The famous viaduct at Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, built in 1851 to carry the line from York to Harrogate. At first glance you might think the train is a pair of class 153s, but it’s not. It’s one of the seven class 155s originally sponsored by West Yorkshire PTE, which were never split and converted into single-car units.
Although it now carries only local traffic, Knaresborough sees a surprising variety of trains; in the space of a few hours I saw class 142 and 143 Pacers, and class 150, 153 and 155 Sprinters.
As many of you will be aware, Jamie’s recently been writing and recording a new album with vocalist Maria Milewska. Originally we’d intended to release this as a Mermaid Kiss album, however as the recording has progressed we realised that what we actually have is a completely new band. Whilst it clearly has elements of the Mermaid Kiss sound, notably Wendy’s woodwind, the new members have each brought their own ideas and influences to the music. Jamie and Maria are therefore excited to announce the new band, called: Zero She Flies.
Recently re-formed Folk-proggers 
“Century Rain” by Alastair Reynolds.
“The City and The City” by China Mieville.
“The Bloodline Feud” by Charles Stross.
“Anathem” by Neal Stephenson. An ambitious work that’s partly about philosophy, part social satire (I do love the concept of the word “bullshytte” as an academic term), and part rattling adventure yarn. Not really a lightweight popcorn novel, though; one of those works that’s hard work but ultimately rewarding, so it’s one for your friends who are into heavyweight literary stuff rather that mass-market bestsellers.
Any Comments?
When I post something of substance to this site, I usually post links on social media, typically Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to make the world aware of it. I notice that people are far more willing to leave comments on those social media links than they are against the blog posts themselves.
While I appreciate feedback and engagement via any route it would be nice if the conversations weren’t fragmented across multiple sites. I have done a bit of superficial research to see if there are any WordPress plugins that let me synchronise comments between WordPress and this blog, and to date (like Bono) I haven’t found what I’m looking for. It may well be that Facebook want to keep things within their walled garden for monetisation purposes, so such a plugin would defeat their evil plans for world domination.
So, those of you who tend to leave comments on Facebook rather than here on the blog, why do you do this? It can’t be to do with privacy, because I usually make links to my blog public, and unlike Facebook this site allows you to comment pseudonymously. Are there things I could or should do to make you more willing to leave comments on the actual blog?
Note that the first comment you leave will go into a moderation queue purely as an anti-spam measure, but once that one’s been approved, all subsequent comments will go straight through.