Gareth Harrison

Yet another Christmas has been and gone… and for this one I decided to stay at home and cook myself a Christmas dinner in my brand new kitchen!

I think Christmas dinner has to be the best meal you can have! It has so many different things in it, and you’re kind of allowed to over-eat for that one meal!

I cooked a joint of turkey and a joint of gammon, and also had he full works with sausagemeat stuffing, bacon wrapped around sausages, roast potatoes, and loads of veg!  It was washed down with a nice glass of wine whilst watching Christmas Top Of The Pops on iPlayer live on my laptop!

And by the time the Christmas pudding made it onto the table, I couldn’t have been more festive if I’d tried!

Once I’d had my dinner I just relaxed and watched TV for the rest of the day! It was a proper lazy day, and I did actually enjoy it!

And last week, just before New Year, I popped down to Tamworth to visit my mum, sister and the twins, and give them their Christmas presents.  I bought Brandon and Chloe some Lazy Town costumes – a Sportacus suit for Brandon, and a Stephanie outfit for Chloe.  The only problem was that it freaked them out a little bit!

Obviously they’re so used to seeing those characters on the TV that they couldn’t get their heads around the fact that they could dress up as them! Maybe they’ll play with them sometime in the future, but I don’t reckon they’ll get much use in the immediate future!

And in other news, I’ve bought a new TV for my living room!  I’ve had a big widescreen CRT for about 10 years and I thought it was time to get myself a HD set.  I’ve bought a Samsung 37″ Freeview HD internet TV – and it’s got BBC iPlayer and YouTube built in. I’m quite pleased with it… now I just need to get Sky HD and a Bluray player!

Well, I’ve just got back from an amazing two weeks in the USA!

I’d never been there before, so when I got an invite to Emma McNeil’s (now Patterson!) wedding to Gerald in North Carolina, I decided that it’d be really cool to be there for that, and also to discover a bit of America at the same time!

I flew out from Manchester Airport on Tuesday 7th, and got on the plane around lunchtime, but not before being selected for a security check as I was boarding!  I guess it was because I was travelling on my own, but it’s funny how you start to feel guilty when you’ve not actually got anything to hide!  About 8 hours later I made it into Newark Airport – and it was really weird being able to see such iconic views as the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty as we came in to land!  After a bit of a delay waiting for my next flight to Greensboro, I finally boarded what can only be described as a coach with wings!  It was a 50-seater, small 2-engine plane, that was incredibly narrow with just 3 seats across, and an aisle separating one of those!  It was a bit of a bumpy journey – I’m not the most experienced flier, so it doesn’t take too much to make me a bit nervous! But we eventually landed safely at Greensboro airport quite late, although my awareness of time was a bit screwy due to the time difference!

After getting through the airport, I met up with Emma and her mum, as well as her brother and his family who’d also just flown in, before picking up the car I was hiring for my time in North Carolina. It was a little automatic Chevrolet, and I then had to follow them back to her apartment on the other side of the city – which considering I’d only driven on the right-hand side once before in 1997, and this time it was also dark, it was quite an experience! I was actually quite relieved it was an automatic because it meant I didn’t have to worry about changing gear with the wrong hand!

After spending an hour or so at Emma’s catching up, I then drove back to the hotel I was booked into (although getting slightly lost on the way there!), and even though I didn’t get to bed until about 1am, I annoyingly woke up three hours later because my body-clock was still on UK-time!

Next day I didn’t really do that much – I went back to Emma’s and just chilled out with her family, as well as doing a little bit of shopping in Greensboro, and I thought that it was quite funny that I kept getting comments on my accent. In Harris Teeter (a kind-of Sainsburys but with less choice!) the woman on the till said she loved my English accent so much that she gave me a re-usable bag for free and a members’ discount on my shopping! And then when I went to buy some trainers, the cashier thought that I was Australian! I’m guessing they’ve never actually heard a real Ozzie accent then! It’s quite mad, because I don’t think I have much of an accent at all – they were the ones who were talking funny…

On Thursday, I finally got to meet Gerald and his son Josh when we all headed over to a shopping mall in Winston-Salem for the wedding party’s suit fittings.  It took quite a while to sort it all out, and afterwards all the blokes went for a meal at Ruby Tuesday, which reminded me a bit of TGI Fridays (and not just because of them having days of the week in their names!)

Then on the Friday I decided to drive down to Charlotte in the south of North Carolina, which was about 100 miles from Greensboro. It was a pretty straightforward journey down the Interstate and I arrived there late morning.

Charlotte’s a really cool place – load of public art dotted around the city, and home to two great museums – the MINT and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art - both of which I had a look around, and I actually felt pretty cultured doing it!  Architecturally both buildings are really bold and interesting designs, and I did find most of the stuff on display really good, although a few pieces of the modern art did go over my head a bit!

For lunch I ended up in a takeaway place called Bojangles – I’d seen them advertise on local TV quite a lot with typically-crazy commercials that you seem to get there – and had spicy fried chicken and what they call a scratch biscuit. I’d not seen them before,  but basically it was a bit like having a savoury scone along with your chicken, which was a bit weird!

I then drove back up to Greensboro where Emma and Gerald were having a bit of a pre-wedding gathering with a load of their friends, and consisted of food with a couple of speeches and just general mingling!

Then the next morning, it was time for the wedding!

The service was held at Magnolia Street Baptist Church in Greensboro, and I had to get there in plenty of time because I’d agreed to video the day for them, although the kit I was using wasn’t to my usual standard!  I’d taken my mum’s small HD camcorder with me, and also borrowed a cheap NTSC DV camera from one of Emma’s friends, and also filmed a bit of video on my stills camera! Not sure how well it will all cut together, but it was the best I could do really!

It was a really nice service – and since I was videoing it, I was up on a balcony overlooking it all. Apparently, it was different to a normal American wedding because they’d incorporated some British stuff into it, which also meant it was longer than people would be used to, but to me I didn’t really notice much different to weddings I’ve been to before.

Then after all the photos were done on the steps outside the church, it was off to the reception which was quite different to what you’d get in the UK!

For a start, the layout of the tables was very different. Whereas here we have a top table where the bride and groom sit with the best man and the families, here there was just a small table at the front where just Emma and Gerald sat, with everyone else just spread over tables around the room.

And the wedding breakfast was exactly that! It was a buffet with a selection of cooked stuff like waffles, hash browns, bacon and scambled eggs, as well as fruit which you had to put on the same plate! That’s not right!! Also, I don’t get the obsession with pouring maple syrup over a cooked breakfast – I made sure I gave that a miss!  But it was a good meal apart from that!

Then there were speeches as well as cutting the cake, and that’s something else they don’t normally have in the US – traditional wedding cake. As a back-up they had some kind of sponge cake for the less adventurous!

It was all wrapped up by about 4 o’clock, so after nipping back to the hotel to get changed, I headed back to Emma’s apartment to spend the evening with her family (Emma and Gerald were staying at a hotel somewhere in Greensboro and are taking a proper honeymoon later), and we watched a DVD and ate takeaway… I went out and bought some food from Chick-fil-A, which is just like KFC but without the good old Colonel! Actually, they also didn’t have gravy either which was a big disappointment!

Sunday morning, and I decided to go over to Winston-Salem which is the next big city to Greensboro, about 30 miles west. Emma’s church is there - Morningstar Winston-Salem - and I’d met a few people from there over the last few days, so thought I’d check it out, even though Emma herself wouldn’t be there.

When I arrived, there weren’t many people there at all, but it soon filled up. It wasn’t being held in its usual place – for some reason they were in the Millennium Center in downtown Winston-Salem.  I sat near to some other visitors, so had something in common with them(!), but Emma’s friend Wendy (who I’d met at the wedding) came over to say ‘hi’ so I didn’t feel a total loner!  That morning they’d got a few guests doing stuff in the meeting- the music was by a visiting couple who I’m assuming did quite a few of their own songs, and I didn’t recognise any of them at all! As well as that, they had a visiting speaker – Bob Jones – who I’d heard of, but don’t really know much about other than he has links with Morningstar, and some of the guys from Reach met him in America on a trip a few years ago. To be honest, I didn’t really connect with him at all… I found his manner a bit weird, and some of the stuff he was saying and got people to do I very much disagreed with, so that was slightly awkward!  But apart from that, I was glad that I made the effort to go!

Then on the evening, I went to the cinema with Emma, Gerald and all of Em’s family to go and see the new Narnia film – Voyage of the Dawntreader.  It was alright, but deviated from the book a little bit, and just didn’t have the epic scale it really should have with the story that it’s taken from.  Not sure whether they’ll continue to make the rest of the series because I can’t imagine this one will do that well to be honest.  Afterwards, I went back to Emma’s for a short while, before heading back to the hotel to grab a meal in the bar, and then sorted out my packing and tried to get an early-ish night.

So Monday morning, I said goodbye to North Carolina and hello to New York City!

I got into Newark Airport around lunchtime, and took an Amtrak train into Penn Station on Manhattan, where I then took a subway train to 51st street where my hotel was.  I stayed at The Pod Hotel – a really cool and relatively cheap hotel which was walking distance from most of the main places in central Manhattan.  It was pretty basic, and there was a shared bathroom, but it was really modern and clean, with a TV and sink, and to be honest you don’t spend that much time in there!

After dumping my bags, I set out for a bit of a wander to check out the city.  It was so cool being there in the run up to Christmas because the place felt really festive.  I went up by the Rockerfeller Center where they’d installed an ice-rink beneath a massive Christmas tree, and then made my way to Times Square and Broadway. It’s so crazy actually visiting somewhere that you’ve seen on countless films and TV shows, and it was so buzzing and hectic there, but in a really good way!  It even started to snow later on in the evening as I was making my way back to the hotel, although there wasn’t really enough of it to settle, but it really added to the Christmassy vibe.

Next day, I decided that I needed to be a proper tourist, so I bought a ticket to go to the ‘Top Of The Rock‘ – the observation deck on the 70th floor of the Rockefeller Building.

The view was absolutely amazing… you could see for miles, and one of the advantages of going up the Rockefeller instead of the Empire State Building, is that you actually get to see the Empire State Building on the New York skyline!

It was so windy and cold up there – around the edges you could see snow that had collected and not melted away, but the view of the city totally made up for that!

Before that, I went exploring more of midtown Manhattan, and came across Grand Central Station which is just an amazing building – I don’t think any railway stations in the UK quite match it for its grandeur!  And then in the evening, I went to see ‘The Addams Family‘ at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway, and it was an excellent show!  I’ve since discovered that most of the reviews by critics in New York have been pretty negative about it, but I can’t understand why!  It was a fun show, beautifully staged, brilliantly acted and sung by the whole cast, and the audience reaction was amazing. I overheard people around me saying it was one of the best shows they’d seen on Broadway, so it makes you wonder what planet reviewers are on sometimes!  The girl playing Wednesday (Krysta Rodriguez) was particularly outstanding – she had a beautiful voice, and it helped that she looked pretty good too!

Then on Wednesday, I started the day with a tour of the NBC studios. It was really interesting seeing around some of the studios, but it was quite funny the way the tour guide would tell us we were standing in a particular studio where some presenter does the news or a talk show, and everyone would get really excited, whereas I had no idea of who they were talking about!  I was more interested in the kit they were using in there!

After that, I took the subway down to the south of Manhattan to look around Battery Park and the financial district.  I visited Ground Zero and saw the site of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.  It’s pretty much hidden from view, but I managed to get on a raised walkway to get a better view of the area, and could just about see the new layout.  It’s crazy to think that’s where the attacks happened back in 2001, and I guess it will always have that day associated with it.

Then in the afternoon, I took a boat trip to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. I’d managed to get a ticket to go all the way up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty – apparently only 250 people a day are able to go all the way to the top, and often have to book months in advance, whereas I bought my ticket the day before and managed to get a cancellation!

You have to walk up the whole way – there is a lift to the top of the plinth, but they don’t let you use it if you have a crown ticket because you have to be physically fit to be able to climb the 354 steps to the top – equivalent to a 20-storey building!

It was quite a strenuous climb, the majority of it on a spiral staircase that goes up through the body of the statue.  You can see the interior of the copper body-shape, and you really do get a sense of how high up you are as you’re climbing. I’m not too bad with heights generally, but there were moments on the way up when I did freeze a little bit, because the staircase was so narrow, and you knew there was no turning back!  But when I eventually got to the top, the view from the windows in the crown was stunning – it’s just a shame it doesn’t actually point directly back to the skyline of Manhattan because then the view would then be perfect!

After walking all the way back down (and spending about 10 minutes trying to get my breath back!), I got onto another boat and made my way over to Ellis Island which is where the immigrants wanting to get into America arrived in the first half of the 20th century.  I could just feel the history of the place as I stood in the Great Hall, where people would have queued up to try and get into the country, being able to see the skyline of Manhattan out of the big arched windows running down the side of the room. The museum was really interesting as well, and really captured the sense of those times.  Then, as the sun was setting, I took the ferry back towards Manhattan, and the view of the skyline lit up was amazing.

For my last evening in New York, I met up with Dan – an old mate that I used to work with back at MUTV years ago. He works as a cameraman for ITN, and is based in New York along with a reporter producing content for ‘Daybreak’ on ITV. We grabbed a coffee in Starbucks, and then he showed me round the studio where they broadcast from inside the Reuters building, which has a great backdrop overlooking the neon and bright lights of Times Square. It was really great to catch up – it must be nine years since we worked together, though we have kind of kept in touch on Facebook over the last few years!

Then, on my final day I got up early and took a walk up to Central Park, just to say I’d been there! It’s amazing that there’s such an expanse of space with grass and trees amongst such a build up area, and I only managed to see a fraction of it in the time I had. Then at lunchtime, I checked out of my hotel and made my way back to Newark airport for the long journey home.

It was a fantastic couple of weeks and I definitely want to go back sometime soon and experience much more of New York, and the USA in general! Anyone want to come with me…?

Check out all the photos I took in North Carolina and New York on Facebook – here and here.

For the last couple of months I’ve pretty much been without a kitchen, because recently I finally got around to getting it extended and re-fitted, making it just over double it’s original size.

It was so small before – you could pretty much stand in the middle and almost touch all the walls!  I originally had plans drawn up in 2005, but it’s taken this long to get my arse into gear!  The builders started work on the foundations in mid-October, and then just before my birthday, they knocked a hole through the back wall, so I’ve been pretty much without a kitchen from then until now.

I’m really pleased with it – the kitchen units are from IKEA, and I’ve got a Velux window in a sloping roof above the far end which looks really cool and lets in a load of extra light.  In my original plans it had a flat roof and 2 windows, but I took the opportunity to get them re-done so opted for just one window meaning I could have cupboards on the outside wall.  I still need to put some flooring down – I’ve bought some laminate which Rob’s going to help me with soon, but it’s so good to be able to cook food in something other than a microwave!

Last weekend I trekked down to Bideford for a pretty special day – Tom Green’s wedding to Vicky!

Tom’s probably my oldest friend – we spend pretty much all our time together when we were kids… whilst at school we tried to start TV and radio stations, produced the school magazine and a yearbook, made a short film, wrote a ‘commercial’ computer game that earned us about £100(!), plus loads of other crazy ventures!

And then after school, we’ve kept in touch, firstly helping start up a community radio station together, and we’ve both then taken career paths in media – Tom in radio and me in tv and video.  We even shared a house together in Birmingham in the summer of 1997!

Anyway, Tom’s been living in the UAE for the last few years, and was in Cairo before that, so we don’t see other loads, but do keep in touch online, and have caught up when he’s been back in the UK visiting family.

So when I was invited to his wedding down in Devon, there was no way I was going to miss it!  It was a heck of a long journey down there from Manchester, but I stayed at a Travelodge on the M5 the night before to break it up a little bit, and then stayed in Bideford on the Saturday night after the reception.

The wedding service itself was in a really picturesque village church, and then everyone drove into the town for the reception in a hotel at the side of the river.

It was great to see them getting married – I’d not met Vicky before, but we had spoken once on a Skype call about a month ago! And I also got to catch up with Tom’s sister Ellen, who I hadn’t spoken to for about 20 years!  It was a bit mad, because when I was younger, she was just Tom’s kid sister who we didn’t really have anything to do with, because that’s how it is when you’re kids!  But it was really nice to see her now with her partner and young daughter, and just seemed really happy with life and stuff.

I also got to meet a few of Tom’s radio mates, which was cool – they were people I’ve heard him mention in the past, but never seen before.  And it was good to say hello to his mum and dad, who again I’ve not seen for a very long time!

I’ve uploaded photos from the wedding here.

One extra thing – after the robbery at our old office, we’ve now moved the business into a new place.  It’s in east Manchester, in a brand-new complex called The Sharp Project, and it’s designed to house digital and media businesses, as well as offering studio space to production companies.  It’s pretty exciting, and we’ve only been in there a month, but hopefully it’ll prove to be a really good move for us!

Thought I’d better do a bit of a recap about what’s been going on over the summer, and I supposed the first thing I need to blog about is that we had a bit of a setback at work last month when we had a break-in at the office.

Basically, the whole top floor of our building was targeted, and the burglars broke into about 50 separate units in all! Most businesses had stuff stolen, but it seems like we were the worst hit, with us losing 3 iMacs and a Macbook Pro, plus all our filming kit comprising of a Sony EX3 and Z1, as well as a load of audio stuff as well.  It’s been a pretty horrible experience – luckily we’ve only lost a bit of work since they didn’t take our server or external hard drives, which would have destroyed us really since we hadn’t really got a decent back-up of all our work. But it’s just so gutting that you put so much time and effort into building the business to have some scum just take it away from you.

Anyway, we’re currently looking at options for what to do next – hopefully we’ve got a new office lined up because I really don’t want us to go back to our old one, because I think it might just happen again if they don’t sort out the security issues.  Should have a clearer idea of the future soon.

On to happier stuff… at the beginning of August, Rob and Clare got married in a field in Mellor (a small village not too far from Stockport), and I was one of the 12 ushers who were all dressed fully in white!

They got married at Clare’s parents’ house, which is basically a farmhouse, with a few fields surrounding it.  There was a little camp-site that we all set-up for us to stay at overnight, and there were various marquees and sheds being used for the reception.

The only down-side was the weather – just as the wedding ceremony was ready to start, the heavens opened and the rain came pouring down!

Luckily it didn’t really detract from the wedding at all – if anything it made the day even more memorable, and it soon cleared up once the reception was in full flow.

Of course, one issue with all the rain was that it meant that the ground started to get a bit muddy, which isn’t the most ideal thing when you’re wearing white shoes, white trousers and a white shirt!

It was a great day – and everyone had a good time, and in the evening they had live music and comedy, and a big bonfire which rounded off the night nicely.

And then after a night camping, it was time to wake up to sausage and bacon sandwiches cooked on the barbeque, and quite a bit of clearing up!

There are a bunch of photos from the wedding here.

And then the last couple of weeks I’ve been away camping at Momentum and Greenbelt.

First off – Momentum down in Shepton Mallet. The last time I went was back in 2006, when I was working on team for Soul Survivor, so stuck around for the extra week.

It was a pretty last-minute decision – I’d gone along for the day to Soul Survivor in Stafford last month, and decided then to book on for this year’s Momentum.

I got there and managed to find out where some other Manchester people were camping, so spent a little bit of time with them, but also there was a crowd from Tamworth there so I met up with those guys quite a bit over the week.

The weather wasn’t the greatest – it was pretty wet, and incredibly windy, but I’ve camped there in worse conditions in the past!  It was actually pretty cool being back there, and didn’t feel like I’d been away for four years at all!

Then once that had finished, I drove up to Cheltenham for the start of Greenbelt – although I stayed in a Travelodge for one night between the two festivals, and it was great to sleep in a real bed and have a decent shower before the bank holiday weekend started!

At Greenbelt, I met up with the usual Bristol crowd – Ali, Julie, Claire and Rosie – and again managed to camp in the volunteers section which meant we were pretty close to all the main stalls and venues.

Got to see quite a few bands – some that I’d not really heard of before, but also saw Shed 7, Beverley Knight and Jars Of Clay all performing on the main stage.

I also got to see Milton Jones do his live stand-up show… had to queue up for ages to get in, and actually missed the first ten minutes because the queue was so long, but it was well worth it… he was hilarious!  Some very clever set-ups, and just some crazy comedy!

So it was a great couple of weeks away – the only sour note was that someone managed to reverse into the side of my car in the car-park on the last day as we were packing up. I was sitting in it at the time, and was stationary so it was totally their fault – the rear door is dented pretty badly, but hopefully there shouldn’t be any problem with the insurance since the other driver admitted responsibility.

Last night I went with John to see Derren Brown’s latest live show ‘Enigma‘ at the Lowry.  John runs the Public Reviews website, and he had a couple of press tickets to go and review the show, so I went for free on his spare ticket!

I find Derren Brown fascinating – I think all his TV shows are great, and he presents traditional magic and illusion in a very contemporary way.  I also find it amusing to read people online who think he’s got real powers(!), but I’m actually in two minds as to whether he uses hypnotism and NLP as part of his act. Certainly stuff I’ve seen on the internet about those methods demonstrate that it’s quite possible, but I don’t really know, and am suspicious of any of his own explanations!

Anyway, back to ‘Enigma’. It really was a brilliant show – great theatrical staging, a very clever structure to the performance, and some really good magic tricks!  And Derren Brown’s an incredibly engaging character – he basically had the whole theatre eating out of his hand.

I’m not going to write about the tricks themselves – mainly because he asked people not to since the show is still touring – but I’m sure it will end up on TV in the near future, just like his previous ones have.  I’ve got an inkling how some of them were done (and today I’ve read a bit about some of the other perfotmances which have given me some more clues), but some of them were truly mind-blowing.

The final trick was one that I just can’t work out how he managed to pull everything together in the way that he did, and with a clever back-reference to something earlier on that seemed pretty throw-away.  John was actually part of the finale – he was one of the 6 volunteers who caught a frisbee thrown out into the audience – so I know it wasn’t done with stooges!

If you get a chance to see the show at all, I can thoroughly recommend it!

The heading kind of gives away the content of this post!  It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with a weekend in Tamworth, a day at the beach, catching up with old friends, and a fancy dress party!

For Easter, I went down to Tamworth for the weekend, and it was nice to spend time with Brandon and Chloe again.  I was obviously down there a few weeks earlier for their birthday party, so I think they remembered me this time round!!

I went with mum, Vikky and the twins to the Easter Service at ECC in Lichfield – it was weird going back there since the last time I was there was when I was 18 or 19 – nearly 20 years ago!  We got there pretty early because they were having a buffet breakfast before the service, and Brandon and Chloe managed to get quite a bit of the food down their smart clothes!  I guess that’s quite normal!  I said hello to a few people there who I remembered from when I was there years ago, and also chatted with Dave Bateman’s sister Helen who goes there, and actually works for them as a student worker!

Then on Easter Monday, I was back up north, and a group of us went over to Formby to spend the day at the beach!

It was pretty windy, and not the warmest of days, but we had a good laugh walking along the beach, and climbing up the sand dunes.

I managed to provide a bit of hilarity for the others when we decided to do a group photo where we all ran off a 1½ metre step of sand, with the plan for the photo to be taken whilst we were in mid air.

Anyway, eight of us lined up to do the running jump, so on cue we all went for it, but as we landed, I stumbled whilst still running, and smacked down face-first into the sand!  It properly winded me – I didn’t get a chance to break my fall with my hands, and someone managed to collapse on top of me as well which didn’t help!

It was pretty funny, but it really knocked it out of me – and I guess I was most impressed by the great support from the others… especially Penny who was in complete hysterics and just couldn’t stop laughing at my misfortune!  Thanks guys!

And to add insult to injury, the photo was taken too early, so we had to do it all again!! Luckily this time I managed to stay upright, and the picture was taken at the right time!  I’ve nicked it from Steph’s Facebook album and posted it here to make the pain worthwhile!

I’ve uploaded a load of photos of the day on my Facebook.

Then last Saturday, I had to go out and get a new mattress for my bed because the springs had started to come through my old one!  So when I got back, I started to unload it from my car, when I started getting heckled! My next-door neighbour Jo had a visitor for the weekend, and they were sitting out on the doorstep drinking wine with Jez and a few other neighbours. Anyway, the woman who was Jo’s friend was actually being quite mouthy about my new mattress being quite small, so I started bantering back a little bit.  Then the next thing I hear is someone making a comment about her being from Tamworth, which is where I’m originally from!  So I said that I used to live there, and when the woman thought I was just saying it for the sake of it, but we soon discovered we both went to the same school, and then it turned out that I was in the same class as her sister, Ellie Sutton – and she was Faye, who I do kind of remember, although she was a  year or two below me. Really small world!!

And last night was John Roberts’ 29th fancy dress birthday party at Baa Baa in Fallowfield.  The theme was musicals and theatre, so luckily there was quite a lot to choose from with regard to costumes, although I always do get a little bit stressed trying to sort out stuff like that! Anyway, I decided to go as a pirate, complete with hat, eyepatch and hook… I was also planning to add scars to my face using facepaint, but since I was going by bus, I chickened out and didn’t turn into a pirate until I got to the pub!

It was a really good night – I had enough drank enough beer to get me briefly up onto the dancefloor!  After the party finished in the function room, we headed down to the main bar – all in costume – so did stand out quite a bit! John and Matt’s costumes were so amazing – Shrek and Dracula – that people kept wanting to get their photos taken with them!  We eventually left at about 3am, slightly worse for wear, but it was worth it!  You can check out the photos from the night here.

Oh, the other thing I was going to mention with regard to random meetings was about when I was down in Tamworth for Easter.  On the Saturday, I nipped into Asda to buy a few bits and pieces, and bumped into an old mate from school – Dan Martin – who I hadn’t seen since sixth form!  Was really weird reminiscing about school days together and learning about what people are up to nowadays. I know Facebook has that pretty much covered nowadays, but it’s more real when you meet someone in person!

As per the title, hand washing certainly is very rubbish!

A few weeks ago, the drum of my washing machine broke and the whole thing has dropped down, so it won’t actually turn round anymore (I basically put too much washing in it!), and so I’ve just bought a cheapo portable washing machine from Maplin. It’s kind of like a food mixer for clothes – you fill it with warm water and washing powder, and leave your clothes churning around in it for about half an hour.  So far, so good.

But unfortunately, that’s all it does!

So you then have to take the clothes out of it, and spend hours rinsing all the clothes to get all the soap of out, and trying to squeeze out as much of the water as possible. And because they’re still really wet when you hang them up, the clothes take ages to dry!

Not sure how much longer I’m going to have to do it for… I obviously need to buy a new washing machine, but with me planning to get my kitchen extension done sometime this year, there’s not much point getting a new one until I know what the new kitchen will be like. I may even start going to the launderette – although the thought of doing that is quite weird!

Also, the Sunday before last, I went on another bike ride with Dave and Rob. Tom was planning to come with us, but had to drop out at the last minute, which was a shame. Although, since he’s such an experienced cyclist, I think I’d have been worried I was really slowing him down!

This time we didn’t venture too far – we cycled down to Chorlton Ees Nature Reserve, following the River Mersey from Didsbury, and then circling back to Dave’s via Chorlton.  I’m still a bit ware riding on main roads, especially with buses randomly pulling out, but I managed okay!

It was actually a pretty cool route – for quite a bit of it you forget you’re so close to the motorway and built-up areas, and most of it was a dirt path alongside the river. When we got to the nature reserve, the route Dave was planning on taking us down was all closed off for some reason, so we had to double-back on ourselves a bit, taking a bit of a short-cut across to Chorlton.  All in all, I think we did about 12 miles which I didn’t find too knackering!

The weather was really nice too – pretty sunny, although since it’s only March, it isn’t quite t-shirt weather yet!

I’ve added photos from the afternoon to my biking photo album of Facebook.

Last night I was at a Geek Party at Rob & Jenny Kay’s, where you had to go dressed as something inspired by geek chic! Now it may come as real surprise (since I am a bit of a self-confessed geek) that I was really struggling with a costume for the night, but with a couple of days to go, I suddenly hit on gold!

I decided to go as the ultimate geek – Mr Dave Bateman!

To make this dream a reality, I wondered about the best way to go about it, even Googling to find out how to make an actual 3d head(!), but finally settled on printing his face onto some card to make an oversized mask, with a couple of eyeholes punched through his actual eyes!

It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to wear for the whole evening if I’m honest, but I really enjoyed how it slightly freaked people out as they talked to me!

When Dave himself finally arrived around 10 o’clock, I think he found it pretty strange to have a bobbing-head version of him staring right back!

And the mask proved so popular that everyone wanted to wear it!

Check out the full set of photos from the party in my Facebook photo album.

So what else? Well, going back a couple of weekends, I was down in Tamworth for Brandon and Chloe’s 2nd birthday party!

There was a bit less alcohol at this party(!), although it was more of a family thing compared to their first birthday, when they had loads of little kids there as well.

Every time I see them, they’ve grown up so much!  I’m not sure if they totally realised what was going on, but they seemed to be happy enough with all their presents, party food and cake!

Just to round off this blog entry, last week we took on our first employee at doodledoMOTION!  It’s Rob Lee, who’s done various freelance bits and pieces for us over the last year, so we’ve taken him on part-time to work across all areas of the various projects we take on.  So, it’s a bit of an unknown for us, but pretty exciting at the same time!

For me, Valentine’s Day = annual slap in the face!

I appreciate that if you’re in a relationship, it’s probably a great way to demonstrate your love to each other, but when you’ve been single for as long as I’ve been, the sheer amount of Valentine’s stuff that’s bombarded at you just really rubs it in.  I’m sure people would tell me not to take it seriously, and that it’s all a bit of fun, but I’m sure they’re people who’ve actually received a card at some time in their life!  I’ll admit that I’ve occasionally sent cards in the past, but obviously with me being the overly confident person that I am(!), I’ve never actually admitted to the girls I’ve sent them to that it’s me!

I know it’s probably really sad putting this all in a blog, but sometimes it’s easier to write this stuff down and throw it out there than to actually talk about it with anyone! I’d always thought that by this time of life, I’d be married with kids, and all that kind of stuff, but I guess I’m starting to accept that’s probably never going to happen. It doesn’t help that for years I was crazy about one girl, and wasted a load of time getting to know her better by spending time with her, and trying to do stuff that I thought she’d like (and other crap like that!)… and then trying to deal with it when she finally made it clear that she’d never be interested in someone like me, which has taken a lot longer for me to get out of my system than it should have done.  So now I’m the wrong side of 35, with no sign of anything in the distance, and obviously the older I get, it gets less and less likely that I’ll have kids of my own, which is pretty tough to be honest.

I’m sure there are other people who have similar issues, and struggle massively with the whole singleness thing, but often when you see so much focus on relationships around you, it’s hard.  As your mates get married, and then have kids, on one hand you’re really pleased for them, and you know it’s an amazing thing… but sometimes it’s really hard not to get jealous about it all, and ask yourself why they’ve got all that you’re desperate for as well. (I use the word ‘desperate’ in a way that hopefully doesn’t make make me look ‘desperate’!)

Wow – it’s a good job that Valentine’s Day is once a year… I wouldn’t want to be this honest on here too often!!

I’ve been cycling again this week – first off I did 10 miles at the gym, which took took me about 40 minutes, and although my legs were like jelly when I got off, I was pleased that later on, my legs weren’t aching at all.  Again, the only thing which I could feel was the negative effect of the saddle!

Anyway, today we went back to the Upper Derwent Valley at the end of the Snake Pass, and did the same route as a couple of weeks ago.

I went with Dave again, and this time Rob came with us.  We started a lot earlier than last time because Rob needed to get back mid afternoon to travel down to a gig in Solihull, so we got to the visitors centre at Fairholmes at about 10.30am, and set off around the reservoirs just before 11 o’clock.

There was a lot less snow and ice this time round, although there were still a couple of places where a few small snow drifts are still hanging on in there.

I found the first 10 or so miles pretty alright, and was able to go much longer between breather stops than last time, and I managed some of the ‘hills’ that I struggled with before, although I did get off and push for a few of them still!  At about 13 or 14 miles, I started getting really tired, and unfortunately at that part of the route, there’s a bit of a stretch which has an incline, so I ended up doing that on foot!  Then I managed the last couple of miles back to the car park, where we managed to grab a hot drink which was very welcome!  Dave and Rob were really good too, because obviously I was slowing them down, but they kept pretty much at my pace, and when they did ride ahead, they’d always wait for me to catch up.

I’m feeling totally knackered now, but it’s more of an overall tiredness rather than any aching legs or anything, which is good.  One thing I’m pretty sure of is that I’m going to get a good night’s sleep tonight!

I’ve added some photos of the day to my biking album here.

I’ve just spent the last few evenings converting my original blog to a new WordPress one.  Google announced this week that it’s getting rid of FTP functionality for its Blogger service, which I’ve been using since before Google had even thought of buying it up!

But basically, what Google’s announcement meant was that from next month, I wouldn’t be able to update my blog in its current form, without re-arranging the structure of my website, or hosting the actual blog on their servers.

So I was recommended WordPress which I installed and then had the fun of importing my original blog, and then reformatting it all so that it still looks right, and adapting a theme to be an evolution of what I had before.

It’s been interesting looking back at what I’ve written over the years – 168 blog posts since March 2002!  And however tempting it’s been at times, I haven’t deleted anything I’ve posted over those 8 years, even though with hindsight, some of the stuff is either a bit stupid or embarrassing!

But the upshot of it all is that it’s still business as usual, and at first glance the features provided by WordPress actually seem a lot better than Blogger!

Yesterday I went to the Upper Derwent Valley in the Peak District with Dave for a bit of a bike ride around the three reservoirs there.

I’d not ridden my bike since my holiday in Anglesey last year, and the last time I did this route was back in 2007 when I did my first ride in 16 years with Jamie Hill.

Anyway, back to yesterday, and we arrived at about 1.15pm and parked up, and set our bikes up before changing into our riding gear.  It was pretty cold, so I’d gone for a layers approach with t-shirt, hoody and coat, and tracksuit bottoms over some cycling shorts.  Dave being the crazy man that he is opted for a Villa top and shorts!

I was really out of practice, but soon got into it, although I do find hills quite difficult.  Obviously I need to build up my strength and stamina, and if I can get rid of some weight over the next year it will really help as well.

There was quite a lot of ice and leftover snow around, which made a few sections quite interesting, but it was a bright, dry day which was good.  Although when we were in the shade it was absolutely freezing!

Dave was a really good bike partner to have, because I know he was riding a lot slower and took more breaks than he normally would do, but he was totally fine about it.  Hopefully the more riding I do, the better I will be with regard to that.

I got a couple of painful muscle twinges nearer the end of the ride, which is a bit concerning, but maybe that’s just down to me not being used to so much exercise!

We actually did 16 miles which is quite a lot really!  And to be honest my legs aren’t aching too much, although I have a really sore arse from my saddle!  Again, I assume that’s something which you don’t notice after a while!

My goal with the whole biking thing is to be able to cycle long distances without too much pain (and to get much fitter in the process!)  Dave’s really keen on doing a Land’s End to John O’Groats ride next year sometime, and I’d really love to be able to join him on that, even though I know it would be the hardest thing I’d ever do!  As part of the build up to it, the plan is to look to do a Coast to Coast ride this year, with about 50 – 60 miles a day for about 4 – 5 days, so it could be achievable for me if I really work for it.  Hopefully me blogging about it might give me more of an incentive to really train for it, so that I can avoid the embarrassment of looking back at this in a couple of years time having not done it!

You can see the photos from the ride here.

Tonight sees two programmes with titles and graphics done by doodledoMOTION on Five in prime time!  First off, ‘Paul Merton In Europe‘ started last Monday night at 9pm, and we did the title sequence for the show (which has had so much work and detail put into it!), as well as the maps which show Paul’s journey across Europe.  It’s the 3rd travel series of ‘Paul Merton In…’ that Tiger Aspect have done following on from his documentaries about China and India, and so far the reaction to this new series seems really positive.

And then the second show for Five we’ve been involved in is also a Tiger programme – ‘Celebrity Quitters‘.  It’s a ten-part reality series that’s going to be on every week-night for the next 2 weeks, and features Linda Robson, John Burton Race, Chloe Madeley, Paul Danan and Derek Acorah as they all try to give up smoking.  We’ve done the titles and graphics for the main show, as well as their online content.

The programme starts at 7.30pm tonight, and to promote the show, Linda Robson, one of the Celebrity Quitters, appeared on BBC’s Breakfast this morning for an interview, where they showed some clips from the series.

It was a good promo for the show, but the best bit was that the main title graphic that we’ve produced appeared on the big screen behind them throughout the whole interview which is really cool!

Back to the beginning of the month, and on New Year’s Day, I went for a walk over at Alderley Edge with a group of Reach guys.

I went there a few years ago with James and Helen for a birthday walk, so I recognised quite a few places we went to.  It was pretty chilly, and we were wandering a bit aimlessly at times, but it was a really nice walk.

Then afterwards we stopped off at a really nice pub in the village called The Merlin for a meal.  It wasn’t that cheap, but the food was great, which kind of made up for it!  There are some photos of the day here.

The only other thing I’ll quickly blog about is the crazy snow we had at the start of the month.  We had a little bit of snow the day after our walk, but then on the Tuesday morning, I woke up to a crazy amount of snow outside!

It was a bit of a nightmare getting into work – luckily I’d parked on the main road rather than in my actual street, otherwise I wouldn’t have been going anywhere!  All the buses had been cancelled, so the only way I could get in was by car, and the drive in took nearly an hour compared to my usual 10 minutes!

And when I got to the office, I made the mistake of driving into the car park, where I discovered James had already done that and had been stuck there for nearly an hour trying to get back out up the slope!  Then someone had the genius idea of using some carpet tiles to build a track for the car to drive on, so we were eventually able to get out, and so we then parked on a nice flat bit of road on the front!

Luckily it’s pretty much gone now, so life is back to normal!

It’s that funny time between Christmas and New Year when generally nothing really happens – so the ideal time to do a blog update!  And since I last posted a week and a half ago, I’ve actually done quite a lot of stuff in that time!

Last Wednesday night, I went over to Liverpool with John Roberts to see a production of ‘The 39 Steps‘ at the Liverpool Playhouse.  He runs a theatre reviews website called The Public Reviews, so we we got free tickets which was pretty cool!  It was actually a really good show – it’s a comedy and was performed by just 4 actors, who changed roles continuously throughout the play, which surprised me at how well it worked!

The show culminated in fake snow being showered on the audience, and then as we left the theatre, we discovered that there was real snow falling – and I’d have been really impressed if that was part of the show as well!  We’d already had a bit of snow in Manchester a couple of days earlier, but there was none in Liverpool when we arrived.  We got back to the car, and within a few minutes we were driving through a pretty intense blizzard, and the snow really started to build up on the roads.

And by the time we hit the M62, we couldn’t see very far in front of us, and you couldn’t see any road markings at all!  So basically you had to follow the rear lights of the car in front, which at one point meant that we accidentally left the motorway by following the car in front off a sliproad!

Anyway, because of the snow and the likelihood of the roads being a nightmare on Christmas Eve, I decided to wait until the next morning to drive down to Tamworth for Christmas with the family. 

What this did mean was that I was still up in North West that evening, so I went along to a little get-together at Michael & Becci’s for anyone who was still around in Manchester.  There was a nice little crowd there, including Jon & Emma, Andy & Ruth, Yan, and Luke, and it was an enjoyable way to spend Christmas Eve.  I chatted quite a bit with Michael who was telling me all about their future plans, and about their upcoming move to America for 3 months to spend time at IHOP before coming back to Manchester to model something similar here.  It sounds really interesting and exciting, but quite a big thing for them to do!

The next morning I drove down to mum’s and got there around noon.  The motorway was a lot busier than I expected – I guess lots of people had decided to wait until the morning because of the weather.  Even so, I was actually the first there, and everyone else was really late, and they all live really close!

It was great seeing Brandon and Chloe again – I know I say it every time, but every time I see them, they’ve always grown up so much more!

And they’re so much more chatty now – even though half of the time it doesn’t seem to make all that much sense, but bizarrely they seem to understand each other alright!

I last saw them at the beginning of October when we were all out in Turkey, so I suppose with it being two and a half months there’s going to be some serious growing up taking place!

And it especially was nice this Christmas because they obviously got a lot more out of it this year than last.  They were really excited about all their presents (of which there were loads!) and what was really funny was that Chloe would decide which presents should be for her, and Brandon would basically go along with it!

I’ve uploaded the photos I took over Christmas here.

It was a nice weekend, and was quite chilled out really, and good catching up with everyone.  I also managed to fit in a few drinks with Tom on Boxing Day, who was back at his folks’ from the UAE for Christmas which was cool.

One last thing I did whilst I was in Tamworth was going to visit my dad’s grave with my mum and sister – I’d not been to it before, so it felt a bit weird to be honest… I’m just not very good with stuff like that at all.

I drove back home on Sunday night, and then to round it all off, yesterday I travelled to Llandudno to visit Emma who was back from the States for Christmas.

I arrived mid-morning, just as Emma and her mum were dealing with a bit of a crisis!  They’d been out to the supermarket first thing and whilst they were out, all the dogs managed to get into the bedrooms where they found load of chocolate stuff which they then ate.

I knew that chocolate and dogs aren’t supposed to mix, but I didn’t realise how dangerous it can be for them, so Emma’s mum had to arrange a visit to the vet to get some medicine to force the dogs to be sick, which sounds like a really grim job!

Anyway, to escape the chaos, me and Emma drove to Betws-Y-Coed, which is a small village about 20 miles from Llandudno.

We went for a short, slippy, walk by the river before grabbing some lunch at a cafe, then decided to head up to Swallow Falls, which we discovered later is actually 2 miles out of the village, so it ended up being quite a long walk there and back!  The falls were really impressive, although the steps down to the river were really iced up and were pretty lethal!

Check out the photos here.