Today is 6th June and 76 years ago the D~Day landings happened, and it is seen as the beginning of the end of WW2. Back in May last year Phil and I went to France and as well as Mont Saint Michel and Conde, we visited some of the places, museums and cemeteries around the Normandy Beaches. Whilst I’ve been off work die to the Corona thing, I’ve been compiling a book of our travels there, and got it finished this week. I’ve uploaded the PDF version here. A couple of the pages are double spread pictures which get broken up for single page viewing, but the rest are OK. Feel free to have a scroll through!
Not the best of weeks, Phil has had a bad cold, and gave it to me so am not feeling the best. I also gave up alcohol last Sunday which (apparently) made me grumpy at work 😀 . I stopped giving up last night so I must be happy again, but I’m feeling poorly so I can’t tell.
In spite of that, Sophie and I had a little outing today, to see the visiting Knife Angel. We also went into the Baltic art gallery, and went to lunch in The Empourium just over the river in Newcastle. I took the Rollei but I noticed after a few pictures that the counter has not moved, though it feels like the film is being wound on, so not sure what’s going on. I’ll take a few more to see if it gets to the end of the film and it’s just the counter not working, but it may be the film isn’t being wound on and I’ll have to retrieve it. 🙄 I should just stick with the Minolta, no problems with that little baby.
The Knife Angel is a 27ft sculpture crafted out of 100,000 knives that have been surrendered to police forces across the country. It is also known as the National Monument Against Violence & Aggression. It was first unveiled in 2017 and has been touring the UK since. Artist Alfie Bradley worked with The British Ironwork Centre who contacted the Home Office requesting permission to collect knives from police forces in the hope of prompting new knife amnesties with the Ironworks offering to supply each force with knife bins free of charge. Permission was granted and the campaign took off.
Once the knives and weapons were delivered to The Centre’s workshop in Shropshire, artist Alfie got to work. He created a structure out of steel and formed the basic shape which the knives could then be welded onto.
He then disinfected every blade, some which were still blood-stained.
He then blunted each knife before welding it onto the sculpture. The wings were created using the blades only, creating a feather like appearance.
We’ve been over to Shelley’s this afternoon for a buffet tea, Carl and his little ones came too. We had some lovely food, the kids played nice, we grown ups chatted on, and I got a couple of pics of the day.
It has become a thing in December, the naughty elf on the shelf. All over social media people are posting photos of the naughty things the elf did. Mostly parents, who do it to entertain their children, but some who just do it for the heck of it.
Such a change to see some blue sky today, so we went out to Tynemouth Market, as I’d told Phil about the 2nd hand record stalls they have there and he wanted to peruse the goods. Very annoying to see one of the albums I’d flogged at a boot sale for 50p many years ago is now selling for £60! 🙄
Phil can say the same, he sold a lot of his record collection back in the day, and a fair few of them are worth a mint. Sigh. If only we’d known bliddy vinyl would make a come back!
Anyway he got 7 LP’s for a grand total of £25, bargain!
I’ve recently been putting together a little magazine with Blurb, regarding my trip to Tuscany. I haven’t used Blurb before, so their programme for compiling the zine was a steep learning curve, but an easy (ish) one, they have some excellent tutorials to help. I have used Mixbooks in the past for a couple of albums of holiday photo’s, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive or versatile as the Blurb programme, which is called Bookwright. I did a magazine rather than a book, as they are cheaper, 🙂 and I will make a series of our travels and keep them all together in something or other, a binder, or box maybe. Because of the tools in Bookwright, I have been able to add words over pictures and stuff, so I’ve done the magazine more or less like a blog post, with all the history and little nuggets added in amongst the pages. It arrived in the post today, and I am quite chuffed with how it’s come out! The quality of the reproduction of the photo’s is spot on, and the paper feels nice too. It’s in colour of course, but with some B&W shots too.
In spite of the grey gloomy wet weather that we are suffering from, Sophie and I went out with our cameras. Our objective was Brancepeth Castle which was holding a craft fair, but when we got there at 11am the carpark man told us it didn’t start until 12. So we had to find somewhere else and went off to Crook Hall, in Crook 🙂 instead for a couple of hours. We wandered the gardens in the drizzle, and I did manage a few shots in spite of there being no flowers or anything much, but I did espy this chap in the vegetable garden…
Day 329 ~ Elvis
I don’t think he works at the chip shop anymore 🤣.
Our Friday music night at Fraggle Towers has morphed into Vintage Night as Phils recent obsession with ye olde vinyl records continues. He has a lot of it from back in the day. Having purchased a rather natty record deck a little while ago that sat on top of the stereo looking pretty but doing nothing other than being a platform for the internet hub to stand on, he thought it was high time we made use of it. We’ve done a few albums over the past couple of weeks, but last night he went up into our loft, and brought down all the singles. Green vinyl was a thing, and picture sleeves another thing. All lost on me at the time, I didn’t get going until digital really.
Day 328 ~ Seven inches
Playing records is a bit like being a human iPod, on shuffle.
Except iPods don’t get hangovers the next morning. 🤣🥴
Fraggle's Other Place 
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