Season’s Greetings Christmas card cover (1983) taken from Flowlines, the Blakeborough company’s newsletter. The illustrations were drawn by David Illand and feature the following executive directors – Christopher Blakeborough (Technical Director), Bill Short (Chairman & Managing Director), Chris Renton (Commercial Director), Brian Armitage (Financial Director) and Ken Pickles (Assistant Managing & Works Director). Christopher Blakeborough was the last member of the family to work at the company. It’s worth reproducing the Flowlines article verbatim: . “Amidst the constant pressures and pace of commercial life within a highly competitive industry, it is essential to retain a sense of humour. In keeping with the festive season we send our best wishes for Christmas and the New Year through our board of executive directors who are ‘pictured’ alongside. In place of the usual photographs however, we feature our directors as seen through the cartoonist’s eye. Customers who have visited our Brighouse works will readily appreciate the uncanny likeness of these rapid pen portraits. The artist responsible for their skilful execution is David Illand, a member of our Medium Valves Department team of fitters. Since he discovered that he possesses the cartoonist’s gift – a happy knack of being able to capture the character and posture of his subjects, David has produced literally dozens of portraits of his family and colleagues. He keeps his works on permanent display on a large board adjacent to his work bench where they can be enjoyed by visitors to the department.” . Thank you for reading. Stuart.

A very viscous volcanic eruption caused the formation of this rock, obsidian; obsidian is the only rock with no minerals, in the sense that the atoms did not organize in an ordered structure, like glass. In fact, it is also called volcanic glass, and is very sharp. Because of that, ancient people used obsidian to make arrowheads. Notice the sense of flowing and the separation in different flows. Somehow the black obsidian is more resistant to erosion and weathering left little rounded ridges on the surface of this rock. (The edge of the coin to the left gives the scale). This rock is found by Mono Lake and the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park Mono county, California