First blog

These notes are from my first blog that went tits-up...

Flash-back thirty years
I was in the woods at the back of Folkington last Sunday (12/10/2008) when about half a dozen young girls and boys walked past with ruksaks on their backs. It made me think of when myself and my friends at Haywards Heath college started doing this kind of thing back in 1977. There was the one at the front with the map (Ian), one at the back with the camera (me) and the others were just bumbling along hoping for another rest break! I wanted to tell them to keep doing this at least once a year for as long as they can as it gives us such a good time thirty years later on.

From BACKSHALL

Uncle Frank

I was searching the war records site and came across a record for my uncle Frank who was a seaman in WW1. It showed he joined the Victory at Portsmouth in August 1917 and four months later was on HMS Monarch during hostlilities. I remember him telling my dad how they used to lower him down the gun barrels to clean them!

Here`s HMS Monarch in action, imagine how loud those guns were...

From BACKSHALL

Dad

Myself and Ruth drove to Haywards Heath to see my mum & dad. Dad has dementia and is bedridden upstairs and can`t do anything for himself. Mum has to wash, dress, feed and help him with his toilet and this is very hard for her. She is doing a great job but she`s in her 70`s and so I think he`ll be in a home very shortly.
Although he doesn`t know who anyone is and where he is, he still shows flashes of the old dad I know and love. Mabel, our puppy, jumped up on his bed and was snuffling about on her back with her legs in the air. This made dad laugh and he was stroking her and letting her lick his face.
Aunty Val popped in while we were there and it`s always good to see her.

Folkington

I saw that the weather was good in the afternoon so I shot over to Folkington to photograph the stretch of Downs that I adore. The three clumps of trees nestled in dimples in the north facing Downs are a wonderful subject. Unfortunately I was a couple of hours too late and the sun was too low. It still looked nice though...

I then walked on a bit and captured the superb view to Mount Caburn...

Online car racing

It`s Friday so it`s race night tonight! Myself and Sensible Steve will be doing battle over the internet with nine other players from all over the world, playing GT Legends by Simbin.It`s quite an old PC game and the graphics aren`t as good as the console games but the physics is spot on and the cars are very hard to drive flat out. It`s good humoured stuff and we`re supposed to drive fairly and apologise for our mistakes! There are people on it who always win and there are those like myself that are pleased with a third position! Just like in real life, the red mist appears in front of us and we spin, nudge and take-out other cars! I`ll post some screen grabs of it here soon...