Adam Bird - My Personal Blog

At the end of June, I disclosed through the pages of this blog that I was at the beginning of a project. Under the working title of “ The Bicycle Man ” I’d began writing something that I termed as “substantial” without actually going as far as saying that it was an attempt to write a novel. At the time, I’d barely written over a thousand words - tonight, just two months later, that word count stands at a catchphrase under 30,000. Does it mean therefore that I have to enough to start calling it something else? In writing this blog, purely for my own benefit as a way of encouragement to myself. A way of measuring a milestone and saying “this is what you have done so far, keep going”. In two months I have gone from having an empty word document with a photograph (seen in the banner above) of a man  I’d never spoken to and an introductory few paragraphs that sparked a set of questions with answers that I needed to deliver. And now, I have some substance, of who the man wa...

This week is a sad week in the Bird household. For Oliver particularly, but also for us as parents, as Oliver leaves Smart Start, the nursery which he has been attending for the past three and a bit years before heading off the week after into the big brave world of Shears Green Infant school and full time education. With Stephanie and I having to remain in full time employment and unable to rely on the constant goodwill of our families we needed to find a day nursery in the local area for Oliver to stay two days a week. At the time, we were living on the Overcliffe, which was just down the road from Smart Start day nursery which is owned and managed, funnily enough by the parents of our good friend Stuart. We’d also heard glowing reviews from other friends whose own children had attended the nursery so it was always going to be our first choice. Despite having such a personal relationship with the nursery owners Stephanie and I have nothing but wonderful things to say about the...

I remember my first Gillingham away game. I remember the second one too, in fact, I could probably give you a snippet or a fact from them all. Like that first one, which was way back in 87, on the open away terrace at Southend United. My younger sister Jessica was also there and I remember my fingers being stained from eating a packet of Bovril flavoured crisps. But the thing that I remember more than anything else was swallowing a whistle which I had sucked inwards rather than blowing out in order to make a reverse whistling noise and having my Dads best friend performing the Heimlich maneuver to wrestle it out when it got wedged in my windpipe. It’s why I thought that I’d better record Oliver’s first Gills away game - as it wasn’t quite so interesting. I’d had a call from Bampy on Friday afternoon, would I like to go to Crewe on Saturday? Our weekend was already planned and it involved gardening, running, rowing and taking you down the park to learn how to ride a bike with two w...

In recent years, a group of my friends, organised and skippered by my good friend Will have taken part in the Great River Race, an event which takes place every September on the River Thames and sees a large quantity of boats, of varying classes being rowed by crews of varying sizes from Greenwhich to Richmond, a course that meanders through central London for more than twenty long, hard miles. Last year, I participated for the first time. Not as a rower, but as passenger, which all boats entering are obliged to carry. “What a great day out!”, you might think, “aboard a boat sailing up the river Thames, taking in the sights and relaxing serenely on the river as it heads west past Fulham and the leafier, greenier parts of the London waterway system”. Except it isn’t quite that comfortable. Magog , which is the name of our boat, isn’t really suited to carrying a passenger. The oarsman and the coxswain are suitably accommodated for, but any passenger is asked to perch precariously on ...

Life as a lower league football supporter is never easy. You base three months of your life in the hope and expectation that the new season is going to be better than the last, that the team which left you deflated at the end of the previous campaign undergoes a miraculous transformation and that in those three summer months those players suddenly morph into world beaters and take the league by storm. Last season as a Gillingham fan was not much fun. It started as all seasons do with expectation, the return of Andy Hessenthaler as manager and according to the club “the biggest budget of the division”, nothing less than promotion would be acceptable and we were on a mission to bounce back to League One at the first time of asking. Supporters had just witnessed the pitiful manner in how the club were relegated on the final match of the season before, away to Wycombe Wanderers, which was personally my lowest moment as a Gillingham Football Club supporter - a team bereft of passion, of...

Sometimes, do you ever get the impression that your life is like the Truman Show, that things happen to you on purpose and would never happen to anyone else? My blog is a personal account of things that I’ve done, or things that have happened to me, stories that may have no relevance or interest to anyone else, but I make no apologies for that - it wouldn’t be a personal blog otherwise. But I wanted to share this story as it typifies the strange but true occurrences that seem to happen to me, for no apparent reason - a magnetic attraction to the strange and surreal. Stephanie and I were given a three piece suite when we lived in our flat which belonged to the parents of my good friend Will. They were getting a new sofa after 20 years and as ours at the time where a mish-mash of things we’d found or rescued we gratefully accepted their offer of providing a home for their old furniture. That was five years ago, and since then, we’ve moved, back to my parents old house and had a bab...

Over the past few weeks Europe has been gripped in a state of lottery fever, as the EuroMillions jackpot reached the dizzying heights of £160,000,000, sparking stampedes to the newsagents in the hunt for the elusive winning numbers. On Wednesday night, that jackpot after 14 consecutive rollovers was won, by a Scottish couple from Falkirk, who stated upon winning “The next steps are going to be the most difficult... with great wealth comes great responsibility” . It would take an average man, on an average salary of £30,000, thirty three years to earn £1,000,000 and 536 years to earn the figures won by the aforementioned Scottish couple from Falkirk, so you can understand quite easily why people are in such a frenzy buying tickets to earn such a fortune. Stephanie and I have been playing the lottery for nearly two years, two pound a week, same line, same numbers, same result - nothing! We have won £10 once in the entire time, which came with much fanfare only two weeks ago. We had...

Generally speaking Stephanie and I don’t have wonderfully exciting lives. We go to work, come home, have dinner and veg out on the sofa, watch a film together or maybe I’ll retire to the other room and spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Interwebs, writing another incessant rambling piece which passes as my blog whilst Stephanie watches a gruesome documentary about murder and it’s ensuing investigation. It has then, for the past week been something of a nice change to the usual routine with some days out, new experiences and the pleasurable involvement of somebody elses very special day. Last weekend, Friday, it all kicked off with the archibald ingall stretton... away day. The first Friday of July is declared an official work bank holiday, in that the whole agency disappear somewhere together and come back the following day feeling rather worse for wear. More specifically, a rather beautiful house in the rolling hills of the Oxfordshire Cotsworlds, near the market town of Bi...

There are chores that we have to do, there’s no escaping them. Washing up, hoovering, laundry and putting out the rubbish, they all need to be done. There are some chores, that don’t need to be done quite so often, but are actually quite enjoyable, so you don’t mind doing them and quite happy finish them off with a smile on your face. Then there is gardening. The worst chore known to man. My main gripe about gardening, apart from the million little things that fly around annoying me, in some cases putting the fear of God into me, is that none of the machinery is actually very good. Ok, so I’m not going to go out and invest in a hi-tech combine harvester type mower as advertised by Forrest Gump, but if I spend £100 on a mower, I’d expect it to at least mow. Rather than me having to go around the garden six times to get every stray blade of grass and random weed that refuses to meets its inevitable demise. But by far the biggest and singularly most annoying thing, not just in gardeni...

The path of fatherhood has been many things, mainly a journey of discovery through various stages of development, enlightening moments, humorous moments, frustrating moments and in the case of posterity, intriguing moments. It has been interesting recording at what exact point in our lifetimes  we first learn to speak, to walk, to grow a first tooth and roll over onto our stomachs, all key moments that we sit and discuss with friends around a cup of coffee and air of admiration, but at what point in time do we start to learn the darker traits that make us human, feelings of hatred, hopelessness and fear? Last night, I sat with Oliver, our nightly story time routine. It’s his choice, his bedtime is 7.30, he can stay up until 7.45 without a story, or on the dot with a book. He chose to have a story. I’ve done this so many times, the same stories, the Gruffallo, the Stick Man, the Gruffallo’s child and A Very Lonely Night. So I suggested a ‘big boy’s’ story, one of the Roald Dahl ...

Enrolling on a Creative writing course has been a rich and rewarding experience. It is all very well being able to write a blog from week to week and have your parents tell you that they enjoyed reading it, but having complete strangers sit and listen appreciably of your made-up mini tales of fiction is a completely different feeling. Confidence is a great thing and I guess that's what I have been looking for. But it can also be very dangerous. With the little confidence boost that I've recently acquired I've taken on the challenge of writing something a little more substantial. I'm not going to come out and say "I am writing a book" as that isn't quite what it is. I was out on a family day out at Riverside Country Park a few months ago and after we had made our way out to the evocatively names "Horrid Hill", we came across an old man, sitting on a bench, watching the world go by. Next to him was a bicycle, parked carefully just in front of...

Last night just as Stephanie and I were starting to fall asleep, she nudged me to say that the baby had woken up,“How do you know?” I asked. She then began to tell me about the strange feelings and sensations that she was currently experiencing in the darkness of our bedroom. These internal nudges and movements, constant reminders of the miracle growing inside, the beginning of the maternal bond between mother and child. You can see that Stephanie is pregnant at the moment, in fact, it surprised me just how much when she informed me last week that we’d reached the half way stage! Whilst she is having that physical bond with her child, I won’t be able to feel any movement for a few more weeks, until the bump has filled out and physically witness the baby starting to kick. I am however, not entirely useless at this stage. For the past few weeks we have been getting some of the house in order, particularly the nursery where the baby will sleep when he or she is a little older. Wh...

Last week we received notice that our appeal for an infant school place had been unsuccessful. Whilst this might sound like particularly bad news, it isn’t really, although the results of which will have a lasting effect upon our day-to-day lives. At the beginning of the year we had to fill out an online form listing the three schools we would like Oliver to attend in preference. We chose Riverview as our first choice and Shears Green second. To make sure that we got either first or second place we put Cobham down in third knowing that this was highly impractical and almost unlikely to be chosen. Academically, Riverview and Shears Green are equally as good as each other, so we are very lucky that it could have fallen either way, but what made the application process more interesting is that as a child, I went to school at Shears Green, whilst Stephanie went to Riverview, so it was in a way, a little race to see whose footsteps Oliver would follow in. But for practical purposes...

For the past six weeks or so Stephanie and I have been members of LoveFilm , a postal rental service whereby for a fixed monthly fee, you can watch as many movies from their database as logistically possible. Simply browse their catalogue, select what films you would like to watch and they randomly choose two for you to watch at home. Once you are finished, send them back and they’ll send you two more. Being parents now, a visit to the cinema is a rare occasions, we have to invariably find a babysitter and so the last minute spontaneity of our courtship is something we’ve long lost. With our LoveFilm membership it gives us a chance to catch up on what everyone else has been watching and talking about for the past few years and see if there are any films that break the monopoly of my top ten list. We’ve all probably been asked, “what’s your favourite film” and we’ve probably all got an answer, for whatever reason. Like a book, what you may hate another person will love, what you’v...

Last Saturday, the 21st of May, passed just like any other, much to the confusion and dare I say it - annoyance to a preacher named Harold Camping and his followers. Harold Camping is a Christian Evangelist and predicted with utmost certainty that on this date, the world would come to a catastrophic end for millions, and the start of something wonderful for the believers of Christ, as this date would see the ‘second coming’ or the ‘rapture’ as prophesied in biblical texts. It would be easy to laugh, to ridicule and use Mr Camping as another example of Christian eccentricity but their are plenty of Christians making obscene and outlandish claims on a daily basis, such as the one about living life as a Christian means that you are not allowed to mix with non believers, or that two family members cannot socialise as their churches have different beliefs. But those people don’t get the negative publicity and ridicule as a good old “end of world” proclamation does. In fact, Mr Campi...

Sometimes we forget what a truly beautiful country that we live in. We get stuck in the monotony of life, the same places, faces, commute to work, back again, routines and school runs and sometimes you need a reminder that it need not be that way. Our country has sights worth seeing, villages worth visiting and natural habitats that allow children to get up close and personal with wildlife and animals. Last week, Stephanie, Oliver and I spent four nights in Weymouth with Stephanie’s parents, Pat and Colin. We collected tickets out of the newspaper which allowed us to apply for a five day break at any of the country’s Haven holiday parks - all for the bargain price of £9.99. With Oliver not yet in school, it was the perfect opportunity for us to take a break outside of term time for what’s likely to be the final time! On arrival at the Seaview holiday park, after a nightmare two hour delay on the M25 we were longing for a swim in the pool, or a refreshing drink in the late after...

Next weekend the FA Cup final will be contested at Wembley stadium, the home of football, the closing chapter of another dramatic season of English league football. The trophy will be awarded to the winner of either Stoke City or Manchester City, two teams that I have no real association with other than the last time Manchester City played a final at Wembley it was against my Gillingham team, managed at the time by Tony Pulis, ironically now in charge of Stoke City, which brings to life a wonderfully scripted sub-plot to what is already an intriguing game. Since Stoke City reached the final, blog posts and online analysis have focused on Tony Pulis, that day at Wembley and a recent interview on the BBC Sport website revealed some insight into the thoughts of the man and what it would be like to avenge that day nearly 12 years ago. Feeling nostalgic comes naturally to me, particularly when looking back at Gillingham Football Club’s finest ever moment. That game, Gillingham vs Manc...