Last night I ordered a new DMX light controller. This will give me more control over my LED par cans, enabling me to produce better quality light shows for my own band and performances, not to mention other performers I work with.
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On Sunday, I set up a Facebook Page for my PA and Light Show Hire. I should have done it years ago, within 24 hours I received 1 booking, at Lynton Town Hall, for a Pink Floyde tribute band, and one very good enquiry for a festival in Bude. Looking good I think. Please drop by and give my page a like https://m.facebook.com/PA-and-Stage-Lighting-Hire-133247160415564/
Music lessons are booming across the UK Telephone 07866 650015 to book your guitar or ukulele lessons in your own North Devon Home or anywhere in the world by Skype, FaceTime, or Google Hangouts. Win a free half hour guitar or ukulele lesson by Skype, FaceTime or google hangouts. During #DevonHour on twitter, this week only (21/82013), 10 questions about me will appear under the hash tag #SoYouThinkYouKnowMe. Simply tweet the answers back to me. All the answers are in my twitter time line and blogs. The winner will be announced shortly after Saturday 6 pm (24/8/2013) when the competition closes, here and on Twitter. In the event of a tie, I will draw a winner from the most correct answers. Anyone is eligible to play, except me. Good luck! You must be able to get your hands on a guitar or ukulele. No cash alternatives. My decision is final. Well, Paul can't get much further North in Devon and We can't get much further South. Paul asked on Twitter during DevonHour, a weekly spot where Devonian Twits get together and tweet the bejasus out of a #hashtag (don't ask, either you know or you don't) if anyone would like to write a guest post for his blog. I volunteered. I'm involved with tourism. I thought I'd nail my colours to my mast at once, but the mast is stainless steel. No, really, it is. I run a tourist based business in Dartmouth with a lovely charter boat. Paul and I chatted about the topic, and I suggested tourism and Dartmouth rather before I realised what I was suggesting! Do I do a catalogue of all the tourist attractions in Dartmouth? Pretty obviously no, I do not. We have an excellent Tourist Information Centre for that. I'm not going to bang my own trumpet nor blow my own drum much, either. After all, you'll visit my web site and make your own decision about whether to come out on Alucia or not. I'd like you to, of course I would, but that's up to you. In Dartmouth we depend on tourism. That's fine, because we're a great town to visit. We have some of the best eateries, drinkeries and shops in South Hams. We're a destination town with a great quayside to catch crabs from, river boats of all shapes and sizes for river trips, glorious floral displays, a food festival, a wonderful , the views of Kingswear across the river, ice cream fish and chips, the lot. We have broad vistas, sea air, easy access to the wilderness of Dartmoor, and wonderful places to stay. The part that saddens me is that many of our tourists arrive by coach and, because they are not always in the first flush of mobility, don't find our beautiful places in the town. Often they leave the coach and manage only to reach the town pontoon before boarding an excellent river boat and being given a lovely tour up the river Dart to Totnes before being met by their driver and whisked away. They bypass our fleshpots entirely. How do we attract them to spend time with us? Don't they know that much of The Onedin Line was filmed here? Do they know that the huge area around Slapton Sands was evacuated in the second World War to provide a training ground for our US allies, or anything about the enormous training disasterExercise Tiger, some of which happened on the beach at Slapton, some of which in Lyme Bay, and which was the single largest disaster in loss of life of the war, a mixture of bureaucratic incompetence, friendly fire and enemy action? Do they know that the French 'General with the Big 'Ooter' ('Allo 'Allo, do keep up) de Gaulle, was stationed here with the Free French Forces, and that we can show them the house, or that HMS Cicala couldn't be sunk because it's the Royal Dart Hotel? Honestly, we'd love to tell them that and have them explore. There are folk who are pretty much the last generation directly affected by that war, and they need more stories to pass on to their kids and grandkids. We also would dearly love more younger folk. It's term time still and the 'happily child free' are with us at present, but this really is a town for the kids, too. It isn't a bucket and spade holiday town, it's a town to do stuff, visit castles. We have, well, at least three! We even have a Palmerston Fort. Dartmouth was invaded by the Brittany French, but we repulsed them. Find that in your history books. They were sent packing at Blackpool Sands. There's stuff to find out about pirates. Politely we call them 'privateers', but we had 'em. The tugs for the Lower Ferry are named after one of them. We were also involved in the Triangular Trade, but not the one with slaves. Hmm, where to find out about that. Ah yes, the museum! And how about those Pilgrim Fathers, the Mayflower and Speedwell lot? Left from Plymouth, did they? Have a look in Bayards Cove and see how correct that is. Come to that they didn;t arrive in Plymouth on the other side either. They anchored of Provincetown on Cape Cod. The wonderful irony is that Provincetown is now a major gay resort!. As my US friends say, “Go figure!” I keep apologising for the Mayflower lot. I keep explaining that the boat was meant to sink, but that's a whole other story! How was Dartmouth defended from invasion from the sea over the years? It wasn't the big guns of the Brownstone Battery, they had a different job. What to know what? Easy, take a walk on the South West Coast Path, and visit it and find out. Chat toCoastwatch volunteers there, at Inner Froward Point. I volunteer for them can can spin quite a yarn if I'm there when you drop in. Did you know that Dartmouth was on the Front Line in WW2? Have you ever knowingly been to a front line town? Looking at the peace and quiet today you;d never realise the vast invasion forces assembled here. It was bombed, too. The bombing almost ruined the unique plaster ceiling of the Tree of Jesse, something you can see by appointment with the museum, but it was recovered, all bit one bit. You see it ain't just the stuff you expect. Dartmouth isn't just one of the most beautiful little towns on the face of the earth. It has a military history, a social history and a whole industrial history I haven't even touched on! Have I even scratched the surface? Seriously, I have no idea. I know there were slums, social deprivation, a jail whose last tenant was a friend's grandfather, stocks, shambles (meat market), a mill, limekilns, one of which claimed the life of a young lad who fell asleep at the top and rolled in to be incinerated, poor kid. There's a powerful river that claims two lives a year, and we have the Navy training baby officers in and around the harbour. And that's without even thinking of listing eateries, drinkeries, our wonderful local theatre and social centre, glorious and quirky shops, the best cream teas in Devon and so much else.
I bet you just thought we were good for crabbing on the quayside!
We are. But we're a whole lot more, too.
So tell me, did anything catch your eye? Tim Trent runs a private skippered charter boat, Alucia, in Dartmouth, Devon, and wishes he'd been born and raised in Dartmouth, but has to confess that he is an incomer who adores the place. |
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