THURSDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2007

I’m sorry this posting is appearing late. I had to leave Newcastle for Cardiff as soon as I finished pre-recording and have only just returned.

MY CRAP HOLIDAY
This feature of The Nightshift is lifted from The Observer newspaper; it's always made me smile and I hope you like it too. It also serves as a reminder that not all holidays are the idyllic, get-away-from-it-all, escapes we may have been expecting when we booked them. If you’ve had any holiday experiences you would prefer to forget, I’d like to hear from you. Use this blog or contact me as below.

BRIDGES: THE LAST WORD
Chris and Jojo emailed from New Zealand to tell us about a particularly unnerving bridge there. “We have a single lane bridge in Whakatane which has a train track as well. You have to wait at the lights if there is a train coming over the bridge. Once the train has passed over the bridge, the lights turn green and you can then drive over; it freaks you out the first time you cross it - specially as it’s about 1km long!’ Quite so, Chris, quite so.

TRUCKSHUNTERS CERTIFICATE
Between us, Kev and I have been able to render his design for a Truckshunters Membership Certificate in a format usable on this blog. Here it is.....Pretty neat, huh? Well done, Kev - and my apologies again for trying to run before I can even crawl on this blog!
Kev has answered my concerns about the expense of producing and posting these Certificates by suggesting that we make them ‘e-certs’. I would simply fill in the blanks and email each member’s certificate to them. Those benighted souls without computers would, of course, need their certs ‘snailmailed’. I guess I could just about afford that out of my own pocket - I doubt very much indeed that the BBC would pay for them.
Kev and I would appreciate your views on the draft Certificate.
Another reminder: if you’d like me to post a picture on the blog, please feel free to send it to me but PLEASE make sure it’s less than about 750 Mb in size. I write this blog on my Mac at home and don’t want it overwhelmed!!!

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The 'land of foreigners' is, of course, Wales. The irony is that the real ‘foreigners’ were the Anglo-Saxons who gave the country its name! The Welsh for Wales is Cymru (cum-ree) which means ‘brothers together’. It sounds very similar to Cumbria and indeed the two words are directly related; Welsh was spoken in Cumbria until the 17th century (or so I’m told).
Tonight’s question........where did the rock band UB40 get their name?

THE NIGHTSHIFT CLASSIC
This week’s classic was the wonderful Canon by Pachelbel.

NAMES
I’ve received an email from Adrian Calvo-Valderrama asking me to spell out on-air the name of this blog - which I have now done. Adrian is French and - o lucky man - lives and works in Paris. Hasn’t he got a delightfully exotic name, though? It rolls around your tongue like a chocolate profiterole! Adrian Calvo-Valderrama. Magic. I think the previously most exotic - or at least most sonorous - emailer’s name to the programme was Andy Tanglewood. I do wonder if the name-holders themselves rejoice in names like this or not. I once worked with a lass called Dawn Rainbow and asked her. I’m glad to say she liked her name as much as everyone else did. I do wonder, though, about the wisdom of Mr and Mrs Healey calling their son Austin - although BBC Radio Newcastle’s own Railton Howes is also named after a car and doesn’t seem to have suffered as a result!
Do you know anyone with an exotic or sonorous name?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.