Gareth Harrison

It’s been a while, so here’s a bit of a catch up!

Yesterday I went to Liverpool Cathedral to hear Rob Bell talk about his new book – ‘Love Wins‘. I’d seen him do a Q&A at Greenbelt last year, so was quite interested to hear him in person talk about his new book which has already caused a bit of controversy within the church.

It was quite bizarre because quite a few influential people were highly critical of it via Twitter, even before the book had actually been released, so I decided I’d rather make my own mind up, rather than listen to emotional ramblings from people who can come across a bit arrogant at times!

I went with Tom Green from Vinelife, and met up with Dave Bateman (who’s now living in Liverpool), and I also bumped into Tim Follin and his wife who were both there too. The place was pretty packed, and it was really interesting to hear his thoughts, but even though I think some of the stuff he said was quite though-provoking, I’m not totally sure I agree with all the points he put across.

After he did his main talk bit, he was ‘interviewed’ by the host of the evening, but he wasn’t really very good at it and asked pretty rubbish questions.  And then they invited people from the audience to ask questions, but again I thought there were a lot of missed opportunities, and Tom went forward to ask a question, but they wrapped up just before he got a chance to which was a bit annoying!

I bought the book afterwards, and I want to read it myself to see what I reckon – I certainly think it’s good that he’s causing people to ask questions about it.

Also, two weekends ago, I went over to Ellesmere Port to celebrate John Roberts’ 30th birthday at Frankie & Benny’s at Cheshire Oaks.  I’d not seen him for a while, because he now doesn’t live in Manchester, and there was actually quite a decent turn-out for his birthday meal considering there was a bit of travel involved!  It was a good night – and it was nice to hang out and spend quality time with some of the guys I don’t really see that much of any more.

And a couple of weekends before that, Steph had a birthday picnic at Tatton Park, so I went along, but for the first bit it was basically me and Dave with a load of people we didn’t know!  So we went for a bit of a walk around the grounds until a few more people that we knew turned up!  It was supposed to be ‘Birthday Fun In The Sun’ but someone had forgotten to tell the sun to turn up!  It was quite cold for a picnic, but we still had a pretty good laugh!  There are some photos from the day here.

Back in February, I decided to pop over to Wales for the day to go to some of the Reach weekend away.  I’d gone a few years ago for the whole weekend, but not been to anything since then, but it was also a bit of an excuse to catch up with some of the old gang!

To be totally honest, it did feel a bit weird when I first turned up, and everyone was already in the middle of the first morning session, so I hung around at the back until there was a mid-morning break.

Throughout the day, I mostly hung out with Dave – he’d texted me first thing to say that he felt like the oldest person there, so was wanting me there to help tip the age balance!

Was a really enjoyable day in the end… we went for a walk up one of the hills near Cefn Lea, and some of the stuff being spoken about was pretty interesting – it was a bit of a trek back in the early hours of Sunday morning though – it’s not ideal driving a long distance after a long day!  Photos from the day are here.

Right back to January now, and I got a step closer to the kitchen being finished with Rob giving me a hand fitting a new floor.  It’s a light laminate floor, and it looks really good with the gloss white units and wood-effect worktops. Now all I’ve got to do is sort out some splashbacks, fit a narrow piece of worktop down the side, box in some pipes, and get a new washing machine and fridge freezer… so not much really!!

Also, January saw Tom and Alice’s wedding at Platt church in Rusholme.  I’d agreed to video it for them, and I nearly fell at the first hurdle when the day before, the church said I needed to pay for a wedding videographer licence to be able to film in there!

Anyway, I managed to buy a single licence to allow me to do it, although the church was a bit of a nightmare to film in because it has tightly-packed pews, and it was difficult to get tripods to fit anywhere!

The reception was at The Lowry, and it was a great night. Got some really cool footage as well, so hopefully the video will turn out alright!  There are some photos here.

Now onto more house news! The kitchen isn’t a million miles off being finished, but in the meantime, I’ve also been having the bathroom redone!  It’s been totally gutted, and I’ve had the door to a cupboard blocked up, which has given me back the corner of my back bedroom, and allows me to move the bath onto the other wall with the shower unit where the door used to be.  It’s still a work-in progress, but it’s getting there!

On top of all that, I’ve been dieting a bit since New Year – using an iPhone app called MyFitnessPal, which you use to keep a food diary so that you can see how many calories you’re eating each day, and it’s a real eye-opener!  It’s quite hard work, and not sure how well I’ll be able to keep it up, but already I’ve lost just over 2.5 stone!  I really need to get into a good routine with exercising, and eating at regular times, but often with work that’s quite difficult!  I’ll see how it goes anyway!

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!

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!

Yesterday was my birthday – something I’m generally not to keen to celebrate, but James insisted that he and Helen take me for a birthday lunch at Kro, so I couldn’t really make up an excuse to get out of it!

It was nice actually – I got to see Jess, who’d changed so much since the last time I’d seen her back in July at Soul Survivor. She looks so much more grown up, and she’s now trying to walk, although it’s more a case of manoeuvring herself around things that she can hold onto!

The food was good – I had a steak ciabatta and chips, and it was much better than my usual Morrisons sandwich – so thanks to the Torrys for a really nice birthday lunch!

Then in the evening, I went to Hillsborough with James to see Sheffield Wednesday take on Preston! He mentioned in the afternoon that there was a ‘friends for a fiver’ night, and wondered if I’d be up for it, so I said yes!

We left straight from work (which unfortunately meant I couldn’t get changed into warmer clothes, and it was quite a cold night!) but it took us a while to get over to Sheffield, so by the time we got to our seats, the game had already been going for about 5 minutes.

Preston scored first after about 15 minutes, but Wednesday hit back with a goal not too long before the end of the first half. Then, not long into the second half, Preston scored again, and the score unfortunately didn’t change for the rest of the game. Wednesday had loads of chances, and it was really disappointing that they lost, but I could see that Preston were really lucky to get a win.

In my… ahem… ‘expert’ opinion, I really don’t reckon Preston should have been allowed their first goal – just before they scored, we thought the ball went just out, and then when we went to have a drink at half time, we watched the replay on the monitors they had on the wall, and I was convinced the ball went over the line beforehand.

And generally, there really were some shocking decisions from the ref! I might not be gifted with the greatest football knowledge, but even I could see that!! I actually thought it was quite apt that the added time was sponsored by Specsavers!!

I’m really not sure I could handle the ups and downs of regularly following a team – it messes with your emotions far too much! But I did really enjoy being there, watching the game and getting caught up in the atmosphere, and I’d definitely go again to see Sheffield Wednesday if I got the chance!

Well, another bank holiday yesterday – it only seems a few weeks since the last one!!

I went for a walk in the afternoon with some guys from Reach – we drove over to the Peak District and parked up by Derwent Reservoir, just off the Snake Pass. It’s actually where I went with Jamie a couple of years ago for my first bike ride in 16 years(!), and I’ve realised it’s certainly a lot quicker to go round on 2 wheels rather than walking!

We only did about 4 miles – we got quite a bit round one side of the reservoir, but soon realised that it would take us ages to get round the next one and back down to the car! So after examining if there was anywhere else where we could cross, we turned around and walked back pretty much the way we came.

The weather was pretty rubbish – it rained a bit – but it was just really nice to do something different. Not been out for a walk for quite a while… we used to do them a lot more regularly, and I guess I miss it a bit. But this was good and hopefully I’ll get to do it again.

Something I’m not sure that I’ll be doing again too soon is what I did next! It was John Cieszynski’s birthday on Friday, so last night he had a murder mystery party!

Now, I’ve never been to one before, and it’s never been something I’ve been in a rush to try, but since it was for John’s birthday I decided I should go. The big problem for me was that it’s all taken very seriously! Basically from when it starts, you’re supposed to then stay in character for 3 hours until all the different elements are solved! Add into that the fact that there were 27 people there in character – most of whom I didn’t even know in real life(!) – and it becomes my biggest nightmare!!

To be fair, pretty much everyone else seemed to like it, and maybe if I was doing it with a much smaller amount of people, and if I actually knew them well to start with, I might find it okay. But it really wasn’t my kind of thing, and luckily my role wasn’t an important character so it didn’t matter that I kept a low profile!

John seemed to really enjoy it though, which is what’s important… next time though, I’ll suggest to him a night out at the pub!

36 years old – rubbish!

Yep, it’s my birthday, and it’s not something I really want to celebrate! There’s nothing great about getting older – you’re basically running out of time to accomplish the things you always hoped you’d do, and the likelihood of them happening just gets less and less.

Anyway, in true tradition I’m spending my birthday working late in the office… we’ve got a job that needs to be finished for the morning, so I’ve got to stay until it’s done, and might be a few more hours yet.

To be fair, as a kind of birthday treat to myself, I’m off to see Delirious play in Liverpool on Wednesday night – it’s their last UK tour, so I’m hoping it’s a really good gig. I first saw them live back in 1995, and have seen them many times since then, so will be weird knowing it’ll probably be the last time.

Quite a bit’s happened in the last few weeks, so I thought I’d better do a quick catch up and write about some of them… I’m manically busy with Preview stuff at the moment – got to try and get it all done for Monday because they need it for a presentation in New York, so that should be fun!

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.

One cool thing about the weekend was that I managed to catch up with Russ (from uni and who I used to share a house with in Birmingham) on the Saturday night – he lives a few miles from Cefn Lea so popped over to say ‘hello’. We had a really good chat, and I can’t believe it’s about 3 years since we last met!

I may write some more about the Reach stuff in the future because I know I’ve been a bit vague – (or I may not!) – but I think I’ll leave it there or the moment, except to say that I’ve put the photos that I took here.

Then last Friday, I met up with Jamie who just wanted to get out of the city for the evening so we planned to go for a walk in the evening up by Kinder reservoir in Hayfield. But we got stuck in traffic going into Glossop and by the time we parked up the car to walk up to the reservoir it was already pitch black! We’d taken torches because we’d expected it to get dark whilst we were walking, but I wasn’t expecting there to be no light from the start! We did an hour walk, up to Kinder reservoir, where we could see a big house lit up on Kinder Scout (Jamie reckoned they were just showing off ‘cos they’d really gone over the top with the floodlights!), then we headed off west over some moorland to get ourselves heading back towards the village. It was great actually – being out in the middle of no-where (without even a phone signal!) and seeing the countryside only lit by the moon and stars was cool.

We made our way back down towards the village, and the original plan was to get a meal in the pub there, but they’d just stopped serving food which was a bit annoying! So we grabbed a pint and crisps before heading back here for takeaway (which was a bit grim – Jamie’s kebab was particularly rough!) Had a great night though – I’d love to do more stuff like that… it can get so boring just working all the time – although I usually end up feeling knackered after going anywhere with Jamie!! He’s much more active than me!

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.

There were about 15 of us there altogether, and again it was nice spending time with some of the guys I don’t see all that often really. I took some photos on my phone and they’re now here.

Friday saw another year added to my age – woo! But more about that in a minute.

It’s been a full-on week with work, and there’s no sign of it slowing for the next couple of weeks at least… I’ll really appreciate some time off when it happens!

On the Thursday night after my last blog, I got back from a day’s filming in Bradford, and drove down to London with Rob so we could get to Docklands for our shoot at 9.30 on the Friday morning. Because Rob had been working late, we didn’t get to leave Manchester until about nine, and eventually got to our Travelodge at 1.30am! And then when we went to check in, we were told that they’d given away one of our rooms, so we’d have to share – so Rob had the double bed and I had the sofa! The trouble was, by now we were past our tiredness and couldn’t get to sleep so ended up talking until about four, which gave us less than four hours sleep before we had to get up!

The shoot went okay I think – it was a presenter in front of a greenscreen for a web tutorial I’m working on (although looking back at the rushes there are a few things I would probably have done a bit differently, but it’s a bit late now!) We got wrapped up by about three, but it took us about 2 hours just to get out of London and onto the motorway (although we did get to see most of the sights at the same time!) and then we didn’t get back home until about nine… so a very long couple of days! I managed to get a bit of a lie-in on the Saturday morning before heading over to James’ to finish off the cake animation we needed for Preview.

Sunday night I took a bit of a break and went out to see Rachael Kichenside perform at Oxjam which was being held at Joshua Brookes in town. I went on my own, but it was really good to hear her performing live with a full band. Was a pretty short set, but like I said, well worth hearing, and I stuck around to hear a couple of other artists as well.

Then this week, I had a final day at Leeds Bradford Airport on Monday (with a 6.30am start!), and the next couple of days saw us working again on Preview, firstly looking at the animation, and on Wednesday, after an early morning swim with James (aren’t we good!) we filmed a webcam interview which took a few attempts to get working smoothly, and then both headed over to Nottingham with Louise to interview one of the guys who’s created ‘Second Life’ – an online virtual world. We were filming in an internet / LAN-gaming cafe, and there were some real geeks in there! I’m sure most of them were fine, but there were a couple who looked like they could do with getting out a bit more! There was one guy who managed to sit right in the back of the shot for half the interview, and we had to ask him to turn around because he was just staring at the camera, and then whenever he got up or sat down, it became obvious that he really could do with a belt, because you got to see more than you really wanted to!

Then Friday was my 34th birthday. To be honest, I usually wake up with the expectation of it being another crap one, so I wasn’t really planning on celebrating it… but unknown to me at this point, that wasn’t to be the case.

I did have one slight mishap – I went into town in the afternoon for a meeting with Dave at Channel M and to pick up some tapes which was fine… however as I was coming out of the multistorey car-park’s mad helter-skelter type ramp, I was distracted for a second whilst sorting out my ticket to get out, and suddenly I heard a really bad scraping noise as I was clipping the concrete kerb on the inside of the spiral! I managed to manouvre away from the centre, but since I was coming down from the 9th floor, I still had a lot of it to get down. I didn’t check my car until I got home, fearing the worst, but luckily it looks like my wheel hub has taken all of the damage, and the paintwork seems fine! I’ll probably look at getting it replaced at some point but I guess there’s no rush to change it.

Whilst I was at Channel M in the afternoon, I got a text from James wishing me a happy birthday, and asking me if I wanted to go out for a drink in the evening. I hadn’t planned to do anything at all (as usual!) but I said yes, and he texted back to say he’d see if Jamie or Sarah were free that night as well.

So it was arranged that I’d pick up Jamie from Sarah’s, and then would go round to collect James and Helen, and then we’d decide where to go. I got to Sa’s at about quarter to nine, and she’d got a choc-chip muffin with a candle in it waiting for me – so I actually had a birthday cake! She’d also bought me a present which was a little bottle of red wine! We’d been talking recently about wine, and I was saying that the few sips that I’ve tasted in the past have always tasted like vinegar to me! So she’s decided that I need to be educated in the appreciation of wine, and this is the starting point! I will try it at some point, because it obviously must taste better than I think, otherwise no-one would drink it at all!

We had to wait about half an hour before Jamie was able to get over, and after picking up the Torry’s, we drove to Chorlton to a bar that was supposed to be pretty good (and smoke-free) but it was a bit busy in there, so we just had one drink before heading down to the Woodstock in Didsbury.

It was really nice hanging out with these guys – I’ve not really done that much socially with them for ages, and it made me realise a bit how much I’ve missed it. We managed to waste a few quid on a quiz machine playing ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, ‘Pub Quiz’ and ‘Spot The Difference’…suffice to say, we didn’t win anything from it!! And the rest of the time we just chilled and had a really good time. Made a real change from my normal birthdays! There are a few photos of the night here.

Got back around 1am and managed to grab a few hours’ sleep before having to get up pretty early to be picked up for a filming job I was doing at a big meeting down at the NEC. It was a pretty long day – 12 hours including travelling, but at least I wasn’t driving! I even fell asleep on the back seat on the way back!

Bit of a gap since my last blog, so had better write one now!

It’s been really busy with work. Me and James got the first Preview DVD completed in time (just!) and the response to it’s been really positive which is good. Now we’ve got to start thinking about how we’re going to do the next one!!

On Thursday I saw Jamie for the first time in about a year which was a bit weird. Good weird though I think. He was at a mountain bike shop in Cheadle whilst on his lunch break, so popped in briefly before heading off on a site visit. Like I said, the last time I saw him was a year ago at James and Helen’s wedding, though we chatted online back in November, and I was kind of worried it’d be really awkward, but it wasn’t too bad considering. I think we’re going to arrange to go out on a bike ride together when he’s got a free weekend sometime.

Then on Friday, I helped James move a tonne of stuff into his and Helen’s new house in Levenshulme. Helen was off on her sponsored bike-ride to Paris, and everyone else from Manchester was up in the North East at Helen Mason’s wedding. Their house is really nice – it’s the kind of house I wouldn’t mind having some day. It was so hot though – not ideal for moving furniture and boxes around, but we got it done, and grabbed takeaway and a DVD in the evening.

And last night I was over in Ramsbottom (middle-of-nowhere, north of Manchester!) for Rob Hallam’s birthday barbeque. Didn’t know too many people there other than Rob (although Ajay and Martin were also there)… though I did recognise one of the guests even though he was out of his normal costume – Kenny Baker, aka R2D2 from Star Wars!

I went down to Bristol this weekend for Ali’s 30th (I find it quite amusing that she’s now back in the same decade as me!) and in true Ali-style, it was a barbeque… in February!
It wasn’t the hottest of nights(!) but they had a bonfire and fireworks, so you didn’t mind spending time outside.

I didn’t know most of the people there, but two others from uni were there – George (minus Hazel because she wasn’t well) and Helen were both there, so it wasn’t too bad.

I drove back up yesterday afternoon – but because of roadworks managed to miss the turn off from the M4 onto the M5 and I nearly ended up in Wales! I managed to get off just before the Severn Bridge and turned round to head back the correct way!

I’m off down to London this week with James to go to an exhibition and conference called VideoForum. It’s not costing too much either – we’ve managed to get train tickets for £25, and the uni are paying for a room in a Travelodge for James, so I’ll be able to crash in there with him… so it’s worked out loads cheaper than I expected. I reckon we’ll find it really useful – we’ll be working together this year producing DVDs for a trend forecasting project, so I think it will be good to see what kind of kit is out there, and also to get to some of the seminars too so we can get the DVDs up to a higher standard (hopefully!!)

So, I’m officially another year older.

Whoopee.

I really don’t like my birthday! I managed to keep it from most people at work, and didn’t do anything in particular to celebrate it. Actually, to take my mind of it all, I took myself to the cinema to watch the new Wallace & Gromit film (which is brilliant by the way!)

Got 4 birthday cards… which was nice I suppose.

Went to Old Orleans last night with a load of people to celebrate Dave Bateman’s 21st… although his birthday was actually on the 4th January, so it was really his 21st and 1 month birthday!

I caught up with a few people I hadn’t seen for ages, and there were quite few who I didn’t know as well! And the best bit was at the end of the meal, just as we were all sorting out our money to pay, Dave’s dad decided that he was going to pay for everyone’s food! That was really cool, although we did all feel a little bit embarrassed because none of us were expecting anything like that! Though we soon got over it and thanked him for his generosity!!

Just about to head down to Tamworth for the day to get my car door repaired and resprayed after the break-in last week. And it means I get get in some visits to relatives as well!

Spent the weekend in a village called Tideswell in the Peak District for Fiona’s 30th birthday. She rented a cottage out there, and a group of us went out for a walk on the Saturday afternoon, and then stayed over until Sunday.

It had snowed in the Peaks earlier in the week, so we were trekking through snowy fields and the like, and it was really smart. Pretty cold and slippy though! It actually took us a bit longer than we thought it would (possibly because two of the party were pregnant!), and it got dark well before we’d finished! Luckily there was enough light to still read the map!

In the evening, we all went to the pub next door for a meal, and then headed back to the house to chill out.

Then on the Sunday, after most people had gone, we went out for a shorter walk around Cheedale, which was where I’d gone to a couple of years ago when Jamie and some of the other guys went bridge-swinging in the middle of the night!

We walked alongside the river, and it was really beautiful around there, although I found it a little tricky in places, because some of the rocks were a bit slippy, and the snow was beginning to melt. This also meant that the river was rising, and when we came back along the same route, parts of the path we had taken were now becoming part of the river! And it wasn’t helped by it starting to chuck it down as well!

There are a load of photos (and a couple of pictures taken with my phone!) here.

I can hardly move this morning because I went on a walk in Edale in the Peak District yesterday with Jamie, Ben, Cathy, Sarah, Celia and Ali… and I reckon it was the longest walk that I’ve ever done!!! We worked out that we did between 10 and 11 miles, and there was quite a bit of up and down with that as well! My legs are really aching, but it was a very good day.

We started off from the village at 10.30am, and we got back to the cars at about 4 o’clock, so we basically walked for nearly five hours not including breaks!

Anyway, the highlight of the day was a very funny moment that was pretty unfortunate for one person, but had everyone in hystrerics! We were walking over a really large section of pretty boggy land, and we were having to be quite careful where we stepped because it was very muddy. So walking along, we’re all getting quite a bit of mud over our boots as we sink a few inches, when suddenly Sarah makes a step which ends up in her dropping through the mud… and she ended up stuck in the stinking bog with the mud now up above her knees!! And as she was there trying to get out, but being pulled back by the suction of the mud, the first thing that people shouted was “Get a camera out!!”. Hence the photo of Sarah being pulled out by Ben and Jamie! To see what those white trousers looked like after she was pulled out, check out the rest of the photos here!

When we got back to Manchester, we went out to Nawaab in Levenshulme, which is a kind of fixed-price-all-you-can-eat-curry-house… which is ideal for me considering I don’t actually like curry! But I made an exception ‘cos we were there for three people’s birthdays – Dean’s, Kat’s and Susannah’s, and there were about 45 of us in total! I ate popadoms, chicken and naan, and had 2 puddings to make up for the lack of main course!! Then a group went into the city centre to go clubbing, but all of us who had been for the walk were so done in, we just went home straight after the meal! Such party animals!

Not much new to report really – except that I’ve decided to bite the bullet and said I’ll go on the ski holiday to Switzerland in the New Year! I’m hoping to get some lessons in before I go, so that I’m not totally rubbish when I get there!

Had quite a good night out on Saturday. Went into town with Sarah, Emma and some other guys to see a band called Stoney Lacuna at a bar in the Northern Quarter. There was a pretty good crowd there, and the place was pretty packed. I hadn’t been to anything like that for absolutely ages, but I really enjoyed it.

Oh and it’s my birthday today… which is a bit of a non-event considering I’ll be working late tonight!