I guess it would have been nice...
But nobody did.
A blog with all of Gareth's latest news!

Firstly, tonight on G.O.L.D. (it used to be UKGold until this week!) there's a documentary about one of the funniest shows ever - "Blackadder Exclusive: The Whole Rotten Saga", and we did the graphics for it.
Other news... a couple of weeks ago I was down in Tamworth for Brandon and Chloe's dedication service.
Both are really happy babies - they seem to laugh all the time, and really know how to pose to the camera! I guess they've got pretty used to having people taking pictures of them all the time!

A couple of Sundays ago I went down to Reading to catch up with some old uni mates - Ali, George, Hazel, and Helen & her new blokey! It was really nice day (although the train journey down was a bit of a rubbish one - an hour late to start with, then decided to terminate at Birmingham rather than Reading!)
I mentioned a while ago that we were going to be moving into an office - well that happened at the end of February, and it's great have a proper space to work in. It's not 100% finished yet... we've still got to put the finishing touches to the edit suite, but I think me and James have done a pretty good job with it!
In my last blog, I announced the birth of my little nephew and niece - Brandon and Chloe. Well they've certainly grown a bit since that week! This first picture of me holding both of them was taken as they were about to leave hospital, and they were just 4 days old. You can see how tiny they were by the fact I could hold both of them at once!
Staying on the whole baby thing, James is now a daddy!


I went to visit her this afternoon at Good Hope hospital, and by the time we got there she'd been moved into a delivery room, going through the final stages before getting ready to give birth! By that point, she was only supposed to have her birthing partners there - Damien and my mum - but they got permission from the midwife for me to visit because I'd not seen her since the beginning of January.
Then, at the beginning of this month, we had to produce 2 commercials for Channel M which are running on Granada this week. It was a crazy turnaround time, with us doing the recee in between Christmas and New Year, and then we shot one of the commercials in James' house, and the other one we made using clips from the news programme, with specially recorded pieces-to-cameras from the reporters.
Thought it was time for one of my not-so-regular blogs! A couple of weekends ago, my brother Steve got married to Julie, so that leaves me as the only one not married!!
It's been quite a busy summer - I've just got back home after being away working for a couple of weeks down at Soul Survivor. I spent 10 days in the Underground venue doing visuals for the venue, so spent most of the time either down the side of the stage or in our make-shift edit suite! This year I had Tom Steward helping me - it was pretty last minute because both Andy and Kate weren't able to come this year - but I was really impressed at how quickly he picked it all up, and the stuff he was shooting on stage every night was brilliant.
It's the first time I've ever been to the festival, though obviously I've heard lots about it over the years! It's very different to Soul Survivor - much more of an arts festival - and in some ways I found a lot of stuff really watered down, although there was a lot of passion for environmental issues and the like, which isn't a bad thing. It's quite a political event really, and the bands that appear are from a really wide spectrum - from Delirious and Matt Redman to Chas & Dave!! Not sure whether I'd go again, but I'm glad I checked it out.
Work news - me and James are now officially joint directors of doodledo MOTION Ltd which is pretty exciting! We got all the stuff finished for the BBC2 series 'British Film Forever' though it went on a bit longer than we expected - we thought the edit would be finished at the end of July, but James was still having to render graphics whilst I was at Soul Survivor! It was a good job for us to do because it was quite high profile - they even advertised the programme on a big board with some of our graphics on the front of the BBC building on Oxford Road! I think all the stuff we did looked really good when seen in the context of the whole show, and it's a good job to stick in our portfolio!
We're now working on some titles and programme graphics for a 'Vicar of Dibley' special going out in October on UKTV Gold. It's basically a showcase of the 40 funniest clips from the series with interviews from the cast and celebrity fans.
So we spent a couple of hours at the show with James' mum, as well as his aunt and uncle, and then I kind of gatecrashed a family meal at Felicinis on Oxford Road - a really nice Italian restaurant that had just enough English food to ensure I got a good meal! 
Other stuff... I caught up with Jamie a couple of weeks ago when I went for a barbeque at his with Dean and Sean. It was quite an impromptu thing... I'd been round at James' doing some work when he gave me a call to see if I was doing anything, so I went straight to his from there, because unsurprisingly I didn't have any other plans! The food was slightly charred, but it was okay and filled me up! I hadn't seen Jamie for quite a while - he's got back into his climbing again which means he's away from Manchester a lot more. It's great for him 'cos he's really into it, but for me it's a bit of a shame because I'd enjoyed the couple of times we'd been out riding together and was hoping to be able to do a lot more of it, but I know it's going to be really difficult to find any time that we can. My bike's been sitting idle since February, and there's no-one else I can really go with, and I'm not overly keen on just going out riding on my own.
I'll post more information about it when things are more definite. But in the meantime, we're currently busy working on titles and stings for a 7-part BBC2 documentary which is going out on Saturday nights from July. It's probably the biggest job we've worked on to be honest, but hopefully it's a good sign of things to come!
Well yesterday I went to Radio 1's Big Weekend in Preston, and I have to say it was excellent!
We sat outside the tent whilst The Twang were on, and then made our way into the crowd of the Main Stage to watch the rest of the line up. Natasha Bedingfield was on next - I wasn't sure what kind of reaction she'd get. Personally I really like her stuff, but I think a lot of people are quite hostile to her. But quite cleverly, Chris Moyles who was introducing her got the crowd to build up to a big cheer in sections as she came on, which meant that her set got off to a really good start. She started off with her 'Babies' song which I wasn't keen on when I first heard it, but now I do like it! She also did 'Unwritten' as part of her half-hour, and when the gospel-singing bit kicked in at the end, it sounded brilliant!
Kasabian were next to hit the stage, and the lead singer seemed to be quite hyped up and excited to be there! They produced an amazing sound actually, and probably got the best reaction from the crowd all day I reckon. Then the last band we saw on the Main Stage was Razorlight who reeled off all their big hits. To be honest, I was quite surprised at how many songs I knew well, and I thought they were excellent, although my legs were aching quite badly by this point having been standing in the crowd for about 5 hours!
We're into the final stages of our manic Preview-filming-fortnight! Did three shoots for the next DVD last week (with two in London), yesterday we shot an interview here in Manchester, and then me and James set off for Liverpool this morning at 7am to film some stuff for Liverpool Council's Sportslinx. It was an incredibly packed schedule with 11 interviews plus shooting various activities!! We didn't get a chance to break for lunch until about 5 o'clock(!) and we got back home tonight at about eight!
The bands there that day include Razorlight, Kasabian, Scissor Sisters, The Fratellis, The Fray, Natasha Bedingfield and Groove Armada! I definitely want to go, but I just need to find someone to come with me because I don't fancy going on my own really.
Been pretty busy the last few weeks - last week I had a meeting with some guys from Liverpool council about some work that me and James should hopefully be doing for them soon, and also had a lot to do on trying to get the latest Preview DVD finished (am pretty close now, and managed to get the bits they needed for New York in time!)
Though I heard from James by email yesterday and they had their campervan broken into this week, and had a few bits and pieces stolen, including his iPod and his phone, so that's not great. Hopefully the rest of their time out there will be amazing and will wipe out the crap stuff!
In my last post I mentioned that I had a 'possibly interesting weekend ahead'... well I ended up in Wales at Cefn Lea for the Reach weekend away, which I suppose was interesting in a way! The last time I went on it was back in 2004, and there were quite a few people there who I hadn't seen for ages, which was quite strange, but I guess in a way, I am glad I went on it, though it was pretty tough at times. I'm not sure what I was really expecting from it all, but maybe that's something I need to reflect on over the coming weeks.
And finally, last weekend was both James' and Helen's birthdays, and I went along to a pub meal they arranged on Sunday afternoon in Didsbury. The plan changed twice because it's quite difficult to find somewhere to eat for so many on a Sunday lunchtime! But we ended up at the Old Cock Inn and it was actually a pretty nice pub - I always had the impression that it was a bit of a smoky old-man's pub, but I think they must have done it up recently, because I'd definitely go there again.
So I turned the power off and removed the plate to look behind the switch, and discovered that the live wire from the shower had welded itself into the terminal, and had burnt quite badly, and that the earth wire had melted through the plastic covering of the live! 
I really enjoy going out on the bike, though I need to get some proper cycling shorts to wear under my trackie bottoms because I got quite sore from the saddle! It's cool spending time with Jamie as well 'cos we don't get to catch up that often.
We stayed in a Travelodge in the city centre, and the room wasn't the greatest! It had a double and single bed with probably the worst mattresses in the world (I went for the single because it seemed slightly better!), only 3 of the 5 lightbulbs worked, and the walls and ceiling were covered in Artex which game the room a distinctly 70s feel! In the evening we went out for a meal at a restaurant in Kings Cross, and I had my first lager (a couple of bottles of Peroni on James' recommendation), and it was very good!
It's kind of weird because obviously I've never really drank alcohol, but this year I've decided to start to do so (responsibly of course!)... my reasons for not drinking before have always been about not wanting to lose control, but I came to the conclusion that at end of the day, whether I get myself into that situation is of my own making, and by having a drink every so often doesn't mean that I have to give up any control of myself! Though the next night we met up for a meal with Cathy and Frank and I had a pint and a coffee with a double Baileys in it(!) so it may look as though I've become a hardened drinker all of the sudden, but I was able to still walk in a straight line afterwards!!
It was back in November 2005 that I blogged about buying myself a mountain bike... well I'm kind of embarrassed to say that today was the first time I've actually ridden it!!
Anyway - first off the Christmas dinner!! It was delicious! I cooked turkey with sausagemeat stuffing and cranberry sauce, sausage with bacon, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, boiled potatoes, swede, leeks, peas and sprouts. And I did more than I needed so I can have the same tomorrow! 

I spoke to my mum first this morning, and then after dinner, Sarah called so we chatted for a bit. Luckily the present I'd got for her went down well - I had been concerned that potentially it was a bit random! I'd remembered she'd said a while ago that she's always wanted to visit the Himalaya region, so I bought her the Michael Palin book of his Himalaya travels, as well as compiling the series from TV into a special little box-set thing... but my concern was that her comment might have been a bit throw-away, and so she might not have been that interested in it! But she seemed really pleased so that's good. Then not long after I'd spoken to Sa, Rob popped round on the way round to Claire's parents so I did him a brew and we had a natter! And finally Doctor Who in the evening with a bit of Strictly Come Dancing! Not as bad as it could have been I suppose![ CHECK OUT OLDER NEWS IN THE ARCHIVES ]