Impossible Xmas presents

Tom's idea for Christmas presents that he couldn't get: "two houses, two cups of tea and two slaves."

SWAT family 2010 Christmas newsletter

Mercifully short and multimedia rich!

https://sites.google.com/site/stevelocks/xmas-newsletters/2010

While Shepherds Snoozed

A little arrangement I made of a well known tune for Christmas 2010.

Starring Steve, Wendy and Amy.

Medical Physics for a class of 6-year olds!

At the request of his teacher, today I gave Tom's class a talk on what I do at work!

It was good fun and they had endless questions!!!

I've uploaded the talk here
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2268177/c5mp.pps
but you might not understand it if you're under 6!

360

Our next door neighbour had some scaffolding up and he invited me to see the view.

Click on the photo for a larger version of the 360 degree panorama that I took.

Morpeth Floods

That was the view from our garden on 6th Sept. 2008.

The river Wansbeck started rising in Morpeth in the morning but by the mid afternoon it had broken its banks and the flood defences until approx a thousand houses and a number of shops had up to a couple of feet of water inside. We saw cars in water up to the roof and wheelie bins, fences, awnings and huge tree trunks go down the river. Here is a video found on youtube somebody took of a car floating down the river:

We saw crayfish swimming on flooded pavements and overheard someone saying they rescued a fish flapping by the side of the road!

There were plenty of people wandering around Morpeth taking photos and there were camera crews from the BBC and ITN. It seems like we saw everybody we knew on Sunday wandering around the streets of Morpeth!

I've uploaded some photos I took, with captions, to http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/steve.locks/MorpethFloods# so for details see there. The swimming pool and the library looked particularly tragic.

I have also uploaded some videos:

Our house is fine. As soon as the national news had finished loads of people rung and texted to check we were okay! Our house is about 20 feet above the highest level the flood came to. But we do have good views!

When the water was nearly back to normal (I'm writing this paragraph on Monday 9/8/2008) we took a plumb-line and measured the hight from the bottom of the footbridge we could see from our house that the water came just up to, down to the current water level which is about a foot above normal now. This came to 11 feet, so the total maximum flood was probably about 12 feet above normal river level.

One mystery is that we noticed large numbers of House Martins flying above the floodwaters. We wondered if they were catching insects knocked out of their usual places by the flood (not that we could see any insects). We even found a dead House Martin by our house the day after the flood.

Eventually the question was answered by someone posting to my YouTube video. The House Martins had nests under Oldgate Bridge, so they had been flushed out by the flood and were trying to get back to their nests.

More from the web:

• some good photos
  

News reports

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7602626.stm
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7601742.stm

Videos:

• Youtube
• Google videos
  

HMS Repulse and Malcolm

I found the following interesting sites for the ships my maternal grandfather was on.

The HMS Repulse (world cruise):

The "World Cruise" of the Special Service Squadron

HMS Repulse photos

HMS Repulse (1916) From Wikipedia

Details of Repulse

The Story of Repulse

Gallery of images

The Sinking of Force Z

The Malcolm (at Dunkirk):

Photos

Brief details

My New Website:

I have now put a website together for this and the photo album from this cruise:

http://worldcruise1923.1924.googlepages.com/

Cygnets hatch in Morpeth

A few days ago some cygnets hatched under the bridge just up the river from our back garden. Here they are before they were hatched:

















Today they were swimming around in the river at the bottom of the garden, popping on and off the bank, eating weeds and being photographed by every local who walked past.

From our vantage point at the top of our garden I got my telescope out, held my camera over the eyepiece and took these photos:

I spoke to Bill Bryson

I had been singing at Windsor and was spending last Monday wandering relatively aimlessly around London before a meeting the next day in Teddington. I had just taken a long "one of those snacks you have between lunch and tea (what are they called?)" in Borders bookshop cafe and was off on my wanderings again when I saw Bill Bryson wander over to a table next to the Cafe accompanied by a shop assistant with a pile of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. I decided to get a copy signed for Wendy but wanted to make some remark about how I'd enjoyed his book The Lost Continent. Of course I immediately forgot the name of the book, so I had to hide round the corner for five minutes until it came to me!

When I went up for a book signing I was the only one who seemed to have noticed him and he said: "Have you been wandering around London hoping to bump into me?" Which was strange as I had been wandering around London looking for a present for Wendy and a signed book by Bill Bryson was just the ticket!

I told him how I had taken the The Lost Continent on holiday with my wife and how I had laughed out loud with it so much that she had to keep nudging me as I was embarrassing her! He said: "Well, thank you very much!"

2006 Christmas Newsletter

Our 2006 Christmas Newsletter is available at www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/news/xmas2006

This year it contains videos, an interactivity and - by popular demand - is a little bit rude!

The videos will probably be blocked if you're looking at this from work, so you might not want to consider it "work safe."