New Look Black Telephone

In order to create a coherent look across my website, I have created a new logo based on ‘IBM’ style lettering and a simular striped telephone reciever. To view my new logo and the new ‘ident’ that will preview all my new youtube videos, please view the video above.

Cobham Bus Rally 2009

AEC Regent Cobham Bus Rally 2009

Originally uploaded by Black Telephone

I finally visited the Cobham Bus Rally at Wisley Airfield this year after being snowed in last year. There was plenty of all different types of buses there with a particular enthasis on AECs. If you would like to view all my photographs please click here!

Milk Float No. 5

Dairy Crest Milk Float

Originally uploaded by Black Telephone

The fifth Milk Float I have photographed this year is one of the few remaining relics of the 1980s monopoly of the milk home delivery service – Unigate! It is yet another Smiths Elizabethan but is one of the few to still be in the Unigate livery (I believe only this one is still in this livery at my local dairy). It also has an old fashioned registration plate, possibly it’s original, which was not swapped for a ‘Q’ plate. Exciting times at the moment as they upgrade and expand the fleet.

Happy New Year!

Yes, it only seems like yesterday that I was standing on Portsdown Hill looking over Portsea Island seeing Portsmouth light up in the night by the many fireworks on New Years Eve. This was in 2000 celebrating the new millennium. Not much to write about today so I’ll just wish all my readers a Happy New Year and a fanruddytastic 2009! Tommorow I will tell what I think about the revival of The Krypton Factor that I recorded due to watching EastEnders!

Sitting On A Black Gold Mine

At long last my town has got in the national newspapers for a good reason for a change – I am living on top of a ‘Black Gold’ Mine! Leigh Park is sitting on potentially millions of barrels of oil. Of course, Leigh Park, supposedly famous for being a ‘chav town’, will reap in benefets from the oil rig set to be built within three years near the B&Q. Comparasoms have been made to that silly american import – Dallas. Hopefully no longer will Leigh Park be associated with ‘Chavs’, ‘Trackies’, ‘Yobs’ and ‘Hooligans’ and instead be famous for it’s high rise glass skyscrapers, modern luxury houses and apartments. Currently Leigh Park’s claim to fame is the fact it is the seventh largest council estate in Europe, once it was the biggest. It was created as an overspill for those people whose houses have been bombed during the WWII. The first completed house in Leigh Park was number 7 Bramdean Drive which still exists. It grew around the Dairy idustry but since this has declined in recent years most jobs are based in Portsmouth or the town of Havant. Of course none of this is guaranteed, if Northern Petroleum do not find any oil in the first four weeks, they will abandon the plan for a full sized oil rig. If they do, they will and Leigh Park will be subjected to constant noise from the Nodding Donkeys and the smell of oil will constantly be in the air, but will it be worth it for a better economy?

Read what ‘ChavTowns’ have to say about Leigh Park at the moment.

• http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=317
• http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1487

My new Telephone Box…

…well, not yet. I have decided to start a fund in order to raise money to buy a K8 red Telephone box. It will be the first exibit in the Hampshire General Post Office Collection which will eventually house a K8, two Wall Boxes, a Pillar Box, a London road sign, an old fashioned Bus Stop and a Lamp Post. It will probably be the largest collection of GPO items on the South Coast. So far I have aprox. £1.50 out of £850. Don’t worry, by the end of next year I will have raised enough money and have purchased the Telephone box I promise!

Third Last of the Summer Wine

Kathy Staff, who played the stern Northern battleaxe Nora Batty in Last of the Summer Wine, has died today. Everyone in my household are very upset and hope she will Rest In Peace.

She was famed for her Wrinked Stockings and ‘relationship’ with her next door neighbour Compo. Her wooden broom keeping him and everyone else at a safe distance! Norman Clegg and Ivy are now the last two original charactors left on Last of the Summer Wine from 1973. Of course we shall also remember her for her roles in Open All Hours and Crossroads.

While we all mourn her we must think of the brighter things in life, whatever they are, and try to move on. R.I.P. Kathy Staff.

It’s Raining Again!

Today I was planning to photograph a newly located blue K8 Telephone box in Hythe near Southampton but, as you may know, the weather is terrible. To much for me to go out just for a Telephone box, so I have had to stay in unfortunately.

I took this photograph when I was last in Brighton. As usual when I go there, it was raining so I used this photograph to illustrate todays web log.

I shall look at today in the future and think to myself ‘it is not the end of the world’. I am not doing anything other than looking forward to ‘ITV 1 Night’ and writing this web log.

By the way I found out that my ‘new’ Telephone is a BELL Bakelite Telephone.