A lot of people use the start of a new year to make resolutions and set themselves fresh goals to try and achieve, but I want to take a little time to look back at what I did during 2011 as last year was a relatively big one for me personally! Now I know some of you might be thinking that’s what my previous post was about, but this is more of a personal list of most of the things I did/attended during 2011. Also I’d like to thank any of my friends who helped to make 2011 such a memorable year (I’m sure you know who you all are).
I realise that this will be of almost no-interest to any of you, but I’m doing it more for myself than anyone else so you’ll just have to indulge me…or you could just stop reading now!
- Finally managed to take a trip to Brighton where I fell in love with the great collection of Veggie food available and lovely collection of small shops. Hopefully I will get back over there for a day or two again this year.
- Managing to successfully hatch a load of Goslings. Sooo cute and fluffy that I still haven’t fully got over them all being killed one night by foxes! This year will be better as our shed’s have been reinforced and we now have electric fencing all around them!
- A fun and bouncy evening at the 02 academy in Bristol for a Reel Big Fish gig.
- A slightly mellower evening at the Colston Hall for a Paul Carrack gig was a refreshing change from a lot of the stuff I listen to and he was really good with the crowd.
- Exploring the small town of Beziers and the larger town of Montpellier during a small holiday in southern France. Highlight was the amazing day on the coast, and I think I’ve been put off all of British beaches as they can’t possibly compare to ones on the Mediterranean!
- Attending the Bristol leg of the inSites Tour – You can read my post on it here.
- Finally watching Avenue Q at the Bath theatre royal was an incredibly funny evening, but then how can anything that has a song entitled “The Internet is for Porn” be anything less than brilliant!
- Seeing ‘Spunge’ twice in one year was good, especially as both gigs each have there own special moments for me, but the highlight was managing to get up on stage and skanking with the band!
- After seeing them support Reel Big Fish and then hold there own tour, I remain convinced that ‘New Riot’ are one of the best things to come out of the British Punk/Ska scene in a long time.
- The complete moment of madness that resulted in signing up for all three days of the Tour of Wessex, followed by the insane amount of hours of training that was needed and finally by managing to cross that finish line on the final day and knowing that we’d raised loads of money for charity in the process was a truly incredible feeling!
- A day trip to the NEC in Birmingham for the first ever GameFEST was brilliantly geeky.
- Attending the Future of Web Apps event in London – You can read my post on it here.
- Rise Against were great live, if a little preachy for my liking, but I guess that’s what they’re all about and the music was top quality so can’t complain.
- 11 years after after it was opened I finally got round to going to the building formally known as the millennium dome (now the 02 dome) to see Brad Paisley. I ended up going to this gig by myself as country music is not a popular genre among my normally gig buddies, but that didn’t prove to be an issue as the 02 had some of the best quality sound from any venue I’ve ever been to and my seat was in a great location, so when combined with Brad’s great show and some great support from Darius Rucker followed by some impromptu line-dancing with some rather fetching cow-girls at a nearby pub afterwards, it really was a night to remember!
- A long weekend away in Amsterdam with some friends was great fun. I got to visit the FOAM gallery, find out how beer is brewed, went to an erotic theatre, visited a zoo and also managed to explore a few other places including Arnhem and the Ajax football stadium.
- Attending the Web Developers Conference – You can read my post on it here.
- Halloween was great as I went to see Alice Cooper’s Halloween night of fear gig at the Colston hall. No-one does cheesy horror better than Alice. Fact!
- Me and few mates took advantage of ‘the Darkness’ reforming to dress up in lycra, wigs and make-up for a night of glam-rock at its finest. Unfortunately it transpired that we were practically the only ones who turned up like this, but that made the evening even funner. Also I discovered that wearing lip-stick and eye-liner gets you served a lot faster at the bars!
- Unperturbed by the lack of others dressing up at the Darkness gig, me and a few mates once again donned the glam rock attire for the glam-rock gig to end all glam-rock gigs! Mötley Crüe, Def Leppord and Steel Panther formed the line-up and thankfully a lot of other people had the same idea as us so we weren’t the only idiots dressed up this time. We did get some great looks when we were getting across London on the tube though!
So, in a nutshell that was my 2011. I wonder what 2012 has in store for me. Whatever it is, if it’s interesting I’m sure I’ll post about it.
Happy new year y’all!