Rookery House closing

Now, it’s probably not a place many of heard about. But Rookery House (Rookery Park, Erdington) is believed to be closing. I know the council are moving Parks staff about (I know some (if not all) Manor Farm staff are now at Kings Heath park), Rookery being an old house which is probably not high on the councils agenda to repair seems the be a prime candidate to be mothballed.

When I say mothballed, I mean the usual council way of being left to rot and accidentally being burnt down. Once it’s burnt down no doubt a small tea room will be built.

It would be nice if the council saved some of these old buildings, but Shitby and his pals seem intent on removing all old building and replacing them with ‘state of the art’ open plan shit offices with hot desking that doesn’t really work.

I’ll try to get a bit more info about Rookery from my mate who has been involved locally to keep it open. Pity the short sighted councillors don’t look at the heritage going down the pan.

Benny Hill Time?

As many will know, Photography is a interest of mine. I’m usually out and about shooting anything I see. The Tory conference at the ICC brings many a photo opportunity. Sadly no politicians have been around, but I did spot the good old Sun doing a photo shoot with a couple of models handing out leaflets.

So I approached and asked if I could take a picture. The Sun photographer ask who I was working for, to which I replied ‘I’m not, just a local blogger’, ‘a wealth blogger looking at your gear’ he said!

Anyway, the ladies didn’t have a problem (neither did him to be honest). So a quick couple of shots got me………..

The lady on the left is Danni Wells (according to Martin!) and I’m sorry I don’t know the lady on the right. Hopefully the Sun will publish the names in the paper tomorrow (cos they’re likely to use the images their tog took – afterall I assume that’s why he turned up!).

I do hope I haven’t offended any of the regular readers.

Things I’ve learnt this week

Quite a busy week for me.  Done a couple of social things and was generally quite busy with work and stuff.

So things learnt.

  • Moo Cards – small business cards which look smart (thanks Jo!)
  • Canadian Lumber Standard (CLS) – wood, decent constructional timber (thanks Jewsons)

O.k I admit it’s not a huge list, but at least I learnt something.

Found that Moo cards can be bought for £9.99 (+£3.50 P&P) – So I bought them, with 11 of my images (was going to be 10, but for some reason upload too many).  Hopefully the all import text at the back works.  I’ve referenced my company – BCG Media Limited, rather than my photography site.  I suppose that’s probably the best thing to do.

You’d think timber is timber, well it is sort of.  It’s wood afterall, so where does CLS come in.  It’s construction grade timber, ie fairly straight.  I had a look at the rough cut wood and that curved more than a curvy thing  with weights at the end.

So there you have it, 2 things learnt.

Birmingham Social Media Cafe

Picture sums it up!  Lots of people in a coffee shop and quite a few laptops.  So what was it all about.  Well, it’s the inaugral meeting of the Birmingham Social Media group.  The facebook page created by Jo Geary explains it much better than I could. Met up will a fair few of the bloggers from tuesday and quite a few media people today.

Anyway, went away knowing the Social media people are a nice bunch. Now I might even get round to setting up a Twitter account 🙂

Special thanks to Jo Geary for organising the event and Marc Reeves for funding the Coffee/Tea!

Strange feeling

A old school friend of my aunt (Margaret, deceased) called Steve passed away recently, Dad told me today.

Now I remember him, but my two brothers knew him better as he had an interest in war stuff and I believe he owned his own Jeep. Steve apparently died of a heart attack, I’m guessing he was probably around late fifties/early sixties.

Now although I don’t remember him much (I remember his ex-wife more and his son who had a page 3 collection from the sun – early pr0n?), one thing I do recall was on a day trip with my Aunt, Steve and my cousin Bryan.

We was somewhere near Evesham, at a pub next to a river. The river had a small boat (might have been a skip!) that was secured by a rope/cable to pull to get access to either side. Now me and Bryan decided to swim on the return leg, but the current took me away. As I was drifting off towards the sides Steve dived into save me. As fortune would have it I managed to get my foot on something as he just dived in. That said, he helped me up and out of the river.

I recalled the incident and thanked him a few years back when I last saw him (at Aunt Margarets funeral). Glad I got the chance to say thanks anyway.

So thanks again Steve. I don’t know if I would have survived anyway, but the good thing is you made sure I did.