Moving Out & On

Another week, another blog. This week's random thoughts are about the whole concept of moving out of where I am now & into my first house!
I've lived in Kidlington for about 15 years, with my Grandfather (Ian), since secondary school & it has been a bit of a mixed blessing - sometime marvellous with friends old & new & sometimes periods of great loneliness & frustration.

However, this is not my main reasoning for this blog - it's the fact that I'm now moving out & on to a new place. It's not going to be perfect (in fact, some might say it's very much far from it!) but it's a new place to call home. The idea is that I will then carve out some independence & learn how to make my way in the world myself. In doing this, I've ended up starting to pack up my possessions & have of course in the process had to 'lose' some 'less necessary' ones!

When doing this I have got rid of such random things like boxes of memories containing this from school & my childhood - the classic was my A Level Biology folder which had some classic 'additions' to it - bringing back memories of people borrowing my stuff & returning it covered in pictures of naked chicks & Begbie from the movie trainspotting - weird!

The really important thing for me was finding an old box of photographs & a box of letters & cards. I've kept all the photos & will need to go through them & maybe put them in albums eventually.

However, it was the letters that really stuck for me as I went though & sifted the cool from the yawn/fail. There were some letter from my Grandmother (Jean), which I had to mostly purge, but there were letters from Princess Diana & Earl Spencer's family, Mohamed Al-Fayed & even from the King of Jordan - definitely keeping those then!

The most interesting ones for me were from a time before emails (yes kids it did exist!) & people like Jo, Giz, Cheryl, Vet Boy & I used to communicate with the hand-written word! It brought back the classic memories of being a teenager & much happier & innocent times. I think I might have to dig them out next time I see them all - to see the reaction their words get!

Overall it's rather therapeutic to start to sift through things & purge a little, but also sad to say goodbye to bygone ages & periods of my life. And yet exciting to be starting something new. all this has come through one day of packing up - what will tomorrow bring?!

To be continued...

Musical Interlude

Have to post this link - just for this track really: Friendly Fires: "Jump in the Pool" seriously huge song & the horn noise around 2:25 mark is epic - enjoy:

Great Moments in Life: Holidays

Playing on the black gravel beaches of Teneriffe with my little bother, when were much more innocent children.

Learning to ski in Serre Chevalier as a per-teen whilst still at school & earning my 3 star's badges.

The French Exchanges - I've been on 2 & they both involved mostly learning to swear in french! However, the experiences of other cultures useful for setting me up later in life with an interest in cultures.

Giant seafood & epic meals in Portugal - including giant grilled prawns - learning the word langoustine!

Staying in the Schweizerhof in Davos with James, Susan & Don & Will & Kat. Also in the same resort being there at the same time as one of the World Economic Forum guns, barriers & security everywhere.

Skiing in Galtur [Austria] with the Cranston clan on numerous occasions - great memories of hanging with all manner of creature; all the Cranstons & Hobbit, Nate Adams, Dave & Rachel Adams & Madds & the old man - brilliant holidays.


Road trips in the summer 2005/6/7/8 - packing as much clothing & gear as could fit in the car - drive to see friends & family & living out of my car - a lot of fun & would recommend it to those wanting to escape for a few weeks of unplanned win.

Getting the chance to go to America in 2008 - a whirlwind trip starting with getting a flight within a couple of days of finding out I was going, to meeting up with a party of people who I'd never met before & had no idea what thy looked it, going to New York & Washington (amongst other places) & sitting in the House of Representatives & seeing the media broadcast room - epic!

Great Moments in Life: Dance Music

Discovering Trance - Gatecrasher Red on cassette & then the arrival of CD's meant life would never be the same again - dance music forever a part of my psyche.


Being given & educated in, eclectric music [thanks Chris Bradford & Matt 'Brad' Oakley], then seeing Lemon Jelly play in Birmingham, after getting 4 tickets, taking both my parents to a gig together - classic gig.

Discovering Hard House - via Rick Castle/ISC crew - Insomnia 1 & Hard House Euphoria begin a long & industrious career as a clubber/cyberfreak - baggy combats, Acupunture shoes, tight Cyberdog (ultraviolet glowing) vest tops & spiky multi-coloured hair! My understanding of Dance musical genre expanding rapidly.

Clubbing for the first time properly to Hard House - Storm [Coalville/Leicester]  with some of the old ISC configs crew - best moment all lined up on the podiums, all pretending to fly in formation - brilliant.

Becoming a member of Sundissential [I still have my members card!] & discovering the joys of real clubbing, although I must admit I was the only one just on just water & not other...chemicals, but the experience of very happy people just there for the music & the atmosphere of awesomes.

Seeing the epic Lab-4 playing Sundissential & 2 venues in Oxford, getting Adam's autograph & chatting to the big man himself - always the toughest music & no DJ could follow them - they had to be the set closers of choice! No hard house DJ/artist was tougher back in the day.

Meeting up with Ed Steele [from school] & discovering that he is a DJ & one half of a breaks DJ team & runs a night in Oxford - the legendary Fresh Out the Box. Cue trying to find any CD I own of breaks music, the only one being Elastic Beats from Mixmag.

Discovering the joys of Adam Freeland - his live mixes: Wonderlust & Essential Mixes, the COPE album & Evil 9 , Ills & Fabric mixes - these are the breaks becoming a permanent fixture phrase.

Great Moments in Life: Rock Music

In no particular order:

Seeing the Silversun Pickups live in London & Oxford in 2008/9- my favourite band & with Maddie last year. Also when they payed in Oxford - going properly mad [not gone off like that since my clubbing days, nor since] to the SSPU was amazing.

Seeing the Foo Fighters live in Wembley - standing room only, epic rock & to top it off they had fireworks & released it on DVD & had one of the original guitarists (Pat Smear) joining them as a touring guitarist. Dave Grohl & his crew have been at the top of my gig list for a long time & I have now seen them 4 times & they have never failed to blow me away, if you ever get the chance to see them - do not hesitate!

Seeing the mighty Muse live in the brand-new Wembley stadium - with Hobbit, Horse & Ben - even though we were sat down it was still amazing to see the mighty boys from Devon electrify the stadium at large. They released the gig as the H.A.A.R.P. live recording & it is rather amazing & definitely worth watching.

CoD 6 MW2...again.....again [fail]

OK more of the legendary CoD6 MW2 - I've gone online, I've begun ranking & have created a clan (denoted by a 4 character tag, with [] either side) which I've called [fail] - very apt I think.

So far has only 3 members, but we work really well as a team. The others are Sparky & TC...I shall update when I manage to get to Level 70 (for far only on about 41) but it's a thoroughly exciting ride so far.

We continue..

Great Moments in Life: University

Party for my Uni class at the end of the first year [summer 2006] some wine, bbq & staying up till silly o'clock in the morning having some serious fun! Then in the morning all doing a meditation exercise, lying down, eyes closed & soft music...whoever snores first loses!


Uni residential [where all the other classes & year groups all got together for a few days at the beginning of the year] for my second year [autumn 2006] & having a beer or two with Steve, Ali, Mark & Han - happy times.

 Graduation - not taking it all too seriously, trying not to think "I'm dressed like a wizard, I'm dressed like a wizard, I'm dressed like a wizard" then my brain thinking "Expelliarmus!"

This weeks bloggeringitus

Expect many blogs this week - I've pretty much written all my Great Moments in Life articles - 4 so far & am working on the 5th, but they're on an auto-publish for the remainder of the week.

....we very definitely continue