"William Tell used to fire cross-boats!"

"William Tell used to fire cross-boats!"

We'd ordered the various 'Blue Peter' books without knowing much about what was in them, apart from traditions such as 'Bleep And Booster' and the colouring-in padding of the Mystery Picture. So it was a nice to surprise to find that the Tenth Book had a couple of pages about transporting dinosaurs to the Isle Of Wight. The Tenth Book has a copyright date of 1973 and it was only a few years later than I had my photo taken standing in front of one of the dinosaurs who were all on display at Blackgang Chine.

As we said in the Michael Sheard video, we've spent a fair bit of time staying on the Island and I recreated the photo on one of our trips. I looked considerably older, but the dinosaur had hardly changed apart from some slightly chipped paintwork.

So that gave us something to talk about on one video along with memories of our journey on the so-called Bus Of Death and accidentally draining all the hot water in a hotel.

As a semi-sequel to this, we also dug up Ivar The Boneless, who is Lisa's Cuddly Viking Red Nose, to help us remember some tales of our two trips to York. For some reason or other, we did visit quite a few pubs, but the one that really sticks in the mind is The Ackhorne, where we met Jack's Mum, who was concerned that she had a queue of three people at the bar, bless her.

We managed to schedule another episode of 'Are You Being Served?' so were pleased to spend time with the staff of Grace Brothers who were 'Camping In' overnight. This was most appropriate for Lisa as the recent snow got so bad one day that she was in danger of not making it home from work.

My recent blog post about 'Whodunnit?' gave us a good excuse to think about some of the odder stories and performances of the series, which features a dizzying array of 1970s stars. It's a show we rewatch quite a lot and I can rarely remember who the guilty party is, which it more a comment on my erratic memory than any implied criticism about the stories themselves.

Finally in this video round-up, we had a quick leaf through Lisa's copy of the book 'Doctor Who - Companions' by David J Howe and Mark Stammers. It was one of those books that proved its worth when it came to collecting signatures and it's lovely to look back on the times we got to meet some of the lovely people who are no longer with us.

More videos are being planned, of course. There's a parcel or two that require opening and the Holiday Memories series should definitely include Tales Of Bath, Oxford and Cambridge, for a start.

Stay tuned!

(By Andrew Trowbridge)