Easter holidays

The end of the week is here.. a loooooong weekend that involves chocolate, shit telly, more chocolate and traffic jams at shopping parks and play parks!

JnrCameradude is fit and well, his eye is much better. MsCameradude is at the age where it's uncool to spend anytime in the same room as her parents - I've also become "dad" rather than "daddy" which is a sure sign that the pre-teen hormones are beginning to course through her veins. Any time now she will stop speaking rationally and just grunt. Her hair will become greasy and spot detritus will cover the bathroom mirror. Then she'll start worrying about her appearance, the bathroom will always be occupied, her bedroom will be covered in clothes and smell like Lewis's perfume department - then boys will start paying her attention...

Anyway... I digress.

Building up to a rant...

I've got another two weeks left of my tour of duty in Liverpool before I start a stint on Breakfast and Newsround. I've decided not to drive into Liverpool while I'm there, so I'm using Merseyrail. It's the Scouse version of the tube - but people make eye contact and strangers speak to each other. I know. We're crazy up North. The journey takes half an hour and you pass through the middle of the Liverpool suburbs before going underground. I've done the journey hundreds of times when I used to live up here. Nothing has really changed but I find myself quietly fuming at something that I'd never noticed before.

Rubbish.

Strewn along the railway embankments.

Now don't get the wrong idea about me. I'm no environmentalist. I don't vote Green and I really couldn't give a fat shiny shite about the polar bears but the sight of all this rubbish is really bugging me to a point where I want to pull the emergency handle, stop the train and start throwing all the crap back over the fences into the ignorant twats gardens.

Take this picture for example:

Railway embankment shit.

It's garden rubbish and general crap that has just been thrown over the garden fence and on to the railway embankment. Why do people do this? Is it so difficult to dispose of it properly? Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the mentality here. Then I started noticing it in more and more places along the Northern Line. From Orrell Park to Kirkdale it seems that every third house just dispose of unwanted furniture, garden wicker shit, rubbish, toys and building crap over their back fence.

I had a look on Google Maps (other satellite imagery services are available) to see what road the houses where on and bugger me YOU CAN SEE PEOPLES SHIT FROM SPACE.

Space shit

It has really annoyed me. I was shocked at how much it angered me. Liverpool is my home town. It was the City of Culture, the gateway to America, the birth place of sixties music. It had the worlds largest dock, two of the greatest footy teams in the world (insert joke here about Liverpool/Everton and Liverpool/Everton reserves), its got two Cathedrals and two cracking radio stations (sorry to Radio Merseyside, but Radio City has always been my favourite since I was a kid. Long live Uncle Norm!).

It's by no means perfect - I like the rough edges and the unpredictability of the place but come on fellow Scousers - this is your home. Be proud of it. Stop giving other parts of the country the ammunition to put us down all the time. The Luftwaffe couldn't destroy Liverpool. Mrs Thatcher couldn't destroy Liverpool (despite her best efforts). Even Deggsy and his Militant council couldn't do it. But the city's own people seem to be happy to do it themselves.

We're just about to be inundated with thousands of people coming to the Grand National. They will see the same view out of the train window as I do. They will go back to other parts of the country thinking that the worlds greatest steeplechase is held in a shit hole.

Do the people of Kirkdale and Walton have any respect? From the look of it, no. They don't.

The Grand National - a BBC institution.

So this will be the last year that the National will be shown on the BBC. Channel Four have the rights to show it now. Another in a long line of sports that have fallen away from the BBC portfolio. 

Many moons ago when I was a trainee cameraman I was fortunate enough for my first outside broadcast to be part of the crew that worked on the National. I was given the chance to operate a camera all by myself as I had proved that I was a 'toplens' in the making!

I wanted to operate the camera that was on top of the Citroen that followed the horses, called the CRE.

The CRE - right, where's that risk assessment..?

The camera supervisor gave me camera four when he stopped laughing. So off I trotted to the camera four position, armed with my lunch, the form sheet and a determination that I was going to win a BAFTA for the best shot of the races' history.

I adjusted the controls to my Philips LDK5 camera and made sure that the friction on the pan and tilt head was just right. Not too tight, not too slack. I had a couple of races to practise on and everything was fine. I was up for it.

Then it was time. The eyes of the sporting world were on Aintree. 

The director started calling the shots. 

"FOUR NEXT!" came the call and I was ready. The horses filled my frame, in focus and steady. My cue light came on and my camera was live to world. I followed those horses like they had never been followed before.

And the BAFTA for best pan of a horse race goes to..

My pan, zoom and focus all flowed and then it was over. Camera 5 took over. 

I'd done it. Hell yeah.

I climbed down the scaffolding and started on my packed lunch. At that point I felt like the greatest cameraman in the world. I tucked into my sandwiches and can of Coke with a satisfied feeling.

"FOUR NEXT!" I heard on my radio. "FOUR.... FOUR... FRAME UP FOUR..."

That's my camera. 

I bolted up the scaffold, panned, zoomed, focused and missed the bloody mobile glue factory. Live on air. Grandstand viewers saw the floor, the sky, the arse end of a horse and then a super wide shot. 

Bollocks. No one told me the horses went round twice.

The Falklands 30th Anniversary

I can't believe that the Falklands conflict was 30 years ago this month. My brother-in-law was deployed there with 12 Air Defence Regiment, seconded to the Rapier missile battery. He travelled there with his battery along with the Welsh Guards aboard HMS Sir Gallahad. 

He made it off just minutes before it was hit by an Argentine missile.

Something that seems to be forgotten in the age of instant coverage and embedded news teams was the fact that back then there were only two camera crews covering the Falklands war. Micheal Nicholson was there with his ITN crew, while the BBC was serviced by the late Brian Hanrahan and his cameraman the late Bernard Hesketh.

Cameraman Bernard Hesketh, reporter Brian Hanrahan and sound recordist John Jockel

He was there and filming when my brother-in-laws ship was hit and filmed the aftermath of what was the largest loss of British troops during the conflict.

John Jockel and Bernard Hesketh arrive with British Troops at Port Stanley.

They didn't have the luxury of SNG trucks, transportable earth stations or laptop edits. He had to rely on the RAF flying his 16mm film and Betacam tape back to the UK. Yes, they had to post the footage back before it could be shown on the TV.

Imagine that now... I know news editors who would implode (and often do) if the latest shot of a perp leaving court isn't on his desktop milliseconds after it was shot.