Well  they say time flies when you are having fun, and it's also a function of getting older. No sooner has Christmas become a thing of the past and than it's summer time.

Sue and I have been as busy as ever with travel to foreign parts as we continue to give lectures on various cruise liners.
In February we made our first ever trip into the Arctic Circle as we searched for and found the Northern Lights, fantastic scenery and most interesting places, the ice hotel and the most northern city in Europ though it was pretty cold, minus 20C at times.

I've already written about my birthday but in April we went to Cyprus to join our first Thomson ship. This company made us very welcome and we enjoyed cruising around some parts of Greece, Sicily, Italy, Spain and Portugal back to Liverpool. The following few pictures tell the story

In May we were pleased to see our cousins from Australia, David and Elizabeth arrive for a tour of the UK, we had a good time showing them the best of the Yorkshire Dales, while David took literally thousands of photos to take back "down under". The bridge is the famous Ribble Viaduct. we did see a pub or two as well.

My Grandson George was the star of a Tunbridge Wells production of "Oliver", here he is in scenes from that production.

We celebrated Sue's birthday late in June by having a family weekend with Sam and Georgie in Whitstable, rented a small house there and had a very nice time with plenty of local oysters as you can see.
Some people, Sam and Sue were actually brave enough to go in the sea! Mad fools.

Two more cruises followed in fairly quick succession in July, first one was a wine cruise to France and Sue was the lecturer, That finished up on Guernsey and we enjoyed Sark very much with horse drawn carriages being the principle form of transport. The second one was a return to Norway, this time in the Summer, incredible scenery, I'll let let the pictures speak for them selves, heres the speaker...

Just spent a lovely birthday weekend in North Yorkshire. As members of English Heritage we can visit some of our old buildings and wonder at the ingenuity of our ancestors. How did they manage to construct such things as Scarborough and Pickering Castles and Whitby Abbey, huge and expensive buildings. We enjoyed the tour, had the best fish and chips in The Magpie in Whitby and stayed at a wonderful B&B “The Horseshoe Inn" in Levisham. Nothing better than Yorkshire in the Spring and in the evening on a clear night we saw the International Space Station as it passed overhead.

I'm intrigued by the news that the BBC is now going to test DAB+ in the coming year.  

For several years now we in the RDS Forum have maintained that DAB+ is a much better system for broadcasting digital radio and only now do the BBC appear to be showing any interest. 

Germany changed over to DAB+ in 2011 but only 515,000 receivers were sold within the year 2013.  

There is a problem in changing systems at this late stage. Older DAB sets are not compatible, so will not pick up the DAB+ signal. Sets built after 2009/10 will work on both DAB and DAB+, but all earlier models would be rendered obsolete. Thus, by changing, the BBC would incur the wrath of many listeners who converted early on. 

In the UK around 17.5 million sets have been sold so far and if half of them are obsolete I can see the growth of DAB listening being further hampered.

In the EU there are now only 22.4 million DAB sets in use. Not very impressive when you consider that it's been around for nearly 20 years. 

If you  subtract the 17.5 million sets sold in the UK it's clear most of European radio listeners are not convinced of the need to switch over from FM. Indeed only Norway and Switzerland have definite plans to switch off FM in the future.

It's all a sorry mess. The Government wants to convert everyone to digital radio but as long as FM with RDS continues to provide an excellent service on cheap listening devices it must be the winner with a life expectancy of many years.

It all reminds me of the adage: “If it ain’t broke….” 

Wednesday March 19, spent the day at the Yorkshire Clinic as I needed more tests to find out why I am getting so breathless when walking up hills. 

Having spent last week skiing in Italy I couldn't believe it was anything too serious but my consultant wanted an angiogram to check it out. Not a very pleasant experience, but at least I could look at the TV screen and see what was happening to my own heart in real time.End result was that I don't require any more heart surgery and the condition can be treated by yet another regular tablet. Total now is nine per day, I rattle when I walk!

Checked it out on Saturday by walking up steep hill from centre of Skipton to our home and managed this without any sign of breathlessness so I am pretty happy, a good result.

Hello! 

I have published a series of blogs on my other web site www.johnnybeelring.com, mostly about the various places Susan and I have visited while lecturing on different cruise ships.

With the launch of this new site I am going to try to do something a little different and sound off about things of interest and concern to me.

For instance, last year I published an audio version of the book I wrote about Radio 1, "Radio 1, The Inside Scene".

I read it all myself and it was produced by another experienced Radio man, John Evington. Between us we made pretty good job of it and it was duly published by OneMedia via Amazon and iTunes. 

I was somewhat disappointed to get a royalty statement for the first 6 months for £1.02p! In view of all the current interest in Radio 1's activities I was somewhat surprised, but on exploring the web I found that what was on offer were individual chapters rather than the complete book! So the royalty on a single chapter amounted to very few pence. If that wasn't bad enough, on top of that by careful searching I found one company had ripped off the whole thing, printed and audio versions and were offering it as a free download!! Talk about blatant theft! What's to be done? The profits are so small I can't afford to put a lawyer onto the case  so I will have to hope my publishers will take some action.

Down with piracy I say, send in a gunboat!

Today Sunday March 2 2014, I have an email from another old friend, Mike Pasternak, aka Emperor Rosko. Years ago he and I wrote a  book "Emperor Rosko's DJ Handbook" and what do you know that's been pirated too. Mike wrote to tell me that on eBay there were adverts for unauthorised copes of that publication, crediting me as the author, on sale at over £25 a copy!! 
So I have been busy complaining to eBay about that situation. What a bummer, we do all the work and Mr Anonymous gets the profit without so much as a "by your leave Johnny". 

I'll keep you posited about progress if any.

March 6 2014
Seem to have picked up a few more followers on Twitter and there is some interest in other books on Broadcasting with which I have been involved, also a few academics looking at my Tweets. It's all quite gratifying to know that people are still interested in my views on the happy "world of wireless".

Have been in discussion with one academic who is seriously considering putting together a retrospective on Radio 1 and who has invited me to be a possible contributor. Will give more news of this when it is firmed up but it looks like being staged towards the end of the year.

Not much response yet from my publisher about the piracy of the book, am waiting to hear from the audio version publisher but it is a serious problem. How can anyone just offer my work for sale without my permission or without offering to pay me a royalty? I guess these robbers think that they can hide under a cloak of invisibility and hope that the owner of the rights cannot afford a legal intervention.

Any one any ideas how to deal with it? As we used to say on the radio " answers on a postcard please!"

More soon.though I am having trouble with site publishing this latest comment...