Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

At the beginning of 2011, I accepted the WordPress challenge, to blog more, to post one unique blog post for each of the 52 weeks of the year. This is blog number fifty-two, where I look back at some of the highlights and thank, you - the people who read them and come back time and time again. I haven't got a favourite post, so I thought I'd have a look at the analytics and find out which was most popular with the people that read them, so here they are: 1) Regeneration, not a Grave End Gravesend is currently in the beginnings of a major transformation. Both the 'civic quarter' and 'transport quarter' are being redeveloped as part of a multi-million pound regeneration scheme, which will eventually see a new one-way traffic system, a new bus terminus, a vastly improved train station and much improved pedestrian areas and access routes. However, if Gravesham Council had their way, the redevelopment wouldn't stop there. 2) I've a Stalker in Jesus ...

Standing in the tunnel, looking out at the stadium. It’s packed, a pre-christmas ticket bonanza that has put an extra three thousand bums on seats. The smell of grass, of fried food and the intoxicatingly pleasant sharpness of deep-heat which tickles the nostrils as the ears cope with the roar of the crowd and the stomach deals with the nerves. You’re dressed in the blue of your team, standing there at not yet five years old holding the hand of a total stranger. A man who leads out ten others to do battle against the other group of men dressed in green and black standing side by side in the long, deep space where shouts of encouragement bounce around the walls. The referee signals that it is time and off you go, into the noise which has reached a crescendo, eight thousand people on their feet to welcome their heroes, you leading the way, across the pitch and lining up in front of the main stand, with your Daddy standing by watching, tears in his eyes, feelings of pride swelling up an...

Heading towards the end of the year, one cannot help but look back at the last twelve months and onwards to the dawn of the new year. Depending upon each and every one of us, we’ll all have different plans, different aspirations and feelings of excitement, apprehension or even damn right fear. For me, the beginning of 2012 is somewhat an unknown quantity, the start of a new journey for sure, but the question is - where will that journey take me? Life has a habit of throwing a curve-ball every once in a while. Work this year has been good, I’ve settled in nicely into an agency that contains many of the nicest people I’ve had the fortune to meet. But sadly, we received the news that our biggest client is taking their business elsewhere and what was looking forward to another successful year changed into something that is filled with, at least for now, uncertainty and lies very much in the realms of the unknown. Sometimes, things happen for the better, bad things happen, bu...

Behind every Facebook status update lies a bigger story. A thought we’ve shared that only has meaning to a select few, or from time to time, our view on a story much bigger than ourselves. These last few days, it has been like that. The sadness behind the status I posted on Friday and then last night, something new, something profound, something that helped one come to terms with an act of despicable evil that arrived and landed, allegedly upon our doorsteps. Thursday night, I came home from work, I was running late, so went straight upstairs to say goodnight to Oliver before he fell asleep. I came downstairs afterwards to say hello to Stephanie, my wife and I immediately saw that something was wrong? “Are you okay?” I asked, but she wasn’t and burst into tears. A couple who we’d met at a party two weekends ago had given birth to a beautiful baby boy, shared his name with our own son, but sadly complications during the pregnancy meant that the baby passed away two days lat...