The Mark Ellis Blog

A bit of a doubler here on the old blog today as there's a couple of things on my mind at the moment. So let's start with scrap vans.  Is the emergence of the scrap van just a County Durham phenomonan, or are they region or even nationwide ?  There certainly seems to be a huge number of them around our little it of County Durham and not a day goes by when there's not one in our street.  Amazingly, when I was out for a run yesterday morning, I saw 3 of them and I was out just over an hour.  Is there really that much scrap around that it's keeping them all in business, who knows !  I know that there's a lot of them around Easington Lane and that there possibly not the sort of people that you'd mess with, but I still don't see where the money is and they must cover an awful lot of miles.  I'm not really that sure that many of the vehicles are quite that roadworthy either as they always look quite mature and seem to have various bits hanging off from all s...

Now this may come as a shock, but I like travelling on buses and there's nothing better than sitting upstairs when you're on a double decker.  Despite my growing number of years, there's still something interesting about sitting upstairs.  I think it's something to do with being able to see things and feeling like your the king of the road. This particular blog was inspired following a journey home on the bus one night last week.  Usually, my bus up the hill from Chester-le-Street is a single decker, but on this particular night it was a double decker - nice !  Off I went upstairs and there was only me up there as its only a relatively short journey through towards Houghton and there's not as many customers in the early evening.  It was lovely and peaceful sat upstairs and its fair to say that some of the views as the bus runs down by the Riverside at Chester-le-Street are pretty good.  Just as the bus was about to cross the River Wear, I noticed out of t...

Well, as many of may know, Social Media is pretty close to my heart.  Today was a bit of a landmark as I reached my 5,000th Tweet.  Now, had you asked when I first joined Twitter and didn't have a clue what to put, that I'd get to this sort of number, then I'd have said you were mad.  But, here we are and I do really enjoy a bit of twittering - sometimes I can be serious, sometimes I can be funny, sometimes I can be winding someone up and other times I can be random.  Above all, I'm being me.  My thoughts and views might not be to everyone's tastes and some followers come and go, but I'm not one who gets excited about how many people follow me as that's not what its about - I'm just being me ! Facebook is a different animal though and despite running a well known bus company's Facebook page for quite a while (despite what other people may say in the trade press !), I was really sceptical of Facebook.  Despite the best efforts of a few mates to pers...

I've been thinking about this one for a week or so as there is a general feeling that people just aren't as polite as they used to be.  Then on Thursday, a survey result suggested that 2 out of 3 people agree that people just aren't as polite as they used to be.  Radio Newcastle wanted the North East's opinion and I weighed in that people not saying thank you when you held a door open for them was one of the thing's that winds me up the most. I do tend to agree though, that in general, people do seem to be less polite and certainly less tolerant of others.  I'm not sure if its one of the side effects of the recession, in that people have just turned very possessive and generally less patient.  Luckily, I'm not one of these experts in these things, but for me, being polite costs you nowt and its nice to be nice. We've always brought the kids up to be polite and it's always nice to hear people comment on them always being polite and always speaking...

Without sounding too bitchy towards the great unwashed, we've had another dose of Mackem-ness today as we've been to see Sunderland play Fulham.  Don't panic, as I've not parted with cash for the privilege as it's another Family Learning freebie and this is the 4th game we've been to for nowt this season ! It was interesting to note that there was no real change from my last blog on the Mackems and their great unwillingness to get behind their team.  Fair enough, they didn't get off to a great start as Fulham got an early penalty which was put away rather cheekily by Berbatov.  Needless to say, going behind turns every Mackem against their team and each player is then just bloody useless according to their so called loyal fans.  Now I know that I like to have a moan every now and again at St James Park, but the negativity you hear at the Stadium of Light has to be witnessed.  We've been to four games, sat in different areas each time and the negativity...