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!

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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!

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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!

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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.

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We’ve had quite a bit of snow these last few days, and yesterday a few of us went for a walk in Macclesfield Forest. It was freezing cold, and we walked quite a way – and seemed to be going uphill a lot more than downhill – but it was a really great afternoon.

We were kind of busking it a little bit, since we didn’t have a map or anything, and the cloud came down quite quickly as we made it to the top of one of the hills – but Penny had been to the forest before, so had a rough idea of where we needed to go! Though there were times when I wasn’t convinced we were ever going to make it back to the cars, especially when we’d been walking so long that it got dark!!

There are some photos I took of our walk here.

Work’s been quite busy recently, and we’re trying to wrap some jobs up before we finish for Christmas. We’re working on graphics for two shows on that will be on Channel 5 early next year, so really need to try and get them pretty much sorted by Wednesday at the latest.

On Thursday night, me and James went out with a couple of the other businesses from Houldsworth Mill for Christmas drinks down at the festive markets, and then onto some bars. We did the same last year, and it’s a pretty good way of doing it, because it would be quite a small event if it was just us!

Anyway, we ended up in probably one of the most pretentious places I’ve been to! I’d heard of the Circle Bar, but had never actually been in there, and to be honest, I don’t think I’d be that bothered if I never went there again! The beer was nasty, the music was rubbish, and the other people there were just really strange! It was like they were all people who thought they were something special, but weren’t at all! The only positive think was that there was a sofa that we’d managed to grab, so I was able to get a comfy seat!

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As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I moved to Manchester at the end of November 1999, and it was the 2nd week here that I went (which was also the last one before Christmas). It’s really weird, ‘cos I can quite clearly remember the people I spoke to afterwards as though it was much more recent – Andy Knox, Dan Plagerson, Neil Cornthwaite and Sarah Smith.

I still have my Reach sampler cassette and copy of ‘Lift’ that I got that night, and I guess even with how things have turned out, it’s still had quite an impact on my life because a lot of the people outside of work that I know in Manchester are through Reach, and of course that’s where I met James, who I now run doodledoMOTION with, so that’s obviously quite a big thing!

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It was a pretty manic couple of days – we headed down late on the Tuesday night and stayed in a Travelodge on the M1, and then arrived in Ealing for about 10 o’clock. The shooting was split into 2 blocks – the first day was a chromakey day, and the second was a live performance.

The greenscreen that had been hired for the shoot was massive! We spent the morning rigging it up, then tried to light it evenly which was easier said than done! Then the guys got into their costumes (which I won’t reveal at this stage – I’ll wait until they’ve announced what single they’re releasing!) and we spent the rest of the day filming various set pieces and individual verses. It was a pretty long day… we wrapped around 10.30pm and then had a bit of a drive to a really nice hotel in some other part of London (I have no idea where!)

Then the next day we shot a load of live performance footage using Rob’s EX1 with a Letus 35mm adapter, and the shots looked really great. It’s amazing how much difference using 35mm lenses makes – the depth of field you get makes it look so filmic. I really want to get one, but need to make sure we’d get enough use from it to justify the expense!

We finished at around 11pm on the Thursday night, and then had to drive back to Manchester, and it took forever! We were both really tired so shared the driving, and I finally managed to get to bed about 4am… but had to be up at 8am to take back the equipment we’d hired – brilliant!

Then yesterday was John Cieszynski’s stag day, which saw me try paintballing for the first time.

I didn’t realise how expensive it can be – I basically rationed the paintballs that I got as part of the basic price, but some of the others spent a fortune buying extra ammo!

It was a good laugh, although it would probably have helped if I was a bit fitter! And during the first game, I got shot in my leg by a member of my own team! And it really hurt – I’ve had quite a big bruise come up today! I also got hit on my ear and the back of my hand, so it was a day of pain!

Then in the evening we met up in town for some food, and as we were arriving the heavens opened. I’d not seen heavy rain like that for a long time – the streets of Manchester turned into rivers! It was a good day all in all, and looking forward to the wedding in a month’s time!

One not-so-good thing at the moment is that on Thursday I discovered that I may be going to the Coldplay gig on my own in September. I’m supposed to be going with James and Helen, but they’ve now found out they have a family wedding on the same day which they can’t get out of. It’s quite gutting for them, because we bought the tickets last October, and James bought Helen’s ticket as a Christmas present. For me, I was looking forward to going with both of them – obviously the gig itself will be great, but the fact I’d get to spend some time with them outside of work was definitely a bonus. I think they’re going to see if they can get there later on, but obviously with so many people there, the chances of us meeting up there would be impossible. I’ve still got a spare ticket to sell, which might mean I find someone else to go with, but I don’t really know anyone else who wants to go, so might have to just sell it to a random person. Just a real shame, because I was really looking forward to it.

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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!

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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!

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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.

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For the first half of it, I caught up with a couple of Reach guys…Dave Bateman was DJing in Lift (the skate park), and also saw Rob Kay who was DJing on one of the nights with thebandwithnoname.

On the changeover day, I went up to Bristol to visit Ali and Pete (and to stick my jeans and towels in their washing machine!), and that was the only day when it didn’t actually rain!

Then for the second part, some guys from Tamworth were there – Andy, Tom, Dave, John, Fiona and Sophie, and I spend a bit of time hanging round with them.

I originally planned to stay until yesterday morning and return, but after waking up on Wednesday morning, decided I couldn’t stick staying another night in my tent, so left late that night and got back to Manchester at about 2.30am yesterday morning!

There are some photos of this year’s Soul Survivor here.

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At the end of January went to see Delirious play a gig at Liverpool Cathedral, and it was awesome! There was quite a group of us – me, Oliver, Rosie, Sarah, Emma, Colin and Caroline – and we also saw Fiona, Jules, Neil and Sarah who had made their own way there.

The cathedral itself was amazing – it’s 100 years old, and looks really cool. And it was fantastic seeing a band like Delirious playing there. I saw them play Coventry cathedral when I was at uni, and that was one of the best gigs I’d been to. The atmosphere at this one was brilliant, and they played a good mix of their new and old stuff.

The place was totally packed, and the view wasn’t the greatest because the stage wasn’t that high, but even with the wierd acoustics of such a large building, the sound was really good.

Then last weekend I went down to Kidderminster for the Reach weekend away. I had to take the Friday at work because the coach was leaving Manchester at 5.30, and it would’ve been pretty difficult to get there for that time. Anyway, there were two coaches taking us all down there, and I think I chose well, because the other coach got lost and went north instead of south, and arrived a couple of hours after we got there!

It was quite wierd, because the place we were staying at used to be called Fort Rocky, and I went there on a summer camp back in 1987! I had hazy memories of a lot of the things there, but the place was a lot smaller than I remember it – maybe that’s because I was a just a kid then!

Jamie managed to dislocate his shoulder again playing basketball on the Saturday afternoon, and since he’d travelled there in his car, I ended up driving him back home, along with Sarah, and a new guy called Simon, who I discovered is good mates with Andy Chadwick who I knew as a kid, and was on the same summer camp at Fort Rocky back in ’87!

Check out the photos here.

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We left Manchester on New Year’s Day and drove down to Folkestone where we got on a coach which took us through the channel tunnel, then across France, and into Switzerland to our final destination of Lauterbrunnen which is a village just above Interlaken… it was a horrific journey – we were on the coach for over 18 hours, and I hardly got any sleep because there wasn’t really that much room to do anything!

Anyway, our first day skiing saw me get left behind by my lesson group on the side of a mountain, which wasn’t really the best of starts to be honest! I had to clambour back up through some pretty deep snow, and by the time I got back up to the top, I wasn’t really in the mood to do much more skiing that day!

Day two wasn’t too bad… until the end of it. After my lesson in the morning, I went and did a blue run with Fiona (who’s a pretty good skier, so was able to advise me a lot of the time!), and even though it was really hard work, and quite stressful at times, I had a real sense of achievement when I’d done it. However, whilst I was doing this, I fell awkwardly at one point and I felt my knee go as my ski (which hadn’t come off when I went over) twisted round the opposite way to my body. Anyway, it didn’t feel too bad at the time, apart from a little bit of pain across the back of my right leg), but by the next morning, I couldn’t even walk properly without my knee giving way whenever I put pressure on the leg.

So basically I wasn’t able to ski for the rest of the week, and had to buy a sports bandage for my knee – which would normally cost less than a tenner in the UK, but when you’re up in the mountains in one of Europe’s most expensive countries, that price rises to about £25!! Athough compared to Jamie, my injury wasn’t too bad – on the Thursday, he was off doing some snowboarding and fell back after doing a jump – dislocating his shoulder!! So rather than come back on the coach, he had to fly back to the UK, so it wasn’t all bad!!

You can see photos from the holiday here.

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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!

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Sarah and Emma came round for some food on Thursday night, which tested my culinary skills ever so slightly!! I thought I’d try and cook something that I hadn’t done before, so I found a couple of recipes that required me making my own herby breadcrumbs and marinating vegetables in olive oil, garlic and herbs!! I actually surprised myself because it tasted pretty good!! Makes a change from the usual meals I end up having!

Also, some of the guys from Reach are talking about going skiing in the New Year, and I’m kind of tempted to go too. I’ve never skied in my life before, so that could be quite difficult, but I reckon it could be quite a laugh. The only things I need to look at is getting the time off work, and also whether I can afford it ‘cos it’s slightly more expensive that the holidays I usually go on! I think I’ll try and make a decision sometime this week.

I’m off down to Tamworth for the day tomorrow – mainly for a dental appointment (arrggghhh!!) – but it’s quite good timing ‘cos it’s Vikky’s birthday on Wednesday, so I’ll be able to see her when I’m down there. The only downside is that my appointment is at ten past nine, so I’m going to have to leave Manchester at about 6am! I think I need to try and get an early night tonight!

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Anyway, following a good night’s sleep (after watching a tape of that night’s Big Brother!), we went over to Tonbridge for lunch, and then went rowing around the castle’s moat! It has to be said that we weren’t really the best of rowers… we all took turns, and ended up in the bank many times, and also came perilously close to some big boats on a few occasions! I had a go at rowing on my own nearer the end, and that was a bit easier to control than pulling on just one oar… but I have definitely decided that sitting on a rowing machine in the gym is a lot easier to control – even if loads more tiring!!

The weather was gorgeous – in fact I got a bit burnt – so that’s my summer tanning completed then! In the evening we had a barbeque which somehow I pretty much got out of doing! Actually it was my second barbeque of the week having been to Jamie’s lifegroup one on Tuesday night, so I was getting quite used to burnt sausages and burgers by now!

Sunday again was really sunny – so we just sat out in the garden taking in the rays! I left just before 3 o’clock, and this time it only took me 4 and a half hours to get home, getting back to Manchester at half seven… arriving late for a quiz night thing Reach were doing at Jabez Clegg! I joined Dean’s team and they actually won(!), even though I came in half way through, and could answer hardly any of the questions! Oh well.

Have a look at my photos of the weekend here.

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A load of us went over to Wales yesterday morning to go for a walk in Snowdonia for Dave Cieszynski’s birthday, and I don’t really think it had registered with me that Snowdon is in fact the tallest mountain in Wales! So we ended up walking about 10 miles in all, and 1085 metres up! It was quite a killer, ‘cos there are parts of it which are really quite steep, and it’s very rocky, so your feet can end up sliding all over the place!

For the first hour going up, I didn’t find it too hard really, but as time went on, it got more difficult. It took us about 3 hours to get to the summit, and the view from up there was stunning, but it was also pretty cold on the top! It was a bit quicker coming down – that only took about an hour and a half – but my feet were beginning to feel the strain by that time. And when I finally got up this morning, it took a little bit longer than usual to walk down the stairs – very painful!… and I’m at work at the moment, and it’s quite a struggle walking from one end of the office to the other! Check out the photos here.

On the way back, we stopped off in Llandudno and had some tea at Emma’s mum’s house. When I was lodging at Emma’s last summer, her mum and her dogs and cats were staying at the house whilst she was waiting to buy this one, so I got to meet all the animals again! Everyone was pretty worn out, and just crashed out in the living room, and I was so glad that I hadn’t driven there – it’s much better being a passenger after a day like that!

Other news… I officially became Irish last week! I received a letter from the Irish embassy in London saying that I’d been entered into the Irish register of foreign births, and that I can now apply for an Irish passport! This doesn’t mean I’m not a Brit anymore though… because my mum’s parent’s moved over here from Ireland, she’s automatically dual nationality, and because I’m next generation I can apply for dual nationality as well and I have! Steve and Vikky are going to apply as well, but we have to do it separately because we need to supply so much documentation! Now all I’ve got to work on is my Irish accent… to be sure(!)

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I’ve got Jamie (from Reach/lifegroup) staying in my spare room at the moment ‘cos he’s waiting to move into James Torry’s new house which he’s going to be gutting and refurbishing. It’s a bit weird actually ‘cos I’ve lived on my own for the last two years, and now I’ve got to be considerate to someone else!!

I’m videoing a wedding this weekend in Chester which is a bit scary – I vowed never to do another one after doing the video of Reuben and Esther’s wedding back in 1997! This one I’m doing is for Steve Clamp and Claire Cartwright, who both used to work here at MUTV, and Steve is now working for BBC Midlands Today in Birmingham. Should be pretty cool though ‘cos some people that I used to work with but haven’t seen for quite a while will be there as well.

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Well, still waiting to hear when I can move into my new house – it’s looking like it won’t be until mid to late August – the only problem is I have to have moved out of my current house by the 29th July, which is a bit of a problem! I’ve got to find somewhere to store a house-full of furniture, let alone find somewhere to live for a few weeks myself! If I can’t move in until the end of August, I may just go off to Soul Survivor for 3 weeks ‘cos it’d be cheaper that staying in a B&B in Manchester! I’ve got the whole time off work, so it may be the best thing to do! It appears that the damp problem isn’t as bad as it sounded, but I’m still waiting to get official confirmation on that. Jeb & Nicky (whose house I’m buying) were getting the house they’re planning to buy surveyed yesterday, so hopefully if there were no problems, things may start moving pretty quickly.

Was down in Birmingham on Saturday night to meet up with a few guys who were on my masters course at uni – Surjit, Don and Mike. Was really weird seeing them all again – we left UCE Christmas 1997 – but was cool catching up with them. We went for a drink in the afternoon at one of the bars on the side of the canal at Broad Street, and in the evening went for a Balti… well, they went for a Balti – I had my usual meal of chicken and chips, not being a major fan of curry myself!!! )

Had a really smart day on Sunday – a load of us from Reach went off to the beach for the afternoon again, and the weather was really nice! I took some shorts this time so I was able to go out into the sea – when we finally got to it! You can see some photos of the day here.

Work’s been manic as usual – last Monday I managed to do 23 and a half hour shift! (started at 8am, left the office at 7.30am) I’ve been working on a TV commercial for Manchester United’s pre-season tour, and had to get Sir Alex Ferguson to film some stuff for it, which stressed me out pretty much in the run up to it!! The ad is supposed to start running this weekend on Sky and ITV, just need to get all the tapes out to all the various tv companies now!

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Been a pretty cool few weeks really – I went to Alton Towers for the first time ever a couple of Wednesdays ago, and it was really good. We had some tickets that got us in half price so it was a real bargain. And I think we were really lucky too, ‘cos it wasn’t too busy, and we hardly had to queue for any major lengths of time at all… I think the longest was for about 20 minutes or so to go on ‘Air’, the new rollercoaster there where you basically just hang off it. It was a real adrenelin rush – excellent!

And the Jubilee Bank Holiday last week kept me busy – on Monday I went to a barbeque with some of the guys at Roz’s, and it was a really good night… I even had a bit of a kick-around with a football in the back garden – and it’s not very often that that happens! Then on Tuesday, a load of us went to the sea-side!! We went up to Southport (just north of Liverpool) and it was a pretty good day – we had one heavy burst of rain, but the rest of the time it was really nice. I even caught the sun quite a bit, which I wasn’t expecting – cheaper than going abroad!

On to the latest in my house-buying saga… the building society have done a survey on the house, and they’ve found a couple of thing that need doing before they’ll give me the full mortgage… basically, the main problem is they reckon there’s a problem with rising damp, and they say I must get it sorted… I have a feeling that could be pricey…

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Struggling a bit at work this afternoon – I’ve got to write a script by tomorrow morning for Angus Deayton to read… yep, that’s him off ‘Have I Got News For You’. It’s got to be a three minute monologue promoting subscribing to MUTV, but it’s got to be written in his style which is a lot harder to do than you might expect – especially since I’m not really a comedy script-writer! Oh well, I guess I’ll come up with something, but I reckon he’ll end up having to add his own ad-libs!

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