Have You Got Anything By The Damned Mate ???

I know, I know, it's been over a month, I've been very slack when it comes to blogging and I humbly apologise to the three people out there in the world that actually read my ramblings.

So what's been happening in my world ? Well, gigs/festivals, redundany, DJ'ing and a school reunion pretty much sums things up.

Them crazy Wonder Stuff types have been out on the road recently celebrating the 21st anniversary of the release of their debut album "The Eight Legged Groove Machine". We hopped around a few of the countries O2 Academies playing to audiences reliving their youth (shame they can't come out in such numbers when Miles and Erica are doing their solo shows) and a generally spiffing time was had by all. We rounded it all off with a great day in the sunshine at The Wychwood Festival at Cheltenham Race course.

The redundancy bit was the recent downer. Not me I might add but my wife who was basically forced into accepting redundancy by the gutlessness of her directors at a large transport terminal in the countries 2nd city (it wasn't a train or bus station and as Birmingham is land locked I'll leave you to figure out where it may have been). We're looking at it as positively as we can. She'll get a nice fat payoff which will clear her debts and leave her with a nice tidy sum to bank. Also since we moved house 4 years ago she hasn't taken well to the 90 minute commute to and from work so it will give her the push she needs to really find something closer to home. I know she'll find something, she's totally employable so won't have a problem finding somewhere that'll want her.

I've had a go at DJ'ing on and off over the years and always really enjoyed it. What I've always wanted to do was DJ at a Northern Soul night. Trouble is those nights require you to have a large and expensive collection of 7" vinyl singles as CD's are very much frowned upon in the Northern Soul world (well if you'd spent thousands of pounds and hours assembling the killer vinyl collection and some guy turns up with 2 CD's with all the same tracks on you're not going to be best pleased are you ?). Well in February a fella going under the pseudonym of "Agent 0-0 Soul" started the Telford Soul Club at a Sports & Social Club not 20 minutes walk from my house. I attended of course, went up to talk to "Agent 0-0 Soul" and was delighted to see he was spinning from CD's and not vinyl. After a quick chat I volunteered my services and he said he'd let me know. Well at the May event he let me do an hour and I had a great time. I must have done something right as he let me loose on the decks for another hour last week and I think I'm on for next month too.

On Saturday I went to something that I really wouldn't have expected myself to want to go to, a School Reunion. Now it was a little under attended, at most there were 10 or 11 of us (even one of the organisers didn't bother showing up !) but it was a top night out. Met up again with a guy I used to play rugby with 30 years ago and with my ex-girlfriend, which was an interesting one as my wife came too. But it's something I think I would really like to do again on a much bigger scale. Not sure I'm volunteering to organise it tho' !

I also found out last week some more info about my ancestor Thomas Callow (see my last Blog entry here). Well my Uncle has turned up a photograph of him and a set of his medals. I'll hopefully get to see them soon and I shall definitely be scanning the photograph so will let y'all see him when I do.

As we say in the Celestial City...Tararabit