Sunday's spotlight - Frosty has returned

By guest blogger Pete.

Everyone here was hoping that the cold, frosty and snow bound weather that we had been experiencing over Christmas and the New Year was over. Yet here we are in February and, although not, generally, as cold as it has been, we are still getting some snow and very heavy frosts.
This looks like a fun slide:

Photo by Joe Shablotnik

As a boy heavy frosts were much more welcome then than they are now to an old crinkly. The playground at our school was on a slope and we lads soon had a number of slides going on those frosty days. Most of us wore metal protectors on our shoes - very common in the days soon after the war because the idea was that they would make our shoes last much longer. I do know that when we marched down the school corridor to our classes it sounded like the St Valentine's Day Massacre was taking place. Those metal protectors, however, were good for polishing slides. Those slides were like glass and a continuous stream of lads sliding along them soon made them into a skating rinks.


No teachers ever told us that such slides were dangerous and, therefore, that we should neither make them nor enjoy them. The present day Granny State with its "Health and Safety" regulations wasn't even thought about then. The only possible "hurt" involved with these slides was to a boy's pride if he couldn't remain upright when sliding.

I was buying some more de-icer products the other day when I came across a product called "The Night Before". For anyone like me who can't use their garage or don't have a garage then this is a very useful product indeed. You apply it on the evening when frost is expected and then the next morning you don't get frost bite on your digits trying to clear ice from the screen and windows. Once, when living in Warminster, I can remember the screen and windows being iced up both outside and also inside the car. This was not in a morning but on a rather late evening when returning from some long forgotten excursion. After much scrapping I managed to get a "port hole" of clearness in the windscreen and with that vision crept the 1/2 mile or so back to our home.

Photo by Froskeland

I finished the latest Lincoln Cathedral painting this week. A scanned photo of it is shown below. I was somewhat surprised by the comparatively short time this masterpiece took me. When you look at it you may not be as surprised as I was!! The next painting is going to be a smaller one; that means, probably, that it will take me to Easter before I get in finished.


Keep on with the de-icer. They do say that Spring's not too far away.

Sunday's spotlight - Updates

By guest blogger Pete

Over the past few weeks I have written, in this blog, about certain Lincolnshire men and the different things that they have achieved or that have happened to them.

I think that one of the first I wrote about was Peter Moore. You may remember him as the Lincoln man who had been held hostage in Iraq or Iran (or both) for a number of years. Throughout his captivity a candle has been kept burning twenty four hours each day for him in Lincoln Cathedral. Earlier this week, as I write this blog, Peter himself paid a return visit to the cathedral and there he blew out the candle that had been dedicated to him. On a sad note for Peter, he also lit four new candles for the four men who had been captured with him. These men had been his bodyguards and it is known that, over the years since the five were taken, these four men had been executed.

Here's a link to an interview with Peter Moore in Lincoln Cathedral (sorry, I couldn't embed it) - the video is at the bottom of the page.

Mic Dawson and a companion were the two who had rowed unaided across the Pacific. Mic has recovered from his adventure and in a recent radio interview said that he has begun to put on weight again. Asked if he had anymore challenges in mind he replied in the negative. He thinks that both his wife and his age are against him undertaking any new challenges. He is in the U.S. as I write this, discussing a film documentary of the crossing (which will entail a certain amount of re-enactment) and testing the waters to see if there is any interest in a book.


News came through earlier this week of a teenage girl survivor of the Haiti earthquake disaster. She had been trapped under the debris for 15 days. It makes you wonder if the authorities were a bit too quick in deciding to send the various rescue teams (from countries all over the world) back to their homes. The men from Lincolnshire who went with the U.K. team to help WERE back a work on the Monday following their return. They had the weekend off and then it was back to normal duties. Personally I think they should have had a little longer away from work and a bit more time to begin to come to terms with what they had seen and done.

Photo by Chuck Simmins

For me, my Art Group has begun again after the Christmas break. (Doesn't Christmas seem years ago already?) I have decided to work on another painting of Lincoln and have made a start on it. Like the previous painting of Lincoln I completed towards the end of last year, this one, too, is based around the Cathedral. It's from a photo I took from the Castle walls. What impressed me about this photo was the way the Cathedral dominated the intriguing foreground of roofs. Below is a scan of my progress so far and I'll show you updates so that you will be able to see how things are progressing.


Congratulations to Ruth and John, both of whom became U.S. citizens this week.

Keep on supporting the survivors of the Haiti disaster. The earthquake began the problems these people have to overcome but I can't help feeling that there is still a great deal more they've got to come to terms with before anything like normality returns for them.