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Good Times

By Friends & Family, Happiness & JoyNo Comments

I’ve just had two weeks off work on annual leave. It gave me the opportunity to spend some precious time with family & friends and take some much needed time for rest & relaxation. The time off has been full of good times including:

Alton Towers – For My Birthday
For my Birthday Mum, Ian, Steve and myself went to Alton Towers for a day of thrills, frights and fun. I wanted to go as I’d never been.The weather remained dry all day, but had dark grey clouds in the sky and the temperature dropped in the afternoon. Steve and I managed to get on:

  • Th13Teen, my favourite ride. It was a thrill and fright ride. Loved it and would have liked the time to go on it again…and again.
  • Air, is a fast hurtling-towards-the-ground-to-your-death before quickly turning away type ride. I had this image of test dummies coming back without legs, arms and a head from some rollercoaster that I saw in the News ages ago. I didn’t like it.
  • Nemesis, a complete thrill ride. Loved it and would go on again.
  • Nemesis Sub-Terra (new for 2012) – really disappointing. If I’d have known it would be like that, I wouldn’t have bothered.

In the afternoon we all visited Hex and illusion type ride which left me with a head ache. We also visited the aquarium, which I was personally disappointed by as it was too small and people were touching the fish even though there were signs asking them not too. Alton Towers is a massive place and we didn’t manage to get to see everything, even using the Sky Ride. So I’ve put together some tips if you’re planning a visit to Alton Towers…

Alton Towers Top Tips:

  • When buying tickets, buy online. There are two reasons for this. Firstly you wont have to que when you get there. Secondly we saved loads of money by buying them a week before.
  • Download the Alton Towers app as it’s really useful for a map, live wait times and other info.
  • Take an extra £6 for parking. I was surprised to see they charged for parking.
  • Go on the ‘big’ rides in the morning. It will save a load of time queuing in the afternoon.
  • Take packed lunches, otherwise you’re going to spend about £20 each on lunch.
  • If you’ve got someone whose not going on the rides then they can hold your bags. If you’re all riding, the rides have luggage storage for while you ride. Plus there are some lockers near the Air ride.
  • We didn’t get to see everything, so consider two days at the theme park. You can buy a ticket for another day at a reduced price both online and on site.

Baby Ethan’s Christening
Baby Ethan is my Nephew and I was honoured to be asked to be his god parent at his Christening. Although I’m Pagan and it was a Roman Catholic Christening I like the concept of a god parent. Someone whose there to support the parents and be there for the child. Ethan was christened, sleeping through most of the service and then there was a celebratory party. It was a great day and although being a god father is a big responsibility, I hope to do Ethan and his parents proud.

Chester Zoo & Tea in Chester – For Steve’s Birthday
Steve, two of his friends and myself went to Chester Zoo for his birthday. Click on any photo for full size image. We had loads of fun:

In the giftshop,
we found masks :).
Steve’s a Giant Turtle.
I’m a Giant Turtle.

I noticed a significant reduction of the animals in Chester Zoo, we started in the side of the park with the Zebra’s (all three of them) and there were a lot of empty enclosures. The enclosures were of a high quality (as always), even if we couldn’t see the animals because of poor design:



(Spirit of the Jaguar Enclosure. Bushes made it difficult to see the Jaguar’s.)

However here’s some photos of the animals we did see:

Elephants.
Zebra.
Rhinos.
Cheetahs.
Flamingos.
Tigers – sun bathing.
Penguins.
Mother and Baby Chimp.
Giraffe’s.
Ducks.
We saw a lot of them,
some exotic, some not.
These Dinosaurs
looked….plastic.
Flying Bird Dinosaur.
T-Rex Dinosaur and baby.

We went for tea afterwards in The Slug and Lettuce in Chester town centre. We all had a great day, made more special because it’s was celebrating Steve’s birthday.

Visiting Steve’s Family in Hastings
For my last weekend off Steve and I went to visit his family in Hastings. It was lovely to see them all, and I would like to thank them for giving me somewhere to stay. We had a day out in town and I got to spend some time on the sea front. It was glorious weather and I had to walk up and down the entire sea front repeatedly to get a photo with no people on the beach, but I managed it:



Lots of Sunbathing
Throughout my two weeks, we’ve had some fantastic weather and I’ve used every opportunity I can to bask in the sun. The result: my face, neck and arms are lobster red. In a few days they’ll turn into tanned skin.

Well that’s about it for my Summer Holidays.

Blog soon,

Antony



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Monday 28 May 2012

Re-Living My Youth: Steps Live

By Friends & Family, Gigs & Shows, Happiness & Joy, History2 Comments

As part of my Christmas presents last year, mum bought me a ticket to see Steps with her, Ian and Jodie. We got into town early and grabbed a bite to eat:

Mum & Ian (1) – with Flash!
Mum & Ian (2) – without Flash.
Me being sophisticated drinking coffee. Later I spend some time peeing while the warm up artists were on. Luckily they were terrible and worth missing.
Me.
While Jodie’s off powdering her nose, me & Ian fight over her bag. We stop to pose for a quick photo.
Jodie’s back and posing for a photo with mum.
Mum, Jodie & Ian.
Mum, Me & Ian.
I decide to be cheeky and mess up mum’s & Ian’s hair (forgetting that Ian doesn’t have any). Mum retaliates as a photos taken.

We got to the Arena and took our seats. There were two warm up acts, both of which were shockingly bad.


Ian, Mum & Jodie.
The audience go wild as the Steps logo appears on the screens at either side of the stage.

Five tubes that Steps were rise up and into on their first appearance on stage.
A vault with countdown clock on. The graphic was completely on a back screen.
The vault opens.
Steps appear on stage.
The graphics screen at the back of the stage. The screen lit up, in combination with the lights made getting photos really difficult.
Steps appear on stage. We were treated to a few Steps classics with dance moves using the back screen as a Just Dance type game.
Steps – Dancing & Singing in boxes.
Backing Dancers – Playing with Fire, while Steps sing.

To give you a feel of the hyper-active, excited atmosphere of the audience, I took a short video:

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Then each member of Steps did a solo song. First Lee, singing a mix of a few songs. His performance was excellent, and there were even screams when he ripped open his shirt:



(Lee performing with his shirt open.)

Next was Faye:



(Faye performing.)

‘H’ sang Don’t Stop Believing and did some clever stuff by making it look like he was interacting with the big graphic screen at the back of the stage:



(H performing. With his use of the graphic screen, I struggled to get a good photo.)

Lisa sang next, singing a mix of different songs including her track ‘Lately‘:



(Lisa performing.)

Claire sang her solo last. Claire had put on weight, but looked better for it. Unsuprisingly she sang an opera type song (having been on Popstar to Operastar):




Then it was time for my favorite Steps song: It’s The Way You Make Me Feel. I couldn’t help feel disappointed, rather than just having H singing the male lines of the song both H and Lee sang them. There voices didn’t feel like they became one. I would have preferred just H to sing to be honest. Still the costumes lived up to expectations, see below:



Lee in his mask and suit.
H in is costume. Claire, Faye and Lisa wore corset type costumes. All keeping in the theme of the orignal music video.

H closer, a photo of the side screen.
Steps then went on to sing Love’s Got A Hold On My Heart

Steps stopped to say Thank you’s – mostly to the audience for supporting them. They even posed for a photo:

Then they slowed things down with a few of their ballot type tracks. What amazed me was that the audience sang along, louder than Steps at some points. The audience singing in mass made me aware of how many people related to the words in Step’s songs.


(Steps sitting on the stage singing some of their slower tracks.)

Steps brought back the hyper-active, excited atmosphere of the audience with Stomp and some other songs. Here’s some photos:

Stage for Stomp.
Stage for another song.
Stage for another song.
Steps on Stage performing Dancing Queen.

Then it was time for Steps to take a bow and leave the stage:

For their encore they performed the only track they hadn’t performed so far: Tragedy :


(Leaving the audience on a high.)

For me it was a bit of nostalgia, re-living my teen years. But Steps stated that they were back – so they may well release some new music. I hope they do, I really enjoyed myself and had forgotten how much I enjoy a bit of cheesy pop.

I would like to apologise for quality and size and of the photos. I should have taken my camera rather than used my iPhone, this would have improved the quality of the photos. I’ve also had to significantly reduce the size of the photos to save on disk space (see More Disk Space). But if you’ve not got tickets to see Steps, don’t worry as the tour DVD is available to pre-order here: Steps – The Ultimate Tour Live [DVD]. Also you can order the live concerts on CD here: Steps Live! 2012 [CD].

Blog soon,

Antony

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Thursday 12 April 2012

Fear

By Thinking2 Comments

Following on from my last post Listening to my Heart through Mediation, I wanted to write about fear. I remember as a child I had confidence (albeit at little too much at times) to attempt anything, I had no fear of failure. It was one of the most precious gifts my mum had instilled me and my brothers. But since I’ve been listening to my heart I have felt more fear than ever before.

Perhaps it’s worried about more emotional trauma. Which is completely understandable. But recently I’ve had to go into situations that my fear has made me dredd beforehand, imaging what’s going to be said by people, how they will respond to me, etc. And you know what?

Facing my fear has been good. It’s never been as bad as I’ve imagined, in fact in some situations quite the opposite. So my advice to anyone feeling fear – think about how positive the situation could go (to give a balanced view), then go and face the situation – it’s never as bad as your fear makes out. And if it was, simply do what you have to do and then walk away.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Thursday 23 February 2012
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