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Postcard From Bishop’s Stortford

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Mark

It’s funny going back to your place of birth, secretly hoping that it still looks like the place you left behind, and your house hasn’t been replaced by a Tesco or Starbucks. I was relieved to see that nothing much had changed when I returned to Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire after more than thirty years. Give or take the odd PVC window frame, and a rash of Ground Forced gardens, it was exactly how I remembered it. I have a lot of happy, hazy memories of growing up here, and we moved away ‘up north’ when I was eight. Relocating to Cheshire was like a cold shower compared to this sleepy, sunny market town in the Home Counties. We went from Cider With Rosie to Wuthering Heights on a one-way ticket. This short film is a tour of my childhood…

Press Quality for HD and watch in fullscreen.

The video features the track Since I left You by The Avalanches, my all time favourite song, which samples old soul band The Main Attraction and Rose Royce, amongst others. It’s a burst of sunshine, and makes me happy every time I hear it.

Categories: Random, Travel, Vibe Monitor, Video | Tags: Bishop's Stortford, Castle Gardens, England, Heath Row, Hertfordshire, Hockerill, iMovie template, Life, Mark Wallis, news, People, photography, random, Since I Left You, Snowley Parade, Summercroft Primary School, The Avalanches, The Vibes, Travel, UK, video | 9 Comments

And the Awesome Blog Content Award goes to… The Vibes!

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Mark

The Awesome Blog Content Award

Ok, stop clapping everyone and please be seated.

Just as my hit counter reaches 9000 and The Vibes gears up for it’s first birthday, I’ve been given this award by Sheila Hurst from Cape Cod, a writer and photographer who has a fantastic blog which you can see here Sheila Hurst – Reading, writing, dreaming. I love her photography which transports me to the sort of place I’d rather be than cloudy old Manchester. The best acceptance speech is two words: Thank you. It makes all my efforts here at The Vibes worthwhile, and I love doing it, and sometimes I do it too much so a little recognition goes a long way! Sheila, you made my day!

And that’s thirty seven words, not two. Anyway, with this award I’m supposed to describe myself alphabetically and pass the award to six other bloggers who deserve it.

Artist
Bearish
Creative
Dreamer
Empathetic
Feisty
Garrulous
Horticultural
Instinctive
Jocular
Kinsey 5
Lycanthropic
Mellifluous
Nocturnal
Obtuse
Pacifist/Pugilist
Quixotic
Retro
Sun Worshipper
Technical
Utopian
Verbal
Whovian
Xenomaniac
Yearning
Zodiacal

There. I didn’t cry or thank six generations of my ancestors. But I did jump up and down on my bed making insane whooping noises. I’m 44 and three quarters. I’m passing on the accolade to the following six blogs for their own particular awesomeness…and the gold envelope reveals, in no particular order….quiet, please…

The Creative Cat – for beautiful light-filled paintings of cats, mixed with feline musings, photography, wit and wisdom.

The Found Sound Orchestra – for great music made from bits of other great music.

Mad Rabbit Photography – for enigmatic animal portraits and textured cityscapes from Dallas.

The Bedlam of Beefy – for the most entertaining style blog I’ve seen, packed full of goodies*.

Red Hibiscus – for photography and ramblings from Renaissance Pam in Liverpool.

Traveling IQ – for a sprawling travelogue from Cuban-born actor and travel writer.

*Not sure if I’m allowed to nominate blogs from outside WordPress, but there is a world out there so go and take a look. There are a lot of other blogs that I follow who are worthy of this award, but I had to narrow things down to six which was very difficult. There will be other award ceremonies, so democracy is at work here…