It looks like I will be at Blackpool for the ISTD finals, 29 & 30 November - so look out for pictures.

Something I've found interesting recently has been the responses from parents of whose children (quite by accident) there aren't any published photos. I'll probably write more about this at some point in the future - but, for now, I'll just say this: I'm very happy indeed for people to come and say hello at any event I'm at, point out their children, and I'll make extra effort to get some good shots of them. (Obviously that's not going to work if all six hundred parents do it - but let's deal with that when it happens!)

This has been a very interesting few days... most of you will have spotted that the site was down Thursday to Saturday, and that I've spent the last few days restoring it. Very briefly what happened was that my hosting provided decided on Thursday evening that the site was too busy and basically switched it off. No warning, no opportunity to fix things - just - the big zero. And no contact or procedure for re-enabling it. This was right at the time when people were keen to see the Guildford DFR Finals pictures.

So the only option for me was to rebuild the site on a new server - 'far away' from the old one. it took me most of Saturday to do the basics and get the Guildford pictures back online and I'm now gradually adding the extra bits'n'bobs like this diary, which is now running again.

Thanks to everyone for their patience during the hiatus. It's probably worth saying that no orders were lost (or even delayed) although some customers won't have received the usual automated email notifications, but I suspect that's not a big problem.

On the pictures front I've even found time to add another three hundred pictures from Guildford in the Rock'n'Roll and Pairs categories (yesterday) so if you weren't in there on Thursday or Sunday, have another look - I might just have found a picture of you and uploaded it.

My next task is to go back through the pictures from the International Championships and get those ready for display. It was a feast of frocks and (very tanned) flesh, and I'm looking forward to showing the photographs to you.

Well, last week was the last ISTD qualifying competition for Blackpool and I was kindly asked to come along and take some photos by Laine Dance Centres who were organising the event. So ... that's what I did ... and you can see the results here. All the junior, juvenile and younger photographs are posted, but I've yet to look through the adults section, so there will be some more to come. Apologies to everyone who's been waiting for the pictures but it's been an unusually busy week because of the International Championships at Brentwood and the Albert Hall. So I've got lots of lovely photographs from there to work through - look out for them on the site in the next few days.


Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll be in Guildford for another ISTD competition, so there'll be some pictures from there soon.

Bank Holiday Monday saw about two hundred people enjoying a free day's ballroom dancing courtesy of Nicky Miles at the Festival Hall's Clore Ballroom. The day kicked off at 11 am with general dancing then at 3 there was a mini-competition between two teams of the South East's best up-and-coming ballroom dancers (and Camilla Dallerup was there to adjudicate). In the evening we had music courtesy of Ross Mitchell and his Band and another competition - of which you can see some photographs here. It was a great day and free of charge to spectate or join in the dancing as you please.

Keep an eye out at the South Bank Centre's website for the next one as these are becoming regular events.