In part 1 we worked through the 80′s and early 90′s ending with the Sega Master System. A console that brought years of happiness to the family long after its sell by date. You’ve got to take what you can right?! In this part we’re going to kick off around 1995 and go on through to about 2001. You can tell immediately from the reduction in timespan that as gaming has evolved it’s become way more intense.

So, Christmas 1995. My little brother got the NES.

This was shortly after the 16 bit consoles came out so everything inferior was now really cheap. It came from Toys R Us and all the games were found in the bargain bin for £2.97. That year I got a Scalextrix but it was huge and we didn’t have the space. My ma sabotaged it and we took it back to the shop as a “damaged” item. I got gift vouchers. I bought NES games. My particular favourites were Gauntlet (“blue Valkyrie shot the food” – *punches brother*), Mario (boing, boing), and Top Gun (jet engines like dial up!). I also have vague recollections of playing Mega Man, Master Blaster, Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The latter was recently remade on the PSN and it was a fantastic tribute!

The NES was actually a cracking system for its time. I think the problem I had with it was that we got it late, so while we were still riding the 8 bit train everyone else was upgrading to first class and enjoying 16 bit. However, as I mentioned last time, upgrading the games console was low priority so I never got into 16-bit. It wasn’t too bad, we had Sky TV (irony?) and there were a couple of games shows on so I lived vicariously. In fact, it was around 1994/1995 that I went to see Gamesmaster being filmed. Whichever series had Dexter Fletcher presenting it from Oxford Prison. If you manage to find any old episodes you’ll see me in one of them standing behind the (semi) famous people clutching my tupperware! I always wanted to be a contestant

Now it gets a bit crazy. Initially, I didn’t get into 32 bit either but around 1998, while studying for my A-Levels, I started working part time and getting paid about £30 a week. It was a suddenly huge amount of money to have in my pocket and I’m pleased to say I pissed it away on computer games, music and beer! When I wasn’t bunking off study sessions playing snooker I was either in a record store trying to impress the cashier with my eclectic tastes or showing off in the video game store getting high scores on games I was too poor to actually buy! When I finally did commit to buying a new console, I jumped right ahead to the Nintendo 64.

When I was at school there were about eight of us misfits who hung around together. I think, in line with a lot of people, sixth form was a really good time for me. Less subjects so I could focus and a whole lot more freedom to figure out who the hell you were and step outside of the constraints of society a little. Mostly because all the dicks who terrorised us for 5 years buggered off to the local comp. (I went to Grammar school, it was awesome!).

One of my friends came in to school one day, after Easter holidays I think, and he had bought the Nintendo 64 with Goldeneye. Now, you’ve got to remember there was no internets back in 1997. When a friend tells you something is awesome, without seeing it yourself, you either take his word or call bullshit. We went for the latter because a) it was James Bond (lame!) and b) it was a movie to game conversion (double lame)! But then he told us that he had also bought something called a Rumble Pak. If memory serves, this was the first of its kind. It sparked our curiosity. We had to see it for realz.

So that weekend a few of us went round his house. Imagine four weedy nerds and his two sisters crowded round a 20″ TV staring in absolute awe at the Dam bungee jump scene.

It looks like crap now but in 1997, Good Lord it was good! I had to have one. As birthdays came and went through that year all my mates got one and we would spend many weekends around each others houses kicking the crap out of each other on the multiplayer. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you know how good Goldeneye multiplayer was so I don’t need to go on too much but we did everything with that game. There was even one weekend where we each took a TV to one persons house, got some Y-splitters hooked up to the console and some L shaped cardboard pieces to block out the other players squares and played blind multiplayer to make it more fun! I tried to find a video but there aren’t any however I did find out that this is simply called the “4 TV Technique” haha!

Dorks!

Eventually my brother got one for Christmas. It was one of those rare moments that two sons and their dad finally found something they could “bond” over. My dad was the only one who could complete the Jungle level for ages so we often played together trying to complete the single player. One of the real genius bits of that game was the cheat system. In order to unlock the cheats you had to complete the game on all three levels in certain time limits. I have yet to find any other game that has encouraged that kind of replayability and I doubt I ever will.

Goldeneye wasn’t the only game we played though. Once I had money in my pocket we were able to experiment much more. Some of my favourites on this platform were 1080 Snowboarding, Snowboard Kids, Mario Kart, Mario 64, Lylat Wars, Wave Race and V-Rally. I even had a steering wheel and pedals. The N64 was flawed in that the games were all super expensive. Cartridge manufacturing was dying out thanks to the PlayStation which I had largely ignored. A console that runs on CD’s with load screens, nah, that’ll never take off!

Then one day, another of our gaming weekends, I was shown the PSone and Gran Turismo and the donut spins and the drift steering and I went and got one. Haha!

The graphics were nowhere near as superior but the games were a lot better. As you can see from the list above, N64 games were a bit…babyish. I was in my late teens and I wanted action and violence. The N64 just couldn’t deliver on that front. I played so many games on my PSOne, some of my favourites are Driver, Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, Die Hard, Time Crisis and Fifa. It really was the console that brought the arcade into your bedroom. In fact it’s probably responsible for the death of the arcade as we knew it and also why games in the arcade now cost about £2 a go.

I left one game/franchise out because it’s particularly special.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Summer. 1999. I finished work one day and went to the local Blockbuster. Oh, new games in this week. Tony Hawk (who?) and skateboarding. Ha! I remember playing skateboarding on Summer Games on the Master system. It was shite! On this though, the graphics looked good. So I rented it for 2 nights. I didn’t put it down all weekend! Seriously, it was so good! I took it back and they were doing this offer where if you bought it straight away you got the rental fee knocked off. Obvious decision really!

Going back to sixth form allowing you to discover who you really were, this game helped finalise the definition. Dude! This game changed the course of my life forever. It brought out this laid back element of my personality, this part of me that knows it’s ok to not have to try so hard all the time, that sometimes it’s ok to kick back. Up until this point I was pretty uptight. This game was full of attitude and I took that into my own life. I bought skateboards for me and my bro and we hung out in town and praticed. I sucked but he was pretty cool. I couldn’t even ollie but he could grind and jump. I just remember falling down a lot!

One of the fondest memories I have of this game, and it’s completely unrelated, is that I had also just discovered Foo Fighters and started what has become a lifetime obsession. Most of my memories of playing this game have There Is Nothing Left To Lose playing in the background!

Playing THPS1 lasted for months! It was totally addictive and it had everything. Insane jumps, destructible environments, secrets, hidden tapes, gaps, Bob Burnquist (!), ridiculously high score challenges, Roswell. It had some of that replayability I loved Goldeneye for too. I spent hours trying to get all five tapes in one two minute session. I don’t think it was possible across all levels. Whilst the PSOne didn’t have the best graphics available, if you look back at THPS1 now, it holds up. It was so ahead of its time.

And then Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 was released. It was slicker and it introduced the manual! Suddenly, massive combos were at your beck and call. It also had Rage Against The Machine on the soundtrack which kickstarted my alternative view on politics. Up until this point I’d been raised in an incredibly right wing Tory household. RATM fucked my world upside down. Thanks Neversoft! THPS2 had bigger levels too, they felt much more open world. It also had Spiderman as a playable skater! This summer THPS1 and 2 are being re-made on the PSN. I can’t wait. The trailers look amazing and from the interviews I’ve read, the developers have pretty much left it the hell alone.

When Goldeneye Reloaded came out last year I was really excited, along with half the world’s 30 year olds! However I was pretty quickly disappointed. It wasn’t terrible but it was incredibly unbalanced and the online mode was an ultimate fail! From the looks of it, Robomodo have come to THPS with a lot of respect for both it and the fans which can only result in good things right?!

So yeah, lots to take in there. Next time I’ll be bringing you all the action from the Dreamcast and the PS2 so stay tuned for Part 3!

But if that wasn’t enough, I also made some bread. A new type of bread. I have pretty bad IBS and over the years have come to the conclusion that store bought bread sucks! It is really bad for you. IBS or not. So since then we’ve had home made bread as much as possible. We’re onto our second breadmaker now after the first fell apart!! Now, a note on breadmakers, if I wasn’t so damn busy all the time I would make all bread by hand. But I am busy. So I use a machine. However, I don’t use bread mix. I use the base ingredients. So much nicer.

Last week I was flicking through the billions of cable channels we have and stopped on the Hairy Bikers Bakeation. I love these guys. They’re rad! They were in Spain this week and one of the recipes was Pan Rustico. It looked interesting so I decided to give it a go. It was a lot fun and I highly recommend trying it yourself.

So, first up, this receipe needs breaking down into two parts; a starter dough and the bread dough.

Starter dough

Take a measuring jug and add your warm water. This should be quite tepid, warm to the touch but not so warm that it will kill the yeast. Stir in the sugar and then slowly stir in the yeast. Don’t go mental with it! Sit it on top of a radiator or put it in the airing cupboard for 10 minutes. You’ll notice it get a bit foamy on top. It’s ALIVE!

Slowly stir in the flour until it becomes a paste. Most flour these days has been sieved so you don’t need to but for this recipe it will make the bread lighter if you give it another sieve. After all, it was packed up and condensed on a lorry before getting to the store. Give it some air!

Take your paste and store it for 24 hours. Room temperature should be adequate but as we’re neither in Spain nor is the UK May climate at a level I can tolerate, mine went in the airing cupboard. When you check it the following day it will smell like a really sweet beer. Nice!

Now it’s time for part 2, the bread dough. Give yourself the best part of an afternoon for this.

Bread dough

Prepare your water, sugar and yeast as per the starter and leave for 10 minutes again.

Mix your flours (sieve again) and salt in a bowl, make a well in the centre and pour in the starter dough, the oil and the new yeast mix. Mix together with a wooden spoon until the liquid gets soaked up and then get your hands in there and give it a good pummelling. As with all dough, judge whether you need to add more flour or more water as you bring it together.

You should now have a nice sticky dough. Bring it out onto a lightly floured service. Now it’s time for some kneading. It’s very important you don’t cut corners at this point. Set a timer for 10 minutes and knead the crap out of this bad boy! Knead as you would normally and every now and then push away one end of the dough with the heel of your palm and fold it in half. You can add a little bit of flour if it’s still really sticky. About 8 minutes in you should notice a sudden change in texture. It’s like magic!

When you’re done, lightly grease a bowl and pop your dough in. Grease some cling film and lightly cover. Store for an hour in the airing cupboard so it can rise. It should double in size. Mine nearly overspilled the bowl. Missus would’ve killed me if I’d messed up the towels!

Take a baking tray, add some parchment and flour. Stretch your dough to the length of the tray and then fold in half. Repeat twice more then stretch out like a baguette. Use a knife to slash the top. 45 degrees looks good! Dust with a little flour and leave to rise for about 45 minutes, uncovered. After 30 minutes, pre-heat the oven to gas mark 8. As with all bread, your oven needs to be really hot, as if you’ve been baking loaves all day!

Bake the loaf for 25 minutes. When it’s done, tap it and it should sound hollow. It’s a wonderful sound and smell!

Check it!

This is without a doubt the nicest bread I have ever made. It smells so fresh and tastes so good. Your turn!

“Oh great, another loser fanboy. I bet he plays Xbox games and doesn’t shower”, I hear you say. Well, steady on Jack Thompson, I’m not one of those guys! Not only am I a gamer, but I’m also a relatively normal person. I can’t tell you how I’ve managed to stay normal in spite of my obsession, it’s just the way it is.

For the next few weeks I’m going to go on a trip down memory lane and highlight the defining moments of my own personal gaming history. I’m going to pick out all those games that hold a special place in my heart. All those games that have played a part in shaping my personality. All those great games that I just have so many great memories of playing!

Why am I doing this? Well, I originally wrote most of this about two years ago and then shelved it. In the last twelve months or so, my gaming “career” has come full circle. Gran Turismo 5 and Goldeneye Reloaded have been released and GTA:V has been announced. It’s turned into an amazing year for gaming. So amazing in fact, that I’ve ditched the usual purchases of Battlefield 926 and Call of Duty 672 in favour of some more traditional gaming.

I’m going to serialise this over a few posts but let’s get started with that great decade, The Eighties!

My first computer gaming experience was on the Atari. I have no idea what model it was. It belonged to my Aunt. She only had a few games and the joystick was a big black square brick with one red button on it. I remember it had Pong on it and then some weird game that involved making food and I’m almost certain the sound effects sounded something like “burger, burger, burger” but I may be getting this confused with a game from the 90’s I played on PC. That could’ve been a remake I suppose. Not off to the best start here, but bear with!

Shortly after, we got our own computer. It was the Commodore 64.

We also had the tape deck:

I was about five years old when we got this. On previous websites, I used to bang on about this in my About Me pages because it was this computer that introduced me to the beautiful world of programming. I was a very clever five year old although if you look at the bio of any developer around my age, they will all name check this or similar as being where they started. Not only was it my entry to uber geek world, it also had some cracking games. Games like Chuck Rock, Chuckie Egg and Supermarket Dash were all played regularly.

After that we upgraded to an Amstrad CPC 464 Plus.

This one was cool. It had an awesome game called OutRun on it which ran not on tape, but on a cartridge that was plugged in to the side and loaded super quick. However, this was the only cartridge we had. Like the Commodore 64, it had a tape deck so all the other games were on tape. We had about 50 games. I think we bought it from my uncle and he had a collection of games and the official gaming magazine of the time. What’s the name of this magazine?! Amstrad Action I think.

It’s funny, I remember setting games off to load from the cassette and then going and doing something else for a bit, regularly checking back to see when I could play. Then we got cartridges which were super fast but now we’ve gone backwards and we’re on DVD’s and hard drives and the games are so big that you still end up with ridiculous load times. Crazy!

I also dabbled in programming on this. A really neat feature of this was that you could save your code to tape. I remember going out and buying special tapes to save stuff on to. They seemed to cost a fortune but I bet they were just normal tapes! I remember rewinding a whole bunch of tapes in bulk using all the stereos in the house (it was the 80s, we had far more than was necessary) and the next time I tried to use them they didn’t work. That sucked. I lost all my saved stuff. It is probably this that made me a good programmer. I had to go back and re-do all my work. Extra practice!

So that was my first era of computer gaming. It probably wasn’t a lot of fun in hindsight. Far too much time was spent waiting for tapes to load. Not conducive to being a five year old! Also, as a wee child, I don’t think you quite get the concept of computer games or particularly the intricacies of them. A lot of them were just fun little platformers and it was really just about getting from point a to point b without dying. However, a lot of adults played these games and I sometimes wonder if there was a whole extra level of complexity to them that I just missed completely.

And therein lies the genius of computer games!

As the 80’s were drawing to a close I had just turned 8 in the summer. What happened next is probably responsible for the way the rest of my life turned out. It started with this game…

Just look at all those amazing colours! It was like nothing I’d ever played before.

Our local video store was awesome. You pulled up in the loading bay out back and went through this really dirty corridor and up the stairs to get there. The owners’ son was this really incredible artist and he spray painted the walls with pictures of Disney characters. It was always a lot of fun seeing what new character had been drawn that week. One day they started renting out consoles. My folks rented the Sega Master System and along with it, Fantasy Zone. It was amazing.

We got the plus version, with 2 pads and a gun.

We had it for two days and I played it non-stop! I pestered for my own that Christmas and Santa kindly brought me one. I think it cost about £130. Super expensive at the time! I didn’t get Fantasy Zone but we did get Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Parlour Games. Built in to the console were Hang On, Safari Hunt and a super hidden maze game which required altering the TV contrast to see the lines.

One of my favourite games on the Master System was Rescue Mission:

This one used the gun. Basically, you help your guys get around a railway system healing wounded soldiers before they die or you get blown up. Seriously, my aim was so crap I held my gun right up to the screen and with every trigger press there was a clink against glass! How we didn’t go through the TV in the end I’ll never know!

True story alert: ironthumb.co.uk was originally started as a games development project. Iron Thumbs geddit?! After arsing about making games like tic tac toe, solitaire and black jack we started planning a remake of Rescue Mission. I think we were using C# and winforms at the time. I’m not sure if XNA was out by this point. Anyway, nothing came of it, the artist was lazy and I got a girlfriend and moved out lol! One day I’m definitely getting on with making this again. It’s a simple concept and with the Kinect/Move tools I think it could be fab.

We had this console for many, many years. The 90’s were a bad time for my family. We were victims of capitalism and Tory greed. My dad lost his job, we lost the house and we moved back to a council estate. Well, housing association but it’s the same thing. Needless to say, upgrading the home games system wasn’t top priority.

Interestingly though, the Master System brought the whole family together and probably contributed to making everything just about bearable. It was the first family games console. Together we played tennis tournaments on Super Tennis, golf tournaments on Golfamania (“splish, splash, I’m taking a bath!” -injoke!) and mouse rescue on Mickey Mouse and the Castle of Illusion.

Towards the end, my games of choice were Speedball, Sonic The Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat. I’d started secondary school by this point and fell in with a crowd of people who loved gaming almost as much as I did. Yeah, I was that kid!

Still reading? Fascinated? Want more? Stay tuned for Part 2!

It was all very exciting at the time, you join one queue, they stab your finger, test your iron, you join another queue, they call you over, you sit in a chair, they stick a needle in you, you sit looking bored and miserable for 45 minutes (well I do and it’s probably only about 5 minutes but it seems like ages!) and then you get up and you go and sit at the table you’ve had your eye on since you walked in. The refreshments table! Free biscuits and a cuppa FTW! Then you go home, maybe a bit woozy.

But then comes the best bit. You get a letter from the NHS saying thanks. Not only does it say thanks, but you also get a bunch of leaflets and a donor card. My donor card is red. This is for people who have donated 1-4 times. Apparently, for donating a second time you get a nifty little key fob with your blood type on it. As you progress up the ranks (as if it were a computer game) they give you all kinds of shit as a reward. Check out the swag here! That’s pretty rad huh?!

So then I did the math. You can only donate once every 16 weeks I believe. I reckon if I do every single one from now until I’m 65, I should be able to get my mitts on that decanter! Most definitely the crystal plate. Hehe!

But, am I really motivated by some crystal stuff? No, not particularly. I got quite a big shock when I got my letter. I’m not sure why it shocked me so much but it did. I’ve been lucky enough to have never been in a major accident or ever needed a transfusion. I’m touching wood here! I don’t believe I’ve even known anyone who has needed one either. Touching wood again! This means I’ve never had my blood type brought up as an issue. I have this old baby book thing from when I was a kid. It’s pretty much the only thing I have from my childhood. In it, it says blood group O and I’ve just believed it, filled in all my forms putting down O. I have no idea why it says O but I am actually A RH NEGATIVE which is apparently an incredibly rare type of blood and is in demand. Oh super exciting right?!

Had I known this from an earlier age, I wouldn’t have left it so damn late to give blood. I could’ve (and probably would’ve) contributed for most of the last 10 years or so. And it is this that makes me all the more determind to give blood regularly now and if you can give blood, then you absolutely should. You never know when you or a relative or a close friend will need a transfusion. I’m touching all of your woods!

So what are you waiting for? Go here and find your nearest centre and do something amazing…give blood!

So Dave Grohl had a rant at the grammy’s (yes lower case g) about fake music, music made with computers, anything where the artist has to fix fuck ups and can make millions. Well dagnabbit he’s right and I have proof.

The background for this post is that we watched Pearl Jam’s PJ-20 documentary last year (and several times since) and we’ve just time travelled back to the early 90s. It’s much nicer here. I can wear plaid in a non-ironic sense. I’ve bought most of the PJ back catalogue as I only had Ten but I was also inspired to listen to Soundgarden again. I have a couple of SG albums but I didn’t have Badmotorfinger. So I bought it. Holy fucking Christ it’s good!

Don’t believe me? Go to YouTube and listen to Rusty Cage. Or how about Slaves and Bulldozers?! But most importantly, listen to Jesus Christ Pose.

But this isn’t just about how cracking Soundgarden are. No, it’s about how talent is better than computers and corner cutting. So check this out. Listen to this vocal only track of Jesus Christ Pose.

Starts at 1:27. Really impressive at 4:39.

Ok, so the fucker can sing, but what’s so special about it?! It’s not just the main vocal line, but the bits in between the lines. The bits where he inhales. The bits where he licks his lips. The silence that isn’t silence, it’s room reverb. Hell, it’s the fucking mustard!

Wait?! What?! Mustard?! What the fuck are you talking about?!

Yeah, mustard!

The missus makes this really great dish. Honey and Lemon Chicken with Cous Cous. If you follow the ingredients, it’s add some honey to some lemon juice with a bit of water, stir in some mustard, fry chicken in it, apply to cous cous. Or, if you like, get drummer, bassist, guitarist, singer, record in studio, burn to CD. How many unsigned bands do this every year? And how many of them actually go somewhere? It’s like 1%. (not accurate).

So what makes one band’s CD better than another? The recording process. I was in a band. We were tight as fuck. We were also broke and not very committed. Our singer could fucking wail! But we never went into a proper studio to record anything with a properly trained producer. It really helps to have someone who knows exactly where the mic should go. Someone who knows exactly how many guitar tracks there should be. The studio makes a difference. Each one has its own sound. Its own personality. And that can make or break a record too.

So, in an ideal world, we’ve got a band with talent and a bit of savings and a good studio and we’ve recorded an album and we’ve made bazillions and toured the world and we haven’t let anyone down with our live show because it sounds like the record.

But what if you take one of those average bands who recorded in a crap studio?! What if you took that little studio and gave it ProTools and an engineer who followed some online tutorials?! Right, studio got no personality? Add plugin, instant personality. Drummer out of time? Meh, MIDI the drum track, drag and drop beats. Done. Next! Singer can’t hold the note on the second chorus? Ok, copy and paste first chorus.

Woah woah woah! Hold up! You can’t do that!! That’s cheating. He wouldn’t do that live, why do it in the studio?!

But what you ultimately get is this fucking piece of turd spinning in your CD player that is note perfect, beat perfect, perfect, perfect, prefect. Make billions off marketing hype and pre-sales. Tour world. Contract cancelled because nobody wants your second album! As it turns out, the band aren’t in time and the singer can’t sing and it sounds fucking horrible. I’m looking at you Alter Bridge! Fuck that gig was terrible!

Which brings us back to Cornell and 4:39. He’s screaming his ass off and it’s not quite holding and it’s just about to crack. But it doesn’t matter. You leave it in. Just like you leave in the lip licking and the inhales. You can’t hear them but they’re there! And the song is better for it. Because that’s the mustard! If you take the mustard out of the missus’ dish, it’s just honey and lemon chicken. It’s ok, but it’s a bit bland. When you leave it in, it’s something else. It’s personality. It’s an error. It’s not perfection. But it is. You go see them live and it’s pretty close to the record and it feels good.

So there you go. ProTools is the anti-mustard brigade of the music industry. And on that note, I leave you with the final output of a bunch of guys in a studio playing their hearts out:

We opted instead to go to the beach. In February. We went to Hunstanton in December and it hailed on us but we decided to give it another go. We stayed at a lovely little hotel called Caley Hall Hotel. Probably one of the nicest, most relaxed places I’ve ever stayed at.

Hunstanton is definitely growing on me. We had a chance to look around the seafront as well as plenty of walks on the beach. I took a ton of pictures:

Someone had made a snow angel on the golf course!

Visibility was minimal on the first day.

Lots of frozen fog!

The missus in her beach attire!

The sea was quite a way out but you couldn’t hear a thing. The fog muffled everything. It was really quite spooky.

Ripples on the beach were frozen.

This is a nice little rise right before you finally get to see the sea. I imagined myself being about five and struggling through the snow and sand to get to the top!

This is the back of the hotel. Been there a long time apparently.

All in all it was a great holiday. Even with the snow and ice and cold. We left the restaurant after dinner and it was -10!!! I made sure I had a beer coat!

We’re going to go again in the summer. Apparently it doesn’t get very busy. I love being by the sea. I grew up going to the caravan in Bridlington every weekend for years. Not being by the sea stinks! The problem I have with beachside places is that they’re usually heaving! I went to Brighton for years and then it just got too hectic. Tried Whitstable and nearly got killed by some chavvy motherfucker in a 4×4 because we nicked his parking space. In our Fiesta. He called us cretins, which was probably accurate but it was a bit pot kettle black.

Anyway, the point is, I miss the sea and I think in Hunstanton I’ve found somewhere pretty, with plenty of infrastructure to make a good holiday. Finally! Let’s hope it pans out well in July.

So first up, my news. I can haz a driving license!!! Yes indeed. After about 100 hours of lessons over a period of 13 years with two driving tests, I finally passed and am legally allowed to drive. Makes you feel confident as another driver huh?! Cue obligatory happy picture:

Once the missus got home I took the car out on my own. I didn’t believe people when they said this but it was actually quite liberating. I feel freeeeee!

So, this weekend, I drove us to Coton/Madingley. We parked at the garden centre, walked to the American Military Cemetary and then back through Coton village. It was really nice.

So now for the pictures:

While buying Christmas presents I ended up on the Lakeland website. A very dangerous place for a kitchen gadget loving freak like me! I was looking for things to buy to top up my order so I could get free delivery. It’s a false economy, I know!! Anyway, I came across something quite fun. Shaped ice cube bags. I bought hearts and stars. I figured it would be a great experiment to shoot a mix of these, maybe with the heart frozen using red food colouring.

Today I finally got around to it. It was late in the afternoon so the light is a bit glum. I’m definitely going to retry this in better light, but for now, enjoy. I hope to be doing more fun projects this year and filling up these pages.

Autumn has fully taken hold in the space of a fortnight and the colours are just amazing. In a previous life when I was emo, sad and pretentious I used to proclaim that Autumn was my favourite month because everything was dying and there was “so much beauty in death”. Lame!

That said, it is still an incredible season and I hope you enjoy these pictures. And hey, in case you weren’t aware, this is happening all around you. Just look up from the glowing box in your palm once in a while

This is my last catch up post from the last couple of months. I have finally caught up! After this I will be doing a digital sort. Re-structuring all my folders, backing up externally, setting up a Flickr account for all the really good stuff. Once that’s done I think it’ll be time to take things up a notch. I’ve not been out taking pictures anywhere near as much as I would’ve liked so this needs to improve. We get our car delivered in a couple of weeks and I should pass my driving test in October *fingers crossed* so actually being mobile should give me more scope to get out to more remote locations at odd times of day.

A couple of weeks ago, the missus’ folks took us out to The Raptor Foundation out in Woodhurst. It was a fantastic day out. They have over 200 different species of raptors. The definition of a raptor over other birds is that they catch their food with their feet rather than their beaks.

We walked around the complex, which is impressively large, and when we got to the end we saw that they were doing a flying display and we were bang on time. Camera at the ready!

I’ve been posting some of these on Facebook and Twitter but without further ado, here is the full collection. If you want prints of these in any format (postcard, greetings card, poster, canvas etc) let me know and I’ll arrange it. All proceeds will go directly to The Raptor Foundation as they rely solely on donations.

My two favourite shots are the little owl who looks like he is singing (he’s actually nomming on a grub) and the falcon catching the bait. The falcons are lightning fast and it was incredibly difficult to track them in flight. However, thanks to the amazing lens I got for my birthday (the Nikon 55-200mm) I got those two cracking shots.

As people venture into photography, they pretty quickly realise what subject they enjoy the most and for me it’s definitely wild life and probably mainly birds. I enjoy watching them, filming them and capturing them in still frame. They really are an absolute wonder. This probably means my future is likely to involve the purchase of a ridiculously expensive zoom lens and many hours spent huddled up in a hide! Oh joy!

Until next time…