I was thinking of subscribing to encyclopaedia Britannica online to supplement my frequent journeys into Wikipedia, I just wondered if anyone had any experience of using Britannica’s online version as it is not very expensive and could be quite interesting and helpful. I would appreciate your thoughts.

As usual no time to look into TV 1979, but before I go I must wish my little boy a very happy 35th (that sounds quite substantial now) birthday, it’s just so scary how old we all get. That’s about it for me today so I will say goodnight and good luck.

A few more TV programmes from 1979:
“Dick Turpin” Richard O’Sullivan starred as a character living just after the time of the original Dick Turpin, modelling himself on do-gooders such as Robin Hood. I don’t really remember this.
“Worzel Gummidge” yep it was back in 1979 that we first saw Jon Pertwee in this character (not long after serving his time as Doctor Who) with Una Stubbs as Aunt Sally. It only ran for two years but seems like forever.
“Agony” Maureen Lipman in this sitcom about an agony aunt, can’t remember watching it.
“Sapphire and Steel” science fiction TV series starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum defending the world against time. Weird!
“Shelley” sitcom starring Hywel Bennett, it ran for 10 series with 71 episodes so quite popular for a sitcom I used to quite enjoy the sardonic humour.
“Only When I Laugh” a sitcom about our hospital ward starring James Bolam, Peter Bowles, Christopher Strauli and Richard Wilson (the doctor), a successful series written by Eric Chapple.
I think that’s about it for 1979 so we’ll start a new decade when I next get to it.

Must get ready to go now so I will say good night and good luck.

Chris was sorting out all our old CDs today, so in between checking if we had them on our I Tunes listing I was preparing a playlist of my top 50 singles, imagine how surprised I was to find out that I had no I Tunes files for about half of them which probably means about £25 in downloads, how frustrating! Just playing the existing 25 at the moment, Paul Weller’s “You Do Something to Me” what a great song!

A bit late in the day again today so not much chance to look at TV for 1979, I will report back tomorrow if not too engrossed in the Liverpool match, so goodnight and good luck.

It can be very frustrating when you’ve had some new building works that have gone generally really well and you find out when you’re applying paint the walls just how poor some of the plastered surfaces are. Both Chris and I are pretty upset at some of the finish although most people wouldn’t notice the areas once you see them you can’t help picking them out all the time. It just shows you how important it is to have good tradesman. We were a bit let down by plumbers and plasterers, I think it was a case mainly of the timetable and when people could come in, so we paid a price.

Back to 1979, BBC2 had a couple of debuts:
“Friday Night and Saturday Morning” by highbrow chat show that even had Harold Wilson hosting it (although that was one of the biggest disasters in television history), highlights included the debate with John Cleese and Michael Palin defending their new film “The Life of Brian” against fierce opposition from Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood (the Bishop of Southwark), I’d quite like to see a repeat of that.
“Not the Nine O’Clock News” one of my favourites of the time which annoyingly coincided with a college night on Monday so there were all sorts of efforts by the students to get out early and get home to see it, I remember the run from Chelmsford to Thundersley was 23 minutes at top speed before the new road was built, fortunately at that time of night the roads were empty. For those that don’t remember, Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Stephenson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones and Chris Langham headed up the show, very satirical and very funny.

I need a break now so I will leave it there, board meeting tomorrow so another busy day so I will say goodnight and good luck.

Still quite busy and I’m probably going to spend a bit of time working on SAVS budget today so I will leave you with just a few debuts from 1979:
“Question Time” hosted by Robin Day back then, followed by Peter Sissons in 1989 and David Dimbleby from 1994 (quite a steady income for David), some pretty interesting debates but always a bit too late for me to watch, still going strong.
“To the Manor Born” starring Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles, very popular sitcom at the time running between 1979 and 1981 was a sequel in 2007 celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.
“Shoestring” I used to enjoy this one with Trevor Eve playing the computer expert now mixing his Radio West DJ’ing with Private detecting, I think it was quite entertaining though it only lasted for one series.

The Internet keeps giving up the ghost so I will leave it there for the time being and say goodnight and good luck.

Not such a good Saturday morning for Chris who has been up all night being sick, I’m hoping she’s having a good sleep upstairs because I haven’t seen her since about eight o’clock, I just hope she feels better when she gets up. I say I’m wilting because of the heating in my office, as I’ve probably explained before, the gas engineer who moved the boiler made a bit of a mess of the installation, in the end we had plumbers and electricians both saying the other should wire up the thermostats, in the end we had nothing and it was only the plumber who saved us just before Christmas who pointed out that we should have two motorised valves fitted to the system before we could wire up the thermostats. Whilst we are waiting for him to come and do the permanent repair we cannot adjust the boiler other than its heat settings, and even with it set very low my office is steaming hot, hopefully he will be here this week.

I am totally enjoying my life downstairs, it makes such an incredible difference to me, and it’s quite difficult for people to comprehend just how much benefit it is to be part of the family once again. I can be in my office or I can sit in the lounge watching TV or talking to Chris or watching people work in the kitchen, and it’s so easy just to move about. I can even look out to the garden and venture down to the very bottom once the weather improves. Probably everyone will be fed up with me very soon (you know, grumpy old man and all that), but it’s too late I’m down here now.

I think I last talked about television programmes about a month ago and I believe we had pretty much finished 1978 so I will have a quick look at 1979, unfortunately my Internet connection has gone down so I will have to leave this now and come back to you later!

Back again after watching “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “Harry Potter no 7″ probably should’ve fallen asleep during that period but managed to watch two quite good films, Chris is a bit better but still feeling pretty rough, I expect she needs some food. A bit of news regarding television from 1979 first of all:
The American cable network “Nickelodeon” was launched.
The whole of the UK ITV network was affected by a technician’s strike that lasted 11 weeks.
BBC 2 unveils the world’s first computer generated television presentation symbol.

Premiers that year:
“Dukes of Hazard” not a massive fan every program seemed to be the same, the good guys always won.
“Blankety Blank” who can forget Terry Wogan’s first venture into TV, not one of my favourite shows.
“Thomas and Sarah”, a spin-off from upstairs downstairs, I think it featured the chauffeur and Pauline Collins; I can’t remember much about it.
“Prisoner. Cell Block H” the start of the Australian series which was heavily watched in the UK (unfortunately not by me).
“Tales of the Unexpected” was released by Anglia Television, the first series of stories were all by Roald Dahl and he actually introduced the first few series, it was very popular and I certainly enjoyed the mysteries.
“Hart to Hart” Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers starred in this Sunday afternoon rubbish, but then that’s just my opinion.
“Antiques Roadshow” and is still obviously going strong, the starting line-up was Bruce Parker, Angela Rippon and the one and only Arthur Negus.
There were a few other American imports that started the year “Bensen” spin-off from “Soap”, “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” I think that was Saturday afternoons, “Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo” cartoons, for the kids and of course “Knots Landing” the “Dallas” spin-off.

I think that’s probably enough for now, I have a few more British debuts for next time, so for now goodnight and good luck.

Went into work today and just a bit under the cosh with a catch up for next week’s board meeting, I’m also getting pressure from both my private clients to get accounts completed as soon as possible, no pressure at all then! Even with all this extra time being based downstairs it’s still going to take a while to catch up, perhaps we need some more staff!!

Must dash as it is shower night again so I will say goodnight and good luck.

Still sorting out computers so I’m not yet in a position to do a regular blog, it looks like a new version of Microsoft Office but I suppose the old one was living on a wing and a prayer and that was a copy but we will get there in the end.  I guess it will probably be a few days before we can install everything so I will have to use the old system for a while, when it can find somewhere to set it up.

We are all struggling a bit with the temperature, we are awaiting the heating engineer to return and wire up our room stats, at the moment we have no regulation to the boiler and the area where we have underfloor heating is incredibly warm, so we are melting at the moment.  We shall have to wait till next week to continue with the works although Chris has already been knotting loads of skirting boards already today and also filling some of the gaps around the door frames with expanding foam.

Chris has just gone off to get a Chinese meal so we will leave it there and I will say once again very very Happy New Year, goodnight and good luck.

As soon as I can get back into the swing of things we can send some photos but hopefully within the next two weeks all the skirtings and edgings will be completed together with a majority of painting.  The whole project has gone very very well and all respect to Tony who has co-ordinated everything for us to continue to carry on during the transfer, quite an ordeal but we are getting there now, I will leave it there as the dinner bell has just gone so I will say goodnight and good luck.