There’s been a meme running around Facebook for the last while to do with 25 random facts about yourself. I hate doing meme’s at the best of times but something my brother said struck a chord with me. Listening to certain songs provoke such strong memory recall that it’s hard not to think about one particular time that you listened to them. And so in that vain and with it being a Friday night and I’m at home on my lonesome with the kids asleep in bed I thought I’d share those memories.

The soundtrack for the rest of this entry can be found here is you have spotify. I hope that works as I can never get Spotify playlist links to work on this damn laptop.

1. Bucks Fizz - The Land of Make Believe
This was quite possibly the first every single I bought. I don’t ever remember choosing it but aside from a few compilation albums it’s the only one I remember owning before I inherited my uncles singles collection from the 70’s and early 80’s. Put quite simply this song terrified me. If I got up during the night to go to the toilet or to get a drink the first thing I would do would be to look out the window and check there was nobody at the bottom of our garden waiting for me.
Shadows tapping at your window
Ghostly voices whisper,
“Will you come and play?”
Those lines had me running up and down the stairs at night terrified of what might catch me for years.

2. Whigield - Saturday Night
My very first holiday abroad without my parents was to Santa Ponsa in Majorca when I was 19 years old. It opened my eyes in a lot of ways but one of my main memories was of loving a song but being unable to find out who wrote it. I spent most of that holiday trying to track it down until one day I was sitting around the pool with Graham and Shug sipping on an ice cold pint of beer when I heard it being played from one of the apartments above us. A couple with twin daughters had bought a tape with Saturday Night on it and it was the third track on the A-Side. I hunted all over town for that tape and finally found it on the last day in a small newsagent. I’d found the song that had been haunting me! When I reached the apartments the twins were fighting as although they’d only bought one tape themselves they’d copied it so they’d both have their own. They only had one case though and so in what I thought at the time was my good deed for the day I gave the other girl my case. It wasn’t until I got back to my room that I realised the tape didn’t have a track listing on it. To this day I still have no idea what the song was called.

I promise there will be some good songs in here. Honest.

3. Green Day - Welcome to Paradise
When I left school I went to on to attend Glasgow University but like the home boy I was I never moved into the city and instead commuted every day into the city by train and then out to the West End on the Underground. The journey into Glasgow itself usually involved getting train at stupid o’clock in the morning and sitting with Alison Noble and a few others before we headed our separate ways once we hit Central Station. I never managed to listen to any music until this point and every day as I walked down Union Street towards St Enoch Station I’d hit play on my Walkman and the tape would jump to life. Just as the train filled up at Buchanan Street Station Welcome to Paradise would kick in. In my half asleep wee world all I could hear was the song and to this day I can still smell the trains whenever that song comes on.

4. Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5
Yet another holiday song. There is/was a bar in Benidorm called Sinatras which has a tiny dancefloor but is where we would end up at some stage of the night almost every night we were there. Why does this song stand out? Well we had got into a bit of a routine of a few beers and tanning a litre of vodka before leaving the apartment every night and this night was no different. What was different however was my brother and his friends were in town on holiday for a few days overlapping my own stay. We had no idea what the other was up to but on this night we fell into the bar and as this song came on my brother and his friends appeared from the other side of the room. I have very vague memories of downing drinks with Scott and Masson but seeing my brother for that first second always comes back when I think of that song.

5. The Prodigy - Breathe
If you’ve ever lived in East Kilbride you will more than likely have attended Crystals nightclub in one of it’s many guises. To call it a nightclub is doing other real nightclubs a disservice but we won’t go there. ANYWAY, Breathe always brings me back to my many drunken nights in there. Whenever the song came on myself and Barry would clear the dance floor and basically scream the song at each other. We’d go home each night covered in bruises from pushing and hitting each other during it.

This is going to be a long post!

6. Ugly Kid Joe - Everything About You
I don’t every remember owning a microphone but somehow one day we started recording ourselves singing to our favourite songs. We were 19 for feck sake not nine year old girls. Everyone picked a song from my CD selection and we recorded our attempts. This was my song. Everything went well until my brother found the tape. I don’t sing karaoke any more…

7. Green Day - King For A Day
And our second entry for fun punksters isn’t that famous a song and fits into another holiday story. This time we were in Tenerife staying in a lovely apartment in Los Christianos and a couple of days before I flew out Green Day booked a one off gig to happen whilst I was on holiday as something to do between their festival shows. I went to the local travel agent to try and get a flight there and back in the hope of getting a ticket from a tout on the night. It would have used up all my spending money but I was going to do it and the only reason why I didn’t was because the only flight I could get home landed 10 minutes before the gig was due to start.

The night of the gig I locked myself out on the veranda whilst the other guys got ready for their night out. I took my entire Green Day collection out with me and played every album and b-side as I worked my way through a bottle of Aftershock and as I found out the next day the best part of a 12-pack of beer and about 48 fairy cakes. The aftermath of that night is where I gained my online username of Bobzilla from so you can guess the destruction and mess I left in my wake that night.

8. Biffy Clyro - Hope For An Angel
The first time I heard this song I was standing in awe after hearing a band that I’ll come to later in the list. I’d never heard of Biffy Clyro at the time I stood almost front and centre in King Tut’s and knew from the moment I heard them that I was going to remember the gig for a long time. You see a lot of local bands that think they are God’s Gift to the local music scene and get nowhere. Simon, Ben and James would almost sneak into the gig through the crowd and put on the most amazing shows. Whenever I hear this song I can remember trying to work out who was singing what part. That might have been down to the fuzzy beer brain though.

9. Moby - Go
The very first CD I owned was the album this track came from. I had to borrow my dads hifi as my own didn’t have a CD player in at at that point in order to listen to it but I stole every second I could. I still remember sitting at midnight after everyone had went to bed with my dads headphones on after I’d snuck back downstairs and putting this track on repeat. I remember thinking at the time that this kind of music was going to change my life. I didn’t realise it then but it did but not in the way I envisioned. This was the first track that I every loved for the feelings it stirred in me rather than the comical novelty songs I’d enjoyed before then.

10. Westworld - Sonic Boom Boy
I couldn’t even tell you who sung this until a few days ago. The song has stuck in my head for decades though. As a child everyone used to sit and tape the Top 40 Chart Show on a sunday night but seeing as I was just a child the tapes were used over and over again all except one that just happened to have this song on it. The tape was played that often however that the tape stretched and for years I actually thought the changes in pitch and tempo were actually parts of the original song. Even now when I hear it as it should sound my mind automatically puts in stretches.

11. Faithless - Insomnia
My clubbing credentials are horrendous. We could never be bothered with the busy clubs like The Arches or Archaos when I first started heading into the city for nights out. We went a few times but we just never enjoyed it. With this in mind we always ended up the biggest dives in the city as nowhere else would let our drunken selves in anyway. One such night we ended up in The Lime Club where myself and Paul looked after the kitty and with every round bought would treat ourselves to cheeky shots from our own pocket at the bar. Put politely we were mangled by 1am. Then this song came on. Until that point I never danced. I tried it once and someone compared me to a granny ironing a shirt and so I gave up after that. This song however had me up dancing for it’s entire eight minutes and those eight minutes felt like the entire night. By the time the chorus came around for the second time our hands were in the air chanting along.

12. The Day I Snapped - Start Again.
This song sticks in my head for reasons beyond my knowledge. Forget that I came away from the gig trying to convince Rab to try out for their bass player as that gig was the last for their current guy. Forget that the guy that got the gig was also a friend and forget that since then I’ve became friends with their drummer. This is the band that were playing before Biffy at Tut’s that night and I don’t think they hit a duff note the entire set. I didn’t walk away from the gig singing Biffy songs. I walked away singing Start Again and Jennifer 8.

13. The Prodigy - No Good (Start The Dance)
Everyone thinks of The Cathouse as a mostly rock or punk club and in all honestly nothing could be further from the truth. They’ve long had a ‘tradition’ of playing dance tracks alongside their normal setlist fodder as well as chart and RnB stuff. There would always be a section of the night though when DJ Billy would try and kill those that liked to dance. The Blade soundtrack would come on and get folk on the dancefloor and thats when the marathon would start. Then the strobes would kick in and the smoke machines would start and opening sample of No Good would start up and you’d be in your own wee world. This is the song that made me realise that I love to dance even if I need to be completely drunk to do it in public.

14. Zero 7 - Somersault
Some who know me and who were at my wedding may think my first memory upon hearing this song is of our first dance. You’d be wrong. When I first started staying over at Vonnie’s flat in Glasgow she would put this album on when we went to bed. I’ve long enjoyed listening to relaxing music to help me get to sleep but I’d never heard this band before. Whenever I hear this song my first memory is of lying in bed in the front bedroom of that Govanhill flat barely being able to hear it staring at the orange street light outside and listening to the world go by underneath it knowing that I was safe in that room with Vonnie.

15. Kid Rock - Devil Without A Cause

Benidorm yet again. This time though I was sober. Everyone on that holiday was there for 14 days where as I flew out late to meet them and only stayed for seven days. I jumped in the taxi to take me to the airport and left all my CD’s in the apartment for the guys to listen to. When I arrived at the airport I found my flight was delayed by eight hours and I cursed that decision as loudly as I could without getting myself arrested. Once through check-in the kiosk, for that’s the only shop that was open, had about ten CD’s to choose from and Kid Rock’s album was one of them. That album spent the next six hours on repeat until I got onto the plain. This song is about the only one I can actually listen to now without all that rage coming back.

16. Beth Orton - Central Reservation
My cousin Alan was getting married and as usually happens my mum organises a minibus and my Uncle Sam drives it to where ever we need to go. With the help of my brother we managed to get our table to drink a bottle of aftershock, 13 bottles of wine, 7 bottles of champagne and whatever we managed to buy from the bar. Needless to say almost all of us, apart from Skippy as she barely had any I think, were very worse for wear the next morning. We then had a seven hour drive home from Birmingham to survive. My brother sat looking very green and I curled up in a ball with this album on repeat the entire way home. Beth Orton’s voice to this day reminds me of being severly hungover and this song in particular of that drive home.

17. Die Krupps - To The Hilt
We had just got cable TV for the second time and my brother and I were obsessed with MTV Europe. Here were bands we’d never heard off before from countries we’d never been to playing songs we loved. Almost every day we would catch this video and would find it hilarious. The video was so simple and the chorus perfect for screaming at each other.

18. CJ Bolland - Sugar Is Sweeter
As I mentioned before I like to listen to music to help me off to sleep at night when I get the chance. For years when I got home from a night out my headphones would go on and my hifi would still be playing the CD on repeat when I woke up the next morning. This song was a staple of my post night out music for years.

19. Josh Wink - Higher State Of Consciousness
This is another one of the songs DJ Billy would try and kill us with. This one stands out though because my dad actually liked it. He went through a period of listening to any music he could get his hands on. I’d catch him listening to my Rage Against The Machine CD’s on occasion but one day I found him sitting with his eyes closed on the sofa, headphones on, nodding his head along to beat and dancing whilst sitting down. I don’t think he even knows I caught him.

20. The Toy Dolls - Nellie The Elephant
I’d heard the song on the radio before but never really liked it that much. That was until one night out in Tenerife where we went into the Crows Nest and downed what I’m told was tequila but what I think was actually lighter fluid. Paul had met a girl the night before from Liverpool who insisted we all keep saying Curlywulry to her. Anyway he was to meet her in the pub opposite the place where we were so we all headed over to find an Irish bar playing this song. Everyone, and I do mean everyone including bar staff, was pogoing to this as we walked in. I’d never seen that kind of energy in a crowd before then and to be fair to them even after a lot of gigs they are still up there in the top five.

21. Dire Straits - Brother in Arms
I’m in primary 6 and we are at the school disco. The girl that I fancied all the way through primary school was there and I wanted to request a song for her. This was her favourite song at the time and everyone else seemed to hate it but I loved it. I can still remember the rest of the class running up the DJ demanding he put of Spitting Images Chicken Song.

22. Terrorvision - Alice, What’s The Matter
This was my Computer Lab tape when I was at uni. Between this and a Carter USM tape I thin I just played them on a loop for the entire year. This song remains my favourite from that time though.

23. The Beastie Boys - Sabotage
My first night of Freshers Week and Glasgow Uni had me in the QMU playing pool with a friend and two girls while Slam played downstairs. As with all attempts to get on with the opposite sex conversation moved round and around until we got onto something we could both get our teeth into. One of the girls stance was that Oasis were the second coming. This was before they had any chart success by the way meanwhile I insisted that I’d never heard of them and anyway how could she dismiss the greatness of The Beastie Boys. It was at this point that Sabotage came on the jukebox, I potted the black to win the game and her friend kissed me. I seem to recall shouting “and that’s my point!”

24. The Bloodhound Gang - Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny
I can barely play guitar. It didn’t stop me going along to my mates band practice though. They ran through various songs but they finished they finished with this song. Myself and Dave jumped of the amp stacks while Mark sang/rapped. I think I even managed to play along to the chorus. It probably sounded like shit but that is how I remember that song. Nothing from the countless times I’ve seen it played live by the actual band or from my CD’s but from our version.

25. The Quireboys - 7 o’clock
If you weren’t there I don’t think this wil ldo it much justice but watch this clip. Whilst at our friends wedding The Quireboys were in the hotel bar and very kindly agreed to play a few songs for the happy couple. Until the day I die I don’t think I’ll see a wedding party so animated for the music. In saying that the groom brought along his band for the nights entertainment so it was going to be a good one anyway!

Tags: meme, memories, music

On Friday it was Nairn’s 4th birthday. Somehow he managed to effectively get five days of celebrations and gifts thanks to parties and various members of our family not being able to turn up on his actual birthday which was actually fantastic. It’s possibly the least stressed we’ve been during one of our kids birthdays because of it I think. Anyway one of the presents that he received from us/the kids was a Woody from Toy Story costume which he didn’t like. If there is one thing I can say about the boy it’s that he’s honest. Even if a little ruthless with it. Anyway seeing as all the kid’s love Toy Story Erica decided that this costume was the best thing ever and this morning I came downstairs after looking out her clothes to wear to nursery to find her sitting watching TV wearing this costume.

“I got dressed Daddy.”

I couldn’t not let her wear it hat and all. I just didn’t have the heart.

So it came to pick up time and for once Vonnie wasn’t able to pick them up in the car as she’d been out in the city all afternoon and couldn’t make it back in time. This meant I had to walk the two miles there and the two miles back pushing a pram with my hurt foot as well as carrying Greer in a sling. It sounds worse than it is but it does take time. It’s usually a 60 minute round trip but with the extra child and bags on top of my foot it was closer to 120 minutes before we got home. Around half way home Findlay pointed out that Erica had fell asleep on the bottom seat of the P&T buggy and she was still holding the the cowboy hat in her hands. The next time I checked on her was whilst in the queue to buy pizza for dinner when I realised the hat was gone. Nairn had only had it five days and already it had been lost.

I was furious. How could I have been so stupid. I blamed Findlay for not seeing it fall from the pram. I blamed Greer for being young enough that I could carry her in the sling which completely obstructs the view of the lower pram seat and my feet. I blamed Nairn because he wouldn’t carry the hat for me to keep it safe and most of all I blamed myself for being so stupid as to miss a large brown cowboy hat falling from the pram no matter how hard it would have been to see it. I’d decided that as soon as Vonnie was home she could deal with feeding the children whilst I’d run back to the nursery and retrace our footsteps in the futile hope that no one had picked it up for themselves. I was close to tears with anger at this point and thankfully Vonnie had beaten us home and before we even made it in the front door she had me throwing the kids in the car so that we could quickly get back to nursery.

I jumped out at the entrance to the technology park where the kids nursery is and started jogging along our usual route after checking with the guardhouse. I had it in my head that between the nursery and a path just by the Territorial Army HQ was where it must have happened as I was sure I hadn’t seen the hat any further along our route so it cut down the possible number of spots where it might be. As I went along the route I started to get frantic. Okay so when we’d last been there it was daylight and an hour later it was definitely night time so I was expecting to possibly miss it as in places it was really dark but as I got closer to the TA HQ it became very apparent that the hat wasn’t to be found.

Just as I was about to turn off the path head to where I was meeting Vonnie with the car I had a thought. I’d long travelled past the place where I was last sure she didn’t have the hat but as there was only another 20 yards round a corner before I reached the end of the path I was on anyway I carried on. And there it was. Someone had came along and found it. Not only had the person not taken it for themselves they picked it up and placed it on a wall under a streetlamp so that I’d be able to see it without staring into the shadows that surrounded the place. The relief I felt was unreal. This is why I know I’m tired.

The level of stress and worry that I felt from this was up there with our experiences when Erica wasn’t well as a baby and we didn’t know what was wrong with her. The sudden joy of finding the hat felt exactly the same as the day we found out that Erica was piling on the weight and was no longer going to be a ‘failure to thrive’ baby. I shouldn’t be having these extreme emotions over a lost rubber cowboy hat.

Still… At the end of the day we got the hat back and there will be no tears in the morning. That’s the aim for every day. No tears from anyone in the morning.

Tags: cowboy, emotion, Erica, hat, Lost, Woody

I honestly don’t know where the last 2 months have went. When I was off work sick with my heart problems a couple of years ago the 4 months I was sitting at home for felt like an absolute age where as this time it really does feel as though I only finished up at DFID a couple of weeks ago.

Things never stop here. We ‘work’ until we’re exhausted and then all our spare time is taken up either being ill or being to tired to do anything other than go to bed at 8pm and struggle to sit through a TV show before collapsing into a restless sleep. When I was still working I went to work Monday until Friday and when I got home each night I’d cook dinner, watch the kids to give Vonnie a little break and then once they went to bed we’d have three or four hours to ourselves. Saturdays would be the family days to rest up and Sundays would be busy with everyone coming and going all day. At the end of every night we’d have those few hours though to unwind and relax. Not so any more.

I don’t know what the difference is but these days your lucky if we’re both awake past 9pm on any night of the week. On those occasions where we are actually capable of not falling asleep on out feet we’ve got 101 other things to get done. Currently I’m trying to put the finishing touches to design for the shops website. I’ve managed to bluff my way through javascript editing and after playing with designs for a few days I’m trying to convince myself I do actually know enough CSS to make it look the way I hope it should. For every thing we manage to check off on the to-do list another six appear at the end of it.

We tried to raid the Au Naturale stores yesterday for any and all shop fittings that we thought we’d need. The only thing we seen that wasn’t ruined wouldn’t fit where we needed it to anyway so other than crockery and a few bits and pieces it was a wasted journey on that front.

In other news I’m sitting here listening to the new Gorillaz album in an attempt to find something to say about it in a review. I’m really struggling. It’s not what I’ve came to expect from them and finding it hard to get into if I’m completely honest. As singles I think they’ll do well but as an album it’s lacking something that I can’t quite put my finger on. We’ll see how it does after a few more listens.

I’m so behind with everything these days. I’ve got my final 28 Day Project photos to edit and upload to Flickr. Don’t hold your breath by the way. They can only be described as photoblog photographs rather than good photographs. It served it’s purpose to get me taking photos every day though. Now I just need to keep that energy going forward and actually try and improve.

Tags: Gorillaz, music, Photography, shop, sleep, time

I’ve struggled to write these past few weeks. I never have the time and when I do have the time I don’t have the energy or brain capacity to string a sentence together never mind a full post.

My foot is getting better. I managed to walk for 90 minutes around Calderglen Country Park yesterday without the support on it. My foot was strapped up as best as my hiking boots could manage though and I’m paying for it today. I managed it though without any real discomfort. I’m looking good for my date with a mountain at the end of March.

Vonnie had it confirmed last night that her contract will not be getting extended so come the end of March we will both be ‘out of work’. By out of work I obviously mean working for ourselves as we should hopefully take over the shop we’re leasing a few weeks beforehand.

Talking of the shop things are progressing. It’s going slowly as every time we think we’ve managed to get over the last hurdle another three or four appear. The latest one involves bank accounts and proof of ID. Basically a lot of the things we need to get sorted NOW require proof of the business address which we can’t do until the lease is signed and in some cases until we get our first utility bill in. I think we’re going to have to get inventive to get past this one.

I breathed new life into my photoblog a few weeks ago but I’m not entirely sure folk know it exists. Trying to work out some way to display the updates on here to catch a few more readers. And yes I did actually take that photo up there!

Tags: business, Calderglen County Park, foot, health, photoblog, walking, work

The short version:-

I’ve sort of broke my foot.

sergiok @ Flickr

The long version:-

On friday night I stood on one of the kids wooden building blocks. I didn’t think much of it at the time as I basically went straight to bed afterwards but when I woke up the next morning it was a wee bit nippy. As the day wore on it gradually got sorer and sorer and about the only time I wasn’t in pain was when I was lying/sitting down or when I was standing still. Any movement in the food just caused me to wince in pain and hobble about. I thought it was a sprain or bruised tendon or something so I wasn’t that worried by it.

By the time Saturday night came along I managed to hobble from the carpark right outside Tesco at Silverburn to Wagamama but I could feel something grinding inside my foot. It wasn’t sore as such but it is the strangest feeling. Imagine two slightly deflated balloons or two blocks of polystyrene rubbing together. That’s the feeling inside my foot. It’s weird. I basically decided that unless it was greatly improved on Sunday morning I was going to head to the hospital to get it checked out. I managed to get Vonnie’s anniversary present before I couldn’t walk anymore which was a bonus but I must have spent about three and a half hours in A&E getting my foot seen to. I felt a bit of a fraud as the boy in front of me came in with a broken ankle and the girl behind me with a broken leg. The fact I could hobble from the exam room to the X-Ray room had me convinced there was nothing wrong. Vonnie turned up not long after I’d been X-Rayed and it turns out I’ve got a stress fracture of my fourth metatarsal or something like that. I’ve to go to see an orthopaedic doctor at 8.30am.

Considering I’m watching the Superbowl at the moment and it’s after midnight already I’m going to be in hell when I wake up.

Tags: broken, foot, health, xray

I’m a little late in day for this what with it being nearly the end of January. My excuse is that before the new year my camera died and the new one only turned up a few days before the bells rang. I didn’t have the time or the patience at that point to think about where I wanted to go with it this year never mind learn a new camera. So hear goes nothing.

Blatently nicked from Mostly Lisa

1. I will learn how to use my camera.

I never got my head around the 300D so I figure now that I’ve actually got a *new* camera rather than a very well used second hand I should actually learn how to use it. I should probably find the manual if I’m going to do that though…

2. I will not use the Auto setting on my camera.

It’s something I never used on the 300D. I don’t know why but I started with Aperture Priorty mode I never really moved it out of there. I never had the manual for the 300D so never worked out what most of the buttons did so I only ever tweaked the ISO, aperture and shutter speed. I know that’s the big three but that’s as far as I went. With the 500D it’s far easier to change the other settings and it scared me enough on occasion when I had to get a photo just right to throw it on to auto and hope for the best. I need to stop that.

3. I will not use on-camera flash

I hate how photos using the on-camera flash coome out. The only time I ever use it I’m either bouncing it of a bit of white card to get a little more light on the subject or when I forget my wife had used it on auto right before I pick it up.

I got my 50mm f1.8 so that I wouldn’t need to use the flash as much until such times as I can afford a decent flash unit. It’s working out quite well

4. I will not be hindered by the gear I do not have.

I’m fed up moaning that my tele is very soft at the extremes or that my kit lens is a plastic piece of crap. They all take great photos if used right. I could really do with a decent set of lamps for my light tent thingie though.

5. I will shoot in RAW

The processing speed of the 300D meant that it took an absolute age to take photos in RAW. If I was taking shots of the kids I’ll always fire a burst off and use whatever ones are in focus and look good. I felt with RAW I’d get maybe 3-4 photos in the same time I’d get 8-9 on jpeg format. The 500D is much faster though. I actually feel that it deals with them faster than the 300D dealt with jpegs. From now on when I’m taking photos that matter rather than whimsical family shots in the park I’ll start using Raw.

6. I will learn how to process my shots

I can use Lightroom and I can use Photoshop. I just don’t have the time to sit through 120 photos and working on each one individually. I need to learn ways of speeding up my work flow and actually doing more than messing with the contrast and saturation without devoting an entire afternoon to Photoshopping one photo.

7. I will share my photos with others on the web

Most of my photos end up as friends only on Flickr. I’m working on getting the balls to widen that net for the decent shots.

8. I will accept critiques of my work.

To be honest 7, 8 and 10 all roll into one for me. I joined the DPS forums a while ago but over time stopped visiting and being part of the community. Part of that community gives critiques of work if you want it. Although I’ve started going back there and sharing some of my shots I’m not asked for advice or thoughts on any of my work. That’s going to change.

9. I will set goals and be proactive about my photography career

I’m not looking at photography as a future job. It’s a hobby that will hopefully help me with my job but it won’t actually be my job. I have standards to keep to in the coming months and I need to get my finger out to attain them. It’s been a good while since I used my camera for anything more that photographing the kids so that is my first one. Getting the skills I already have back into shape and honing the skills that I will need the most over the coming months.

10. I will connect with other photographers

Going back to the previous answers. The DPS forums are a good start for me and I know of a few local photographers that are always up for helping out with technical questions. These will be the base from which I learn from and all that flowery nonsense. We’ll build from the once I’m more comfortable with my camera and skills.

So that’s that. It’s not a tough list but one that is going to mean a lot of work none the less. Time to get my finger out!

Tags: camera, Digital Photography School, DPS, Photography

The postman knows us very well. There isn’t a week goes by where we don’t get a package of some sorts. It’s got to the stage where he knows we’ll be about so holds on to packages for use if he misses us while we’re on the nursery/food/chicken feed run and swings by later to pass them in. Every single package is for Vonnie. The stuff inside might be for the kids but it’s always addressed to Vonnie. Then last week a box arrived addressed to myself…

Turn back time to just over a month ago. I’m sitting at my desk at work trying desperately to do as little as possible whilst still looking busy (for all prospective employers out there…read back through my journal as there is a reason for it ;)) I stumbled upon a competition being run by the Scottish Book Trust. All you had to do was complete the titles of a few books and give their authors and you could win a few books. Easy. So over lunch I completed my entry and then completely forgot all about it. That was until the other week when I received an email saying I’d won the competition. With it being kids books it was a nice win but my limit of good luck never stretched to more than a few quids worth of prizes.

Now we’ve had a few freebies from them in the past. One of the things they do is to reach out to every child in Scotland and at various times of their give them a bundle of books to help encourage the love of reading. So needless to say with having four kids we’ve seen our fair share of Bookstart books come through the door.

What arrived was a little more than a few free books however.

Rory and his Magic Castle by Andrew Wolffe
Yo-Ho-Ho A-Pirating We’ll Go by Kaye Umansky
Stella to Earth by Simon Puttock
Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates by Timothy Knapman
Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs by Giles Andreae
The Octonauts & the Sea of Shade by Meomi
Chick by Ed Vere
Paddington : King of the Castle by Michael Bond
Love From Louisa by Simon Puttock
Call Me Gorgeous by Giles Milton
I Love Holidays by Anna Walker
Red Rockets and Rainbow Jelly by Sue Heap and Nick Sharratt
Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

To buy all that in the shops your looking at around £60 and Nairn’s already demanding to have the dinosaur pirates one read to him at night. We already own a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpiller just like every household with children in the UK but I think we’re on to our 5th copy and that is on it’s last legs. My favourite off them all must be Chick though. With us keeping chickens it’s a great wee book for the kids but Nairn was the only one of the younger kids to go through the hatching of our chicks and be able to remember it. If we don’t hatch this year then it will be perfect for the girls to get a better look at how our chickens live.

So needless to say I’m very pleased with the prize and so are the kids. Now all I need to do is buy them another bookshelf to fit their new books on!

So hows things with us other than winning books? We’re getting there. Greer is loaded with the cold and seems to be teething so we’ve been up a fair bit of the last two nights. Vonnie says my eyes look like pinholes which is a nice look. With Nairn we’ve got the whole speech therapy thing going on as well as trying to work out whether it’s in his best interest to go to school a year early or not as well as working out just what school we should be sending to him. Erica’s speech is confusing me. She still has her own wee language almost as her pronunciations aren’t great but in the last few days her fluency has shot through the roof. Findlay? He’s in his own wee work with his laptop these days. If he’s not playing on Club Penguin he’s round at his friends houses.

Today all the kids are at nursery so although I had plans to use that fact to get started on decorating the girls room it’s looking like a quiet day with tea and a sofa to snooze on. This isn’t a bad thing.

Tags: books, competiton, kids, Scottish Books Trust

Just realised I haven’t blogged about my jaunt up Ben Lomond last year. Well I did but a couple of short paragraphs doesn’t really cover it. It was a crazy day after all.

It started with the seven of us planning the trip and gradually realising the weather was going to possibly scupper all our plans. Alex ended up pulling out due to a case of the lurgy and one of Willie’s mates gave up as well. In all honesty we possibly should have as well with hind sight.

I guess the first sign that the day wasn’t going to go we the way we planned appeared when we started driving up the east bank of Loch Lomond. Forget the rain we encountered on the way up there. It was definitely the fallen trees on the road that gave the biggest hint.

The rain held off as we got our gear together but thanks to a few errors in the layout of the roads and land *cough* I couldn’t read my map */cough* it took us five minutes which included a walk up a forest road that went nowhere near the summit before we realised we had to head back to the car park to find the real path.

The initial going was good. The weather was a bit crap though. One minute it rained the next it stopped but the wind just didn’t let up. We would get completely soaked by the rain and then by the time it stopped and started again we would have been blown dry. As we started to reach about a third of the way up we really started to struggle with the wind. It gets a little steep at this point and as the hillside is completely exposed once you get pass the tree line at the beginning it started to take it’s toll. Mark decided he just couldn’t go any further. I don’t know if it was the wind or just his body telling him that despite the energy drinks he was stupid to go any further but he was the first to head back and with hindsight I think that’s when we all should have turned back.

The wind didn’t let up at all throughout the climb and in fact just got worse. I read the weather reports when we got back and for most of the climb the wind was gusting at up to 50 miles per hour. Dave and Stoo were determined to at least make it to the half way point which to there credit they did. There is a well about halfway up on the map which they made it passed before they turned back. I don’t know why but I stood for a few minutes shouting to Dave to make sure he knew what to do if something was to happen to them on the way down. I guess it was because although we all had radios with us the mobile phone reception up there is sporadic at best and almost all the survival and first aid gear was either in my own bag or Willie’s ruck sack.

So we pressed on. At times the wind would just hit us constantly for a few minutes and we’d just stand there leaning into it hoping for it to let up long enough for us to walk another couple of hundred yards before the next gust. It was round about this point that we started to meet a few other climbers as they caught up with us. We’d only seen one other person on the hill up until then and he had shot ahead with his dog and you could see his outline as he made a break for the summit. They all seemed nuts if truth be told. We stopped for a quick rest just as it starts to get really steep and rocky just before you turn back around and start the last leg up to the summit. Willie stopped for a breather and I carried on to see how far I could get before I stopped for a bite to eat to let him catch up.

That’s when I bumped into they guy with the dog again. He was on his way back down after reaching the summit and said it was insane up there. As I found out later it was gusting at up to 90 miles an hour up there. He waited until the wind died down before running between rocks and then holding on until the wind died down again. He almost lost his dog three times thanks to the wind apparently. I pushed on and got to within what I thought at the time was about 400 yards from the summit but after looking again at the map it was probably twice that I turned back. It was just stupid to carry on. I took my last picture looking out over the lochs behind the mountain and the camera’s battery died. It’s was definitely a sign.

It turned out Willie had actually decided just to wait where he had stopped hoping that I’d turn back as well. I eventually made it back down to him and just like when I climbed Ben Nevis there was a spring in my step on the way back down. Where we struggled to walk up the damn hill we were almost running down the thing. The worst bit was still to come however.

When we reached the bottom we found out that the hotel was without power. A tree had been blown over and took out both the power and phone lines. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem except all the way back down the hill all we could think about was a nice warm meal and a pint of beer. The kitchen was shut and the beer pumps wouldn’t work without power. We were stuck with warm bottled beer or cans of soft drinks and a scone.

We will be back to do it again when the weather gets better and there are plans afoot to hit The Cobbler in March in preparation. Fingers crossed the weather works out for us next time!

Tags: Ben Lomond, Dave Hogg, hills, Mark, outdoors, rain, Scotland, Stoo, walking, weather, Willie, wind

Today marks another step on the long road towards being our own bosses. The first lease application was sent off today.

I’d like to say it was a joint effort but Vonnie did all the hard work and I signed at the crosses and took it to the Post Office to be sent off on it’s way. So where does that leave us now? Well it still has to be accepted so we’ve got that uncertainty to deal with but we’re moving on regardless. A few pieces of furniture and bit’s and bob’s for the shop have already started being delivered. In most cases it would be silly to get things like furniture bought and delivered before we have premises but in this case they fold flat and to behonest without knowing when we’ll get a place and a move in date and being on a strict budget we have to take advantage of the sales when they are on.

Things are starting to move

Tags: business, lease

The past few days have been hellishly hard work. At the beginning of the week Vonnie went to see the doctor who told her among other things she had a viral ear infection which was causing her headaches and sore throats. On Wednesday night Vonnie had trouble breathing and collapsed meaning she ended up with the paramedics out and a trip to A&E in the back of an ambulance. It turns out she has a really bad case of tonsillitis and has been put on a pile of drugs to get her better.

This morning we woke up and for the first time in about a week Vonnie actually felt positive about the day and was able to get up and not be in that much pain. Our respective parents were popping in to see the kids so we planned a relatively quiet day once we’d tidied the living room up a bit. Then the parents arrived and our son turned from a happy wee boy into this.

He’s excitable. He’s noisey. He won’t do a damn thing he’s told. And that’s before he even gets anywhere near the sweets. Even when he’s not fighting for his grandparents attention he is loud without an off switch. He talks to himself or when he’s alone he’ll just whitter random noises but there certainly isn’t an off switch. He becomes that hard work that Vonnie was completely and utterly shattered by the time our parents left to go home and it’s been a constant battle with him for the rest of the evening.

His speech therapy assessment went really well. Apparently problem cases are flagged if they have something like more than three percent of their normal chat being effected by stutters, stammers or repetition. I think Nairn comes in at just over two percent so they don’t see it as a major problem but he’s to go back in five months for a check. He’s got so many things going on that check of boxes for autism, ADHD and dyslexia that I don’t know if it’s just my parental desire for there to be nothing wrong that makes me think it’s just a kid thing. From getting my own ‘diagnosis’ with regards to dyslexia last year I know that if any of them do turn out to be a problem for him none of them are severe enough to really cause him much bother but it would allow us to target those problems to help him and ourselves.

I guess time will tell.

Tags: ADHD, autism, dyslexia, Nairn, tonsilitis, Vonnie