Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)

But no idea of any history

Do you mean this one in the middle - Grenfells left - Hairdressers on the right. If so I can't remember anyone posting any info on that house🙁

Never been involved🙂 - it's held at the West Bedlington Community Centre :-

I wonder if @Rigger can help. He raised a topic on Sunnyside whilst he was searching Family Tree stuff :-

Can't help you there @lilbill15. All I know is what the Bygone Bedlington members posted on the Facebook group :- Plus the info posted on the Chronicle site :- Kathy was born in Bedlington , Northumberland, and first came to public attention as a continuity announcer for Tyne Tees. She went on to news programmes and hosted her own show, Kathy and Co, where her winning smile brought her thousands of fans. She had no training, not even voice coaching, but she proved a natural. She once said: “I was just a Bedlington lass but I have always spoken this way. “I went to school in Newcastle but when I was at home with my friends it was different. “Even now I can slip into the broad Bedlington dialect if I wanted to, but my mother would have a fit.” I can't remember her, born 3 years before me, around Bedlington I only remember the young twin Secker lads that played football for local teams. However - @pilgrim did post this comment back in 2016

1. What is the correct collective name for a litter of piglets? Answer = Farrow 2. What is the final event in the decathlon? Answer = 3. Of New Zealand’s two main islands which is the larger, North Island or South Island? Answer = 4. In which city can you see the Obelisk of Luxor? Answer = 5. What sort of instruments are timpani, table and boodhran? Answer = Drums 6. What was the name of the cook in the TV series Upstairs Downstairs? Answer = 7. Who wrote the song A Whiter Shade of Pale? Answer = 8. Who led the victorious armies at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314? Answer = 9. Before marrying Mark Antony, who was Cleopatra’s lover? Answer = 10. In which sport are the terms ‘silly mid off’ and ‘extra cover’ used? Answer = 11. The sun’s heat is derived from the fusion of hydrogen and which other element? Answer = 12. What type of fruit is a Grenadier? Answer = I’ll bet you didn’t know …. All polar bears are left-handed. Answer = Nooo – polar bears live in the North not the ‘southpaw’ antarctica. Polar bears are related to Grizzlies, who are thought to poop in the woods because, well, they live there. But polar bears never poo in the woods because they live on ice… they poop where they stand regardless of the place, and they scream while doing it. Top 10 facts about polar bears 1. Polar bears are classified as marine mammals. ... 2. Polar bears are actually black, not white. ... 3. They can swim constantly for days at a time. ... 4. Less than 2% of polar bear hunts are successful. ... 5. Scientists can extract polar bear DNA from just their footprints. ... 6. They face more threats than climate change. ... 7. Grizzly-polar bear hybrids exist. 8. THERE ARE AS MANY AS 19 SUBPOPULATIONS OF POLAR BEAR 9. MALE POLAR BEARS CAN WEIGH AS MUCH AS 10 MEN 10. THEY CAN SMELL THEIR PREY UP TO A KILOMETER AWAY

@Symptoms - Malcolm started the previous post under the topic 'Freeport' in Talk of the Town section :- I see in the article you linked to they say the gigplant is at Blyth - Cambois doesn't get a mention🙂

👍 - hopefully you downloaded any images of the area that fit in with your family.

Never walked it. last time I would have been in that vicinity, 5 or 6 years ago, would be to have a meal, and a couple of beers, in The Forge Inn at Ulgham but that pub, only one in the village, is now closed🙁

Morning Vic - can't see any way around the problem when loading the system. I had a Google search and the Microsoft site seems to be the best way at finding a solution. Once upon a time I would attempt to recreate a problem as I found it was the best way to learn how to get out of it. These days I wouldn't dare as the operating systems etc. have changed so much and the new terminology (even though it is just replacing terms we used to use) is confusing. This is the address of the Microsoft site, that you may already have looked at :- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-security/vista-user-profile-service-service-failed-the/48a4489e-a002-4e32-8a5c-a3577bcae587

Unfortunately not. I'm fortunate to have an old PC with Widows Vista where some old software - Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10 - still works. A mate bought it many years ago (10 I think) and I think it was up to 3 users could register the software package so he gave me the discs to load on my PC and have a play. Once loaded I gave him the discs back after I had registered the product and that was it until about 5 or 6 years ago when I started to to clart with it and I have clarted ever since. Mobile phone software = no idea. My mobile is 2G with no access to the www. It's there for emergencies when I can't get to a landline. I have played with Photoshop software but it was £20 a month for two of the 8 (I think) packages so there was loads of options that I have now that were not available with the £20 a mount contract. My mind says Photoshop is Microsft Digital Pro 10 broken down into 8 options with each option costing you more. I remember adding up the cost of all the options and I think it was about £60 a month which would be ok for a commercial user that used it everyday and helped them make money but to me not an option for casual use.

Don't know of a way around that Vic - I'll have a think and see if I can find a way - don't hold your breath!! My first action tomorrow, when I load this old PC, will be to see if I can create a new user account + password etc. at the point when the system gives you the option to enter password or switch user account

Unfortunately the route from Netherton Colliery to Choppinton Station must be the only area (but there may be more) that this wandering Bedlington lad, (from The Oval and went to Barrington CP school 1953 to 1960) never wandered along. And in my youth I did wander and explore without wondering what my parents would be thinking as I was always late home from school or any other place I visited on a weekend. According to me mam I was, at the age of two and a bit, took a box of matches out of the house so I could stand it on end and try and climb over the gate into our house. I carried on wandering off for years. Good job there wasn't a Lock Down back then

Unfortunately @lilbill15 - I don't know how to get that Emoticon, along with many other oldies, when working on my Windows 10 Desktop PC On Windows 10 I assume I get the same set of Emoji's that you get but when working on my old Windows Vista Desktop PC I get the old Emoticons and not the Emoji set. I kept my old PC with Windows Vista as that is the machine I have the software that I use when 'clarting' with the photos.. The software I have, Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10 (MDIP 10), for clarting is nearly as old as me and is no longer available and it can't be transferred to Windows 10 as it is not compatable I had a clart with the Adobe Photoshop= £20 per month to rent - and this old dog was not having these new tricks so I got out of the Photosshop contract after a couple of months So when I go, MDIP 10 & Windows Vista go with me

It will be approximately 18 months since I drove passed Station Terrace, Choppington, but I knew they had started building there as they prepared the land where the old Station House used to be and had started to build a new house. I don't know if it was the same builder that built the equestrian centre, or if it was part of a deal with the council ie yes you can build the equestrian centre as long as you build a house where the old Station House used to be, but Google street view (2020) shows the new house still under development. And you can see Station Terrace just passed the house.

@lilbill15 - @Alan dicksonstil a member but hasn't visited the group since July 23rd 2014 - you will find him on the Barrington, Barnt' n memories and stuff!! Facebook group where he is the Admin = https://www.facebook.com/groups/958444760904321 @Canny lass - the photo you were asking about is just before the railway lines where the Choppinton Railway Station used to be. There is a short terrace just before the railway lines and the house + Equestrian Centre in @lilbill15's photo was just built a couple of years ago.

1. What did Messrs Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain invent in1947? Answer = 2. Which is the oldest of the Cambridge colleges, founded in 1248? Answer = Oxford 3. Which song begins “When you left me all alone, at the record hop; told me you were going out for a soda pop”? Answer = 4. Darbies is a slang word for what? Answer = 5. Boo boo is the friend of which cartoon character? Answer = 6. Who made history in 1997 by becoming the youngest ever US masters golf champion? Answer = 7. What can be a box or a part of the body? Answer = 8. Which monarchs preceded and succeeded Elizabeth I? Answer = 9. What do the initials GMT stand for? Answer = 10. Which French word describes a very thick soup? Answer = Potage 11. Hearts and Hibs come from which Scottish city? Answer = Edinburgh 12. Which stretch of water separates the Scottish mainland from the Orkneys? Answer = I’ll bet you didn’t know …. In America there once was a magazine called Chocolate News. It came in a glossy brown cover and actually smelled of chocolate. Answer = I didn’t

ps. forgot to say the last file input to the OCR was a selection from your comments from the Bates album - all converted - nee bovver👌

@HIGH PIT WILMA - I was curious to see how the OCR software that is available for everyone these days worked so I Googled it and went for the free download of the Windows FreeOCR software. I wondered if there would be an interaction with the user if the software couldn't recognise the text input on Pdf/Jpeg etc files. I download a mix of files = hand written & typed to input to the OCR software. The handwritten one I downloaded a one with fade writing and created an enhanced copy and they both copies were input. Unfortunately the original faded written copy failed to have any characters recognised and the enhanced copy only had four characters recognised. In fact it was only the standard typed copy that was totally transformed from a photo to a text document. You will have to hire an out of work typist, that knows pit taak, and has quite a few days free time 🙂 The original input on the left and the OCR output on the right. This one is Foundation text and quite a few letters failed to be recognised by the OCR :- This is the enhanced hand written BLACK text - only 4 characters recognised :- This one the input had upper and lowercase print plus numerous symbols but just a few of the uppercase characters were recognised :- This was the enhanced faded script but nothing recognised :- Faded handwritten letter - nowt recognised :-

HPW -OCR = Optical Character Recognition has been around for years - we had an OCR machine on the Longbenton DHSS site in the 1970's. It was used to read all the 'GIRO's, issued for all Benefit payments, and cashed at the Post Offices. Even though the relevant details were were typed on the GIROs the OCR system still had a few problems identifying all the characters and there were two teams of staff - working 09:00 to 17:00 & 17:00 to 01:00 - to input the details from the rejected OCR input GIROs onto the computer system so that the reconciliation process of all the Benefit payments could be completed. The following are not my words but 'copy & paste' from The Gaurdian online article :- How can I convert my handwritten notes into Word documents? Michael has a large pile of handwritten notepads that he would like to convert into Microsoft Word documents Your handwritten notes would be more useful in Microsoft Word format because you could do lots of things with them. Photograph: Acestock/Alamy Jack Schofield Thu 18 Dec 2014 16.19 GMT 32 The idea of converting written or printed text into digital text is generally called OCR for optical character recognition, and it has similar problems to speech recognition. That is to say, if the input is close to perfect, the output can also be close to perfect. But in practice, it works best when dealing with restricted inputs and/or limited domains. For example, it’s possible to recognise the English names for numbers and the names of major UK cities, especially if you can get people to write each letter in its own little box. The same software wouldn’t have the domain expertise to cope with a Russian-speaking coroner who liked to include Sanskrit quotations in his handwritten autopsies. Handwriting matters OCR works best with high-quality printed materials and worst of all with handwriting, so you’re not starting from the best position. In my experience, you can only get handwriting recognition to work well enough by doing it in real time. That enables you to train the software to recognise your input, while the software also trains you to write characters in ways that it can understand. I’ve had some success with this approach, starting more than a decade ago with Microsoft OneNote (which can also record your voice in sync) running on Windows XP Tablet Edition, and more recently with a Livescribe Echo digital pen and MyScript software. However, all this has more to do with keyboard replacement strategies than with OCR. It’s generally agreed that the best OCR programs are Abbyy FineReader (£99) and Nuance’s OmniPage 18 (£79.99) and Ultimate (£169.99), though neither is suitable for cursive handwriting recognition. Both companies offer free trial versions so you can test them before you splash out. There’s also CharacTell’s SoftWriting ($49.95), which the company says is for students taking notes in class and professionals taking notes in meetings. But it also says it is designed “for recognising non-connected handwriting and machine-printed text” (their emphasis) so I wouldn’t bet on it reading your handwritten notes. Like most if not all the programs in this field, SoftWriting has to be trained to recognise your handwriting. When it is processing a document, it will present you with words it doesn’t recognise, so that you can tell it what they are. If you have 250 words on a page and the program miraculously gets 90% of them right, you will still have to correct 25 words. If you want to try a few pages as an experiment, then you can download FreeOCR for Windows, though be careful not to install any crapware that may be included. FreeOCR is based on the widely used Tesseract OCR engine, which was originally developed by Hewlett-Packard in England in the 1980s. HP made it open source in 2005, and Google now maintains the source code. You can also use FreeOCR online by uploading PDF files to free-ocr.com. Google Docs and various other services also use the same Tesseract OCR engine. Wikipedia warns that “Tesseract’s output will be very poor quality if the input images are not preprocessed to suit it: Images (especially screenshots) must be scaled up such that the text x-height is at least 20 pixels, any rotation or skew must be corrected or no text will be recognized, low-frequency changes in brightness must be high-pass filtered, or Tesseract’s binarization stage will destroy much of the page, and dark borders must be manually removed, or they will be misinterpreted as characters.” PDFs and scanners Your handwritten notes would be more useful in Microsoft Word format because you could do lots of things with them. For example, you could change the typeface, size and spacing, correct and amend your notes, add illustrations, and so on. But unless you have extremely neat, clear and very consistent handwriting, that probably won’t be possible. Instead, think about converting them to high-quality, scanned PDF files that you can store on a hard drive or in the cloud. You can feed these PDF files to OCR software and hope that it will recognize enough words to make your notes searchable. If not, you will probably have to tag them manually. Either way, if someone does come up with an OCR program that can read your handwriting – not impossible, though I’ve already waited 30 years for one – you will be ready with sharp PDF files, rather than curling originals where the paper has aged and the ink has faded. Of course, if you are going to scan your notes then you must already have a scanner, or be prepared to buy one. A cheap Epson or Canon flat-bed scanner should give good results, though it is time-consuming to scan a lot of pages. If you intend to do a lot of scanning, consider a sheet-fed model like the Brother ADS-2100 (from £222). You can also get scanners that include OCR, such as Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Duplex (from £352), which scans both sides of the paper at once. (The scanner’s OCR software usually runs on your PC.) Scanning services If you have to buy a decent scanner and perhaps good quality OCR software for a one-off project, add up the cost and divide it by the number of pages of notes to find the cost per page. It’s a boring job, so perhaps you should add the cost of your time. The result might prompt you to abandon the whole idea, or start looking for a company to do it for you. Most of the companies that provide scanning services cater for businesses that need to clear away large volumes of paper records. However, some cater for low-volume and home users. One example is Oxford-based Scanning Geeks, which charges 25p per page for documents up to A3 in size. (One page means one side of a page.) They can do OCR (“Textual Data Capture”) as well. Ideally, find a good local company where you can drop off your notes securely and collect them afterwards. It’s an expensive route if you have lots of paper: it could cost £3,000 to scan the contents of a four-drawer filing cabinet. But if you only have 100 to 500 pages of notes to scan, it could be the best option.

@Tonyp - replies to your question from the Bygone Bedlington Facebook group members :- Allison Jones Joseph miller Tommy's son has the computer shop on glebe road bank above the barbers and chip shop. Jean Hale Gordon died a few years ago but his wife Irene is in a home now after she had a fall. John Henderson Tommy & Vi ran the Greengrocer shop, Tommy started the bingo in the shop next door to the greengrocers. He was a great musician and played at most of the clubs at some time or another but was at the Universal in Ashington for a long time. He often went to the computer shop that his son Joe ran but admitted that he had absolutely no idea how computers worked. Sadly both Tommy and Vi have passed away.

Cheers Tony - let you know if I get any info🙂