Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

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...

Here is the full excerpt from the BBC vidiprinter of Gillingham vs Shrewsbury, League Two 2009 Playoff Final 1720: Congratulations, then, to Gillingham, commiserations to Shrewsbury. A cracking match with more drama than an Eastenders Christmas special. And if you thought that was heart-pounding, just you wait until tomorrow. The legend that is Stevo will be talking you through what promises to be a sensational day of Premier League ups and downs, with a pinch of League One play-off final action thrown in, so what ever you do - do not miss it. Nice one, legends. "Congratulations Gillingham. Bouncing straight back up after relegation is a lot easier said than done so hats off and good luck in League One next year." Liverpool_is_my_life on 606 "I feel for Shrewsbury; being a QPR fan I know how late, late play-off final goals feel and it's the worst feeling I've experienced, much worse than a relegation." SuperHoops10 on 606 1705: The Gillingham p...

I read a book last year entitled "Here we go Gathering Cups in May", a seven story account written by seven Liverpool supporters and their encounters of each of the seven European Cup finals Liverpool have been part of. The name of the book derived from a flag made by a Bootle lady named Mrs Margaret McDonald, who was thanked in the preface with the line "For gathering a needle, a thread, and a line from her head, before waving her son off to follow the red". Being a Gillingham supporter we are not accustomed to "gathering cups in May", indeed, if you are not a supporter of the "big four", namely Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester Utd the chances of picking any silverware at the end of a football season is an alien concept. However, each club outside the Premier League does have the chance to cover themselves in glory by either winning their league outright, or as the case may be for most finishing within the top six or seven and ent...

According to the Gravesend Messenger Ebbsfleet United, whom changed their name last year in an effort to forge links with the new community in Ebbsfleet have revealed plans for a new stadium... in Gravesend! The new site, next to Morrisons inbetween the new and old A2, will see the new stadium form part of a larger eco-recreational site, which will have walking areas, playgrounds, a BMX track and horse trails. How realistic the plans are only time will tell, but from my knowledge planning permission for moving over the A2 was only granted on the condition that the new space would be used not be used for commercial or residential purposes. Does a football stadium fall under a leisure enterprise thus making them eligible for development? Time will tell. Now for the rant! Gravesend and Northfleet FC changed their name to Ebbsfleet United so that they could forge stronger links with the "new community" expecting to increase their fanbase on the back of a migration of p...

On Sunday 2nd February, in response to a group that I had set up on Facebook "Say NO to the Ebbsfleet Angel" I was invited by the BBC to appear on the Politics Show to speak alongside Mark Davy, one of the directors at Future City, the people behind the landmark proposal. To help me prepare for the interview I wrote a blog outlining my arguments and gave detailed answers to potential questions - which did help me out on the day, although I did succumb to a severe bout of nerves and forgotten most of which I had written, or wasn't able to articulate what I really wanted to say. Leading up to Sunday, playing various scenarios out in my head, as is nearly always the case - nothing is ever as bad as you think it will be and nothing is as you would imagine it. There was no tripping over the camera, using a profanity by mistake, gibbering incoherently, although there was a brief moment after the first question was put to me that I managed to lose track of myself and apolo...

Last year I set up a Facebook Group in an attempt to open dialogue with Land Securities, the company behind the Ebbsfleet Landmark. I also wrote a couple of blog articles and set up a petition on the government website so that us, the local residents could, if we wanted be given the choice to reject the three shortlisted designs as being unsuitable and vote to reject the plans altogether or come up with a more suitable, viable solution. As a result of my Facebook Group I was approached by a researcher for the BBC Politics programme and interviewed over the telephone and subsequently invited onto Sunday's show to discuss the proposition alongside a member of staff working for the Ebbsfleet Landmark Trust - a subsidiary of Land Securities. Despite having huge misgivings about appearing on a television show and attempting to eloquently put together an argument against something and coming across sympathetically to a watching audience, coping with the extreme nerves and potential...

Being the son of a fanatical football fan means that more than likely, it's a case of when you start going rather than if . In Oliver's case it was always inevitable, although I hadn't planned on it being so soon. The plan had been to mention football as much as possible and tell him everything about the Gills and put it off until he was five years old so that I could build up the anticipation and excitement. On his fifth birthday he would go to his first Gills game - as a mascot, making his Gills debut by leading the side out at the hallowed turf of Priestfield. As always with best intentions and perfectly laid plans, they go awry in amongst a set of strange circumstances. When Gillingham drew Stockport at home in the FA Cup second round it wasn't exactly a tie that caught the imagination, but a home game I would not have wanted to miss. I had decided to go for the pay on the day option, not imagining a sell out by any means! But as the game drew closer I b...

"Exactly 100 years ago today, HMS Alert and HMS Discovery sailed past Plymouth on their way from Portsmouth on an Arctic exploration mission which was to keep their crews away from home for nearly a year and five months. One of the members of this expedition, led by Captain Sir George Strong Nares, was a Newton Abbot man, Mr Henry Winser, who was picked as ship's carpenter for the team at the age of 24 because of his strong constitution. The expedition suffered many hardships and accomplished much, reaching 30 miles nearer the North Pole than any previous arctic explorers, but still fell 400 miles short of its target. The "Advertiser" of November 4th, 1876, summed up that the venture had demonstrated "that to reach the Pole is an utterly impracticable undertaking... deemed not to be accomplished by human energy." Henry Winser was believed to have been one of the sledge party which spent 70 days on the ice in conditions so rugged that it could only...

Earlier this year I wrote about a book I had read, A Quiet Belief in Angels, by Roger Ellory and how, since then, I had purchased all his previous works and had been enchanted by the epic worlds his creations had surrounded me. Last week his sixth book, A Simple Act of Violence was released and I eagerly visited Waterstones to get my copy. Roger Ellory doesn't write simple novels. They are vast in scope and character and although they share a similar theme, human nature, human relationships and the analysis of human behaviour against all odds, they are all vastly different. The synopsis for A Simple Act of Violence, provided by Amazon: "Washington, embroiled in the mid-term elections, did not want to hear about serial killings. But when the newspapers reported a fourth murder, when they gave the killer a name and details of his horrendous crimes, there were few people that could ignore it. Detective Robert Miller is assigned to the case. He and his partner begin the t...