Memoirs of a Roadie

Close (To The Edit)

Posted on 8th March 2011

On Saturday March 5th 2011, a neighbour of ours, Kate Angel, took part in a sponsored head shave for Cancer Research UK. Her friend Angie was diagnosed with breast cancer last September and with Angie living in Blackpool, Kate felt she needed to do something to help her. Shaving her head to raise money and awareness seemed to be a positive and inspiring way to do it.

Cora Flowers, a professional hairdresser and neighbour, offered to shave Kate's head, and David Le Marchand, "another Dad", worked on the posters and flyers for the event. Having a video camera, Nicole offered my services to record the whole event as "The man across the road".

Having recorded the event, I then spent Saturday and Sunday having fun editing the video. The full edit came to 30 minutes, but I also managed to make a shorter edit at just over 12 minutes for YouTube, featuring the main highlights.

So far the online donations and the money raised on the day has raised nearly £1,500 (and is expected to be more with all the promotion of the videos). If you would like to donate an amount, please visit Kate's JustGiving page, and donate as little or as much as you can to a very worthy cause.

To see the event itself, watch the YouTube video.

Down In The Park

Posted on 6th April 2008

Ethne & DanDan

After waking up to snow, we took the kids round to the park to throw snowballs and build snowmen.

Snowball fight!

Up on the hill it looked like a few people were even venturing down the slope on sledges. Seeing as it's a steep hill, they obviously felt quite brave. Some kite flyers were also having a good day up there too.

Meanwhile, DanDan made a snow angel and four snowmen, while Nicole and Ethne made another. Ethne made us laugh by adding a bum to her snowman, although it looked more like a pronounced tail. Should have added long ears and called it a snow bunny :)

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

Posted on 6th April 2008

Snowy Rubery

I commented to someone in the US recently that we'd had snow, blistering gales, rain and only a bit of sunshine over the last week. He then replied "all four seasons, wow!" However, the snow we had was only light had gone within an hour of the sun being out.

Not so this morning!

We awoke to discover Birmingham has been covered in a blanket of snow, and not just a light covering, but a couple of inches in places. DanDan was supposed to be playing a football match today, somehow I doubt that now. Ethne got all excited when she saw it all. I think trying to stop them playing outside today might be a bit difficult ;)

Snow

Posted on 19th November 2007

It's snowing!

Early this morning, just before going to bed, we happened to look out into the back garden and noticed a rather large abundance of white. It had been trying to snow earlier in the day, but it hadn't been settling. After it had gone dark it would seem the snow had fallen a little more heavily. I tried taking some photos through the kitchen window, using a night setting, but I think it would have been better had I been outside. Seeing as I was too tired to go out (it was 2am) and it was far too cold, I had to make do. Hopefully this won't be the last snow, as I'd like to get some with Ethne playing in the snow :)

The Carnival Is Over

Posted on 16th June 2007

The Rubery Festival was supposed to be today. The fun fair is there, but the festival had to be cancelled due to the weather. Parts of St Chad's Park are flooded and much of the rest is a muddy mess. We took DanDan and Ethne round to see whether there was anything that they could ride on at the fun fair, which thankfully there was and they did seem to enjoy themselves. However, they did manage to extract a small fortune from us!

It's a shame the festival was cancelled as the event last year got nearly the whole village turning out. While we saw several neighbours walking round today, it wasn't exactly packed. Nicole was really looking forward to the singing competition, but it turns out that that is being postponed until July or August. It's the kids who have worked towards the festival for the past weeks and months, who won't be able to join the parade or do their performances in the "main arena", that I feel sorry for. Hopefully the weather will be a little better next year.

However, the signposts marking off where the festival arena was supposed to start from the fair, did cause a bit of confusion. Is the council really selling off half of St Chad's Park? Advertising is one thing, courting controvesy is just irritating.