Cobden Mill

Cobden Mill was one of many cotton spinning and weaving mills in Bolton, the inside is traditional and easy to imagine the hundreds of looms that must have been running there in the past.

Since the days Telefusion (we used to nickname it 'Teleconfusion') Cobden Mill in Farnworth has been used for other purposes. Now it has a large furniture and bed store, but the inside of the building is still the same. I went back to take some photos.

The old cotton mill is very large with 5 floors, most of it empty now. The roof of the building used to have lots of TV aerials and sometimes I had to go onto the roof and check the aerials. I was an apprentice don't forget...I got all the s**t jobs! There is a lift in there, but it scared me to death, so I never used it.

Telefusion owned three floors of the mill. The ground floor was the stores and loading bays. Stuff was sent out to shops in wagons all over the country including the shops in Northern Ireland. On the first floor was the service department, this was where I worked most of the time. Then on the third floor was a warehouse which housed hundreds of televisions waiting to be refurbished.

At the front of the building there is a small lodge, this provided water to the sprinkler system in the building. Now it is owned by Deane Fishing Club and it is currently airating the water with a huge pump in the middle.

I enjoyed working here, even though the building was horrible...I will never forget my toast and cheese in the canteen at break time...mmm!

Telefusion

Telefusion Head Office in Blackpool.

Gosh! I found a booklet that was given to me back in 1970 when I started working as an apprentice electronic engineer with Telefusion Ltd. I worked at Cobden Mill in Farnworth, this was the main service centre for refurbishing televisions. In my first year I was responsible for repairing and aligning UHF Tuner units. This involved using some quite suffisticated analogue equipment such as the UHF Sweep Generator and oscilloscopes to display the response curves of the tuner units. (Analogue Heaven!)



I worked for Telefusion for almost twenty years. I moved to the Heywood base and then to Whitefield working at the TAM (Television Audio Maintenance) service centre.



Telefusion's demise came around 1987 when Visionhire took over the company and asset stripped everything, closing down most of the Telefusion stores.

An end of an era!

Had some real good times at Telefusion, lots of friends and a nice working atmosphere!

Alan Sugar

I bought a copy of 'What you see is what you get' Alan Sugar's autobiography...

This is a fascinating read, especially if you worked as an electronic engineer with televisions, hi-fi and computers...like me!

He talks about shops like 'Lasky's' and other shops on the Edgeware Rd in London. Places that I ordered stuff from in the 1970's. His mate the TV engineer that mended and modified old TV's and sold them on as a business. (sound familiar!) The 'valve pusher' and later the 'panel pusher'...I never got into this routine...fault find down to the component was my way! (Alan would have been proud of me!) Later, the famous Amstrad hi-fi (pretend) stack unit that took over our workshop like faulty daleks! The Amstrad TV...OMG...I hated them...when they went faulty, they took most of the switched mode power supply and line output altogether...I wouldn't touch one of these with a bargepole unless I had to!

Now the Amstrad 464 computer was ahead of it's time, but also had to compete with Sinclair...the Amstrad was quite reliable, I don't remember having to fix one (apart from cleaning the audio heads in the tape player) It had a wonderful proper keyboard and colourful as well! Then came the dedicated office word processor machine, which I didn't understand...tooo complicated, had a dedicated operating system and not flexible at all.

Now this one was good...PC arcitecture, full colour and software. I remember playing with this in the late 80's drawing colour pictures on screen. Twin disc drives and software to go with it...but expensive. I fixed a few of these at the time, mainly hard drives that were not yet reliable!

It's fantastic thinking back at the growth of technology in the 80's with Alan Sugar, Clive Sinclair and a few other guys (aka Acorn)

Alan Sugar - a shrewd business man, not a technical genious, but insiring!

Clive Sinclair - a technical genious, but not a shrewd business man and a bit ahead of his time!

I wonder who would be The Apprentice... Alan or Clive?

What you see is what get!

Rockin' Robin

Snow, snow, snow.... and it's not Christmas yet!

I have a very shy Robin that visits my garden every day, but flies away everytime I try to take a photo. Today I lay in wait and managed to take some photos of this festive beast without it knowing....

It's Christmas time and time to hibernate until Spring!

See how the snowflakes are falling

Falling so gentle and white

Coming from God in his beauty

All through the days and the night.

Atmospheric

This is a photo that I took last Sunday at Leverhulme Park. It was about 3.00pm and all day we had freezing fog, temperature down to -6 degrees. The sun was just going down and the view was spooky!

I sent this photo to The Bolton News and they published it the next day!

The weather is crazy, snow in November and temperatures as low as -15 at night. Last night the temperature rose to +7 and all the snow melted...wow!

Snow in November!

Here is the view from my house this morning...

Could this be? Heavy snow in November?

Temperatures down to - 15 degrees, much of the country covered in snow, schools closed and worse to come. It's not even Christmas yet!

It is snowing outside now...unbelievable!

"Snow is expected to continue falling across large parts of England overnight, causing further disruption.
The Met Office has issued heavy snow warnings for London, the South East, East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber, the East and North East.
It also warned of widespread ice on roads across the whole of England.
Snow and ice covered much of the country on Tuesday causing travel problems and hundreds of school closures."

Bolton Wanderers!

Now i'm not a football fanatic, but when Bolton Wanderers reach FOURTH in the Premier League with just Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea above it's time to follow!

Today they hammered Newcastle 5 - 1 at Reebok. Johan Elmander the Swedish wonderboy scoring two of the goals.


I can't remember Bolton being so high up and so far into fixtures. At last they seem to have come together and now have a great side...could they win the league? You never know!