The recent death of Jim Callaghan prompted a few memories for me. The memories are not really of the former Prime Minister, but rather of a particular holiday we had in the late 1970’s.

Mum and dad had some friends who lived in Sussex, in fact they were relatives of my mums best friend. And one summer we spent a few days staying with them.

It was rather like stepping into another world. The family had obviously made a lot of money over the years, and lived in a huge house with grounds and and cattle. They weren’t farmers you understand, just people who had land (and they had plenty) and the money to own 20 or so cows, just for fun. To make them seem even more exotic, the husband had been married prior to his existing situation, and I was amazed when his ex-wife came round to have tea with his current wife! At the time, divorce was still a pretty unusual and messy thing, so the seeing the two of them sitting and chatting amicably, seemed amazingly bohemian to a simple young boy from Fishponds.

One day we went for a walk in the countryside around the house, and Jim Callaghans house was casually pointed out as we strolled past a succession of ever more amazing properties. I was stunned to think that people we knew could live in such close proximity to the Prime Minister.

Back at the house a treasure trove of delights awaited me. Whilst the admittedly splendid scenery around the house did very little to excite me, I was very much of the opinion that the only real purpose for grass was to play football on it, not something you easily do if the grass was long and covered with cow pats!

However part the families considerable wealth had been spent on a huge record and book collection, so I spent many happy hours working myway through the cream of 1970’s rock music, whilst flicking through some stunning antiquarian books. I needed little else from the holiday, yet as well the vast array of recorded music available to me, the south eastern location of the property meant that I could also pick up Radio Caroline with almost crystal clear clarity, something that was virtually impossible in Bristol.

This I decided was the life for me, although we have never owned the big house, the land or indeed the cows! Also I’ve never had a Prime Minister living around the corner. Luckily I have been fortunate enough to surround myself with books and music. Bliss.

Sunday afternoon was really very pleasant. We made the most of the short spring interlude (we're back to damp weather again now) by meeting up with a few of our friends for drinks and food at our favourite dockside location Arabi 'n' Tap. Six of us worked our way through a succession of coffee's, teas, main meals and cakes, whilst sitting on the rooftop deck enjoying the sunshine. The afternoon was not however without it's perils, Orynthia and our poor waitress suffered at the hands (or should that be bottom!) of a passing seagull. Luckily the damage was not too great and did not tarnish a lovely afternoon.


We nipped home for a couple of hours before walking up to the Orpheus cinema in Henlease, to see "A very Long engagement" which stars Audrey Tatou and is directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The film tells us the story of a group of French soldiers in world war 1, who were due to be executed for injuring themselves in an effort to be removed from the frontline. Jeunet sense of visual flair, gives the film some remarkable trench scenes. Over the course of the film, we focus in turn of each soldiers, learning what bought them to hideous situation. One of the soldiers situation takes centre stage as polio stricken Audrey Tatou attempts to find out the truth of what happened to her fiancée. It's an engaging yet confusing film, once again Audrey Tatou is captivating.


last night we went to see The Raveonettes at The Fleece. When I last saw them I was left feeling slightly disappointed, they seemed rather too controlled, contrived even. Well the months have been kind to them, and although they had only just flown back from SXSW in Texas, and by the look of it, left their collective wardrobe behind, they sounded great. They still use the dreaded "click-track" which means that all sorts of sounds were coming through the P.A. including the disembodied voice of Ronnie Spector at one point. Yet they managed to come across as being pretty free, and very enjoyable. Also on the bill were Dogs, who I quite enjoyed, despite the fact that without The Libertines or The Strokes having shown them the way, I can't imagine that they would be with us today. We arrived midway through Boxer rebellion, who left us both completely underwhelmed.

Musical contrasts have been the thing for this weekend. By the way, I really like the way American TV shows like West Wing can use a phrase like “What’s The Thing?”. When we try to use it England it never sounds quite right, yet the American accent throws the right amount of weight and suspense being that simple phrase “The Thing”. It can impart a sense of gravity and intrigue onto the most mundane of subjects.

Anyway back to the music. Friday evening saw us make a long overdue visit to that strangest of all music venues in Bristol - Seymours in The Dings for the launch gig for the release of the new CD from Bucky - All the new mistakes. Seymours really is a great little venue, the music room has a wonderful “Phoenix Nights” atmosphere, from the glittering pillars to the pictures of Cliff and Shaky on the world, everything is fantastically uncool. Anyone with the sweet tooth of a 10 year old should also check out the amazing Tuck shop element of the bar, as it contains a startling array of goodies, many of which I have never seen before.

It was a top night, with multiple collaborations going on between Bucky, War Against Sleep and My Two Toms. We picked up a copy of the aforementioned CD, and rather good it is too. You can never accuse a Bucky song of outstaying it’s welcome as most them are only around 1 minute long, but the production on the album really brings out the best in the band.

Saturday saw us making a visit to the Colston Hall for an evening of Baroque music from the English Symphony Orchestra and the Bristol Choral Society. It was great to see a full choir of 100 + singers surging through the works of Handel and Bach, with the brilliant Zadoc The Priest proving to the big tune of the night.

Spring time in Bristol

Spring time in Bristol
Originally uploaded by tomory.

A hard working Bee enjoying the sunshine in our garden today.

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PICT0004
Originally uploaded by tomory.

Spring has arrived in Bristol. Here is our 1st Bee of the year!

Recently we've been spending time a bit of time, trying choosing where to stay when we visit Berlin and Ljubljana in September.

Over recent years we have been amazingly lucky with our choices the highlights being our apartment in Chelsea, New york, which was so "New York" it hurt. When we went to Paris in 2003, we had a brilliant stay in the midst of one of those amazing Parisian apartment buildings, where you could almost feel the presence of Jean-Paul Sartre in the air. Then we we went to wonderful Vilnius and stayed in a show home for new rich of the Baltics. Last year it was Berlin and that lovely house and garden.

We picked out a few places which look really nice for this years trip. Part of the fun in doing this is the element of the unknown. The places we stay in, are not part of some huge global hotel chain, where everything looks the same, not matter where you are. Sometimes it can be tricky working out how things work, but that is part of the fun. Hotels just don't have that element of fun about them.

My word, it's been yonks since I wrote anything here. No real reason, other than I've not found much time to sit in front of the Mac recently.

As ever a large finger of blame can be pointed in the direction of football. A particularly pointless weekend has just passed, watched City fail to win at home again, before losing 2-0 on Sunday morning when playing for Bryan Munich.

Also been catching up with a few old films, including "In the mood for love" (fantastic), "Spirited Away" (very good) and "Betty Fisher and other stories" (very clever).

Our mums have gone away on holiday with each other! How will it turn out? We are most intrigued.

We've been doing a lot of family socializing over recent days. It's all been pretty relaxed and quite nice, could be the lull before the storm though. This weekend will see both of our respective mothers going away on holiday together. Although they have obviously known each for many years, they don't really know each other that well, they also have very different personalities, so it will interesting to hear how their week together goes. It does feel as though we are masterminding some weird sociological experiment but it really is down to them, we hope it goes well.

Other than that, we saw Sondre Lerche at the Louie last Saturday. Once again he played it as a solo show and was really very good. A tad more scuzzy than when we saw him in Cardiff last year, he had the crowd lapping up everything he gave them. On occasions I thought the chat was a little too "cute" but I seemed to be alone in that.

I've finally started reading "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell, the trouble is that I got my copy of the book back in January, so I'm lugging around the huge hard backed version, even though the much lighter paperback version has just been thrust upon an excited nation. When the paper dust jacket is removed, the book does take on a vaguely biblical look, which has provoked a few concerned looks and remarks from some of my colleagues at work. The same thing happened last week, when I wore a T-Shirt with a nice picture of a toaster emblazoned across my chest. Apparently it was the cause of some debate and discussion before someone finally asked me, what it signified? I just replied with something along the lines of "Well it's just a toaster, everyone loves toast don't they" caused more confusion, as some people were sure that I was hiding some great meaning from them. oh well, sometimes it's best not to explain too much.

I need to say thanks to former Imperial customer Kristen for sending me a fantastic link, all the way from snowy Philadelphia.

We share a love for the music of Sufjan Stevens, and she kindly sent me a link to this wonderful Canadian site which hosts loads of concert and session recordings from interesting bands. As I write this I'm listening to a show he played with his band in Toronto last year. As well as that gem you can find full recordings of gigs by The Shins, The Magnetic Fields, Broadcast, Fiery Furnaces and loads more.

Talking of music and things Canadian, after reading masses of great reviews I picked up the album from Arcade Fire - "Funeral", yesterday. Only had a chance to hear it a couple of times so far, but I'm liking what I'm hearing. They are playing Bristol soon, so I may get a chance to see them in the flesh. I've also been enjoying the Bloc Party album and a lot of Rufus Wainwright in preparation for his upcoming Bristol visit.

Shoes - I know it's not something that men are meant to talk about, but I'm getting concerned about the paucity of the display on my shoe rack.

I think that I can point the finger (or should that be toe) of blame at Elvis Costello and Nick Cave. Both of these gentlemen have recently entertained me musically and sartorially, and both have been resplendent in their fine footwear. leaving me feeling somewhat inadequate in the shoe department.

It used to so different, back in the 80's I was quite happy to spend out on an ever-increasing range of fabulous 50's themed shoes from Bonie Maronie near the bus station in town. When that fine (if slightly overpriced) shop closed, I had a barren spell for several years before discovering a shop called Robot in Covent Garden and succumbed once again to the lure of the
pointy rockabilly shoe again. In between times I dabbled with the English gentlemen look, with several pair of fine brogues - leather soles and everything. Oh how sophisticated and grown up we were.

Then suddenly years after everyone else, I decided that general daily shoes were not important, but a lovely pair of Converse trainers were, and that was that. My shoes became more and more average and non descript, which is still true to this day. It could be time to have a change of approach again and to look for shoes which I won't need to keep hidden under the table.

Well that Nick Cave chap certainly provided us with some entertainment on Saturday evening. In the one of the the most wildly incorrect pieces of promotional material, since a Bristol city chairman promised the fans European football a few years ago, this “solo” show, proved to be anything but. Cave and three members of The Bad Seeds, bludgeoned their way through around two hours of top notch stuff.

The man himself was surprisingly relaxed, joking and taking requests from the audience, whilst keeping his poor “lyric roadie” fully occupied. Eventually the poor chap ran out of patience and emptied a huge carrier bag full of lyrics on the floor, much to the crowd and Mr cave’s amusement.

After the show I managed to find time to nip across to The Bunch of Grapes, to catch 15 mins of my friend Yuki’s blues band who I think are called Mean Red Spider (sound right as that’s an old Muddy Waters song), before heading home for some sleep.

Sunday saw another impressive victory from the Bryan Munich boys. That’s two wins on the trot and no goals conceded in either match, it’s almost like being in a proper team!
After the match we hooked up with Katja and Jon for a belated Sunday lunch at Le Monde. By the way if you are looking for unusual nappies and quite frankly who isn’t these days take a look at Katja’s website.

Whilst the forthcoming weekend won't be as busy as last weekends madhouse, it still promises to be pretty hectic. This evening we are going to a farewell party for one of Orynthia's colleagues who is going of to Sri Lanka for a while.

Tomorrow I'm off to watch City play Blackpool, can we make it 3 wins in row, for the first time in ages? Then straight after the match, I meeting up with Orynthia and several of my old workmates from Imperial Music. It will be good to see how everyone else is getting on 6th months after that fantastic shop closed. Although everything is going really well in my new job, I do
miss the shop in all sorts of ways. As well as the music, I do miss meeting such a vast array of people everyday. I also fear that I'm going to turn into a fat old man, I really used to enjoy being on my feet all day and dashing all over the place. Now I just sit in my chair and wait for that triple chin to emerge!

Actually, I think that one of the reasons I enjoyed last weekend so much, was because I was more or less constantly on the move. I'm lucky that my legs don't really get tired in those sort of situations.

Following the post Imperial bash, a few of us are heading off to see Nick Cave at the Colston Hall, it's around 20 years since he last played in Bristol, and the memories of that night at Trinity are still fresh in my mind. Can he be as good again?

On Sunday morning it's time for the latest match for the mighty Bryan Munich, we are heading all the way out to Backwell for the match, it's our equivalent of going to some far flung part of Europe for a champions league game (without the quality obviously!).

After than the plan is a nice walk on The Downs, we were hoping for some snow but at the moment it looks as though we are going to miss out.

Ohwe've booked a holiday in Sptember, we are off to Berlin and Slovinia!

Well we've had an amazing time since I last wrote anything here!

As previously mentioned Orynthia and I were working as part of the production team at big Oxfam / Tsunami benefit gig last weekend. Initially we thought that we were going to be working from Thursday onwards but a late change of plan meant that we weren't actually needed on site until the Friday morning. So at 9am on Friday the adventure began.

We just helped out in anyway that we could, a lot of our time on Friday was spent ensuring that everyone had enough to eat and drink, whilst the crew were setting up the stage and Massive Attack and Portishead went through initial sound checks. It was really quite odd to be hearing the bands going their stuff with only a handful of people around, on a couple of occasions I found it really difficult to stop myself from clapping! When the bands weren't in the main room everyone came into the impromptu dining area which we had set up, the atmosphere was really relaxed, everyone was chatty and friendly - no over pampered rock stars here.

Then at around Pam we had to dismantle everything as a different event was taking place at the venue that night. After a couple of quick drinks with John and Jane, we were back at home slumped in front of the TV beforeheading off to bed at around 11:30.

On Saturday we left the house at around 9am, to buy some additional nibbles for the day, before people assembled for a large group breakfast. Friday had been busy but Saturday was very busy indeed! As the day wore on more and artists arrived - Patrick and Alex, Fuzz against Junk, The Coral and surprise guest Damon Albarn from Blur. Also vast amounts of snacks and drinks had to be moved around for the dressing room area's later in the evening. By around 4 pm things were really hectic but everyone was still friendly yet focused. Eventually the dressing rooms and storage area's were stacked, all the bands had arrived and everything was falling into place.

It was time for the last servings of food before packing away all the catering stuff for the evening. I then had to give Damon Albarn and three of his friends a lift to a local hotel, in our VERY small car, which proved to be quite entertaining! By the time I got back the Oxfam people had started to arrive, a large group of them were trying to get audience members to donate more money and to get involved in the "end poverty" campaign. It was nice to catch up with a few old friends from Oxfam in the last few minutes before the doors opened and the public came flooding in.

The gig went like a dream, all the bands were brilliant, it was fantastic to be able to hear Liz Frazer and Beth Gibbons wonderful voices ringing out loud and clear on the same evening. What a treat! The audience reaction was fantastic, especially when they did the massed backing vocals for Damons solo version of "Tender". I was still doing a bit of dashing around to make sure that the performers had everything they needed, Including nipping out at around 10pm to buy some milk for Robert Plant and Ciggies for The Coral! Orynthia went one better on Sunday when she bought a kettle for Robert Plant, for use on his forthcoming tour. So if you go to see him, look out for his kettle on stage and think of Orynthia.

We were far to tired to hang around for the after show party, so it off home and into bed at around 2am. It had been a long but glorious day.

On Sunday we all gathered again at around 2:30 pm. Despite some serious hangovers, the mood was one of joy following the undoubted success of the previous evening. That time and atmosphere was one of my happiest memories from a weekend which was overflowing with them. After yet more sound checking the tempo slowed somewhat, everything was in place, for the second evening of entertainment. Orynthia went out on her shopping mission for Mr Plant whilst I listened to lots of men getting very excited about effects pedals!

Once all the food and tables had been cleared away and the dressing rooms prepared, we then said our goodbye to head off to see The Go! Team at The Fleece. Luckily we managed to find somewhere to sit down and rest our weary legs. 1st band up - Attack and Defend were amusing in an ironic art school sort of way. Next up were The Pipettes who provided retro kitsch of the highest order before we suffered a brief and hideous interlude from a crazed MC type. Then finally along came The Go! Team for their 35 minutes of punchy and energetic fun.

Then it was a quick journey across town just in time for the Massive Attack/ Portishead finale, which was suitably awesome.

The only disappointment of the weekend was that our good friend and founder member of Fuzz Against Junk Steve Dew missed out on this amazing event, due to previous commitments. It would have great to have seen him up their on stage in front of that packed crowd. I'm sure his time will come.

You can watch it all at Crisis in Asia

So since I've last been here I've seen another miserable performance from BCFC, been to a 65th birthday party (no not mine!), watched Elvis Costello in imperious form and watch the highly rated film "Sideways".

Firstly the sad case of the football, Friday nights home defeat looks like it could be the hammer blow to our hopes of making the promotion play-off's. It's hard to know where to start when talking about city at the moment, the team just are not functioning at any sort of reasonable level.

Still we did have one highlight, the amazingly awful half time entertainment! Now the weather on Friday evening was pretty shocking, the wind and rain swirled around Ashton Gate with an energy that our woeful team never came close to matching. The perfect conditions then for a portly middle aged gentlemen and his two underdressed assistants to wander on to the pitch, in order to confirm his status as "Britain's top Neil Diamond tribute act" The concept of a pecking order for tribute acts such as this is a strange one indeed.

The voluminous sparkly blue shirt and flowing (but thinning) hair where funny enough to observe in this wonderfully inclement weather, then when this entourage reached the centre circle, they turned to face us, just as the backing tapes kicked in. Sadly for them the P.A. is Ashton Gate has long history of being very low quality, so as our main man was frantically gesturing for the volume to be turned up, with the microphone well away from his mouth, it came as quite a shock to hear Mr Diamonds voice coming from the speakers high above our heads. Our poor friend in the middle realised that he had been rumbled, but quickly moved the mic so that he could lip-synch his way through the next five or six minutes of excruciating embarrassment.

So in effect what does the act of "Britain's top Neil Diamond tribute act" consist of? Well as far as I could make out it's a sparkly shirt and an American accent (he did speak to the bemused crowd on a couple of occasions). I hope he was well paid for his work, in a strange sort of way it was the most entertaining thing we saw all evening.

The film "Sideways" has received almost universal price from the critics, however I must admit that initially I did not warm to it. It had the makings of a generic "mismatched buddy" film with little new to say. Yet as the film developed the quality of the script and the performances to it to another level.

As for Elvis - well he was just fantastic, one of his best shows for years in Bristol.

On Sunday evening we had a chance to enter the strange and mercurial world of Adam Green again. The last time we saw him was, oh yonks ago when he was in full Robin Hood outfit as one half of Mouldy Peaches, when they supported The Strokes at The Fleece.

This time he was headlining the same venue, under his own name. Although the place was not at the crush levels which were witnessed on the night of The Strokes gig a pretty healthy crowd turned up to see what he had in store for us. No costumes to report on this occasion, but the same dry sense of humour was well to fore, as he shimmied his way through a succession of hilariously pathetic "moves", whilst gently putting the people of Bristol in their place.

The music was simple and straightforward, ensuring that the full range of his very strange lyrics could be easily heard. In the main, the crowd loved in it, although one poor chap behind us was obviously distressed that Mr Green made a couple of mistakes regarding geographical references to this part of the world and was so manifestly un-"rock" as to be virtually cotton
wool. That is really the delight of the Adam Green live performance. You feel as though you could be watching some sort of camp, cabaret show from the 1950's a delightfully knowing and self assured performance, some of the songs aren't bad either.

Talking of music our friends Fuzz Against Junk have been added to the bill at forthcoming Tsunami benefit gigs in Bristol. Orynthia and I are actually going to be working as part of the production team for the event. We don't yet know exactly what they have planned for us, but we will be working as part of a small team from Thursday to Sunday trying to ensure that things run as smoothly as they can. Should be an interesting few days!

Less happy news is that The Metropol, the excellent venue in Bedminster which opened before Xmas has fallen foul of licensing laws and has been forced to cancel all upcoming gigs. Hopefully they will able to get the issues resolved, it's exactly the sort of place that Bristol needs.

I must also say how much I am loving the latest album from The Dears - No Cities left. It's just fantastic!

Books - Forgot to say that I finished Murakami's latest - "Kafka On The Shore" a couple of weeks ago. Thoroughly enjoyable, although not quite in the top echelon of his work. At the moment I have a couple of books on the go Francis Wheen's "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The world" and Jonathan Franzens collection of essays from a few years ago "How To Be Alone". Both of them are great reads, Wheens free wheeling attack on superstition, greed and hypocrisy takes the moral and intellectual high ground from the start, launching into a variety of targets with gusto. Franzens is a slightly more
contemplative book as he ruminates of everything from the death of the American novel, to the state the postal service. They make a good pair, so I've been reading chapters from each book in turn.

Well, what a hectic week off that was.

Firstly we had a leisurely drive through mid and north Wales, for our visit to Snowdonia. The views became increasing more beautiful the further north we travelled. We had an overnight stay in a lovely, if slightly ramshackle B&B in Betws-Y - Coed, before driving around the mountains the next day.

The scenery was spectacular, heightened if anything by the amazing weather fluctuations. One minute rain, then fog, the next bright sunshine, then somehow all three at the same time - leading to bizarre changes in the views as we drove along the narrow and winding roads.

Wednesday saw us staying in Bristol for the day, zipping around in tourist style using our bus pass to hop on and off any bus which took our fancy.

Then on Thursday it was an early start in preparation for our flying visit to Belfast. Given the history of recent years, it's hardly surprising that Belfast has a strange feel to it. Whilst I'm sure huge strides have been made in the past 10 years, the centre of town it somewhat lacking in character. Although it has to be said that The Crown pub is absolutely fantastic, as is City Hall. We took a bus ride around the sights of Belfast which inevitably includes the Shankill and Falls Road area's. The level of division in those communities are still shocking, let's hope that the peace process can run it's full course and that people never have to live in conditions like that again. Some famous words from Johnny Rotten kept ringing through my head as drove round the more desolate parts of town "A cheap holiday in other peoples misery". Whilst things are looking up for the people at the moment it looks as though many of them still have a long way to go before they can live in a situation which most of us in the rest of the UK (or Ireland) would consider normal.

Everyone we spoke to was delightful, friendly and went out of their way to be helpful. I wish them all well for the future.

On Friday we spent our 18th wedding anniversary by having a rather decadent lunch in the luxurious surroundings of the Royal Hotel in Bristol. The meal cost twice as much as our trip to Belfast, it was a chance to put on our glad rags and live the high live for a few hours, and very nice it was too.

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PICT0145
Originally uploaded by tomory.

A damp and misty day in Snowdonia.

We're off to Snowdonia for a couple of days, before going to Belfast on Thursday. Sounds like a pretty good way to use our week off.

Last night we went to see 2046 at The Watershed. As with director Wong Kar-Wai's previous film "In The Mood For Love" it's a sumptuious visual treat. The slightlty strained plot is not always easy to follow, but when it comes to atmosphere and style few people can touch him, it's like bathing your eyes in honey.

A shock 6-0 win for Bryan Munich today, for once we had 15 players, so we could really use the rolling subs rule. It certainly paid off, now we can't wait for the next match.

Talking of the 70's (which I was earlier), I've been thinking about my complete inability to wear anything which looked even remotely good during my school days.

It appears that kids these days know exactly what they want to wear the moment they emerge from the womb, "Take that Next baby grow away - I'll only be seen in ...(add your designer label of choice)". For me it was all so different, I was the classic kid who has his clothes bought for him by his mum. According to Orynthia, the photographic evidence from that period indicates that I was in receipt of some rather fine knitwear.

My main memory however is of complete bafflement as my schoolmates emerged butterfly like into adolescence, wearing all manner of clothing which was wider, brighter and texturally stranger than anything I could understand. In hindsight I suppose that my mother protected me from the worst excesses of the period, however to compensate for that I was subjected to a collection of clothes which were sensible to the point unreasonableness.

In the later stages of my schooling, a quiet rebellion of sorts started to rumble, within my nylon clad chest. I decided that the black sensible shoes from the Tuff factory outlet shop in Kingswood were no longer right for me. I put my foot down (no doubt clad in the black plastic shoe of my mothers choice) and said that I needed to have a pair of platforms, like every other boy in my school. Of course it was a dreadful mistake, the hideous pair of brown shoes I chose were ugly, ungainly and ultimately unwearable. Needless to say, fairly soon I was dutifully following my mum back to Kingswood for another pair of generic black shoes.

An earlier, more painfully memory around schoolboy clothing, is of my first trip to school in long trousers. This was in good old days of junior school, which is probably known as "year zero" or something in the new fangled American style school systems which we have now. I guess that I was probably one of the last 3 or 4 boys in my class who was still turning up for school, on freezing cold winter mornings wearing dark grey shorts and socks, which were nicely offset by the lovely blue of my freezing legs.

Eventually my parents took pity on me and I was taken to Hodges on Fishponds Road for a pair of full length trousers. The following Monday, I proudly marched into school feeling every inch the mature young man about town. Sadly disaster lurked just around the corner, that day my classmates and I embarked upon the making of a spectacular papier-mâché creation. I eagerly joined my young friends as we set about the task of creating a wonderful mountainous landscape.

The day ended with us standing back, admiring our handiwork, quite impressive it was too for a bunch of 8 year olds. I did what I'd been doing all day, wiped my gluey, gunky hands on my trousers! Then for the first time I looked at my previously impressive new leg wear - OH NO! They were of course covered in the detritus of our endeavours.

I returned home and was greeted by my stony faced mother, the next day I was back in the shorts. I had proved that I was not yet ready for the extra responsibility that comes with being grown up and the guardian of full length trousers. It was several weeks before, I was given the chance to test my maturity again.

Two remarkable people Ivan Noble and Michel Thomas.