Alive In Four Decades

This happened a few weeks ago now, but on the 22nd February, I turned 30. Honestly no big deal, all I had to do was go to sleep the night before and then wake up and I was immediately that old. Actually that's not strictly true. I was born on Greenwich Mean Time, so I technically I became a day older around 9:58 am on saturday morning of the 23rd, but because I was having my birthday in the future, I felt like I could get away with stretching it out a bit.

The day was great and one I'll definitely remember, not least because of the fact that it was spent on a different continent. I've been playing bass in a band over here called Swandive which some friends over here started. It's great fun, because usually, I've always put together the bands I've been in and written the songs for them, but this time, I haven't done any of that, plus I'd never played bass in a band before, so it's been a good musical challenge as it were. It's also nice to not have any pressure on me to come up with songs, so I can therefore approach it all from a different angle. Anyway, the point being, was that also on my birthday, we had our very first gig at a club in the city called Rosies, so I can finally say I've played "abroad". Wicked.

Nina ordered me the most amazing dairy free birthday cake, of which the photo above is of. It was a double chocolate and hazelnut cake and it was made by the lovely people at The Forest in West End. Hands down the best cake I've ever had.

That's Nick screaming and me on the right in the shadows. Photo taken by Luke Dyms over at the Kingdom Of Sad Machines.













Cake is nice. Photo also by Luke













I also built myself a bike. It's also the first bike I've ever bought, as I've usually inherited them off my Dad, as he has a little collection going on and has passed bits on to me in the past. I bought the frame a couple of months ago as I saw it in the classifieds, I think it's an old track frame, then took it to an incredible place, again, over in West End, called Bicycle Revolution to get the remaining parts. I think I read somewhere that it was started by Friends Of The Earth as a way to get old, unused bikes off the landfills, so they just have all these bikes lying around and you can pick and assemble. The people that run the place are awesome and did an amazing job on my bike, so when I said earlier that I built it, it was kind of a lie.

I had new wheels put on, but everything else was from bikes that were already lying around. It's so awesome and I'm already incredibly attached to it, so will be shipping it home when I move back.

This is Torres. I've called him this because he is red, fast and pretty :)

































































xx