Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

Growing up as a Gillingham supporter often caused me some ridicule and as a way of combating the abuse thrown my way it often became easier to say that I was also a Liverpool fan. Liverpool being the "fashionable" side of the mid-late 80's when I was growing up. Dad was also a Liverpool fan, often going to see Liverpool in cup finals at Wembley including the 85 final at Wembley stadium. Last night, with Liverpool playing AC Milan in Athens I was keen to get back to Gravesend and head to Gareth's house and watch it on his newly installed cinema screen. I am not going to use the word television as the monster situated in his lounge is not a TV by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, if I was to look out the back window of my flat I would be able to watch the game quite comfortably without having to make the two mile journey to his new gaff. Not only were the gods against Steven Gerrard and the millions of scousers whom travelled to Athens, they were well and tru...

Having allowed Stephanie access to my blog and her excellent account of her weekend away it is now back to me and my random ramblings of nothing in particular. OK , maybe not nothing, but one thing I wanted to get of my chest. The FA Cup final... the pinnacle of the football season, the countries best two teams fighting blood, guts and tears to win the greatest cup competition in the world, all in front of the largest TV audience of the year and in the case of this years final, back at Wembley with 90,000 people watching from a brand new stadium. With Stephanie off out practicing her sign language with her tutors, the boys out in Prague for Mark's stag weekend, and my Dad sunning himself in Antigua my choice of viewing partners were few and far between. As it was, Oliver and I sat in readiness for our first FA Cup final together. As we sat an enjoyed our pre-match refreshments of a bottle of beer (me) and a bottle of formula (Oliver), the BBC did there best to hype up the game,...

Adam has told me many times that I should write my own blog. I have always enjoyed reading Adam's - his thoughts and feelings have always put a smile on my face. Waiting for the right topic/subject, the time has now come for me to write my own blog titled - Birdy's Bognor Hen Do May 2007 - The Official Story When Adam's sister, Jessica, announced that she was getting married, she asked me to be her Maid of Honour. I was shocked, honoured, privileged to name a few feelings. I felt like I owed her something and the only way I could see was to arrange the best Hen Weekend that she would remember forever. Jessica decided that an adult only, 70's weekend at Butlins in Bognor Regis was the place to be. So after a few weeks of working out who was coming it was booked. It wasn't until the middle of April that my sister, Carly, said to me "Have you started to sort out the itinerary?" I didn't even know what that meant. I had to arrange rules, forfeits, games an...

I was planning on writing a blog today, celebrating the joyous occasion at Anfield last night, as Liverpool reached their seventh European Cup final, their second in three years. The fact that it was a hard fault battle against the likes of the unlikeable Robben, Drogba and the "cannot make my mind up about him" Mourinho made it all the sweeter. Poor Oliver whom was attempting a peaceful nights sleep was probably wondering what the hell his Daddy was doing two inches away from the TV trying to scream quietly and jumping up and down like a rabid banshee. However, my pre thought blog entry was instantly scrapped when I read this article on the BBC website. "Gravesend announce change of name" my Google homepage told me. Naturally I was intrigued as to what this meant, I thought maybe they had dropped the Northfleet part, as in some media circle the Northfleet is never displayed (possibly because Gravesend and Northfleet is too long or something). Instead, it turns ou...

It has been nearly a year since I started up my blog and as yet have not even posted 50 entries. There are hardcore people out there who blog, once, twice, maybe more in a day. Getting hold of a decent blog, like this one (!) is hard to find, that's why there are feedburners and feed readers so that you can search under blogs that you may or may not find interesting. One of the biggest blog topics is football, or across the pond Soccer as it is know. There are litterally millions of blogs worth reading on a daily basis. I use the Google Reader plugin on my personalised Google homepage, so that when a new blog entry in written I can read it from my homepage without having to remember to navigate to their site. Here are some links to some of the best footballing blogs I have come across so far: Brian Moores Head An online version of the old Gils fanzine, has been mentioned in my blogs before, but seeing as we are on the subject... Culture of Soccer An American blog, but has lo...

I have not posted a blog here now for nearly a month, which by my standards, and web standards in general is a long time! Nothing of note has really happened, just been going through day to day life of commuting, working, commuting, catching up with Steph, watching Oliver sleep, sleeping myself and repeating the process over again. It may sound a little bland and uninteresting, but the reality is that work has been great! Busy, but great! Catching up with Steph has been great, not had much quality time together but the time we have has been spent in contentment as opposed to screaming at each other, which is not our style really anyway! Watching Oliver sleeping as you can imagine is the highlight of my day! Generally he is already sleeping when I get home, so I miss the best part of his day, but occasionally he will wake up and we will have a little play we have a good half hour of him bouncing on my knee whilst he watches in bewilderment as I gurn at him. Not quite sleeping throug...

Just under 7 years since Dietmar Hamman buried the last goal at the old Wembley Stadium past an equally creaking David Seaman the new Wembley re-opened it's doors for the first time on Saturday as it hosted an England under 21 match against Italy. The redevelopment programme had been beset with problems, delays and increasing cost's. In all honesty I had not been too bothered by all the stories, as ultimately once the stadium was finally built I knew we would have a stadium to be proud of. On Saturday afternoon that fact was confirmed to me. Getting tickets for the first game was a challenge in itself with the website crashing almost immediately the tickets went on sale! Determined not to be beaten I spent a good half hour hitting F5, (the refresh key) and opening multiple windows of the same page. Lo and behold I had beaten the cyber goalie and had secured the prize of four tickets to the game! Once the tickets had arrived a good week before the game itself, I tried to work...

You Tube as everyone knows has some great, and some not so great videos, but trawling around for some Gills related videos uncovered some great finds. Unfortunately some of the better ones have since been removed for copyright purposes, but these appear to still be working. Bob Taylor's salmonesque last minute winner against Fulham This match would eventually be remembered for all the wrong reasons, but for last minute goals against your at the time biggest rivals, you can't get any better than this! Carl Asaba against Colchester A new one for me, as I had never seen this one before. Another player, whom never quite hit the highs elsewhere as he did with us. Will be remembered quite possibly for his manner of departure as opposed to goals like this one. Dean Macdonald He may only be slightly taller than Oliver, but he has scored some great goals for the Gills this season! This video shows four of them, including the amazing last minute goal against Chesterfield (you had to be t...

On March 24th, after seemingly a million years in the making, Wembley National Stadium will host it's first game after being completely rebuilt. The England under 21 team, being managed on the day by Nigel Pearson will take on Italy under 21's in front of a crowd of 60,000. This match has been organised as a ramp up event in order for the FA to test the stadium before it gets its final safety certificate to host the FA Cup Final on May 19th. What makes this match even extra special is that I am going! I joined up yesterday in a virtual queue amongst the many others who tirelessly hit F5 in the hope that the refreshed page would bring entry into the FA's ticketing website instead of one of the three error pages that I seemed to get for near on an hour. Whether or not the match will remain historically as the "first game", or will be overshadowed by the FA Cup final remains to be seen. But in my eyes I will be one of the first people at the new stadium and something...

I tend not to write too much about life as a Gills supporter, purely because I find other people manage to sum things up a lot better than I can. In particular the boys at Brian Moores Head whom have made the transition to traditional fanzine production to online "blogging" with relative ease. The match reports and "headitorials" more often than not capture the mood of the moment and pretty much sum up the events of a particular game or event in a nutshell. With the current mood amongst the supporters being of doom and gloom the following articles ( here and here ) were posted recently and cover a lot of what I have been witnessing at Priestfield over the past season or two. They also prompted a lot of my own thoughts on current life as a Gills supporter. I sent those two articles to my mate Reaso, who is forever a Gills optimist and he wrote back" don't worry, we will be fine, I can feel it". But I couldn't quite find his level. I am actually de...

Last month my good friends Stuart and Aimee announced their engagement after returning from a whirlwind tour of Venice. As we approach the end of this month, I am happy to congratulate another of couple, who are great friends of both Steph and I whom also announced their engagement this week. Will and Olivia returned from Eqypt on Sunday as an engaged couple after Will finally managed to pop the question! Will and Olivia are the textbook couple whom met as childhood sweethearts. They met each other as innocent 16 year olds and became each others first loves. For the past 10 years they have both fulfilled their own personal ambitions of university and travelling, whilst remaining true to themselves and one another. I said when Stuart and Aimee got engaged that it was destined to happen, but something in the stars happened the night Will and Olivia first met. From that moment there was only going to one outcome. To live apart for three years during university and remain strong as ever wa...

Last month I became another victim of the banking code, whereby a person goes 12 pence overdrawn the day before payday and the bank feels well within there rights to charge you £30 for the privilege. By chance I was surfing the BBC website when I came across this article , which is an indepth look at the process in which to claim back your "bank charges". Not only does it highlight the problem faced by millions of people daily whom are a victims of banking greed, it shows you step by step how to claim back, not only for you most recent charge, but for charges accumulated over the past 6 years! The best thing about the article was the fact that they had already prepared three ready made templates for you in order to save, tailor and print out in order to make your claim, it really was supposed to be that easy. I wasn't going to do anything about it, I just thought that it sounded like a great idea, but nothing would happen in practice. However, I then came across the Penal...

I read this great story on the BBC Website about the Gravesend and Northfleet Chairman ringing up all his season ticket holders in order to inform them that Saturday's kick off against Morecombe had been brought forward by an hour. I know it would be practically impossible for Mr Scally, the Gillingham chairman to do the same, but it goes to show what a diffference a personal and friendly chairman can do for a football club. A lesson for not just Mr Scally, but for most of the league chairman I am sure.

Yesterday a friend of mine, Will, commented on the blog saying that it was too long and I needed to add some shorter entries... So here it is.

I wrote just before I came back to work about how we needed to find a sense of normality and readjust to having a baby in our lives The transition has been quite straightforward really, after the first day back it felt like I had not been away! Now four weeks later Christmas and the birth is but a distant memory. It is amazing how time passes and how we remember things. The birth was an amazing experience and Steph suffered hugely, but if you ask her she won't remember the pain of the birth at all, although the sewing up after still sends a shiver down her spine. Being at work, getting home at eight o'clock and sometimes later has not been ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world. Seeing Oliver at night and first thing in the morning is better than not seeing him at all. Working is the one thing that I need to do in order to feed and dress him each day. A little sacrifice is not a problem as far as I am concerned. Every second we spend with him has been amazing. It is inc...

I had heard about the Tour de France coming to London and Kent this year for a little while, and when I first heard the news I speculated that the route may go pass the flat. We live on the main road from Dartford and into Gravesend, and it made perfect sense to me that this is where the route would go. In the past few weeks, with the build up and official announcements on the Tour de France website being made and confirmation by the council , we really will see the Tour de France racing along the Overcliffe and past Pioneer Court! I am not a cyclist, or a cycling fan per se, but it is great news for Gravesend that the world's largest annual sporting event is passing through! Even better for Steph, Oliver and I, is that we can watch all the action live and uninterrupted from the comfort of our front room! It is strange how when you see the Tour de France on the TV how they appear to be cycling through idyllic French hamlets, or high in the hills somewhere providing breathtaking v...

The Coca Cola promotion allowing you to win a player for your club is back! Just in case you have not seen it, or are reading this whilst drinking a special promotion packet, please please peel off the label and insert the code here ! FAQ's Why the desperation? Well Gillingham are in dire straits financially, so cannot afford to be competitive in the transfer market. If they win a prize like this it could help them improve there squad. If there squad improves they could improve there league position! If they improve there league position I am more happier! If I am happier I am nicer to you! I don't support Gillingham? That's fine with me, I do! If you are a Manchester Utd, Chelsea or Liverpool fan does your club really need to win anymore players? The answer really is no, so help another club instead, and seeing as I asked so nicely, enter under the Gills! What else is in it for me? Well apart from being my friend for eternity you get a chance to win £25,000 for entering. Y...

David Beckham announced today that he will be leaving Real Madrid and signing for LA Galaxy at the end of the season ( see BBC Site ). What has this got to do with me? Nothing really, but in the interest of blogging and the abillity to randomly discuss news events I thought I would give my views on this as a) I am a supporter of football and b) David Beckham is probably the iconic footballer of my generation. Since before Oliver was born I have thought about things that happened to me when I grew up, things that I enjoyed that Oliver will miss. It came about really by reading The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson . I won't write a review now, but it's basically a look back at Brysons life growing up in the 50's and the things that he remembers. After a lengthly thought process about things from when I was growing up I arrived at a mental list of footballers whom I remember standing out from all the rest, just like when my Dad grew up with Dalgleish, S...

Having been off work now since December 18th, tomorrow brings the first step of creating a new normality for us when I go back to work The past three weeks have gone in a blink of an eye, and it is going to be strange tomorrow not seeing Oliver or Steph all day! In Steph's case she probably cannot wait to get rid of me! In pre baby times a normal week would be Steph and I at work during the week, in which she would have one day off, I would be home between 7.30 and 9.30 depending on how busy my day has been, or if I have popped downstairs for a quick beer before home! An average weekend would see Steph at work on Saturday whilst I went to football and Sundays we spent the day together doing household chores, shopping, or if we were particularly lazy nothing at all. Since Oliver arrived and I have been home we have been all over the place in terms of our sleep, our day to day roles and our meal times. There is no going back to the pre Oliver routine, so we can only find a new one! T...

I wasn't really going to write this blog at one stage because I didn't really want to tempt fate, afterall if this year has been so great, who is to say that by celebrating it next year is going to go the other way. But I figured each year brings different things and hopefully next year I will be able to write about how well 2007 has gone too. Even if it does bring the unexpected. But for Steph and I the year 2006 felt like our year. I got the new job which I had craved for so long, which has since gone like a dream for me. I have really settled in, learnt a huge amount from some talented, intelligent people and earnt a reputation based on hard work and a willingness to help out whenever possible. Steph, whose broodiness was exposed the day Jessica announced her third pregnancy managed to fulfil her dreams by getting pregnant herself and spent the year nuturing an eventual baby boy, culminating in Oliver's birth on the 21st of December. A big highlight's for both of us...