I arrived in Chichester around 3pm on Saturday and had half an hour to spare before meeting up with Charlotte and so I took the opportunity to pop into the Otter Gallery, an art gallery located on my old University campus.

When I was at Uni I only ventured into it a couple of times, but now I’m a mature gentleman I can appreciate a little bit of art and so I had a look around and actually found it quiet impressive. ‘Cut It Out’ is the exhibition currently showing, featuring seven artists.

Cut It Out is an exhibition of established and emerging contemporary artists from the UK and Europe who are challenging the traditional boundaries of paper cut. They are exploiting the unique qualities of paper to make unexpected and unusual work, blurring the distinction between craft and visual art. Cut It Out seeks to explore artists currently working in this field, examining how their techniques and approaches are evolving paper cut into something uniquely modern.

You can read a bit more about it in this pdf or why not pop along to the Otter Gallery and see for yourself.

Now for a few photos I took on my phone:

'Digging Words' - by Oona Patterson

'Butterflies' - by Ciara Healy

'Ream' -by Oona Patterson

Next weekend I’m off to Chichester and I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t been down there since November, so it’ll be good to catch up with a few old faces.

The place really is a home away from home for me and although I’m going to a house party on Saturday evening I think I’ll get down there in the morning so that I can have a good old look around, maybe get a few photos and see if anyone is around during the daytime.

I’ve just been going through my flickr photos to see if there were any photos I could use to accompany this post and I found myself getting a bit nostalgic. Better put an end to that straight away!

I went down to Chichester for the first time since July of last summer, yes July 2007, and I can’t believe it’s been that long. I left Chi in 2004 and have tried to get down a few times a year, but I’ve been lazy and it took an engagement party to get me down again, and a great excuse to catch up with lots of old friends.

Having not seen people for quite a while the natural questions came up… “how’s it going?”, “what are you doing now?”, etc, and it dawned on me that my answer to every question was that absolutely nothing had changed since I had been down last, and to be honest nothing has really changed since I left in 2004. I’m doing exactly the same then as I am now. Depressing isn’t it?

I know I’m not the only one in this situation, but that still doesn’t make it any better. I guess the only comfort is that my job is secure and I get paid every month which is not the case for a lot of other people in the current financial climate.

People also asked if I missed Chichester, and yes I do, but I know that whilst I do miss the people there, what I’m really missing is the nostalgia of Uni life there, some of the best years of my life. I know that if I was still living there I would still be working all the time, and generally be in the same situation as I am now. It’s also worth noting that these little weekend snippets always give me a rose-tinted view of life there where everybody is out having fun and has no other commitments, but I know come Monday that the majority will be doing and thinking the exact same as me.I also remember that the reason I moved back was because I was getting bored of life there, so I guess it’s always a case of the grass being greener…

For now though I can look back and say I had a good weekend.

Guess what? I never went down to Chichester at the weekend. Despite being knackered and having a hangover I was going to make teh long journey down, but after a few phonecalls I found out my place to kip had deserted me and that a few more people had dropped out, and so I took the decision to stay indoors and not travel. In all honesty I couldn’t be bothered to drive, be knackered, and probably not have as good a time as I would being my usual perky self. I’ll try and go down pretty soon when I’m tip top and in the mood.

So instead I didn’t go out this weekend apart from popping down the tip, and I felt much more refreshed when I went back to work on Monday. I guess I’m a bit more refreshed too now that the days seem to be getting longer (they are, aren’t they?), and it’ll soon be summer (not really but I like to think so!). I took these nice sunset pics on Sunday evening around 5pm.


That’s all for now although I’m sure I’ve got quite a few posts in me (I wondered why I was walking funny….)

OK, well, I just started writing a post and then accidently deleted it. Doh. So you’re going to get a more concise post now without the rich tapestry of storytelling that you’re used to!

1. I am feeling a lot better and almost recovered from my cold. I just have a throaty/phlegmy thingy going on which leaves me hacking up horrible green stuff. Nice.

2. I watched Alien vs Predator: Requiem on Wednesday and it is a very bad film. Believe the reviews. They do not lie! There are plot holes everywhere, parts of the storyline are meaningless and just tacked on, and there are parts which just don’t make sense. I like the Alien films. I like the Predator films. I even enjoyed the first AVP film which linked in quite well and had some good teasers in it, but this film was just a sequal too far and completely pointless.

3. I went out to Chiquitos at Westwood Cross last night for Katie’s going away evening (she’s off travelling around the world for 10 months), and had a great time. The food was good and the service was very good which was suprising for a Friday night at 8:30pm. So thumbs up to them. From there we headed off to the Sovereign, a new pub on Harbour Street in Ramsgate. It’s basically like a Weatherspoons (but with music) and the drinks were very cheap which is not that common in Ramsgate where a pint will set you back around £3. And then…off to the Royal. We got in around 12:30am and had a good ol’ rave-up to some speed garage. MASSIVE! Hmm, well it was okay in there and a good way to make the evening carry on, but for some reason, even though it was packed, they shut up at 2am when they could’ve gone on until 4am, which meant back to Steve’s for some more drinks. I eventually got home around 3:30am.

4. I am off to Chichester for the weekend for James’ birthday and will report back, but it should be nice to see all the old peeps, amnd hopefully by then I won’t feel as crappy (not the cold… just a hangover).

5. Have a nice weekend.

Blimey, I’ve got quite a lot to go through but haven’t found the time to blog (this seems to always happen this time of year..) but I’d better get started or I’ll forget.

So last week I went down to my old stomping ground at Chichester and had a very nice weekend. I was going down to see some friends who I haven’t seen since summer 2005, who were either just visiting or had moved back to the area, and I made the decision not to tell anyone else who I normally visit that I was coming down so that I could just concentrate on these friends as I wanted the weekend to be a bit different to what normally happens when I go down.

We drank, we ate food, we played pro evo, and we went clubbing in Bognor Regis to the wonder that is Sheiks Nightclub. I shouldn’t really call it Sheiks as it was rebranded as Club Vision was back in around 2002 but habits die hard and this was the place where I spent many a Thursday Night drinking too much, dancing my tits off, and then feeling ill….. oh what memories!

The memories did start flooding back, as they normally do on my visits, and it was nice to go to the club as I hadn’t been there since summer 2004 as I think three and a half years is probably a good enough gap to leave in between visits. I have to admit that I was a bit like an old man when I found out how prices had changed (or in fact how I’d perceived them to) such as paying £17 to get a taxi from Chichester to Bognor, or paying £7 to get in the club, or that my Sunday carvery at the Nags Head had now gone up to £10. In fact the prices hadn’t really gone up that much, it was just that my perceived reality was based on the memories stored in my head of how Chichester was and so along with this is the prices which surely had to rise over the years, as the prices have in my home town.

After the carvery on Sunday I went up to Uni to hook up with Jamie to join in a game of football on the top field, and ended up playing for a good couple of hours which surely must have burnt off some of the carvery. After that it was a long trip home in the dark back to Ramsgate and the following day I was back at work.

Going away for weekends is good fun, but you do feel exhausted at the end of them when you have to go to work.

So back to work and I toodled along during the daytime with ‘real’ work, and in the evening I cracked on with more websites. In the end I opted for the reseller package at HostGator as I think it should help me with websites in the future, but for the moment I’m going to have a huge amount of work to move over my current sites to the new accounts and get them fully up and running. In the end, all the sites will be on HostGator and I’ll be able to cancel my hosting with 1&1 and A Small Orange which simply didn’t suit my needs.

One website that I’ve already migrated is that of AmyHooper.co.uk which was less of a migration, and more of a complete rebuild (see the old site here). The site now runs on a CMS which means that it is easier to edit, and it’s also got its on individual account on my reseller space so it can now be considered completely separate. I’ll have to take it all a site at a time and eventually it will all be sorted. It’s probably a good time to give all the sites a spruce up and then I’ll be able to crack on with my own, knowing that I’ll have a completely clean slate.

That’s all for now…..speak laters

I lived in Chichester from 1999 until 2004 and all throughout that time it was known about the ‘Chichester Rapist’ as there had been a range of attacks in the area. Not a very nice topic but something that people had to be wary of as it was a University town and as such full of young students away from home for the first time. Women were warned not to go out alone and I have no doubt that this brough a lot of fear into their lives. Sure, people are safe most of the time but if it’s common knowledge that there is someone out there doing things like this then it must prey on your mind sometimes.

Well the man has now been jailed and will serve a minimum of 12 years behind bars, but what has come to light is that he could have been caught a lot sooner:

Jurors were told that a serious error by police investigating the attacks allowed him to remain at large.

Prosecutor Christine Laing said he was arrested over a suspected “peeping Tom” offence in 2002 but an “oversight” meant his DNA swab was not sent off for analysis until a case review four years later. – BBC News

The means that after this time he committed offences for another 2 years which is shocking and I don’t think an “oversight” really covers it.

There was actually a time, around 2001, when police were actually going door to door and taking samples from men in the local area in an attempt to capture him, and they actually came to my house but I was out. Luckily my housemates were able to put the police at ease as I was such a nice fellow and had a long-term girlfriend at the time too. I doubt that would really put the police off if they were really interested in me, but according to this article I didn’t really fit the profile.

Mark Campbell is now behind bars and hopefully the victims will be able to get on with their lives and others in the area will be a little safer.

We had the Police around yesterday, no not the band, but the actual Police who came to talk about the burglary. It was nice to have a friendly chat about it with someone who has obviously more experience in this type of thing, and he reassured us on quite a few things.

It looks like, based on similar crimes in the area, that generally the burglars just want cash, and didn’t venture any further into the house once they’d got the handbag. Obviously if there were other things around in plain site then they would’ve gone too, but there is no evidence of that, and nothing else has been touched or moved.

I’m taking this as a real eye opener to be more careful, and be thankful that nothing worse happened. Sometimes these little things are almost a Godsend and make you buck up your ideas. I made a comparrison to these event to the time I got could speeding in my car. They may seem unrelated, but in 2002 I used to drive very fast of the motorway, around 90mph all the time, and I’d been doing that for years and was pretty laid-back, but in July 2002 I was driving down to Chichester and got stopped by two Police Patrol bikes, and was clocked doing 94mph. I didn’t even realise I was going that fast, but luckily I only got 3 points on my licence and a £60 fine, when I could’ve in fact ended up in court, or worse, not got caught, and carried on driving fast and eventually ending up in an accident.

I still don’t always stick to the speed limit on motorways, but won’t top 80mph anymore, which I think is quite sensible, and so I look back and although I wish I hadn’t got the points or fine, I can be grateful that I got a little warning to slow down. In this same way I can use this burglary as an indicator that I should perhaps be a little less naive when it comes to home security, and be glad that nothing worse happened.

I’ve had a brilliant weekend. Nice to know eh? I went down to Chichester and caught up with lots of old Uni friends and did I say I had a brilliant time? Sometimes when I’ve popped down to Chi there hasn’t been much going on or not many people around but this weekend it was Charles and Lisa’s wedding and they were having their reception at the Students’ Union Bar and TTP were playing there so it was guaranteed to bring all the old faces out of the woodwork.

I got to Chi around 2pm on Saturday and met up with Karen for some lunch and a couple of drinks and then went back to hers and Miffy’s as I’d be staying there on their sofabed. We had some wine and some passoa (don’t ask!) and were joined by Jamie and Rich and then around 7:30pm we headed up to the Union and a bit later were joined by friends who were actually at the ceremony

The highlight of the evening was catching up with Hannah who, ashamedly, I haven’t seen since 2004 as she’s been busy with being a mother but it brought a big smile to my face to see her again as she was a really good friend but as mentioned in a previous post I had lost touch with a few people. More wine, vodka, and beer rounded off the evening along with some dancing and body-popping and I crashed out around 3am.

The next day I met up with Jamie for a spot of football and although the weather was fine to start with we were soon in a torrential downpour and then pelted with hail stones! We carried on playing but once the water was 1 inch deep on the pitch we were forced to give up. I got changed into some dry clothes in my car and then headed back to Ramsgate.

I’ve been in a great mood today following the weekend and then to round it off I went to watch Die Hard 4.0 which I enjoyed.

One thing that I did occur to me after this weekend is that when I used to live in Chichester the majority of my friends were women, where as in Ramsgate the majority of my friends are men. Strange eh? I have got female friends here but they are mostly girlfriends of my best mates and as such I don’t usually socialise with them on their own. I need to get some more lady friends!! Not with a view to get hooked up (although I wouldn’t say no) but it’d be nice to have a bit more variety in my friendship circle. I love my male mates but there’s nothing wrong with extending my friendship circle. Let’s see what happens.

Tomorrow I’ve got a training day in Birmingham, which is a very very long way from me, and as I’ve got to be there for 10:30am I’m going to have to get a train at 5:30am, which is very very early. I suppose I could’ve made an excuse but that would be wrong and so I’ll be making a very sleepy way to Brum, and in particular Birmingham University.

Harking back to my last post of thinking the internet is brilliant, I can link this into my trip as I’m going to see an old university friend I’ve not seen for three years, and I’ve got Facebook to thank for this. Becs moved away from Chichester in 2004 with her partner Will as he had got a new job in Birmingham, and although both were very good friends my life was very egocentric at that time and I simply didn’t find time to keep in touch. It’s a shame but that’s the way life was and I can probably tell the same sorry about any number of old acquaintances who I’ve simply lost touch with, even more so now that I live in Ramsgate.

Anyway, back to Facebook. I’ve been building up quite a list of friends on there, innitially mostly people I see in day to day life, but as Facebook has been growing I’ve been getting in touch with more people I had lost touch with and Becs was one of them. Over a few messages I learnt that her and Will were still in Birmingham and had recently got married and were expecting a child!

The even better news (for me) was that Becs works at the same place as I’m going to be doing my training (Birmingham University Guild of Students) and so I’ll be able to see her when there are breaks in the course. More than likely, without Facebook, I would’ve gone up to Birmingham for the day and not even know that an old friend was working in an office down the corridor from where I would be. Coincidences are brilliant and I’m very happy now.

The baby is due in September so I’m going to pop to Mothercare in my lunch break to get a gift to take with me and may also grab a belated Wedding present (something tacky no doubt!).

In other news, I’m off to France on Friday for a long weekend and luckily I’m not driving so I should hopefully be able to get a little rest whilst we’re travelling as I’m bound to be knackered after tomorrows travelling. This will of course mean that I won’t be blogging over the weekend so excuse my absence. Au Revoir!

Header image under CC by Shutr.