Shelterbox packing for Haiti

Have a look at my very first news package for our weekly news programme for my MA Multimedia Broadcast Journalism at the University College Falmouth.

Work Experience

Charlotte said to me in our first tutorial, “you need to get some work experience”. So here I am sitting in Wales doing just that.

It was a stoke of luck really. I was in the pub in Falmouth (as usual) for halloween. Dressed as as psychopathic butcher, there were a bunch of people singing away in the corner. I love a good sing song myself and lets be honest, I was quite tipsy, so I decided to sing along. Much to my horror and don’t worry, I let them know about it, they were singing in Welsh. How am I supposed to join in with this I asked them? After a lot of banter I got chatting to this one chap who asked what i did. I said Broadcast Jounalism. It turned out that he was the director of a production company in Wales, making a programme called Ffermio, a welsh language rural affairs and farming programme. Ideal I said, I have a degree in Organic Agriculture aswell.

So there came the work experience and hopefully some work in the future.

It’s the third day so far. Just two more days before they close up for Christmas. Hardly anyone is in the office, but i’m kept busy researching for a ‘green’ Ffermio programme. Ideal really, I love a bit of alternative energy and the like. I also intend on trying to get my programme ideas looked at today. My list is getting bigger all of the time. I think I may even go full time as an ideas man. Now that would be a great job. 

Tomorrow I’m off filming on a farm somewhere and then Friday is the Christmas party. The question is, can I restrain myself enough once the amber nectar gets flowing? Will I ever work here again?

Cornwall property market review

Obviously the property market across the country has been very difficult for the past 12 months. But it most certainly hasn’t all been bad. In fact, for people like me, it enabled me to get onto the property ladder after years of procrastinating. Having followed the property market my whole life and having spent a lot of time involved with my parents properties, I think I’ve just about got the market sussed in Cornwall (at least in the areas that I’m interested).

Top tip: Penryn and Falmouth have nowhere near reached their peak.

Finding an investment property is all about finding a property with a small market and giving it a big market. So many things influence this.

The recession was the most obvious recent market changer. It caused the market to contract and expand at an unpredictable rate. The key to making money out of this was to jump in at the low point. So how do you judge this? Well its very difficult and very risky. I ended up basing my decision on the potential rental market. Investors will always dive back in on the property market when they can make more from renting it out than the current rate of borrowing.

An improving area is another reason for buying a property. So, for example Falmouth and Penryn has an expanding university. Another 2000 students will be arriving in October 2010, which will almost double to size of the university.

Using and finding inside knowledge is very important in finding a property. The university case is a perfect example.

But…also look out for the opposite happening. Look at any planning proposals in an area to make sure that a huge nuclear plant isn’t coming to the area in the next 5 years or a field overlooking the sea in front of your window is going to be the home of 100 new flats!

I always think it’s best to spread your eggs, so a property that has many potential markets is preferential. Then, if one market dies, you can pick up another. ie. Student let, private let, business let, holiday let, investment sale, private family sale, individual person sale. The more boxes you can tick, the safer you are.

The houses that I most recently purchased were in quite a dilapidated road. There were three houses that were totally derelict and some old industrial units and buildings. But why was this road like this in an otherwise affluent conservation area? Well it all stemmed down to the three houses dominating the street. I bought them at the bottom of the market depression and via a tender. Once we started doing up the houses, everything else in the street started to happen. The house next door put on a new roof and is putting in new windows. The industrial unit has been demolished to make way for some new flats and updated unit. And the planning has gone through for the car garage two doors down to turn into a flat. The more time I’ve spent on the project, the more i’ve realised that these three houses have been upsetting people. The moral in the street is way higher and it will almost certainly end up being a very desirable street.

So, the market is almost certainly bouncing back now. Certain sectors are still struggling, such as the £500k plus market and the commercial sector, but the family homes and rental investment properties are definitely on the up.

Houses to buy now:

http://tinyurl.com/y85lhze This is a bargain and more importantly a flexible property that could be a great family home or student let. Also plenty of character.

http://tinyurl.com/yern883 Another bargain. In a great road with plenty of scope for development. Also, partially updated, so could be let straight away. Or a great family home.

The Christmas Party

Apparently Christmas is officially allowed to be talked about now. I still think it’s way too early, but I obviously have no say. Therefore I’ve decided to embrace it and have started planning a Christmas party for my Broadcast Journalism class and the International Journalism Class (they tend to ‘hang on’ to our class, so I was forced to invite them!).

So what’s the plan? Well I was going to have a BBQ and get pissed in the hut, but having mentioned it to my parents, they thought it was inhumane to have people outside during the Winter. So, they’ve donated the house for the evening. Bonus. So it’s all change – we’re going posh.

To keep a country feel, we’ll do some clay pigeon shooting in the afternoon and then I’ll cook up a storm. Tag of homegrown organic beef, with loads of roasted veg and Yorkshire puddings. Tasty. It will be a bit a challenge though, cooking a roast for about 30 people. I wonder whether we’ll all be able to get around one table.

We’ll finish the evening the same way that all good parties should end – drunk by the fire singing Christmas tunes.

So far the reaction has been great. Noone even batted an eyelid at a £5 sub, so we should be well sorted for a cracking feast.

It’s always a nightmare trying to pick a day that will suit enough people though. People always end up missing out. Ah well, at least that a great excuse to have another party!

 

 

 

To Teach Giles to Sing – Week 2

Well done Giles,

So for week two I think we’ll focus on getting out a rounded pleasant sound. As we discussed last week, the sound must come from deep down in your lungs. This means that you must not sing from your throat or nose. This sounds odd, but you’ll soon realise what I mean. To get the best sound, you must relax your throat, relax your jaw and make the biggest space possible in the back of your mouth. This is done by lifting up your soft palette. You can feel your soft palette by yawning. When you yawn, you’ll notice the back of your mouth just before your throat lifting up. That’s what you need to learn to do whenever you please. Now place your tongue flatly and relaxed against your front bottom teeth. We’re trying to get rid of any obstructions to the air flow that may change the sound.

Lets make some noise.

Now with plenty of your new found lung support, stand up straight, keep you head level, shoulders back but relaxed, soft palette up, tongue flat, mouth open fairly wide, sing out a single note of a comfortable pitch towards to other end of the room.

What a glorious sound. I imagine you weren’t supporting it enough, so try again with more support from just below your breast bone. Keep imagine yawning. Practice this a lot. Try different notes, then try going up and down the scale. A simple ‘AAAHHH’ sound is fine.

Next try to control the volume of the sound using you lungs and NOT by closing off your throat. Try counting how long you can sustain a note.

Now then, next try making words. Exagerate every word by moving your mouth shape. You’ll need to over accentuate every vowel. Focus on the vowels in each word. Every vowel needs to be sung as if you have a plum in your mouth. So ‘eeeee’ needs to sound more like ‘ae’. To get more of an idea how it may sound, sing ‘eeee’ but while sustaining it, widen your mouth and narrow it. The sound will totally change. It sounds odd, but it will sound much better within a song.

This is the same principal for all vowels. Elongate them. To remember to do this, make every vowel in your song words that you will be singing.

Your diction still needs to be perfect so that people can understand what you are saying. Don’t forget to pronounce ‘T’s clearly at the end of every word.

To help with your diction you will need to do some exercises. The best one I know of is;

‘The tip of the tongue, the teeth and the lips’

Sing this over and over once for every note in a scale. Try to speed up and then time how many times you can say it before running out of breathe.

As a special treat this week, you can try singing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’.

Now go, be free….

Movember

I’ve decided that I shall grow a moustache for a month. As I’m sure you may be aware, ‘Movember’ is about raising awareness of Prostrate Cancer. I’ve decided to get involved, not because I have a moral conscience, but because I want an excuse to sport a glorious mo for a while! Of course it will have the benefit of raising a bit of cash for charity. I decided that the best way to capture people will be to impose a fine system. Should anyone say anything derogatory towards my facial piece, they will be forced to sponsor me. That should work.

I’ll get a pic up as soon as it’s past the early fledgling stage.

Donate here: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/297792

 

My Cheesy Banglasdesh Cyclone Aila Video

Have a look at this beast of a video. I was bored on the train on my way to India, so I decided to hammer a few video clips together of my deployment in Bangladesh and then I smeared cheese all over it.

Thank you, Thank you.  I know, it’s glorious

To Teach Giles to Sing

So Giles has asked me to teach him to sing. Where do we start. I think we’ll go with breathing.

Try to breath from the bottom of your lungs. To do this, try to think of breathing into your stomach. Don’t pull your chest up deliberately, but just leave it realxed. It will automatically come up a bit as your lungs fill to their brim. Try breathing in out out slowly, controlling your breath. Count inward and outward slowly.

Next. Where you voice come from. Many people speak from their nasal passage. If you talk, where do you think your voice starts? In your throat? It needs to start from the bottom of your lungs, as that is where you can give it the most control. This allows your vocal chords and head to pitch and shape the sound. To make the tone full and rich.

To start your voice from the bottom of your lungs, you need to support it using your diaphram. To feel which muscle this is, try filling your lungs and forcing the air out with your stomach muscles. Place your fingers just below your brest bone and try to push them out and in. Now try forcing out small controlled bursts of air with this muscle. Keep doing this whenever you get the chance, so that you get used to working this muscle.

That’s enough for today. Tomorrow, we’ll make some noise. If you want to get ahead, try making a single note and sustaining it from the bottom of your lungs. Try moving your mouth and tongue to see the effect it has on your sound.

Super Rats

I have no problem with most animals. They live their lives, I live mine. We generally get on pretty well. For example, I have until very recently had a ‘pet’ spider that lived in my bathroom. I noticed his funnel web behind the shower tray many months ago. There also happened to be a large number of flies at the time living on the window. So, obligingly, I took on the responsibility of taking the live flies from the window and placing them in the funnel and watching young Jeffrey come scuttling out and wrapping the poor fly up and drinking it’s blood. It’s a win win situation.

However, my generosity stops when a family of rats starts living under my hut. They insist on continuously intruding on my life. They crawl around the walls pulling out all of the insulation and they have on the odd occasion eaten through some of the electric wires, that led to three out of the four red lights coming on, on my friends xbox. Apparently four would have spelled the total death of the machine. I could almost forgive all of this if it wasn’t for the fact that one plucky little bugger insisted on venturing into my living space and chewing through the back of my kitchen cupboard and eating my Mars bars. He stepped over the line.

So out came the humane trap. I thought this would cause the least long term problems. After a few weeks of attempts and various tasty morsels being placed in the trap, I discovered that these rats are far too wiley to be caught by such obvious means. So, it was back to old faithful. Rat poison. Living on a farm, we always have a large tub of poison, ready and waiting to take out the next rat platoon that plans its assault upon us. At first this appeared to work. The walls stopped sctraching and a pungeant smell of rotting flesh circulated my living room for a few weeks. A penalty I was willing to take for the protection of my food stocks.

But it seems that I was indeed too quick to celebrate my victory. The scraching has slowly returned and grown in intensity. My bins were raided and I know that they are heading for the food cupboard next. So, I was straight back on it. Poison in liberal quantities. It’s starting to cost a small fortune. But, the scratching only seems to have increased further in the past few weeks. It seems that I have been feeding a new breed of super rat. It thrives and multiplies on poison, simply regarding it as a tasty, if slightly spicy vindaloo style snack. So where do I go now. Do I risk sending in the ferret reinforcements and risk a bloody bath at the hands of these monsterous mutants? I have to admit that normally I’m a flight kind of a guy. Any sign of trouble and I’m off home, but this is my home. Should I move out and hand them the keys. I think not. It’s time to stand up for what I believe in. Enough writing, it’s time to get serious. I think I’m going to call in the rat man.

First car

Having grown up in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall, I guess I’ve definitely had a pretty unique upbringing. Obviously I’ve always love living here with my brother and sisters, but there’s always been the problem of getting anywhere to maintain a healthy social life.

Not many people can say that their first car was a 5 litre single seater 4×4 Valmet with more torque than a Ferrari. Oh yes ladies!

The day I got my tractor driving license when I was 16, was one of the best days of my life. It was the beginning of my freedom. It may be slow, but it’s faster than walking and frankly I was always a lot dryer an warmer than any of my friends who were buzzing around on their little 50cc scooters. More importantly though, it meant that I could go to parties, visit mates and on the odd occasion, drive to school.

I’ve loved driving ever since. Some say that I’m a little too obsessed with cars. I’d agree with those people. I currently drive a Ford Ranger pickup, but I also have a 1947 Hillman Minx hotrod tucked away in the garage. I’m desperate to get it out and on the road again, but I know when I do, I’ll need to sell it.

I need to pay for this uni course somehow.