Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

On the 18th June 2022 I ran the Mote Park parkun which was the 3rd event held at the venue, my 83rd parkrun and 18th different course I'd attended. I use the massively helpful 5K Achievements App for keeping record of my parkrun activities, planning future visits and accessing course event page information to understand more about various routes and how to get to the event. This resource is usually updated once a week, bringing enhancements to the app and updating the library of courses. On a recent update to the app a new purple icon appeared on the map feature and a new parkrun for Kent was born. Mote Park by all accounts had been attempting to start a parkrun for a number of years without much success. I'm not entirely sure what had changed, nor why. But I was enthused to see that a new event was coming to Kent and I was keen to attend as soon as possible. What wasn't clear however was when the inaugural event would take place. I suspected that it would start on Jubilee...

On the 26th March 2022 I ran the Bear Creek Greenbelt parkun which was the 63rd event held at the venue, my 71st parkrun and 9th different course I'd attended. It was also the first event that I had ran overseas. When looking back at the other venues that I had ran at the time of writing this, there was only really one place to start when looking to write a retrospective.  In 2020, I had a milestone birthday and as a gift Mum and Dad offered to take Stephanie and I to Texas so that we could watch the US Grand Prix in Austin. The original plan was to base ourselves out of San Antonio and drive up to the circuit on qualifying and race day. However, the global pandemic put pay to that idea and despite attempts to reschedule we wasn't able to go in 2021 either. Due to the booking conditions of our accommodation in San Antonio we had to rebook by April 2022, so we did. Instead of a week of sporting tourism, we had a Texas roadtrip to look forward to instead. As the itinerary change...

On the 11th June 2022 I ran the Greenwich parkun which was the 584th event held at the venue, my 82nd parkrun and 17th different course I'd attended. The biggest impediment to my parkrun tourist ambitions is lack of access to a car. So I've devised a list of venues that I can access by train should a car be out of reach. I've come to a sort of agreement whereby on Friday evenings we borrow the in-laws second car and then we drop it straight back on a Saturday morning after parkrun. But with them enjoying another well earned cruise I wasn't sure whether this arrangement would work this week. So I planned to go by train to New Eltham from Gravesend and walk the short distance to Avery Hill park where the Greenwich event is held. As it worked out in the end, the prior arrangement stuck and I was left with a dilemma of sticking to my plan or choosing an alternative venue and saving Greenwich for a rainy day when no access to a car was definite. To make life easier for myse...

On Saturday 4th June 2022 I ran the Queen Elizabeth parkrun , which was the 407th time that this particular event had been held. It was also my 81st parkrun at my 16th different event and was by far my most enjoyable. I enjoyed the event so much that I've found my way back to my blog to write all about it! Since I last wrote a blog post, a whole load of everything has changed. The global pandemic caused a seismic shift in how we live and go about our lives that recounting everything would take more than a blog or two. I should probably take a few minutes and re-read what I wrote back then and to see how much of it resonates. But I digress, this post is about my parkrun journey and a new obsession which I want to document for safe-keeping. My first parkrun was back in July 2014 when I ran the Great Lines event. Over the subsequent years I had run occasionally at the Great Lines and even did some touristing at Hastings and Bexley , but it wasn't until the Cyclopark event came...

At the end of every year when the clock strikes midnight, a thousand hopes and dreams nestle in the heart as you look forward to the forthcoming twelve months. Holidays, birthdays, plans, milestones and expectations that the year ahead matches the desires that have been joyously painted in the imagination. But as Big Ben struck midnight at the end of 2019, who on earth would have imagined the reality of what the new year had in store, not just for me, but for every person on this earth? This blog was always intended to be a kind of digital keepsake of things that we had done as a family as well as a creative outlet for my writing. But as the years have gone by the habit has worn off and the blog posts have dried up. Appearing less frequently as social media has grown and memories are shared easier and quicker as single snapshots of moments rather than long drawn out waffle of words. But with the world undergoing a global pandemic, this post is an opportunity to record a small personal...

I started blogging over ten years ago as a means to document becoming a father for the first time and coming to terms with growing up. It took me on a magical mystery tour beyond accounts of childbirth, marriage proposals, family trips and unlocked an interest in writing and prompted the beginnings of a novel and other journeys into the world of creative writing. But then as suddenly as it started, it stopped and real life took over instead. 18 months of unpublished thoughts lay left unsaid and whilst that time hasn’t been filled with notable tales of adventure, dismay and excitement, the preceding years before it hadn’t either. It was merely the minutiae of an ordinary, everyday life left behind as a legacy to remind myself and those closest to me what had happened, when it had happened and how we all went about it. Any comments, likes and shares were a welcome surprise and gladly received, but the motive behind my words was not for others benefit, it was for mine and mine alone -...

As a child was it just me who used to devise imaginary play areas and build the world longest slide and the highest swing ever known to man? Did others dream as I did about being offered a job as a toy tester like Tom Hanks’s character did in the movie Big? No, you did too? Oh good, I’m glad about that, as that is exactly what happened to us last week! When an old friend sent me a message via Facebook wanting to know if I was interested in taking the kids to Greenwich to test elements of a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum I jumped at the chance. As a family we love spending time in Greenwich, there is so much to do -  we didn’t need asking twice! Besides the park, which is a global treat, you have the iconic Cutty Sark and masses of Maritime History. The Old Royal Naval College is a must see, particular for us as my Grandfather used to school there. Also, as it was Saturday and with the wife working I invited my mother along, her foster child and for good measu...

Nor would it seem does it wait for the errant blogger! This little corner of cyberspace has been home for the past eight years to varying biographical accounts of entering fatherhood, married life and the odd look back at more innocent times. I’ve written travel diaries and the odd opinion piece and random thoughts that don’t make much sense. But so far, 2013 has only seen me hit the ‘Publish’ button hit three times in anger and it’s about time I got back on track. I’d love to say that the void since April when I wrote about our trip to Disneyland Paris has been filled with adventure, the wild and the unpredictable. But the truth, as always is a much more grounded affair. Life has been lived, work has been done and not a huge amount has happened in between. Nothing different then to the past eight years, so what has changed? In fact, nothing has changed at all except one minor little thing - I’ve stopped reading. Working in London afforded me two hours of the day in which was sol...

Today apparently is National Poetry Day . Oliver's homework this week was to find his favourite poem in mark of the occasion. He is nearly six, poetry isn’t quite clearly defined yet in his vocabulary, but I thought that well, if it was good enough for him it was certainly good enough for me. So to mark the occasion, I’ve had a go and written a poem. Firstly, poetry is hard! If the word ‘poem’ is unknown to a six year old vocabulary then the terms; Villanelle, Triolet, Amphimacer Meter; Iambic Pentameter and so many others are strangely foreign to me. But that’s what days like today are for. To get people learning, understanding and appreciating an art form which is difficult to master but beautiful to read and listen to. Today’s theme then is ‘Stars’ and my poem on the subject was based upon the thought that when we die, heaven gains another star. I should also tell you, that I had some guidance, took some advice and was advised by a true professional. I work with a proper p...

Last year I took part and completed successfully the Wordpress post-a-week challenge which saw me write 52 blog posts over each week of the year. In 2012, as we cross over into the second half of the year I've found myself lapsing back into 'lazy blogger' mode, posting sporadically and with time growing ever more distant between posts. That’s not to say that I’ve been idle, far from it - I made a promise and I’m trying my damndest to keep it. The promise, made via this blog towards the end of May, was that I would finally find my way back into a project that I also started last year. A project in which I attempted to write a novel, which was inspired by a photograph of a man I took; a man who sat gazing out to sea at Riverside Country Park – a place right on the end of the causeway there known mysteriously as ‘Horrid Hill’. What was he thinking as he gazed out at beyond? Only God will ever know. But I took a wildly fictitious guess - which subsequently grew into a my...

In danger of slipping into the abyss that is known as ‘non-updated blog content’, I thought I’d write a short and concise account of just what’s been keeping me away from my keyboard and broken the weekly habit which I’ve so long maintained. I should first of all congratulate myself on ‘short and concise’. Afterall, those who have read any of my previous blog posts will know that I don’t do short and concise very well! Waffle yes, overthought and over complicated, yes to that as well! Anyhow, before I get too far into beating myself up, what’s been happening? The biggest thing? That would be the three websites I’ve been working on with my Uncle Matthew and his colleague Austin. We aim to soft launch next weekend with a formal live announcement a week later. I’ve actually been invited to stand up and talk about the whole process to the church congregation at the formal launch service. To say that I’m nervous is an understatement! I don’t think I’ve ever stood up and spoken to ...

It has been nearly two months since I wrote the last part of my series of case studies looking at the project I am currently working on for King’s Church Medway. I’m pleased to say that those two months have not been wasted. We have the skeletal bones of the websites and creative ideas in place, we have a launch date in mind and all hands are on deck adding gloss to make sure that the final products are something that I and more importantly the church can be proud of. With that in mind, I thought that now would be the ideal opportunity to talk about copy. A website generally has many levels of engagement. You have the ‘bouncer’s’; those visitors who have hit your website by mistake and immediately leave. You have those who arrive at the correct destination, but leave shortly afterwards as the site on first view just doesn’t do it for them. There are people who then arrive to be nosey, looking around the website, looking at the pictures and videos with no real aim in getting someth...

Last week I wrote about the family and our Easter break in Cornwall. What I didn’t mention at the time was how I’d spent the entire week digitally disconnected, or as I’d left it on Facebook “Adam is Rebooting”. What this meant was, one whole week, no laptop. no Internet, no phone, no iPad, no nothing at all. Question is now, how on earth did I cope? I have a little line of copy on the banner of this site, proclaiming myself as something of a digital evangelist. What I mean by this, is that I believe strongly in the Internet, that it is a tool for empowering people and that by making use of it productively, can improve peoples lives by a) giving them access to opportunity or b) providing a platform to communicate. Why then would I want to leave it all behind? The truth is, so far during this calendar year, I’ve been working pretty much nonstop on either the King’s Church Medway project, work in general or another one of the projects that has landed on me and taken up some of ...

Towards the end of last year I entered a writing competition. The subject was 'life-writing' which for me is what this blog is all about, however uninteresting it appears to anyone from the outside looking in. Unfortunately, I didn't make the final long-list, but in celebrating my 200th post last week I thought that now would be as good a time to share it as any. The following "story" for me, encapsulates everything I've learned about myself in the previous two hundred posts. Premature Perfection Gravesend 1980. July the 26th if I am going to be exact. I don’t remember it. Of course I am not expected to, nobody does. It was the date of my birth. Nothing remarkable about that. People are born every minute, every hour of every day. It’s life. Like mine; nothing really remarkable about that either. I am married now, I have a child. Have another one due next month. Married for just over a year to the women I started dating thirteen years ago. I have a semi-su...