Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

Having spent two amazing weeks back in 2007 in the tropical paradise of Cozumel to celebrate John and Nadine’s wedding, Stephanie and I made the conscious decision to forego any holiday since then in an attempt to put all our financial resources into next year’s wedding. Eventually however, there comes a time when enough is enough, and a week in the sun is needed! With reckless abandon, we headed to the travel agents and booked a week’s stay at the Holiday Village in Sarigerme, Turkey, an All Inclusive resort with pools and slides aplenty for Oliver to run riot. Turkey also had the added benefit of amazing October weather and a currency that has a great exchange rate against the pound. Research is always the key, and in this case, we did some extensive research into the Holiday Village and many of the trip advisor reports were very complimentary. However, there was a darker side, a continuous mention of illness, food poisoning, pool closures due to “deposits” left floating upon ...

Twenty years ago, before having my heart broken by long haired permed blokes with dodgy moustache's, prior to a realisation that a nation's infamy was due to atrocities carried out many years earlier at the control of one of history's most notorious figures. I sat watching various news reports, that, whilst kaleidoscopic in recollection left memories in my mind. Those images were unprecedented at the time, showing scenes of joy, peaceful anarchy, violentless destruction, witnessing at the age of nine probably my earliest memories of "current affairs". Scenes that were of course those of the Berlin wall coming down, East meeting West, end of the Cold War, things that to a nine year old were politically insignificant, but visually powerful enough to understand a certain importance and to remember many years later. So when Will emailed asking if anyone fancied keeping him company on his brothers stag weekend, two days in Berlin, it was an opportunity...

Early autumn is seemingly a great time for hot literature releases, with Roger Ellory's "The Anniversary Man", being followed by Dan Brown's highly anticipated "The Lost Symbol" and the final instalment of Stieg Larssons Millennium Trilogy, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest". I pre-ordered all three a while ago via Amazon and was attempting to save all of them for our week in Turkey next month. However, this weekend, sandwiched either side of the holy matrimony and alcohol infused celebration that was Carly and Reaso's wedding, I spent some time in a much darker place, New York, in the presence of a man named Ray Irving as he liaised with John Costello, a survived victim of a serial killer known as "The Hammer of God" murderer. A place which I don't think would have been suited to the tranquillity and warmth of an Aegean odyssey. I have eulogised over the works of Roger Ellory previously within the confines of this ...

Everyone knows how special a wedding day is, and in the past few years Stephanie, Oliver and I have witnessed several of our close friends and family enjoying their own, unique occasions and we have felt privileged to be a part of each and everyone. This weekend, barely a month since Stephanie was “Maid of Honour” at her sister’s wedding; she resumes the nuptial role once more for her best friend Carly, whom shall marry my fellow Gillingham supporting fanatic Andrew in becoming Mr and Mrs Reason! Stephanie and Carly have been friends since school and have grown up together, shared those first tentative steps into their teenage years, sharing the growing pains and first experiences that teenage and early adult lives brings, the first boyfriends, the first kisses, the first time drunk and first holidays abroad on their own. I am guessing, purely from my own imagination, but I can imagine the two of them as young girls sitting in a pink bedroom, with fluffy teddy dolls and picture...

Life is for living and taking in experiences when you get the opportunity. With the opening of cheap flight routes to mainland Europe I have been fortunate to have previously enjoyed weekends of 'carnage' in Tallinn and Budapest, both of which still live long in the memories. Now that my good friend, fondly known as Reaso begins to count down the days of his pending marriage to Carly, I was given the opportunity to help celebrate his last weekend of freedom in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. At first, I wasn't particularly enthused with the idea, after all Amsterdam is famously known for it's relaxed attitude to recreational drugs and apparent 'seediness' of it's sexual tourism, both of which slightly daunted me and I can honestly say held not much in the way of mass appeal. However, Amsterdam surprised me, the two things that seemed daunting before we arrived, it became clear that reputations clearly stand for nothing and you shouldn't always b...

Yesterday, High Speed 1, the new commuter service running from London to Ashford took it's first passengers as part of it's preview service before rolling out full time in December. Due to a series of circumstances I found myself using the train far sooner than I anticipated. For most of my life there has always been discussions, talks, plans and ideas for a high speed service that would link London to the continent, allowing you, if you wished to be in Paris, or Brussels in ludicrously short amounts of time. Slowly but surely as the infrastructure has been built up around us and details about international rail travel and local commuter routes we have found suddenly, that it is actually reality. Living in Gravesend , we have been very fortunate that the Ebbsfleet International Station has been built upon our doorsteps (even if there are a million negative issues here), as this has allowed us easy access to the service. Having commuted to London for the past three y...