Carole

I've added another batch of photos to my gallery 'Old photos of Netherton'. The new photos date from 1901 to the 1930s and they include pupils at Nedderton School, the Colliery Engineer and Colliery Secretary, some of the staff who worked for the Colliery Manager at Howard House, and one of some pitmen with their motorbikes. I am hoping to get more photos from family sources and I think there will be some taken at the colliery itself. I will scan and upload anything which might be of interest.

Hello again Jojo, I forgot to mention that I came across some more photos and other information about Netherton and other towns and villages on the Northumberland Communities website. You probably know all this, but just in case here's a link to the photo entries for Netherton: http://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/Nedderton_C4.htm Carole

Hello Jojo I've had a look through my collection of family photos and I'm sorry but I can't find anything later which could be of interest. I've just got a few very ordinary family snaps which no-one else could possibly want. It's sad that there seem to be so few photos of Netherton, and now there's hardly a trace of it left. Like you, I would love to see any others that people may have if they would be happy to upload them. Carole

Hi Poldweia I'm glad the photos are interesting for you. It does seem quite possible that some people in your Grandma's family could be in the photos that I have got. I have put about a dozen more photos into the Galleries section (click on ‘Galleries' at the top of the screen, then on 'Places Gallery' and then scroll across to the right and click on ‘Old Photos of Netherton'). There is one taken during the Second World War of a large group of people dressed up for a fancy dress pageant - maybe you might spot family members in that one. I'm not sure if we are counting people in the same way in the photo you mention - the people in it are not all standing side by side in a tidy line. There are two girls toward the left of the photo standing side by side carrying trays of flags and medallions, both wearing white caps (a bit like old fashioned nurses caps), and they both have coloured ‘bibs' with a medallion pinned to them. The girl on the left of the pair has a roughly centre parting, the other has a side parting with her hair swept across. The girl on the left of those two (the one with a roughly centre parting) was my Great Aunt Kitty Harrison. I'm afraid I don't know who the other is, in fact I can't identify anyone else in that photo. If you can't be sure about which one is Kitty there's another photo of four of the girls in the Gallery section and it's easy to spot Kitty in that one - she's the only one sitting down. I've noticed your post seeking information about the Tweddle family and I wish I could help but I don't remember ever hearing the name mentioned by my relatives at Netherton. I hope you do get some replies from people who can help you. Carole

Thank you - I now have a cleaner PC but sadly no restoration of the missing function. It feels as if Roxio didn't just deactivate it so that you would be forced to use Drag-to- Disk, it feels as if it is has deleted this Windows function completely. I'm still hoping for a solution but trying to think of a work around to use instead. I know I could re-install Windows XP and I think I've got everything backed up, but I suspect I might just dig myself into a deeper hole.

Thanks very much for your suggestion. I've tried this but you only get the option to select out uninstalling Drag-to-Disk or the whole of the rest of the software suite. If I'd known at the outset what I do now I would have tried a customised installation to avoid installing Drag-to-Disk in the first place.

I installed Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 for a one-off job to edit a collection of old cine films which had been transferred onto DVD. I had various difficulties with the Roxio software, in particular the Drag-to-Disk function. One problem was that it seemed to have disabled the function within Windows which originally copied pictures to CD, ie. 'Copy to CD' in Picture Tasks. Now that I've finished the editing job I decided to get rid of Roxio and I have uninstalled the whole suite including Drag-to-Disk (using Add or Remove programs in Control Panel). I'm left with no way of copying pictures to CD because the 'Copy to CD' function has not been restored to the 'Picture Tasks' Menu. Too much to hope for I suppose. Does anyone know if I can reset the 'Picture Tasks' Menu to restore the original functions? I'm not keen on reinstalling Windows XP if I can avoid this. Help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I'll use it if I ever want to get a picture into a post.

I don't doubt that the Bose speakers Monsta suggests are great but I wanted a 2.1 set of speakers for my PC, not a 4.1 set, and I was looking within a price limit of £100. I tried a range of speakers in this price range - nothing I tried came close to the Harman Kardons. The appearance initially made me think twice because I loved the design but suspected that something so radically different might be putting appearance before function and they could be really let down by poor sound quality. Not so. I was astonished by the sound when I tried them. They produce a clear undistorted sound with more volume than I could possibly want. They have the capacity to produce a really punchy bass if that's what you want, although I generally don't so I haven't got the bass turned up very far. Appearance definitely isn't the key factor for me but I find a lot of computer equipment frankly ugly (apart from Macs - wish I had one) so it's just a bonus to find something in my price range which sounds great and looks great. I looked at Monsta's link to the Bose speakers on That online auction site that is in no way as good as Free Bedlington.co.uk Classifieds to see what I might have missed, but as they are a 4.1 set they weren't what I was looking for, and as the current bid for them is £190 (including delivery) with 3 days to go they would in any case have been way out of my price league. I agree with 3g that by far the best way to chose speakers is to try them out and make your own comparison. People have different preferences for sound quality and appearance. Some people will think the Harman Kardons just look weird and hate them - fine, each to their own! There are loads of customer reviews of the Harman Kardons available on line if anyone's interested. Some people say they are using them with an iPod to replace their main hifi/audio system. I wouldn't go THAT far but they do give our Denon system with Mission speakers quite a run for its money. I notice from scanning some reviews online that one person bought them even though put off at first by their appearance: "Not sure of the alien phallic jellyfish thingy they've got going on but the sound is simply awesome (for less than £100..!) Bargain price too.. I'm hearing sounds on cds I didn't know where there... After the initial should I shouldn't I etc I am simply overjoyed that I did... " Well, that thought hadn't occurred to me... By the way, the price on Amazon for the Harman Kardons has just been adjusted down to £90 (9th Jan 2008).

Thank you 3g for adding the photo and link to the Harman Kardon website. I would have tried adding a photo but so far my attempts to put photos into posts using the PhotBox photo sharing website have been unsuccessful. Your photo is much better than my description!

If you want some multimedia speakers for your PC or Mac you can get some brilliant ones for under £100. I bought the Harman Kardon Soundsticks II, best price probably from Amazon (currently £97) and they are just fantastic. Unbelievable sound quality, very easy to set up and great to look at (transparent and curvy, and the subwoofer looks like a small fountain with a blue light). There are loads of user reviews for these speakers on Amazon too. I tried them out with our new Sony Bravia TV. I just plugged them into the earphone socket and the sound is just too good to be true, so I bought another set for the TV. They sound better than friends' much more expensive multi-speaker surround sound systems, and they look far better too. I've checked and they will work with any audio device which has a socket for 3.5mm audio jack - MP3 players, games consoles, Walkman etc. I can't think of any bad points, except that the subwoofer looks so good that you don't want to hide it away.

Ha! I'm proud to have a pay-as-you-go Nokia 1100 which cost me all of £9.99 (new) two years ago. It does everything I want and I really don't give a **** what anyone might think of me because of the phone I own. I'm happy to spend my money other things. When it gives up the ghost I might be tempted to get one with a camera, but only if it's cheap!

A belated Happy Birthday to 3G. Thanks for all your work on the website and your help to the bewildered!

If you have your own business getting professional advice on anti-spam measures plus other aspects of computer security and privacy would be a very good move. If you're a private user I think you will be able to sort this out by alterations to your AOL account settings. I used to use AOL some time ago (then only dial up) and it actually had pretty good facilities for filtering out spam and blocking unwanted emails. I'm not familiar with the current version of AOL but I support Mr Darn™'s suggestion that you try AOL's "live help" service. I used this a couple of times and it was genuinely helpful. Good luck.

The people I heard using this term were from my grandparent's generation, probably born between about 1890 - 1910 so they would have heard about the Klondike Gold Rush when they were children. Perhaps they heard of people who left to try their luck. I thought the Gold Rush must be the connection, but the sculleries I remember weren't the sort of places to make you think of striking gold... I'd never heard of the reference to Cramlington/Klondike. The back of beyond, perhaps? Thanks for to monsta and threegee for your suggestions.

Does anyone have any idea why some people at Bedlington and Netherton used to call their scullery the "klondike"? I heard this when I was a kid and my Dad later confirmed that I wasn't imagining it because he remembered it from his own childhood at Netherton in the 1920s/30s. I can't come up with any idea to explain it.

I have now put these photos and others into the 'Places' section of the Photo Gallery.