The lost musical generation

While out in the car, I noticed that I had cranked the music up all the way (not unusual). What could be seen as unusual was my choice of music. I was listening to Bryan Adams, Summer of 69, and singing along, yes i'm a car singer. Now many of you will not find this unusual, Summer of 69 is a great song and undoubtedly a classic, what I find weird about it is why it wasn't a classic from my generation.

There are many songs and Artists that people in my generation love, songs like Summer of 69, Bon Jovi's Living on a prayer or pretty much any song from Michael Jacksons early career have all become a mainstay in the 'Cheese' club scene, a scene mostly dominated by people from my generation. While, as I have said, these are all great songs, I can't help but wonder how they ended up loved by so many instead of us finding our own music, after all most of these songs were released before I was even born, yet I can not help but sing along to them.

My wife raised an interesting point, 'There's just too much music' and 'it's all rubbish' she also raises the point that it's the same with films and as a result of the ever increasing range of films to see and music to hear there are no longer any unique or original pieces being released and as a result nothing stands out from the crowd.

In my mp3 collection there are many songs and artists that I really enjoy listening too but I can't help but wonder if I will still listen to their songs in 27 years time or if my children will ever enjoy them. Have we really reached the point where no one can stand out from the crowd or are we just so fickle that we forget about one song as soon as it stops being a chart topper.

I consider myself to be a music lover and since 2010 I have downloaded nearly 800 chart songs on to my mp3 player, but i can't think of a single song of the top of my head that I have sung too as often as the songs that I have mentioned or many others the previous generations have given us.

Is it too much to ask for someone with the natural born ability to write and sing music to come along and leave a legacy for us, the lost musical generation?

Thanks for reading

From a Musical Optimist

Who's the Daddy?

Well actually I am!

What a difference a day makes. For the past 12 weeks and 3 days Charlotte has been pregnant and ever since I found out I have been crapping myself. I don't know why but I keep worrying that something is going to go wrong or that i'm not going to be a good Daddy. But this morning we had our 12 week scan and I now know that no matter what I do, whether I get it right or wrong I am going to be a good Daddy, because I am going to be doing it for our baby. That baby is going to be the most important thing in the world and I am going to do everything in my power to give it the best life and to keep it safe. I know that I can't shelter it from the hazards of the real world, but I can sure as hell prepare it to deal with them. From this day forward, I am the 3rd most important person in the world and I will make every sacrifice I need to to give Charlotte and Burnham the baby bump everything they deserve, although I may not give them everything the desire. It feels so weird, 24 hours ago I was petrified, but now i'm just excited and focused. It feels so good to be able to say this but in 27 1/2 weeks I will be able to stand up and scream from the top of my lungs 'I'm the Daddy' and Charlotte won't be able to tell me off for being arrogant.

Thanks for Reading

From The Daddy!

Truly Inspirational

Sometimes in live you get inspired. I got my insiration today from a news headline, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18454800.

This headline is about the story of a 9 year old girl who has been banned from taking pictures of her school dinners. The girl had been photographing and blogging about her school dinners for less than 2 months, and in that time she had got over 2 million views and raised over £2,000 for charity.

Argyll and Bute council, however don't find this inspirational and have deemed that she can no longer photograph her food. All I can say is shame on you. To stem a 9 year olds creativity like this can bring no positives, and I just wanted to blog to share my support for this wonderful project, in the hope that if enough people see it and share it that we could get the council to overturn it's decision.

Here's hoping

Thanks for reading

Inspired from Ipswich.

p.s. you can check out the blog here - http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

p.p.s. please share this with as many people as possible.

p.p.p.s. if this touches you like it touches me, contact argyll and bute council on this link and let them know - http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/forms/contact-us

Hairy Sausages

It's been a very busy Jubilee bank holiday weekend, firstly I worked 2  of the days in the 4 day weekend. On top of this I had my brother-in-law Daniels 15th Birthday on Saturday, a Jubilee party on Sunday and we were due to go to our friends daughters 2nd birthday party on Monday (unfortunately we didn't make it) and today we had a relaxing day, our plans for the weekend all involved bbq's. Tuesday was my turn to cook the bbq, but after looking at the weather we decided to make it an indoor bbq, so I sparked up the grill amd cooked a feast of salmpn, corn on the cob, burgers, chicken, rice, potatoes, salad and hairy sausages. Yes that's right Hairy Sausages, while cooking the sausages I slipped and dropped them on the floor, I quickly picked them up off the floor, which had been thoroughly cleaned only days before. Our friend Dan then made a joke about hairy sausages, which I dismissed saying 'don't be silly, they'll be fine'. How wrong I was! But apart from that it was a success and at least now I have a speciality dish.


Thanks for reading

From the Hairy BBQ specialist.

An unexpected day off.

Monday 21st May 2012, 6:45am, my alarm goes off. I wake up more easily than usual and i'm out of bed and in the shower by 7:10. By 8:00 Charlotte and I are both ready to go so we take the dog out to answer natures call, then head off to work. I arrive at work at 8:30! Bob, our assistant manager, opens the door greets me and then says, I didn't think you were in today! We check the schedule and sure enough I was not scheduled to be in, so once my colleague Pete arrives I head for home.

It's always nice to get a day off when your not expecting one, paticularly when you need one and have things to do at home. So I will be spending the rest of the day chilling out and doing a few bits around the flat.

Ciao

From the comfort of the sofa.

we now return to your regular schedule!

it's been a long time since i last blogged, but between my new job, my hospital stay and our holiday i have been keeping busy. things seem to be settling down now so i shall return to entertaining you on a regular basis.

thanks for reading

we will now return to your regular schedule!

Note to self - don't take Charlotte shopping on an empty stomach

Thursday is our weekly shopping day. For the last few weeks I have done this by myself but Charlotte's Uncle got married today so she had the afternoon off. After the ceremony, a very intimate do, we went shopping. As always we had a list, (bread, milk, jam, butter, shower gel for me, tissues, ice cream, yogurts, potatoes, rolls and we each have £3 to spend on stuff for ourselves). It didn't go to plan. After having a small debate about the butter, I wanted to get the bigger pack for better value but Charlotte insisted we couldn't afford it, we carried on around the shop. Charlotte picked up £3 of flying saucers and then asked if we could get some popcorn, then we got some biscuits (these were my £3's worth), apple turnovers, creme eggs and strawberry cornetto's. At this point I questionned her as to why we couldn't afford to save money by buying a bigger pack of butter but we could afford to buy all the extra junk food, at which point she told me that she was hungry. I should have figured as she didn't have any breakfast and someone forgot to make her lunch to take to work with her and as she had to be there at 8 she didn't have time to make it herself.

So the moral of the story is feed your wife before you take her shopping.

There's more than one way to shave a dog!

A very windy night
After dinner Sunday night, pork, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, yorkshire pudding & gravy, I started having terrible stomach pains, this carried on until after I'd gone to bed and was accompanied by lot's of gas, unfortunately for my wife. Between that and the terrible wind blowing around in the garden, knocking over our table and tearing our neighbours bike cover off, I took a long time to get off to sleep.
 
Signing On!
Despite the fact that I knew that I would be starting my new job this week I still had to Sign On, for the 1st and last time (hopefully), so at 11.30 I wrapped up warm and braved the weather to go to the job centre, I arrived at 11.50 and went to let them know I was there, as my appointment was between 12 & 12.30 I was told I had to wait until 12 before letting them know I was there, how fucking ridiculous, nonetheless I sat down and waited. At 12 I went back to the desk to let them know I was there and was sent to sit in another waiting area, which I could have been sitting in 10 minutes earlier. Bloody bureaucracy. Despite being 10 minutes early I wasn't seen until 12.20 at which point I signed on and signed off and went down in history as the shortest claimant this year.
 
No good cause.
I got a call late Tuesday and I start my new job next Monday which is a slight problem as I stopped my Job-Seekers claim from Tuesday so will be a week short on my money! D'oh the wife told me I should have waited. I also received a letter telling me that my application to back date my Job-Seekers Allowance had been rejected as I have shown 'No good cause for the delay in applying.' Me and the wife disagree, I ceased my previous job on the 10th February and I was planning to start my application on the following Monday, the 13th. However on the 12th I received a call from my new employer offering me the job. So I decided not to complete the application, my new employer however had some issues with the exiting employee which prevented me from being formally offered the job. I believed that these would be resolved sooner than they were so decided I didn't need to claim, however once it became clear that I would not start this job in time to be paid in March I felt I needed to claim. I did so on the 27th February and completed the section to apply for backdating as I felt I should be entitled to claim from the date I stopped work. This section consisted of 200 characters in which I was supposed to justify why I should get this. To put this in perspective my last sentence was 98 characters, so I wonder if anyone could justify anything in that space. So an appeal will be submitted and an independent tribunal will be held where surely I will have to justify in no more than 50 words why Job-Seekers Allowance Decision-Makers are useless.
 
25 year old's.
Sorry that should read 20 x 5 year olds. Monday is my nephews 5th birthday so on Saturday Charlotte and I went to his birthday party to act as adult supervision. The party was at a sports centre and was a soft play and bouncy castle party, so adult supervision consisted of bouncing on the bouncy castle and making sure the kids weren't getting bored. As I said it was a 5 year old's birthday party and all of his friends were 5 or below and there were about 15 of them in the end. After the food Charlotte, my sister Niki & I were creating circuits for the children, they had to go over the bouncy mountain, weave around the bouncy trees and go through the bouncy tunnel, it was at this point I made a friend. A little girl named Freya, one of Samuel's friends younger sisters, took a shine to me and would only go over the bouncy mountain if I was there to catch her and spent most of the rest of the party shadowing me every where I went. As I was catching and bouncing Freya when she came down the bouncy mountain I felt I should offer it to all the children and before long I had a fan club of 5 and under girls insisting that I catch them despite being able to slide down by themselves, (all the boys declined my offer and went to play elsewhere). My wife found this hilarious and managed to prevent me from relaxing at any time and even at one point tried to trade me for a baby, (who happened to be Freya's younger brother, and very cute). I was not impressed!
 
There's more than one way to shave a dog!
Actually there's not. Found that out Sunday when we groomed Theo.
 

Thanks for reading.

From my BlackBerry® smartphone

Stuck in the mud/ Hot sauce?

Who knew that not having a job was so stressful?

It was Sunday, and my parents were coming round for a roast. My wife spent all morning preparing, she cooked the beef, made stuffing balls & pigs in blankets, prepared all the veg, made Yorkshire pudding mix and prepared some of her of her brilliant gravy. On the odd occasion she needed my help, I was thoroughly grumpy. I was stressed. My parents have a tendency to have arguments and I was worried that this would be one of those occasions. It wasn't, it was a very nice meal, topped off by watching Arsenal beat Tottenham 5-2, which made me a lot happier, if only temporarily.

Job-Seekers Allowance

Still no start date for my new job, so on Monday I started the process to claim Job-Seekers Allowance, I really didn't want to but I needed to. I spent the next couple of days worrying, completely unnecessarily, about my Job-Seekers interview. It was on Wednesday at 14:55, I arrived, eventually found the door and let them know I was there. I was shown to a waiting area and I started people watching. I realised at some point that I must stick out like a sore thumb, I was wearing smart shoes & a shirt while everyone else was wearing at least 1 item of sports clothing. I was seen by a man named Martin who took me through the process, assured me that I wouldn't be out of work for long and described me as a 'Model Customer' which made me feel a lot better.

Stuck in the mud.

Thursday morning arrived and after dropping my wife off at work I came home. I spent most of the morning on the PS3 before I realised that I was feeling sorry for myself and decided to do something constructive. 1st thing I did was to join Twitter, you can find me @AdamEGrant, but that was just phase 1. I decided that I needed to pace myself, after all Rome wasn't built in a day, so I made myself a list of jobs round the house to do on Friday and settled for taking the dog for a walk. We were out for over an hour and a half, we walked to the park where I took advantage of the unseasonably nice weather and the dog gambolled around, we walked round the park before going to meet the wife from work or that was the plan. It didn't work out like that. We saw an Alsatian, Theo, the dog, is scared of Alsatians so he got as far away from it as possible, he happened to walk into a boggy bit of the park and got stuck. Of course I had to rescue him. In doing so I got one of my shoes stuck, ended up hoping around to try and get my shoe back and then fell flat on my backside in the mud. So after a trip home, a quick wash for the dog and a change of clothes for me, we eventually met the wife halfway home.

Hot Sauce?

Thursday also happened to by my friend Rick's birthday and for a birthday surprise his fiancé, Sara, took him out for a meal and invited us along. We went to ChimiChanges. It was a nice night, although there were some trade description issues with the not-so-hot sauce.

It ends as it began.

So the week started with parents and it ends with parents. The in-laws this time and I managed to not be stroppy with Charlotte while she talked me through making her Spaghetti Bolognese. I had also buttered her up by surprising her with Moulin Rouge when she got home from work Friday night. My Saturday night was made a lot better by a phone call confirming that the issues around my new job had been resolved and I would be getting a call from my new boss on Monday to confirm my start date. The in-laws didn't stay very long as Richard, my father-in-law is suffering with a lot of pain in his hips and wanted to be comfortable in his own house.

A chilled out Sunday.

I was permitted a lay-in on Sunday, and when I did eventually wake up I didn't have anything I had to do. I chose to do some baking and made a fruit cake for myself and about 70 buns for my wife for herself and for her to take to work. We spent the rest of the day doing nothing and loving it.

Thanks for Reading

Yours from a Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Desperation

Date: 18/02/2012, Time 00:03 Age 26 years 364 days 9 hours 53 minutes (No I’m not 27 yet)



It was my birthday and I was having a 1/4 life crisis, I crawled into bed next to my wife and panicked. What have I done with my life? Sure I’m only 27, already married, trying for children and doing a degree but I haven't really achieved any greatness yet! Oh, it's also worth noting at this point that I’m unemployed for the 1st time in my life, even if it's only until I get a start date for my new job.



21 hours later



So now I’m 27 and all thoughts of panic are gone, mostly because my wife has drunk too much Baileys, collapsed, thrown up all over herself, me and our bathroom and generally entertained/horrified our guests. Once she sobered up a little we went out and had a great night.



The morning after the night before



I'm definitely not 17 any more. I woke up with a smashing headache and apparently today was my day to be sick. We had organised a party with my family, all 14 of us, including the 7 children. It was loud, but worst of all my wife felt fine. Now I feel old.



Desperation



The rest of the week passed normally until I got a call from my ex-employer. The long and short of it is I won't get paid much this month. This led me to think about the things we do in desperation. In October 2008 the lady who is now my wife was so desperate to move out of her parents house that she bought the 1st place she could, a 1 bed flat, less than 6 months later the 2 bed flat was purchased, fully furnished, for the same price. Since we got together in 2010 I have reminded her constantly of how silly this was. I will never mention it again. I was so desperate for a new job last September that I took the 1st job that came along, and look where it got me.



Thanks for reading!



27 and Proud.