THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER 2007

NIGHTSHIFT SUPERSTORE: COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT
Hilda (‘Hildie’ to her friends), who lives in Dipton, has emailed me with a couple of complaints. Firstly, she wants to know what’s happened to the Truckshunter Certificate. For those not ‘in the know’, this was a ludicrous idea I had to award every listener with a certain level of mental incapacity a special Certificate; this would have the dual effect of raising their self-esteem and - on presentation at the appropriate institution, sanatorium or retreat - guaranteeing sympathetic treatment. Kev (who, I’m glad to say, is now recovering from his recent health scare) even went to the trouble of designing the Certificate. You can see his handiwork on the blogposting for 22 November. Well, Hildie, the delay is all my fault. Implementation of the The Honourable Company of Truckshunters WILL occur as soon as I can work out a system for it. Printing and posting the Certificates is beyond the resources of my bank account (seriously), especially as so many Truckshunters live overseas. Issuing them as ‘e-Certificates’, which a few of you have suggested, disenfranchises those without computers and is also, to be perfectly honest, beyond my computing capabilities. I’ll find a solution if it’s the last thing I do.
Secondly, Hildie’s having trouble posting a comment on this blog. As far as I know, all you do is click on the ‘number of comments’ indicator at the bottom of each of my postings. This should open the ‘Comments’ window. Type into the 'Comments' box and click ‘Publish’. Within a couple of minutes, your comment will be available for all to see if they click the ‘number of comments’ indicator. That, at least, is how it works on my Mac here at home. Benighted Windows users may well have to right-click something or other, enter a secret code starting with ‘C**//dir/’, hit ‘control/shift/delete/caps lock’ and take a pill. Is anyone else having problems?

HIT COUNTER
Speaking of which....I would like to install a ‘hit-counter’ on the blog. It’s a simple device which tells me how many people have looked at the blog each day. I’ve looked at various examples which are, apparently, free to download from the internet. But how do I do it?

MAUREEN
Maureen’s emailed list of trivia and useless information caused far more trouble on the ‘live’ part of this morning’s programme than I thought it would. But, as Dubya once famously said, what do I know? She said that dreamt is the only word in English that ends with -mt. Many of you called in high dudgeon to suggest prompt, tempt and others. Wrong! It seems that, on this occasion, Maureen’s right!

GEMS
Tonight’s Truckshunter Gem tracks were....Ashes To Ashes, David Bowie’s Number 1 hit from 1980. I played it because of its memorable video, directed by Bowie himself with David Mallet.......and Satie’s haunting Gymnopedie I, written originally for solo piano but played here in the version orchestrated by Debussy.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
No Place must be one of England’s strangest names and the explanation for it in my book is wrong. A Blue Bus listener some years ago informed Paul and me that the name arose because the pit-shaft sits directly over the boundary between two parishes - Chester-le-Street and, I think, Beamish. It was thus in ‘no place’.
Today’s query.....of the many leg-related place-names in the north-east, which of these have I made up: Hoppyland, Kneesworth, Tiptoe, Legs Cross?

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.