Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

Admittedly we are not the most cultured of families, our collective experience of the theatre amounts to a few pantomime performances and the odd West End show. So when we were offered the opportunity to visit Greenwich to watch a performance of Alice and Wonderland we set off not really knowing what to expect. Sell a Door theatre company is a mid-scale touring theatre whose aim it is to attract young adults and teenages who wouldn’t ordinarily attend live theatre and excite them of the possibilities in which live theatre provides. Alice in Wonderland is their latest work and is running at Greenwich until the 1st June. Yesterdays performance was the first live showing to an audience and we were invited to the preview and to enjoy the celebratory Mad Hatters tea party beforehand. The communal areas of the theatre had been decorated with props and themed around the whole Wonderland world as written by the author Lewis Carroll and brought to life in many forms of media ever since. ...

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...

A work colleague of mine shared her account of a weekend spent by the sea in celebration of her birthday. Whilst she recounted her various stops around East Kent the hopeless romantic in me dreamt up visions of walking along a wintry seafront with a brisk chill in the air, before warming up inside a cafe on the beach with steamed up windows and drinking hot chocolate with sticky marshmallows floating on the top. Which is exactly what we did last weekend except I left with an even bigger romantic desire than the one that lead me there in the first place. Margate , a seaside town that evokes memories of hot summer days, childhood, sunburn and laughter. Memories of my dearly departed grandmother and my great-grandmother too, ladies who loved Margate and everything it used to stand for, namely good old-fashioned fun. I have fond recollections of riding the Scenic Railway , the Mary Rose and the Looping Star as both ladies watched on by with smiles just as big as mine. But as time pas...

When I was a kid growing up, football kind of passed me by. It wasn’t until Italia 90, Gazza and the heartbreak of Turin that the beautiful game become a conscious thing to me. I knew that my Dad went out on Saturday’s and came home smelling of beer and that sometimes his van broke down which meant he had to stay in the pub, but the association with that and football wasn’t something I remember with much clarity. After Italia 90 things changed, I fell in love. The Gills, football and everything about the game; except one thing - I couldn’t play. Which is not true really, anyone can play, its the easiest game in the world, jumpers for goalposts, simple. I just couldn’t play very well. Once I started secondary school and saw all of the other kids running around with a ball stuck to their feet doing Cruyff turns and keepy uppies like circus seals I grew jealous and wanted to be just like them but didn’t know how. Apparently they went training and played boys football and I didn’t/coul...

The first England International I watched in the flesh was against Chile, way back on 11th February 1998 - I remember it for all the wrong reasons. Not the fact that a certain Michael Owen made his England debut or that Marcelo Salas and his Chilean compatriots showed England a footballing masterclass. But because of the pre-match warm-up; being served at 17 years old and ‘aving it large with the England ‘massive’, singing ‘no surrender’ stood upon a bar stool because everyone else was and because it seemed the cool thing to do at the time. How times change. Over the past few months Oliver has been getting into his football. He has been learning the rules and feeling the raw emotion of the beautiful game. A season ticket at the Gills has helped (strangely enough), but so has Sky and the often daily diet of Premier League or La Liga. He has also started to play too, joining a team on Saturday mornings for training and will make his league debut once his registration with the FA is ...

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...

It’s been a while since my last post, three months in fact since I wrote about leaving London and starting a new job. Much has happened in that intervening time, most of it work related, some of it home improvement, but mostly stuff too insignificant to warrant writing about. However, last weekend we spent valuable time together, the four of us for the first time on foreign shores as guests of Walt Disney in Paris - a place which for Stephanie and I holds such fond memories. In recent years our breaks, holidays and time away have been spontaneous, unplanned affairs. Either we’ve been rewarded for work done for others or we’ve earned the right by winning inter-family competitions and our weekend this time around was equally the same. In return for our trip to Paris, Stephanie and I are looking after my parents foster children whilst they are away at Christmas, ironically to Florida, another home of Disney and all the magic it provides. Which is exactly what we were looking forward...

In 2006 I made two life-defining decisions. One, was to agree with Stephanie’s request for a baby, the second was to seek new employment, to work in London and try and perfect the art of website development. Now, almost seven years later the tide has turned and I’m heading back to where I came from. I had been working in Maidstone for a company called Qube Data Management , I was answering the phones and dealing with database queries as part of the Renault Trade Parts project. My boss asked me to build a website, something for a father-in-law about building your own home. “Okay”, I said “There is just one problem, I don’t know how to build websites...” He had already second guessed my answer and told me that I’d better start learning. He gave me a book on how to build websites using Microsoft Front Page and off I went. That book ultimately proved to be a turning point in my career. In fact, it was the start of my career. I’d been presented with a unknown gift which opened a part o...

My last blog post was way back at the end of last year in memory of my departed Grandmother. Writing something new would make that old news and I’ve not wanted to archive it just yet. Life however, moves on and barely at the end of the first month of the new year, there is so much that has happened and so much to look forward to. Already this year we’ve had new babies, a wedding, a trip booked and for me personally a huge and exciting change with the promise of a new job. After three years at ais London , I decided to seek ventures new and have secured a new position at James Villa Holidays , which means not only am I going from agency to client-side, but it means that after seven years I’ll be leaving London and returning to the bright lights of Maidstone. I’ll probably take a nostalgic look back at my time in London over the next few weeks, but for now I wanted to write something for myself, something therapeutic, something argumentative, a dear diary piece that helps channel s...

Someone approached me once, a colleague whilst I was working at Safeway, “Your nan isn’t it, the Lady in White gloves, what a character! She’s been asking after you.” I had never considered it before, how she was known to others, to complete strangers. I just knew her and loved her as my Nan, a lady who sadly passed away this week at the fine old age of 93. In looking back, as one does when one is faced with the reality of such news I cannot do anything other than smile. The cherished memories that I have of her are of humour and laughter, drawn from her character, - that word again which defines us as individuals, along with personality, of which undoubtedly she was one. That same colleague of mine, after I had confirmed my relationship status asked the inevitable next question “Why does she wear white gloves?” And the answer was to help combat psoriasis, a dermatological disease that caused her serious discomfort with itching around her hands and fingers, which was by far the w...

On Thursday evening Stephanie took Phoebe's photograph for the final time as part of our second 'Year in the life of...' project. Just like we did with Oliver, everyday for the first year of Phoebe's life we took a photograph to help track her progress through what is an incredible year of change. In this blog post, I've taken one photograph from each month to quickly show how quickly time flies: 9 November 2011 31 December 2011 30 January 2012 29 February 2012 25 March 2012 11 April 2012 22 May 2012 17 June 2012 25 July 2012 27 August 2012 19 September 2012 30 October 2012 8 November 2012 To view the full project »

Humunga Kowabunga, Bubba Gumps Shrimp Shack, Manta, Rip Ride Rocket, all names and sounds synonymous with the heat and surreality of Florida, a playground for the young and the young at heart which has drawn families in for decades bringing dreams to life. Names which could soon be coming to North Kent and rejuvenating an industrial backwater famed for the manufacturing of cement and refinement of industrialised metals. I arrived into work yesterday morning under a barrage of text messages from a very excited younger sibling. My sister had read an article on one of the local news websites detailing plans of a new multi-billion pound development which would see a world class theme park and entertainment resort built quite literally on our doorstep. Apparently land local to us on the Swanscome peninsula has been earmarked as a possible location for this venture and Paramount, a Hollywood movie studio has agreed licensing rights which means we could potentially be seeing a collect...

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...

Over the past two weeks Mrs B has been asking me some rather strange questions, mainly about what we should buy Phoebe for her first birthday. Questions that, at first might not seem odd at all, but for me highlights another difference in nearly a year of subtle nuances I’ve noticed between the sexes. How has having a girl in the family been so different from having a boy? Each and every one of us are of course different, our characters and personalities define us and make us who we are. Phoebe and Oliver may share the same genetic building blocks and at times scare us as parents with looks and the odd stare that give the impression that they are very much the same person. But throughout Phoebe’s first year there have been moments when I’ve felt uncomfortable not being able to handle certain situations as I’ve not been able to relate to the female point of view - or have suddenly realised to myself, “Ooh, she doesn’t like that, it must be a girl thing”. The first, big, noticeable...

Last weekend Gillingham Football Club kicked off the new football season with a home game against Bradford City. It was the first time in... well, perhaps ever, I wasn’t there to see the start of a new campaign. In fact, as much as it pains me to say, it was the first time in twelve years that I began the football season as a non season ticket holder. The past few seasons have been a difficult time for us Gillingham fans. The reappointment of Andy Hessenthaler after the shambles that was our relegation season was a move aimed to rebuild the fans relationship with its players after deteriorating so badly under previous manager Mark Stimson. But ultimately, it was the wrong move as time and time again the players at the managers disposal were not playing to their full potential and two eighth place finishes meant that once again Gillingham Football Club found themselves looking for a new manager during the close season. It would be easy for me to turn around and say that on the fie...