Restoration Project

My dad made me a wooden train set when I was very young, possibly around 3 or 4, I'm not sure. Anyway, it was a great little set that he slaved over while working in the ship yards. It served a second purpose by converting into roller-skates, well two of the three carriages did.

Ben and Sam, my brother and sister came along and they too had some fun from this train. As I got older I wanted to do things my way and so the train got repainted, my way. It was a stupid move as I ruined it. What started off a good idea in my head turned this lovely train into a red blob. As I continued to get older, the poor thing got relegated into the darkness of long term storage - forgotten but not gone.

Years went by and so it came to be that mam and dad wanted to clear some clutter from the loft. Out came the red train and back into my possession. It had remained in this sorry state for at least 30 or so years!

Dylan took a liking to it when showed him. It's probably the only remaining toy from my childhood that I kept. It was good to see it being enjoyed by my son as it has a very sentimental attachment to me now and I've regretted the damage and paint job it suffered. I vowed at some point to restore it to its former glory. But more years went by with this in the back of my mind. So this past week I've done what I should have done a long time ago.

I dismantled the engine as far as I could get it without damaging it further, sanded the paint back to reveal the original paint to remind me how it looked and got to work on restoring it. The damaged roof was patched up, the pin holes and cracks filled and finally it was repainted back to the way my dad had intended all those years ago. It's not as good as my dad's handy work but it's as close to it as I could get.

Now when I look at it I feel happy and sentimental seeing it sitting on the side with its new shiny paintwork and colours. I only wish I'd kept the carriages, though I'd avoid skating on them this time!

Grand Day Out

When I got up this morning the sun was shining and it seemed appropriate weather for a day out. As usual on getting ready the clouds came over and a chill set in. But my mind had been made up and I was determined for my son and I to have a good day out.

The first idea of getting a train somewhere fell through as the next one was hours away. So the next stop was kids days out website. Again nothing on today. Then I remembered Tanfield railway. We drove there and found it to be closed. Now what? To get there we passed the angel of the north and so on the way back we stopped for a picnic. Ignoring the cold we were determind to have a good time, and we did.

One final stop before heading home was Penshaw Monument. It is one of those land marks that can be seen from miles around. Dylan thought it was tiny so this was a good reason to show him it properly. I remembered as a boy getting up the steep hill no problem. This time my knees were creaking and I took a subtle break half way up by taking a photo and examining it for a while.

After a good hour of being bitten by the cold wind we decided to head home. Two horses in a field provided last minute entertainment for Dylan as he attempted to feed them grass. One emptied its bowels much to Dylan's amusement! He also made good friends with another little girl. Together they believed they were training the horses. It was quite amusing to watch.

Something I noticed while taking shots on the iPhone was that the location stamp couldn't make its mind up where we were and so my photos of today have us in more places than we visited. Although the iPhone has some flaws it's made up for it in that I could share the photos on facebook and write this blog in the warm car while Dylan kept the horses busy.

Right, I'm off home to cook tea.

Bye bye.

Posted From My iPhone

Location: between Washington and Houghton-le-Spring, in Sunderland,

Harking Back

Now that I'm hitting 40 this year, call it a midlife crises if you like, I've began to look back over my life and realised how much of it is a blur or just simply forgotten. I came across a school photo on facebook and I was transported back but trying to put names to faces was too hard. Well most faces, some I remembered straight away, others came, some just first names and others completely gone from memory.

I was compelled to start contacting some of the names and was glad to see I got some replies and that they also remembered me. Perhaps I wasn't as invisible as I thought?

But the search goes on. This photo was taken at Westoe Infants in South Shields around 1977. I know a few names but would love to find them all.

All help appreciated. There is the ability to tag this on facebook or friends reunited under my photo profile.

Cheers

Lee

Google Mail

Well I set up a googlemail account. I dunno why, I suppose because other people have them and while my name existed, I thought I'd better jump on it. But annoyed at the same time that the name I wanted to use was gone, but such is life.

And Buzz? Hmmm another social network to get my head around. Why so many? myspace, facebook, tumblr, twitter? Just when I get used to one, then another one opens and people jump across. I don't think Buzz will tempt me just yet, but lets see where it goes first.

So now that I have my googlemail account I expect it will have an empty inbox for sometime and who knows, when google eventually takes over the world and we're all forced to use its services, I'll have my email and address all ready for that time.

bye for now

Lee

Nearly there

I've been hacking away for a while on www.LeeFoster.co.uk and finally it is live and ready to view. It's going to be one of those projects that grows and improves over time. It not only captures me and my interests going back to my beginnings, but what inspires and frustrates me now and in the future.

I hope it will be interesting, humorous, useful and at times, miserable. Too much happiness can be really irritating. And you know it. People who smile too much make me suspicious.

For now though you can see my design history, websites, photos of family members and information about my other interests such as Apple (as in computers etc) whisky, paranormal and social networks.

I'd love to hear back from people either via comments on here or following me on twitter. Go on, say something.

Lee