This is where I’ve been this evening; I think that if you can give blood, you should. Only 4% of the population gives blood, yet 96% expects to receive it if needed. You can find your nearest donor session and book an appointment at blood.co.uk.

I was struggling to find something to photograph after an altogether uninspiring day, and Wendy suggested the ring that I bought for her four years ago. She really likes it, and wears it all the time… though, of course, ensures it doesn’t impede her excellent hand hygiene at work!

You’ll have seen last week that I featured the Tees Barrage, and mentioned how it supported a white water course. Well, this is that very course.

It wasn’t running today, so the water wasn’t especially white, and the whole course looked a little tame. Still, I’ve included a closer photo below.

This shot is interesting for showing some of the mechanics. Those things that look a bit like milk crates in the water (you can also see them in the first picture) are actually called “rapidblocks”. These can be repositioned to change the water current to create different flows and create different levels of challenge and difficulty. That’s how this course can be adapted to be suitable for both beginners and Olympians.

In fact, the blocks are the same as those that will be used at Lee Valley for London 2012, which is why the Tees Barrage International White Water Centre is being used as an Olympic training location for teams from across the world.

This is my Livescribe pen and current notebook. I use them all the time, and think they’re pretty fantastic.

My life revolves around Evernote, and Livescribe means that I can upload everything I write without the hassle of scanning everything in. Evernote also does pretty good OCR on my handwritten notes, making them fully searchable. On occasion, the audio recording function of the pen also comes in handy, especially in complex meetings.

Basically, it’s a brill system that I use all the time and highly recommend!

This is the war memorial in Newcastle’s Old Eldon Square. It’s a bronze figure of St George finishing off the dragon, designed by Charles Hartwell and unveiled in 1923. The inscription reads “Memory lingers here”.

This isn’t the best angle – St George is leaning off the other side of the horse, poking the dragon with his sword, so he looks a bit decapitated from this rear angle…

When you can’t trust M&S to use appropriate apostrophes, who can you trust? Perhaps they could re-employ the one sacked by Waterstones?

Or perhaps they have more pressing problems… the newly refurbished store I was in today had tens of these boxes dotted around the store catching leaks from the ceiling:

This is our bin for garden waste. Many Newcastle residents have these, and the council pays for them to be emptied fortnightly.

Or at least, the council did pay. In the new financial year, residents have been asked to pay an annual subscription fee of £20 if they want to continue using the service. In times of austerity, garden waste collection was evidently not seen as the city’s most essential service.

Yet, the council has, it seems, dug itself into a bit of a hole. Only 24% of eligible residents signed up for the scheme, which leaves tens of thousands of green bins that need collecting from residents and – more challengingly – storing. The story has even reached the well-tuned ears of The Guardian, which reports that the bins are being temporarily stored in salt depots which are empty at this time of the year.

Where they will go next is anyone’s guess. It’s suggested that they’ll be sold on to other councils but, as you can see, they’re fairly comprehensively Newcastle branded, so who’s likely to buy them?

I do wonder if this scheme might end up costing the council more than in saves, at least in the short term. Oops!

I was back at the James Cook University Hospital for a meeting this morning – I previously featured it on 4th April.

I hadn’t ever really noticed until today how pretty the signs outside are. They’re a bit overshadowed by the massive lettering on a nearby fence.

I was going to make a sarcastic comment about the hospital’s “expresso bar”, but it turns out that expresso is, in fact, merely the Spanish to Italian’s espresso. There are, it seems, quite a few expresso bars. So I learned something new there!

This is the 160m Tees Barrage, built to maintain the upstream river at a constant level, preventing flooding and allowing excellent watersports facilities to be created: so good, in fact, that the 2001 World Canoe Championships were held here. The white water course is to be an international training location for London 2012.

It took from 1991 to 1995 to construct, and was the country’s biggest civil engineering project during that time. Its construction cost £50m, and used 650 tonnes of steel and 15,000 cubic metres of concrete; and a further £4.6m is currently being spent on upgrading the facilities. The Gazette has some very dramatic pictures of the original construction, including one arresting shot showing how the Tees was temporarily diverted from the site to allow construction.

It’s a remarkable feat of engineering, combining brute strength with precision control, made all the more remarkable by a fairly charming appearance.

I wanted to reflect my nine years of blogging in today’s photo-a-day, so had the idea of nine fairy cakes assembled in the shape of a 9… I’m not entirely sure I pulled it off to the extent that you’d realise it was a 9 without being told…

I wrote a bit more about my nine years of blogging earlier today, if you’re interested!