Circumnavigate the globe

When I was in my early 20’s it seemed like a good idea to go travelling. The idea came about after one of my friends had done the same but it was suggested by another friend. I actually crashed his idea. He told me he wanted to go to Australia and I invited myself on the trip. He didn’t put up too much of a struggle though so shortly after the idea had been aired we started planning. In every plan there has to be a degree of compromise and Ian agreed that we could go and see a little of Asia before we went to Australia. So we started in Bangkok and after a week in the heat and humidity we headed to somewhere hotter and even more Humid, Hong Kong. I am still not entirely convinced that Ian was happy doing these trips as he struggled with the spicy food and we had to find alternatives for him, while I was happy to eat more or less anything. After 10 days in Hong Kong we landed in Cairns for the beginning of our trip down the Queensland coast. On our trip south we lived it up like we were on a long holiday but we also picked up work along the way. Work in Queensland at that time meant picking fruit. So we turned our hand to picking anything that was growing in any place that would have us. Conditions were normally hot and uncomfortable but if you were lucky you would have a laugh. This was needed at times as it is amazing how quickly the mixture of lifting and the 40 degree heat can wear you out. We stopped many times on the way down the coast, not just at the bigger towns like Townsville and Magnetic Island, Airlie Beach and The Whitsundays or Hervey Bay/ Fraser island but also in smaller places like Ingham. The decision to go to Ingham was made aafter one of said "no-one ever goes to Ingham". We arrived in Brisbane just before Christmas and we were behind schedule, we should have been in Sydney but Brisbane was a nice city and we’d been moving for a while so we stayed and worked and eventually I decided I’d had enough and went to Canberra and then to Sydney. Ian came with me but decided after a few weeks that he wanted to go back to Queensland. Our parents thought we had fallen out but this wasn’t the case. I worked for a while and eventually ended up back in Brisbane but took a more leisurely trip back up north. By the time I had got back to Brisbane another of my friends had come over from the UK. As Ian had got settled in Brisbane, Adam joined me on the return leg of my Journey. This took us to New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji and across America ( LA, San Francisco, Orlando, Washington and NYC) before I landed at Heathrow airport 11 months after I had set off.

Have a Shave with a cut throat razor

As part of my morning preparation on the day of my wedding I thought it would be good to do something I had never done as that could fit nicely into the day. My wife’s uncle knew of a barbers shop in our local town that did a wet shave with a proper cut throat razor, this sounded ideal. My dad and my cousin (who was my best man as well) decided we could make it a family affair so off we all went on the Morning of Sept 22nd 2012. As there were 3 of us and only 1 person was qualified to perform the actual shave that meant that 2 of us had to wait, I was pushed forward to go first while my dad and Mark watched. Naturally Mark decided that seeing me lay almost flat on a reclined seat with shaving foam on my face and a lady holding a blade to my face was a good photo opportunity so he started snapping away and was intent to get as close to the action as possible. Oddly enough the actual shaving part seemed to take quite a while and the razor didn’t feel particularly sharp, I expected there to be more of a sensation involved but it wasn’t until after the shave was over and the towel was put on my face that I actually felt anything at all. There was no stinging or anything like that, I just felt really clean and fresh. When it was Marks turn I got my own back by trying to make him laugh every time the girl got close to him, he also had to be the captive subject of a photo session. I have to admit that even though I did feel good afterwards the feeling is quite short lived, this could be because there was still so much to do before my presence was needed at the church but I would not be in much a hurry to relive the experience of the “Proper” shave.

Ride on a Segway

This post could have been called “the latest item that Ian has fallen off”. I do tend to be a little clumsy at times and over the years I have managed to cause myself a few minor injuries (see the post on the Manchester to Liverpool bike ride for another fine example of this) so it was inevitable that at some point I would end up in the dirt but we will get to that later. This all came about after My wife’s best friend bought me a voucher for the Segway experience for my birthday, I chose to do this on a Saturday morning at the Go Ape site in Cannock. I had seen people riding the Segway before and it looked like great fun, as the voucher was for a Forest Segway experience I knew we were in for a few laughs. My wife decided that she would join me for the experience as well, this was a huge bonus as I’d imagined myself going around the course while she watched from the side lines. After a brief safety talk we were lead to our segways and guided through the basics before being sent to the practice track where we spent the next few minutes driving in a figure of 8, then we progressed to the Uphill and Downhill section. This is where I became the first group member to fall victim to the Segway. All was going well until I had to negotiate a tight corner, I got around the corner well but over corrected when I on got on the straight part of the path and one wheel touched a tree stump. I am not if you are familiar with the workings of a segway, I wasn’t and I found out quickly that if anything touches the wheel it instantly stops…..Unfortunately this information isn’t shared with the other wheel so it carries on as if nothing has happened. This action generally throws anything that is on the Segway onto the ground, in his case it was me that ended up as a crumpled mess in the middle of the training track. As injuries go this was not even worth mentioning, a little chat and a plaster on my finger and I was back on the machine and off we went into the forest. I kept to the back of the pack initially as I was quite cautious after my little spill. The first section had us weaving between the trees and we had to practice a figure of 8 manoeuvre then they suggested we take it up a notch and increase the speed of the machines, the increase seemed to make the Segway easier to handle and we were soon whizzing down the forest tracks. The guide did notice that my wife and I were sticking to the back so he decided we needed to move up so made sure we were at the front. I think this gave Keely much more confidence as she was off like a shot and was speeding ahead of the group, I was just about keeping up. By the time we reached the final section we’d had to make a couple of unscheduled stops as the 2 wheeled menace managed to claim another couple of victims, I was happy that the day hadn’t ended with me being the only idiot to fall off the Segway. The last leg was the most challenging section as it saw us negotiating some fairly steep parts of the course, both up and downhill meaning we had to lean backwards or forwards much more to control the speed. It was tricky to get the right measure of this at times. Too much meant you’d go too fast, too little and you could make the thing stop completely and lose the much needed momentum. By now my wife had really got the knack and left me standing, the instructor even commented at how well she had taken to the experience. At the end of the course we were all given a certificate to show that we had survived the day and could now claim ourselves to be proficient Segway drivers.

Get a Song that I have performed on played on a radio station

“All Over the world, All over the world, it’s where I want to be….”

This was the opening line of the song that was played on “Wolf FM” when we went to be interviewed by local DJ Ollie Hayes on his evening show all those years ago.
We were inspired by an idea that the Beatles used and started the song with the Chorus to make it catchier and I think it worked to a certain extent as I still only have to hear the opening lines and I have the song stuck in my head.
The band I was in at the time was called “Shiver” and we were making a minor ripple on the Wolverhampton music scene.
We’d had a handful of gigs at the varsity and a few others around the midlands but we were just about to embark on our first trip to London and we had been invited to go on the radio to help promote the 5 live festival that the Varsity were hosting and we had been told to bring a copy of our latest demo.
As we entered the studio we handed the CD over to the station manager and he took it into the back room and came back, handed us the CD and said…Yeah, I can play that. We all giggled like idiots.
We were prepared for the interview but had never considered that they’d play our song as part of the show.
To be honest I think all we did was laugh all the way through the 15 – 20 minutes we were on air apart from when the DJ hit the play button and our tune was aired to dozens of local radio listeners, at that moment the laughing stopped and we all sat dumbfounded at what was happening.
I never managed to record the session so I do feel a little sad that I never actually got to hear the song being played on the radio itself and as Shiver split a good many years ago I guess I will never experience this.

Go Paragliding

Two of my biggest fears are heights and deep water so, when I went to visit my mate in Perth it seemed like a good idea to tackle both of these fears numerous times over the 3 week period.
We had already done the one where you sit in a rubber ring and get pulled along the Swan River by a speedboat and we had sat in a cage attached to industrial rubber bands and been thrown into the air, we had also gone for a trip down the coast of Western Australia in a helicopter. Each of these were quite adrenaline fuelled activities for me as they tackled one of my biggest fears but Ian still had another trick up his sleeve. For this I would need to dig deep and tackle both my fear of heights and my phobia of deep water.
I had seen loads of people Paragliding in the past and it was always one of those activities that looked like a fun thing for other people to do, I had never for one minute considered having a go at it myself, Yet Somehow I found myself on the back of a boat wearing a harness and being winched out on a line as a parachute lifted me up in the air.
The initial adrenaline kick kept me going for a little while as I was lifted higher and higher and I remember thinking that I should actually feel more scared than I did. Even looking down at the boat didn’t make me the slightest bit anxious. It was such a strange feeling. There was very little sound reaching me at this height so it felt totally peaceful. I looked down and could not comprehend that the thing beneath me, that looked to be about the size of a mobile phone, was the boat that I was attached to and was the vessel that was responsible for keeping my at my current altitude. The parachute is only kept in the air by the movement of the boat and while the boat was moving I was happy to take in the views of the city and the other boats on the water. After a while though I started to get a little bored and that was when it happened - The boat started to slow down and the parachute started to succumb to gravity.
I wasn’t bothered about this though, I was only falling slowly and I was confident that they were just going to winch me back onto the boat. As I got lower and lower I could see my mate on the boat. He was chatting to the guy who was in charge of the boat and they were laughing. I had a bad feeling about this and I was not just being paranoid. I was getting lower and lower and there was no sign of me getting any closer to the boat. They were still moving but they were slowing right down and the slower they went the faster I fell until I could see the water right beneath me. Surely they would do something soon?
Next thing I knew I had wet feet, then I felt the pull of the boat. I had actually gone waist deep into the water before the boat had lifted me up. In all I was dunked 2 or 3 times before they brought me back in but it was quite an invigorating feeling. Plus it was my mates turn next so I had the chance to laugh at him. If anything I got off quite lightly as when he emerged from the water he was soaked from head to toe.

Perform a best man speech

Being asked to be the best man at a wedding is a huge honour. It is a position normally reserved for a best friend or a close member of your family as you have to put all of your trust in this person on the biggest day of your life. I have been asked to do this 4 times and I have agreed on every occasion but I am not sure if I would do this again. The first time I did it was for a friend I have known since we were at school, the bride and groom were quite young and despite the fact that I knew I was too young to be considering anything as life changing I knew that they were ready. The wedding took place in a local registry office and the reception was in a pub in our hometown.
I can’t recall much of the speech as I was nervous and possibly rushed through a few cards and messages before raising a toast and leaving the stage.
20 something years later they are still married and have 4 children.

By the time I got to do the second of my best man duties I had gained a little confidence and decided to bring props. I had known Adam and Deb for a little while so I felt confident enough to make jokes about his long hair and him loving his car more than his wife. The speech went down well and they are both still talking to me.
They are still talking to each other as well and have been married for about 14 years now.

Ian’s wedding was a pretty special affair and I was genuinely moved when he asked me if I would take part in his wedding. I met Ian years ago when he joined the band I was in, he was our drummer and we later split the band up by going travelling for a year. Sadly for me but happily for Ian he managed to emigrate to Australia so my best man task for this year would see me travelling thousands of miles to Perth in Western Australia. I am not sure if this type of wedding is typical for an Australian wedding but it was not like anything I had been to before. After the Ceremony we all went down to the beach for some pictures and the wedding party were taken down the Swan River on a boat to the reception. Ian had carefully chosen music for all of the speeches so I walked to the podium to “Let me entertain you”. During the grooms speech I had to encourage audience participation and shout out punch lines to his jokes. He called it Kare-jokey. With it being Western Australia the buffet was an incredible array of fresh seafood and other marvels, I have never seen anything like it and the waiters were obviously under instruction to not let the tables go dry as the jugs of beer and bottles of wine were replaced as soon as they were empty.

The last time I performed the Best man task was for my cousin, Mark. We all arrived for the Civil Ceremony in a limousine on a sunny October day. After the ceremony I stood up to deliver my speech and I was reminded of how seriously people take these things as one of Marks friends advised that “I’d better be funny”. Luckily I have known Mark all of his life so there was no shortage of material and I even managed to throw in a few off the cuff remarks to cover my visible nerves. The beer and wine flowed well and the afternoon faded into the night, and we were all taken outside for a firework display. Even after the music had stopped and the bar had closed a few people wanted to carry the party on and hosted their own sing a long before we arranged to carry on at the Hotel bar. I am happy now to retire from the business of standing up and making jokes at other peoples expense, Mark returned the favour in 2012 by delivering his best man speech at my wedding.

Witness a world class firework display

Every year on Dec 31st the TV starts to show pictures and live footage of the new year being celebrated across the globe. A lot of the time this means a huge firework display with the backdrop of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Australians seem to love a firework display and they do it well. The best display I have ever seen was in Western Australia when I just happened to be over there for the Australia day celebrations. I was actually over there for a wedding but the dates coincided so I found myself caught up in the revelry. The whole day was a build up to the firework display, the local radio and TV stations were covering the celebrations and we joined the masses that had gathered by the Bell Tower in Perth. We had taken advantage of the boat rides that had been arranged for these celebrations and there seemed to be hundreds of other boats on the river doing exactly the same thing. From our vantage point we could see three pontoons moored up in the middle of the Swan River, the TV and radio crews were constantly reminding us that each of these vessels contained about $1 million worth of explosives and as soon as it was dark enough to fully appreciate the spectacle then all of this would be released to the world in all of its glory. Obviously we had to wait for night to fall before anything would happen but the whole event was an incredible celebration and it gave us the chance to really get to know the family that my mate was marrying into and also spend time with his parents who had come over from the UK. In all I think there must have been about 30 people in our group and all of them were in good spirits. At about 9.00 it was dark enough for the Skyworks (as they referred to them in Australia) and the countdown began. I have to admit that I was expecting it to be a huge anti-climax but it was immensely impressive, just as you thought it was winding down there would be another onslaught of lights and explosions all as impressive as the first. After this experience I have not been to an organised firework event as there is simply no way that any other pyrotechnic experience could compare to what I witnessed here and none of the photographs or videos I have seen of the Australia day celebrations do the display any justice at all. The sheer vastness and area of the sky that was covered simply cannot be captured on film.