“Nobody knows the way it’s gonna be” – Noel Gallagher. Getting Oasis ticketsin 1997 for the Be Here Now tour was nuts and the proper way to see your favourite rock’n’roll band. Nothing was done online, nobody had the internet, nobody had any type of mobile phone at all, never mind a “smartphone”. Oasis massive…
Read More
Long overdue then this one! Seventeen years ago this week I was backpacking in the North Island of New Zealand. Across a brace of trips to New Zealand, I have backpacked the North Island and the South Island but not yet Stewart Island. I ended up in Rotorua where I have backpacked through twice. I…
Read More
“An extraordinary guy can never have an ordinary day” – Noel Gallagher. The truth is that I have been way too busy to actually write this blog post! I am brimming with ideas and I was meant to post this on the EXACT 25 year anniversary of the epic album “Be Here Now” being released.…
Read More
“God damn right – it’s a beautiful day” – The Eels. Well that crept up fast. FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS passed you and I nonchalantly by, for better or worse. “And on the streets tonight, an old man prays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days” – Nick Wire. (“And on the streets tonight, an old…
Read More
Be Here Now🎸ðŸ️: The Time Of My Life At Casa De Snagg, Chester Cottage, Saint Vincent🇻🇨 “You gotta be bad enough to beat the brave”- Noel Gallagher. A 23 year delay was eventually put right on the 23rd December 2021. I was finally doing that Noel Gallagher pilgrimage that I craved back when “Be Here…
Read More
By March 2008, my broken leg bone hat-trick was beginning to heal and though I didn’t travel much, I was in two countries that month – England and Northern Ireland. I made plans to visit Scotland again in May 2008. I had started to backdate and document my life in more detail by now. As…
Read More
It was in February 2008 that I started to reminisce a lot more and write about glory days, some of these posts were written from memory, many of them them simply from my handwritten diary. Notably I covered a family holiday to Afandou in Greece, where my Dad wrote a poem/song to sing to us…
Read More
“Footloose and fancy free, she comes to rescue me” – Kurt Nilsen. At the start of 2008, I had a broken leg and was housebound. I actually spent most of those days studying and watching Michael Palin DVDs of his global travels. I was preparing myself for bigger and better travels once my leg had…
Read More
“Where it began, woo oh oh oh” – Neil Diamond. Where it began, I know. It began in Toronto in Canada. An unlikely city to inspiring a nomadic Ulsterman’s whackpacking writing dream. It all began in Toronto in September 2001 when I spied the words “DON’T STOP LIVING” on a High School Wall. Nobody else…
Read More
December 2007 was a bit of an odd time for me. Having been really busy in November 2007, December was where it all went wrong. I headed on a rare night out at Christmas to party in the Old Firestation Nightclub in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. It was on that night in this nightclub that I…
Read More