Early last year Jo went on a rowing holiday. It was great – I didn’t have to hear anyone talk about rowing for a whole week (or so I thought – she phoned me mid-week to tell me all about it). When she returned she told me not to get excited but that she was a little late. So obviously I got quite excited.
About
a week later she took a pregnancy test. She came downstairs excited and so I got excited, only for her to tell me that she was just excited that she’d taken the test and that she had to wait a few minutes for the result. A few minutes pass and she comes back
down with the good news and we both got even more excited.
One of the weird things about finding out you’re having a baby is being unable to tell people your exciting news for a while. I completely understand the reasons, but this is something you really want to share with people and it can be quite difficult keeping such an exciting secret.
There
was a weird rollercoaster of emotions that I went through after finding out we were having a baby. It started with excitement and then went through fear – about how our lives would change, whether I would be able to deal with the lack of sleep, if I’d be good
at being a dad – and alternating between the two before settling very much on the side of excitement.
Like a wedding, having a baby requires a lot of planning. This was where I felt most comfortable and helped with controlling the fear and increasing the excitement.
Nine
months is a long time to wait for a baby. It can make you especially broody, well it made me especially broody at least. I have a total of 5 nephews and nieces who are awesome and have just made me want a mini human of my own even more. However even 9 months
is not enough to make you mentally ready for the moment you get rushed into hospital.
One
of the things we did in preparation was a short hypnobirthing course. I had a vague idea of what it was as my sister-in-law had used it for her second child but I was very impressed by it and would recommend it for anyone who is due to give birth as it gives
you a very positive attitude towards the experience, regardless of what route your birth takes.
The
birth itself went quite well. Not a textbook birth, but possibly as close as you could realistically expect. Having heard stories about other people’s birth experiences, we were very lucky in our experience.
Everything
went really quickly on the day. So quickly in fact that there was a point at which I thought I would have to catch our child but fortunately the midwife came back into the room at the vital moment.
And
now we have a baby. She is called Imogen Scarlett Eileen Anderson. She is called Imogen as that was one of the few names we could agree on, Scarlett after her gran and Eileen after her great-gran who was born 99 years and 364 days before her. I’m sure I’ll
tell you more about Imogen in the future.
I’ve been meaning to write a blog about our wedding for quite some time. The problem that I’ve had before is that there’s so much I could write about, however most of it will be so detailed and personal that it will only be of interest to a very small group of people. So I’m going to try to just talk about the few most significant things about our big day.
Firstly, everyone says it’s the best day ever. I’m often reluctant to believe what everyone says about things. Everyone said that Napoleon Dynamite was great but that’s an hour and a half of my life that I’m not getting back. Everyone says that pineapple on pizza is wrong but it’s the best pizza topping by far. Everyone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. However in this instance, it turns out that everyone was actually correct.
The whole day was spent seeing our friends and family and they were all so happy for us (or just wanted a free meal). It’s just like having a massive birthday party for all of your birthdays at once. It truly is the best day ever. The main downside to this is that there is a limited time and if you’ve invited a large number of guests it won’t be possible to spend a lot of time with them all. It is important to not worry about this. Spend your day with who you want to spend it with – whether that is the people you see all the time, those that you don’t see because they live so far away or a combination of both of them. It is easy to get pulled in 100 different directions. One of the best bits of advice we got was to make sure we spent a bit of time together to enjoy the day. You could potentially spend most of the day barely seeing the person you’d just married so grab a moment or two together when you can.
Obviously the wedding day doesn’t just happen. The day involves a lot of build-up and preparation. I actually really enjoyed planning. I’m very much the planner. After the proposal Jo told me – “right, that’s my bit done. Now you need to plan it!”
In reality it was still shared. I came up with a couple of options and discussed with Jo who would then help to make a decision. One thing we were trying to do which I really recommend is to make it feel like your day. Make it feel as personal as possible. We had zombies, Lego, Jane Austen and rowing boats as these are the things that we enjoy (between us – please don’t take this as any endorsement of rowing on my part).
We were slightly worried that it wouldn’t all go together but as soon as I got there and it all looked awesome I relaxed. Everything just felt right. Not that I expected it to feel wrong, but we’d arranged lots of different things as separate decisions and had no idea what it would all look like when it was put together. I know it will be different for other people but that was what really helped me to settle into the day. All of the planning came together and there was nothing for me to worry about any longer. Getting married seemed really easy after that!
Another sign of the personalisation was the fact that ours was the only wedding I’ve been to where there was a mosh pit. We were very particular about the music. We had a DJ provided by the venue who had lots of suggestions about things he could do but we were very clear in our minds what we wanted. We gave him a playlist of songs that we knew our friends would dance to and let him improvise a little around that but we did have to reign him in a bit around other stuff. This is totally fine. Everyone realises that it’s your day and that it needs to be how you want it to be.
The day itself was not as much of a blur as I expected it to be. I’ve got a good memory of a lot of things about it.
Whilst I know the bride will be excited about getting ready and making themselves look amazing, they miss out on one of the bits that was most enjoyable for me, which was getting to greet everyone as they turned up. I also had to shout at some people for taking drinks into the wedding area. Apparently if that happens the wedding might get called off. I’d imagine that the official people don’t often follow through with that threat, but I wasn’t taking the chance.
Of all of the day, the ceremony is what I remember least about. That’s the only bit that seemed to go by really quickly, and that is possibly to do with it being the most important bit and me concentrating on doing all of our bits right. We had two friends pick awesome readings, which really suited the whole feeling of the day. We wrote our own vows. It seemed important to us that we told each other how we felt in front of a bunch of people. Public speaking is scary, but telling the person you love how you feel on your wedding day is surprisingly not so. We wrote our vows on a bit of card which I pulled out of my sporran to laughter. I’m not sure exactly where else I was supposed to have kept them. It was nice to later discover that a friend had filmed the whole thing on their phone which they sent to us and we were able to watch it through.
As I have written previously, we both changed our name upon marriage. As part of the signing process, we also signed deed poll forms. A few weeks later, Jo had to re-sign them as I had told her to sign in the wrong place. Oops. That’s all sorted now and we both have a new name.
After the ceremony, the rest of the day is basically socialising, which is quite easy when everyone is there to wish you a good time. The main structured bits after that involve everyone staring at you, and it is easy to get nervous about them. I was much more nervous when I was a best man at my brother’s wedding, however. I think there is a lot more pressure on the best man to be funny and/or entertaining. I returned the favour to my brother and he delivered an excellent best man speech complete with a PowerPoint presentation.
As we believe in equality, it was decided fairly early on that Jo was going to do a speech and hers was great and funny, and I was annoyed because I had to follow her! There is not much pressure on the groom’s speech, though as you’re supposed to be quite soppy and I was pretty good at that.
The most important things of all are a) we got married and b) it very much felt like our wedding day. We had managed to personalise it and the memories will stay in our heads forever.
[This is copied from what wrote in my super occasionally kept journal on the 8th of August 2016]
I am now engaged to be married! This is very exciting, although it is taking a little time to sink in as, although I always thought that this was the path that me and Jo were on, the fact that we have taken another step along it is awesome. We have decided to take a little time to enjoy the feeling before we start with the planning.
We had previously discussed that Jo would be the one to do the proposing. This is for a couple of reasons – firstly that I would have done it far too soon.
Secondly, and more importantly, we both believe that we have been living in a male dominated society for far too long. Why should it be that men are the ones who decide when to get married and have all the power in relationships? The only way to change this is by small individual gestures to attempt to change it.
On Friday night (5th August), I got home from a day of watching cricket in the sunshine to find that Jo had made a candlelight dinner for us. I knew that she was arranging dinner but we usually eat in front of the TV so this was a nice romantic addition to my evening.
We had egg wrap things – I’m sure there must be a technical term for these but I don’t know what it is – and then I offered to do the washing up. This is the point when I started to twig that something might be up, as Jo told me she wanted to enjoy the ambience.
A few minutes later, she told me she had a present for me, and that there was a treasure hunt I had to go through in order to find it. She had placed the clues in significant places – for example, one was by our guardian deity, Thor.
After some searching, I had worked my way through the six clues and returned to her with my present which she gave to me whilst telling me all the reasons she wanted to marry me as I cried tears of joy. When she asked me to marry her, I said “of course I will.”
The rest of the evening was spent talking and cuddling and enjoying being engaged before we started to tell people the next day.
Falling
in love, they say, like breaking up is hard to do. Or at least I could have sworn that was a saying. Or at least in a song. Having done a Google, I now think that I’ve probably made it up. Which is annoying as I was about to disagree with it. So now I’m just
going to disagree with something that possibly has never been said by anyone ever which makes me look a little bit weird.
Falling
in love with Jo was possibly the easiest thing I’ve ever done. And I think that’s probably how I knew it was right. After our first date she thought to herself “I wonder if I’ve just met my husband.” She didn’t tell me that until way later as she didn’t want
to come across as crazy. I’m not sure I would have thought she was (although at that time I didn’t know how addicted she was to rowing) because the first date was basically perfect and it wasn’t long before I was thinking the same thing.
It
is possible that the first date went so surprisingly well as I didn’t have any expectations going into it. I had been doing online dating off and on for a good few years and whilst a few of the dates went well, the majority seemed to be less than average.
As someone who has a reasonable understanding of maths I know that this is statistically impossible. The whole online dating thing could fill up several blogs on its own. There is a lot of time and effort that needs to be put in to even establish any sort
of meaningful communication. Whilst I knew a few people who had met their partners online, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope that I would do so too and therefore I went into our first date not really expecting anything amazing.
After
that first date I changed my mind quite quickly. We went for a drink at the now non-existent Googies before taking a stroll down to Folkestone Harbour where we sat near the mermaid watching a storm over the Channel (Thor really helped a brother out), ate cake
(Rocky Road which has marshmallows in which I hate), talked (about castles and music) and eventually kissed. We clicked instantly and there were no awkward silences or the frantic scrambling around for conversation topics that can often plague first dates.
I
was very excited to keep in touch and arrange a second date which also went well. We went to a Tapas bar and then for our third date, I persuaded Jo to go to the cute little cinema in Folkestone to watch a film I’d heard good things about (but not heard what
the plot was). It was called Gone Girl which – in case you were wondering – is not a particularly romantic film. Afterwards Jo did promise to never frame me for her murder though, so that was a positive. She’s kept that promise to this date.
Despite
my catastrophically unromantic choice of movie, things continued to go well. It just felt so natural. To repeat a bit of the speech that I gave at our wedding, when I was single I had often asked my friends who had got married how they knew they’d met the
person they were going to marry. Their answers were varied – one said they couldn’t imagine finding anyone better, one said that they made each other better, one said they made everything better even the bad stuff and another said that there was just no bullshit.
It was near the start of our relationship that I realised that all of those were true about me and Jo. If anyone asked me that question now, I would say that I knew I’d marry Jo because it was just obvious that I would.
Why was it so obvious? It was obvious because it was obvious. Which I know is a tautology but so what? Jo and I each have our own things but we also share in each other’s things at times. We make each other laugh. We make each other smile. We have lots of fun. Jo is an amazing human being – she is fun, funny, caring, thoughtful, adventurous… and exactly the person I was looking for.
I am quite fond of zombies. That is, in the sense that I like stuff involving zombies, not that I’m a zombie sympathiser.
One of my favourite computer games ever is Dead Rising, a zombie slash-em-up. I’m also a really big fan of the Telltale Walking Dead games, which have some of the most emotional moments I’ve ever experienced in a video game, as well as watching the Walking Dead TV show. Zombie entertainment is my not so guilty pleasure.
So, you can probably imagine how excited I was when my brother told me that he’d found a zombie experience day for us to go to for my stag do. In case you can’t imagine it, I can tell you that I had an excited face on.
He had been in contact with Zed Events who run an event at a disused mall in Reading. The mall is scheduled for destruction so you can only book it a couple of months in advance as they’re unsure when it’s going to be knocked down. There are doors with big Warning! Danger! signs on that they tell you to be extremely wary of as they are actually doors to lift shafts with a big drop.
I don’t want to give too many details away about what actually happens because I highly recommend you go. It was an amazing experience and even the most hard to please of us seemed to really enjoy it. It was really well executed. From the moment that you walk into the building after your safety briefing, you feel like you’re walking into a computer game. The actors really add to the experience, both the humans and the zombies – with some of the zombies having really chilling screams.
At the end you get to have some photos taken by the organisers (see the photo above) and then you can wander around taking photos of yourself and the zombies, who very impressively stay completely in character the whole time.
I highly recommend this as an experience to take advantage of whilst you still can!
I put Read War & Peace on my bucketlist when I made it a number of years ago. I can’t remember exactly why I put it on there. I think it was probably at least one of the following things:
1. The fact that I love reading and I wanted to put something related to reading on the list. 2. I’ve enjoyed the Russian literature that I have read. 3. Despite now having been there and being a bit underwhelmed by it, I have had a fascination with Russia for several years. 4. It is supposed to be a difficult book to read and I wanted to prove that I could do it. 5. I want to be able to say pretentiously to people that I have read it.
Jo bought me a lovely hardback version of the book for my birthday last year (now almost a year ago), which I finished reading earlier this year. It took me several months to read. It’s a long book. But not only that, it’s a heavy book. That meant that it wasn’t too easy to transport and therefore I didn’t read it on the train which is my usual reading time. I ended up reading for a quarter of an hour every night before bed.
There are almost 600 characters and it isn’t really suited to this style of reading, especially with my concentration span. I would often forget who people were when I began reading the next day, let alone a few weeks later if they had gone out of the narrative for a while. As such, there are passages which I remember vividly – Pierre’s father’s death and the game of cards are two of them – and yet others which I barely remember happening at all.
This was brought out when we recently watched the BBC dramatisation of the novel. There were bits that I definitely don’t recall at all. Then again, there are bits which I am fairly sure Tolstoy didn’t write but were included because they were naughty bits and the BBC wanted ratings. It was really useful to see how it was condensed down to a 6 hour series, and I think I’m quite a visual person and being able to see the actors made it easier for me to remember which character was which, rather than getting lost in all of the words in the book.
I think I will definitely attempt to read it again at another point. I don’t think I got everything that I could out of it, however it won’t be for a while as my pile of books to read is almost as tall as me.
This has always been a thing I’ve been interested in. That the place where I live is somehow mysteriously linked with an enigmatic town in another country with an exotic sounding name.
Earlier this year I won an overnight trip on the Eurotunnel. I was trying to decide what to do with it when I realised I could finally visit one of these mysterious places in a faraway land.
Hythe where we live is twinned with two towns – Berck-sur-Mer in France and Poperinge in Belgium. As we had already booked our summer holiday for Marseilles, we decided to go to Belgium for this trip which we tied in with our anniversary celebrations. We booked a slightly extravagant hotel (we were being decadent) with a bed so big I couldn’t reach the edges and a really cool bath and headed over. It also had free sherry and brandy. Winners.
It turns out that our twin towns aren’t quite as faraway as I’d previously thought. It took us less time to get to Poperinge than it takes to get to Oxford or Southampton or anywhere else that seems like it should be nearer.
Jo managed to tick something off her unrecorded bucket list by driving in Europe whilst I navigated us there. These roles definitely work to our skillsets as I’m not keen on driving but I’m great at planning and I love maps, and vice versa for her.
I’m quite glad I waited until I had moved to Hythe to complete this item. I previously lived in Folkestone (admittedly only 10 minutes drive away) which is twinned with Etaples-sur-Mer. I don’t know much about the place, but it definitely doesn’t seem as interesting as Poperinge is.
I didn’t know much about Poperinge either, really. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the name (Popper-Ing-Err, if you’re interested). However, I did know that the town had a lot of beer related connections which made me quite excited to visit.
We therefore made our first stop the Hopmuseum. It was informative and we got to smell a lot of hops but there was a lot less beer drinking involved as part of that tour than I had hoped there would be. I insisted then that we made our next stop a beer bar that they do so well in Belgium. I love anywhere that has a beer menu and the place that we found was fantastic, cheap and gave us free peanuts. We both had a local Poperinge beer which probably tasted even better due to having to wait so long for it.
I had wanted to eat at a restaurant called Markt 38 as according to Trip Advisor it is the best restaurant in the city. I didn’t think that the best restaurant in the city might be fully booked on a Saturday night so we went to a hotel nearby to try more Poperinge beer and have quite a posh meal. Not as posh (or as expensive) as the breakfast we would have in our hotel the following day but quite posh, with an amazing local desert that I have completely forgotten the name of but was an apple and cinnamon thing which I completely recommend.
The other thing that the town is largely associated with is the First World War. One of the reasons it is linked with Hythe is Talbot House, a club for soldiers established by Lord Talbot of Hythe. Unfortunately we weren’t able to visit – apparently they have lovely tea and cakes. There is a war memorial in the town and around 40 soldiers were executed in the city.
The following morning we took a visit to Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. It is a ten minute drive from the city and, as always with this sort of experience, is very humbling. The visitor centre gives you an idea of the size of the military hospital which in itself is mind blowing (around 4,000 patients at any one time) but then going out to see the graves of over 10,000 and being unable to comprehend what you are seeing, when it is still such a small portion of the total number of dead… it’s one of those things that always hits me emotionally.
Overall, the city was a lovely place. It was great to also go somewhere that we knew next to nothing about and to learn the local history and sample the local food and drink.
Once upon a time, I went on a little road trip around England. One of the things I was wanting to do was to climb Scafell Pike. I ended up not doing so. For a few reasons.
1. It is really big and I am generally quite lazy.
2. I was on my own and thought I might navigate myself to certain doom.
3. The weather was supposed to be bad for climbing mountains.
So instead I did other things. However, climbing the mountain got put on my bucket list as a result of not climbing it. I resolved to do so when I wasn’t so lazy, had someone to navigate me away from doom and when it wasn’t so windy.
Therefore, I gathered a band of intrepid adventures and we made our way to the Lake District on holiday (having previously done a similar thing in Snowdonia at the same time last year) to complete this feat. Due to amazing planning, we were there the week that the wettest place in the country had its summer and all managed to get a little bit of a sunburn.
The mountain is 980 metres high. This doesn’t sound like much until you try to go that high. Then it sounds a lot harder. When you have been climbing an hour and still can’t see the summit, it appears infinite.
Compared to Snowdon, it is actually smaller, however as a climb it is a lot more intense. Snowdown has more scrambly bits (I learnt that the technical term is scree) but also more flat bits. Scafell Pike is basically a 980 metre staircase. With big rocky stairs. I thought I knew what to expect having done Snowdon but this was a lot more intense. But we all managed it, see! Go team!
Several years ago, I always got confused by people who went up mountains because they were there. Now I am that kind of person, and I can recommend it. You get a great sense of achievement, and you feel like you are on top of the world (both literally and metaphorically) and that you can achieve anything. I would definitely recommend it, as long as you have some idea what you are letting yourself in for and prepare adequately in advance.
There has already been talk about doing Ben Nevis next year to complete what is one of the slowest Three Peaks challenges, I am just giving my body a little time to recover before telling it about this.
I also love Tim Minchin. He shares a similar world view to me, is an amazing musician and makes me chuckle. Sometimes I think he is far too intelligent. For example, I saw him once do a philosophical joke. I studied philosophy at uni for three years (admittedly I’ve forgotten most of it now) and the joke went over my head.
When I heard that he’d written a musical based on Matilda I got excited. It was a bit like that time when Ben Folds and Nick Hornby collaborated. A mixture of a musician I like and an author I like gets me excited. These two art forms don’t generally cross over much.
I suggested to my girlfriend Jo that instead of getting each other a physical present, we arrange a day out for each other. Shortly after I suggested that, I started hoping that she remembered watching Matilda was on my bucket list. When we told each other what we had planned, and she revealed she’d got us tickets, I had a big grin on my face!
In fact, last week, I actually watched two musicals based on Dahl’s work. Our staff conference at work involved us going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Drury Lane which was extremely enjoyable.
Whilst the Hornby/Folds album is good, and Charlie is great, the mixture of Minchin and Dahl blows both of them out of the water.
I’d heard lots of good things about Matilda from people who had been but I was still not prepared for how great it was and how the songs would be stuck in my head for the next few days.
The characters – especially the grown ups – are brilliant characatures that match the Quintin Blake illustrations from the book. I hadn’t seen the posters outside the Cambridge Theatre so I didn’t realise that Miss Trunchbull was played by a man and definitely let out a giggle when the reveal happened. Although to be honest, I was giggling throughout.
It was also very faithful to the source material and the parts where it diverged fitted in so well that you almost forget that they’ve been added.
I’m struggling to go on without adding any more spoilers. However, I urge you to go see it if you have any interest in Dahl, Minchin, musicals, theatre or laughing as it is quite simply the best show I’ve seen.
Once every two years, the world’s elite athletes descend on Folkestone’s East Cliff to compete in some of the most dangerous and extreme sporting events known to man.
The event is so top secret, even Sky Sports don’t know about it and what video footage and photographs are available after the event are usually taken on camera phones by competitors or the few fans lucky enough to gain access to this exclusive event.
For my friend Luke (known henceforth as The Committee)’s birthday, we form ourselves into loose collectives based on some vague theme and argue amongst ourselves about who is the best horse or who is the best at running blindfolded and then send forth our gladiators into the arena.
This year was the fourth edition of the games and only the second which I had been able to attend in full. I formed a team of the best athletes I know and Bass who then argued for about three days as to what our team name would be. Eventually settling on “It’s my birthday” so Bass could make endless jokes when Luke read out our team name, we made our way to the arena complete with party hats and blowers.
After Bass’s blindfold fencing style – which largely resembled attempting to play cricket and then rolling on the floor – earned us a silver medal in the first event, it looked like we were on for a good day.
I didn’t compete until the Four Legged Hurdles event when me, Lisa and Natalie felt confident after literally minutes of training. Despite even giving hints to our opponents in the heat (two thirds of whom hadn’t yet reached their eleventh birthday) we mercilessly beat them with our athletic prowess.
In the final, we went up against Team Gin B who had a couple of McNeices as ringers on their side. We were less confident but after going neck and neck down the first straight we took them at the turn before getting over excited and almost losing our rhythm as we stormed home to victory to set the world record of 38.03 seconds.
We managed to hold back the tears during the medal ceremony but our joy was evident. We also learnt a valuable lesson: don’t let Bass play. This was reinforced when during the Piggyback Equestrianism event he did 5 of the set moves rather than the three which he was supposed to do. He’s a loose cannon.
I had considered not entering any more events to maintain a 100% winning record but I felt I owed it to the team to try to win more for us. Unfortunately it was not to be. In the Blindfold Biathalon underhanded instructions shouted from a rival team member (don’t worry, Katie, I won’t tell anyone it was you) lost us valuable seconds and in the Water Balloon Shot Put, it turns out that I don’t know my own strength and I crushed a balloon in my bare hands before launching it down the course.
Despite the fact that our team finished last overall, we were the smallest nation entering and I feel we can be proud of our performance. We now have two years to get in training for the next one to build on what we have accomplished.
