Just a quick mention of my Flickr Account for Photos.

Victoria and I were at Ikea in Bristol on Saturday. Anyway, while taking a breather in the resteraunt - I am sure we saw someone getting married!!!! There was definatley a celebration going on with a Camera man and Video and some guy at the front and a couple, and champagne and toasts… and a guy dressed up as a parrot Chicken (thanks Victoria for jogging my memory of this odd event!)…

Later on part of the store that we had previously been through, was now setup with Keyboards and Speakers…

There you are…

Back in the 80’s I had some records by an artist called Shannon. She’d made it really big in America with her debut singles “Let the Music Play” and “Give me tonight”. However for some reason she never seemed to make it big in the UK. The records used to get played at clubs in the late 80’s but I guess her records had long since been released by the time they became popular over here.

I managed over the 80’s to get her first 3 albums imported. They were on Vinyl as that was the medium of choice as you will recall. Anyway, everyone kept borrowing the records off me to tape - oh for CD’s and MP3… they were probably the only sort after records in my collection.

I never managed to replace them on CD and have over time generally forgot about her. Once or twice I’ve done a search to see if the original albums can be bought on CD, but to no avail. ( You can now get a Best Of CD on Amazon )

Anyway, I was listening to Desert Island Discs ( yes I’m getting old now - deal with it! ) which featured Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys and he talked about going to America to cover the release of a Shannon record. He talked about how her the sound of her records influenced early Pet Shop Boys. It was only while listening to the version of “Give me Tonight” that they played that I suddenly realised this link - and it’s such a pronounced one!

Anyway, it was a slight trip down memory lane while I thought about that time when Shannon was in my life…

Jacob has Chickenpox or “Chicken Pops” as he calls it. He’s so happy about it! I’m not sure he will be as happy when the itching kicks in to full affect! However, we are glad that he is finally getting it out of the way as he’s managed to avoid picking it up for so long.

I took this while on my way to work yesterday…

This New Forest tree sits on a road bend at the top of a dip and has little else around it. It has pride of place at one of the highest points in the New Forest and you can view it almost in isolation on a full 360 panoramic. Many days I have watched the sunrise and sunset behind this tree, it’s just a matter of direction.

Apparently the area gets its name from the fact it was used as a mass grave during the second world war… I don’t know if this is true or not, just picked it up from a partial accademic paper on the net!