saxophone tuition Tyne and Wear

tenor and alto saxophone lessons available, see "Biography & music" for more info.
Please Email dave clarke for info
Beginners welcome with music theory as well as improvisation technique, you're never too old to learn an instrument. I have a gentlemen of over 65years who started from scratch a few years ago who now plays his favourite swing numbers and absolutely loves it

208 radio Luxembourg

Heard "the lion sleeps tonite" the other day, which reminded me of when i was having breakfast before going to college in approximately 1961 in Burnley Lancashire.
The program i listened to in the mornings was radio Luxembourg, which transmitted from 6pm in the evenings until about 1.0 am in English, but in German in the mornings.
Take your pick and double your money started out on 208 before moving to tv, and of course there was "horrace batchelor" with his keynsham Bristol football advert.
208 was about the only pop music program around in those days, until the pirates came along. Remember johnnie Walker on Caroline South with Percy Sledge's when a man loves a woman at 10.30 pm every night and the cars on the coast at Frinton Essex flashing their headlights.

some of my "life songs"

These are just some of my favourite songs which have a certain significance in my life up to now. there are more when i remember them, if i think about or if someone mentions a time or memory or whatever, it will almost always trigger a tune that was out at that time.
Fortune teller----Mersey beats
She loves you---Beatles
Little by little-----Stones
All over now---------Stones
Then only then------Julie Grant
Macarthur Park----Richard Harris
U made me so very happy--B.S & tears
Sometimes in Winter---B.S.& tears
Say a little prayer--Aretha Franklin
Close to you----Carpenters
Walk on bye---Dione Warwick
Something in the air--Thunderclap newman
Do you really want to hurt me---Culture Club
Rapture-----Blondie
Piano in the dark---Brenda Russell
Cry me out----Pixie Lott
Music has always played a part in my life, i remember situations by the music of that particular time & place, for example, the Mersey Beats fortune teller came out as a b side & my mates & i were starting a group up so my mum bought me an electric guitar & amp from Pollards music shop near Burnley market on standish street, opposite the blackpudding stall.

the frogs are on the move

What a beautiful day once again, there was certainly some heat in the sun this lunchtime, nearly shorts time!
Had a peak in the pond and could clearly see two frogs stirring on the bottom, i just hope they don't start too early as all the frogspawn died in the frost last year. I 'll just have to get some in if the weather turns cold again, and put the tadpoles back in later
For all the pond info, please go to Blogs of interest / Pond life.

it isn't white no more, oh yes it is!

On Thursday i said to a friend this is the longest we've been without the white stuff on the ground, when low and behold a few hours later the damn stuff is back. The snow is brilliant for the security cams, lightening the image nicely.
I did catch a glimpse of all the bulbs beginning to show, although they are obviously a week or so behind this year.
The pond is looking crystal clear now all the ice has melted, and the fish are quietly waking up, and i eagerly await the first sign of frog activity. The fish must be 16 or 17 years old now and i think the spinal thing which i mentioned in an earlier post has definitely spread, as i can see a slight kink in all of them.
You are supposed to kill them but i cannot bring myself to do it so when they all pop off i shall remove the net and have a wildlife pond and allow the heron as well as the fox and hedgehog to take a drink as there will be no beakfast for them. Also i think a net keeps the dragon flies at bay so that's another thing to look forward to.

Computer problem solved

I had a problem with my Dell vostro 400 desktop machine, in that my frame rate was way down when in gaming, & also a strange occurence at start-up.
I would switch on, the blue light appeared, the fan came on at full speed as normal, but as the fan slowed down the light went out & the computer was dead, then it immediately started up again, then died down, & on the 3rd time the bios bleeped & it stayed on. This was driving me mad, i trawled everywhere on the net & all seemed to point to faulty power supply, others said faulty motherboard, but i wasn't fussed on installing new power supply as it was about £80 for this model. Incidentally the graphics card was a nvidia geforce 8600gts.
I finally took up a friends suggestion of a gainwood 9500gt 1gb DDR2 graphics card which only cost around £50, & it is absolutely brilliant. My fps went way up & the machine starts first time.
On the start-up issue, this new card takes power only from the pci express slot, not from a flying lead, so whether that was part of the problem, i don't know. The card has no fan so i thought it may get hot as on the vostro midi tower it is upside down, & also takes up 2 slots, but it has been fine.
So if anyone has had similar problems as i had, i hope this has helped.

pond life

Well all the snow has nearly gone but the pond has still quite a bit of ice on it, got a shot of one of the golden orfe through the ice free surface as shown in the photos. The waterfall is kept running 24/7 all year round so there is always a part of the pond surface ice free, although this year only a tiny fraction.
But the fish are very hardy, about 16 years old, but i have had four with a spinal thing, which spreads, probably even more as they have spawned for the last few years.
I did one year get two which survived to about one and a half inches then disapeared,
whether they were eaten or they just died i don't know. If anyone needs advice on building & running a pond feel free to ask, i used to have a website with a pond-life section which was very popular but as i hosted it on geocities it went down when they stopped free hosting.
As i mentioned in the previous post we have foxes in our grounds, well one night last summer one of the fish was on the patio dead, & i knew the net covering the pond had frayed at one end, so as i have 24/7 video recording i saw a cat so we thought we had the culprit. but when i found time to run the tape on i found one of the foxes walking round the pond. I just wish it had hooked one of the "Bent" fish out instead of one of the good ones.

Snow trails

With all the snow we have had in the last few weeks, it's been very interesting seeing all the different tracks in the snow of birds & animals.
we have a foxes den in our grounds & i thought they had moved on as we hadn't seen or heard them for a while, & the entrance to the den had not been used. But all is well as there has been fresh tracks every day leading back to near the original den, so they must have opened up a new entrance. The foot prints were in a near straight line but where the snow was deeper it was a continuous channel as the bushy tail had joined the foot prints up.
We also have a blackbird, a thrush, a robin & magpies drinking at the frozen pond, which has been frozen since christmas, apart from the waterfallwhich i leave running all year round just to keep a tiny bit of ice free surface for the gasses to escape.

Good morning world!!

Well we're just into a new year, i wonder what this year has in store, if only i had crystal balls, what! There's already this earthquake in Haiti, terrible, it's so frustrating when all the aid is at the airport but 3 days have past & they are still trapped under the rubble, although there was one piece of good news when that aid worker got burried, phoned her husband who jumped in his car, drove 100 miles & found her with just her hand showing, what a mirracle escape.