that you all have a wonderful Christmas holiday.

If you are still looking for Christmas gifts, or just a nice afternoon out, i can recommend the Christmas market in the middle of Manchester. its spread across a dozen or more street, sort of from the Arndale centre, down thru St Anne’s Square and then it fans out. Lovely atmosphere, coffee with a  rum in it, some quirky and original gists. Really busy times are a bit of a crush so its best avoided, but some great live music on every street corner it seems.

Its going to be our first all at home as a family for many years, we have usually all been working.  We have ten guests for Christmas Day lunch, so are all really looking forward to that.  Boxing Day we have to take over from my Mum who always had “open house”, a tradition that seemed to go back to our childhood.  Of course I missed most of them, invariably working over Christmas, either in clubs, or in radio, both of which took me far and wide. 

The last seven years we have been 'mine hosts;' at The Triton, and both Christmas Day and Boxing Day were two of the busiest trading days of the year.  We would fervently hope and pray for good sunny weather, as snow always turned trading at the Triton into a disaster - our friends in the media would bleat that the entire world was under a snow drift and no one should venture out. Very annoying when you've had contractors come in and clear the car park, and people are ringing to cancel!  This year we won't be fretting about the snow - it usually makes our garden look as tidy as my neighbours! 

Boxing Day for us this year will start an hour after the big game (thats The Tigers v Man U !)  and will feature a Murder, guaranteed!  We have a few glasses of wine some whereabouts the house. 

I should emphasise that these pictures of our home (right) and the Triton (above) were taken two years ago when we saw heavy snow and that this winter has been very mild so far, with a nice blue sky this morning and yesterday, not bad  for the shortest day of the year!  At least the nights are starting to get lighter now! 

Local TV on the banks of the River Humber

Estuary TV (New Local TV station) 

I've now had a little  time to dip and out of the new Estuary TV. As far as I can tell among my associates I'm the only one in West Hull and surrounding villages to bother, despite it being a cracking signal. If you don't already know, these new 'local' TV services are transmitting on the regular UHF band at Channel 8. There are stations also planned for York and Scarborough, maybe as soon as late 2014. Quite why the fair city of Hull hasn't been considered for one is beyond me, but the authorities who control broadcasting in the UK have always ignored the 'City and county of kingston upon Hull', for radio or television.

Estuary is run from Grimsby, from the programme output you would think that Grimsby or Lincolnshire  council, or the college,  run it (maybe they do??). There is precious little programme content about the East Riding, and aI'm wondering if their licence or funding have constraints that insist they devote their time and attention to Grimsby. 

The programmes are usually a couple of hours each day, which is then repeated several times - a great idea that I proposed for a radio station about 25 years ago. It makes sound sense when programme material costs a lot of money to produce. 

In summary, the content is a bit dull and won't be of mass appeal, although maybe there isn't anything else happening in Grimsby and Lincolnshire. Its not going to attract huge audiences and so won't be a commercial success, and even more so when it seems to 'hide its light under a bush'.  I am impressed with the enthusiasm though - not seen that in TV since Lex Harding set up several TV channels from the old Concordia Studios in Bussum, near Hilversum. One of these went on to great international success - the Music Factory. 

Just in case you missed my original piece on the launch of Estuary TV.

Posted on November 28, 2013

The new local TV station in Grimsby opened today. Its putting a great signal out as far as Hull as well, but you will need to retune your TV or STB first, a simple process 9usually under MENU and then RETUNE) .

Nice to see some local TV without the patronising sneers, or Hull stories being subservient to those about Sheffield and Lincoln, as we see on the existing 'local' services for Hull. 

Its been a month since I last jotted anything down for this Blog; its amazing how time flies, especially when you think you have so much spare. We just passed the '3 months closed' point for the poor old Triton. While we are full of hope for the future and a brand spanking new Triton, it is very hard to go through the doors in the morning and see the last vestiges of 'devastation'. All the internals are now stripped out, we even have the salvageable bits of furniture back fully cleaned now and you can't even smell any smoke on them. Hopefully the rest of The Triton Inn is going to clean up just as well!

With all the ceiling stripped out of the conservatory it really is amazing just how bright and airy it looks in there already, and the old glass rood is still in place , all browned and smoked. That is coming out in the very near future and being replaced by a nice new roof, see through and clear, in some wonderful new material that insulates heat both ways, so it wont be "hot in the Summer and cold in the winter" as it was before we put the false ceiling in a couple of years ago.

Tom Wilson-Brown

Owen Holness and Tom Wilson-Brown are just members of the Triton team who have been hard at work sorting out the other areas and we now expect to be open once again on the 14th June.  Not long to go now.  We have ordered new aluminium and timber tables and chairs for the front patio to replace the timber picnic benches - they were never very attractive to the ladies to sit at.  

It really is amazing just how expensive furniture and other room accessories have got in recent years; a simple table and four chairs costs around £600 while the fixed seating for the booths is just astronomical at over £200 per linear foot!

The best news of all is that we are now ion the final rounds of a major new hiring for The Triton, our new Head Chef. We shall be releasing more details soon but I can tell you that his food is superb, he follows our mantra of 'all fresh' ingredients, has run his own award winning restaurant.  He has worked at several Michelin starred restaurants, including a long spell with Heston Blumental. He is already hard at work on menus, but we shall be retaining the legendary Triton favourites, including our Steak Pie and fish dishes.   Hopefully that has whetted your appetite?  More very soon.

Dawn and Anne at Queensferry by the Forth bridge.

Anne has been up in Edinburgh this weekend visiting Dawn and Vince, and a couple of pandas, and they stopped off at Queensferry to look at the Forth railway bridge, one of the modern day's most remarkable structures,  now 123 years old.  I've always believed the old myth about the painters having to restart the job all over at the far end as soon as they have finished painting it, but recently I saw on as TV programme that this is now a myth of the past. A recent complete repaint saw them strip down to bare metal and apply some specially developed paint. It took a few years with all kinds of elaborate safety devices in place, mainly to stop old paint and new paint falling into the Forth below. The cost was £130 MILLION, but they are expecting it to last at least 25 years and maybe as long as 40 years.  Even so, I hope my wife is never in charge as she is bound to want to change the colour long before that!  Do take a close look at the Forth bridge if you find yourself in the Lothians or the Kingdom of Fife, it realy is a majestic sight and a true engineering wonder.