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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

Well it’s been quite a busy weekend – on Friday I was over in Liverpool shooting a live music video for thebandwithnoname and LZ7. They’ve done a joint track and need some kind of promo video to go with it, so I organised a 9 camera set-up at the monthly ‘Space’ event. I dragged Dave Bateman and Bruce from The Message along to operate cameras, and then used a few guys from the event itself, so I’m going to have a lot of footage to go through! The only downside of it really was that the stage was tiny, and it was really cramped with effectively 2 bands on there at the same time, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Then on Sunday, I went over to Rob’s in Ramsbottom (because he’d lent me some cameras for Friday’s shoot and I had to return them) and we ended up having a bit of an impromptu barbeque which was pretty cool.

We tried to get Rob’s reclaimed gas barbeque working, but even though we could hear gas coming out from somewhere, it just wouldn’t light. Eventually we gave up, thus averting an explosive disaster(!), and used some disposable ones instead! Clare made burgers from fresh minced beef and onions, which I’ve never done before, and they tasted really good. Next time I have a barbeque, I think I’ll give the frozen ones a miss and make my own!

I got home late Sunday night and watched the season finale of ‘Fringe’ on Sky+, and wow… it was excellent! A pretty major plot twist, and quite an unexpected ending! Won’t say much more if people haven’t seen it yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to the next series!

On to Monday, and with it being yet another Bank Holiday, a group of us headed over to Formby beach again.

The weather wasn’t too bad – we had a few spits of rain later on, but the rest of the time was okay, and I even caught the sun a little bit! We did the usual beach volleyball, which again was really very funny! And there were also a couple of excellent sand sculptures produced by Tom and Chris which had to be seen to be believed!

There are some photos of all our beach shenanigans here.

Then in the evening, we went back to Phil’s because Ralph was house-sitting there, and after a false start with a slightly inappropriate film starring Russell Brand(!), we ended up watching a quirky little film called ‘Son of Rambow‘ which I thought was really good, and was something I probably wouldn’t have watched otherwise.

Other news – I mentioned last month about doing the graphics for 2 documentaries about Fawlty Towers, and they’ve both now gone out on G.O.L.D. The pre-publicity for the programmes generated a lot of interest in the press, There’s a video on the BBC News website which shows the amount of press at the launch!

For the first of the shows – ‘Fawlty Towers Re-Opened’ – we produced the opening titles, but for the second 2-hour show on the 17th – ‘Fawlty Exclusive: Basil’s Best Bits’ we provided opening titles, episode guides, interview backgrounds, as well as other in-programme graphics.

I thought they were really well put together shows, and had some great behind-the-scenes stuff as well as obviously a load of hilarious clips. And on top of that, they were voiced by none other than Stephen Fry!

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!

Well it’s been a pretty busy few days… I was in the office for most of the Easter Weekend trying to get some graphics work finished for this show we’re doing for Tiger Aspect. It’s basically a couple of documentaries about Fawlty Towers for G.O.L.D. (very similar to ‘The Vicar of Dibley‘ and ‘Blackadder‘ ones we’ve worked on previously), and we’ve been working on titles, stings, episode guides and interview backgrounds.

But I did manage to get a few hours off on Monday to go to the beach! I was in the office preparing another time-consuming render, when I got a text from Dave saying that a group was heading off to the beach for the afternoon, so I decided to go to that instead and carry on with the graphics later!

We set off to Formby in a few cars, and it was all fine until we actually got near our destination – it appeared that everyone else in the North West were heading there as well! Rather than spending the whole afternoon waiting to get into the car park, we eventually managed to park up on a housing estate and then took a short walk back towards the beach.

We eventually found a bit of the beach that wasn’t full of people, and also didn’t have bits of brick sticking out of the sand – not ideal for playing sports! I didn’t bother with the game of American Football, since I have no idea at all how the game works!!

But later on, we played beach volleyball with a proper net that Dan had just bought from Decathlon (he was taking it seriously!) I was pretty crap at it, but it was good fun!

There are some photos from the afternoon here. All in all, it was a good Bank Holiday Monday, even if I had to be in work for part of it!

After six months of us moving into our office, we’ve finally (almost) finished sorting it! I say ‘almost’ because we’ve still got a few little jobs to sort with the edit suite like some internal skirting boards, and some shelves that need putting up, but now we’ve got some pictures up on the wall, it feels like a really nice place to work in.

Also, we’ve just launched the proper version of our website – www.doodledomotion.co.uk. There’d just been a single page there before now, but I think the new one looks great. Our biggest challenge with it is to make sure we find the time to update the blog, and keep our portfolio up-to-date! Also, due to some music and copyright restrictions, we can’t put examples of everything we do up there, but hopefully we’ll be able to get a good range of the kind of stuff we do.

Work’s been a little bit less hectic over the last few weeks, though there’s enough to keep us occupied. Drama Trails really took its toll – I ended up doing 63 days in a row which wasn’t ideal! Not had a chance yet to have a proper break, but it’s been nice to get my weekends back!

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!)

We went for a pub lunch, then for a nice walk alongside the canal, and it was a really sunny day which definitely helped! Then in the evening I went to Bristol to kip over at Ali’s house, then back up to Stockport on a very overcrowded train on the Monday. You can check out the photos from the day here.

Thought I’d better do an update for February considering it’s the last day of the month!

Anyway, I’ve been really busy with work, and a lot of my time has been taken up with working on ‘The Soul Shutter‘ (notice there’s a ‘The‘ there now… I only discovered that after doing the opening titles!) I think I’ve now finished with all the CG work – there’s a meeting that Hamish and Rob are going to on Thursday to get feedback, but to be honest, I don’t really have any more time to work on it, and I’ve already put hours more work into it than I originally thought I’d have to. It’s fine because it does look really good, but they’re getting a really good deal!

Went for another bike ride with Jamie on Sunday afternoon which was good. We rode along the Longdendale Trail which is a route that goes runs alongside 5 reservoirs and follows the old Manchester to Sheffield railway line, and in all we did 14 miles there and back! 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.

At the beginning of February, me and James went down to London for a couple of days to attend this year’s Video Forum event which was really good. Got to go to a few good production seminars, and saw loads of kit I’d like to buy! Did actually spend a bit of cash buying a better head for my tripod and a remote zoom unit for my camera which should be useful.

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!!

I went with Jamie into the Peaks, and we did a ride around Ladybower, Derwent and Howden reservoirs. It was about 15 miles in all, which is quite intense when you’ve not been on a bike for 16 years! I was quite apprehensive to start with – the longer I’ve waited to do it, the more I’ve convinced myself that I wouldn’t be able to ride any more!

We started off on a reasonably quiet road and I was soon able to ride without wobbling too much, and then quite soon we went onto a track around the valley which was pretty muddy and rocky in places, but generally wasn’t too much of a nightmare. It took me a while to get used to the gears again… it’s crazy because before I got a car, I used to cycle everywhere, but I suppose it was nearly half a lifetime ago!

Definitely plan to do it again soon, although I am starting to feel the after effects of it all now… my legs are aching and it’s painful when I sit down!

Yesterday was Dave Ciezynski’s stag day, and a load of us went over to Snowdonia to do a bit of a walk up a mountain called Tryfan. I guess I should have guessed it wouldn’t be the easiest task, because Jamie was leading everyone, so I found it pretty challenging.

As we were climbing up, it started to snow, and the further we got, then we found that there was a bit of ice around on the rocks as well. Unfortunately, we has to climb up quite a few of these, and there were a few times where I had to climb over or up rocks where I felt really scared because we were quite exposed on the side of the mountain, and I was seriously concerned that I might actually fall off!

We finally got to the top, and it was pretty cold up there, but at least it had stopped snowing, though there was a bit of an intermittant mist which kept coming down. So, then we started making our way across a ridge, and then started making our way back down the mountain.

Just before we got to the bottom, I was walking over some quite boggy ground, when I took a step, and suddenly found myself up to my knees in mud! I managed to get myself out, and luckily I was wearing some waterproof trousers so it wasn’t too bad. Fortunately, no-one actually saw me fall in, which I was glad of, especially as I’d found it highly amusing when an identical thing happened to someone else exactly a year ago!

After the walk, we went to a nearby pub and had a nice meal, and were back in Manchester for about ten o’clock. Not the latest stag party I’ve been to, but still a really good one!

Check out the photos of the day here.

Right… it’s been a whole month since I did a news update, so here’s one now!

Earlier this month I went on a camping weekend with Dean and Michael (and some other guys who I didn’t really know!) to a place called Shell Island in mid Wales. It’s quite a nice place – where we camped we could see the mountains of Snowdonia on one side, and the sea on the other!

It was really sunny on the Friday when we arrived, but unfortunately on Saturday and Sunday it went a bit manky. Me, Dean and Michael ended up doing quite a bit of castle-visiting… not sure why(!)… but we stopped off at a little castle on the way there, and then on the Saturday afternoon, took a look around Harlech castle. Then on the Sunday afternoon, just before we drove back, we took a walk up by some small waterfalls which was cool, although we had a little panic when Dean realised he’d dropped his mobile phone somewhere along out route, so we had to go and trace our steps, checking in all the undergrowth. Found it in the end though!

My main achievement this month is my newly-disovered skill of cake baking!! Sarah & Emma are running in the New York Marathon in November, and they have to raise quite a lot of cash for Christie’s Hospital, so Sa held a cake sale at work on Wednesday, and I foolishly said I’d do some cakes for them to sell!! I had one attempt at baking some blueberry muffins and chocolate brownies last Sunday – which turned out pretty bad to be honest! I’ve now discovered that my oven is quite rubbish, and that it’s hotter than it says it is, and the heat’s uneven! So something else to add to my list of home improvements! Anyway, tried again on Tuesday, and the results were a lot more successful! This time I went for chocolate chip cookies, and produced another batch of brownies – which this time were brown rather than black! And my pièce de résistance… a sponge cake with fresh raspberries, and a crème fraîche and mascapone! Don’t know what it tasted like, but it looked good… and apparently it sold within minutes for £10!!

Oh, and the final amount of cash that I raised for my run was £317!! Well chuffed!