Back when I partied : One epic night in 2006

Hello all

Recently I embarked on a very rare night out for the 18th birthday of my friend Michelle, and the next morning I was exhausted so decided to go on a nostalgia session and in this session I remembered one of the most epic nights of my life.

It was April 2006 and Ellen had organised a night out at Cubes for her birthday. For those of you who aren't from Lincoln, Cubes is pretty much the only rock venue in Lincoln, and given that I was heavily into my rock music at the time, it was just inevitable I would go. Infact, I spent most Friday nights out at Cubes, I loved the place, even though it was a shitehole and that they seemingly never cleaned it. Ellen then stipulated that she wanted all the lads to go as schoolgirls........an interesting turn of events but you know what, I was game for it, afterall, it was a laugh.

I wasn't on my own in this as all the other lads, with the exception of Rik and Jim found themselves dressed as a school-girl by the end of the night. Dan Svarc didn't know about the dress as a school-girl theme, so when he entered he was dragged (literally dragged) by three girls into the bedroom of Ellen and turned into a school-girl.

Left to right - Dan Svarc, Darren Glendinning and myself

I thought to myself, you know what, fuck it, might as well milk it.

Whilst all this is going on, we realise that we still need Charlie to turn up, fortunately she didn't live far from Ellen so we just walked to get her. Myself and Darren (Charlie's boyfriend at the time) made the short trip and it was past several van loads of builders....which you can imagine lead to several interesting comments given that, well as you can tell, I had a very bushy beard at the time. I didn't care though. I was only 21 at the time and didn't really care what people thought, which was probably for the best.

After everyone has finally gotten ready we make the journey into town and towards Cubes before Darren then remembers he has forgotten something as he was one of my best friends at the time, I say I'll go with him. We have a good laugh at his flat and take the piss out of the way each other looks (as you can tell from the video) On the way down the Cubes from his flat we walk past a lot of chavs, drunk chavs, but surprisingly there were no comments from them, although the bouncers on the doors at Cubes did give us a few strange looks.

Eventually in Cubes and the nice progresses epically. Due to the fact we stand out in our school-girl outfits, we get a lot of attention, including the DJ playing "Dude Look Like a Lady" by Aerosmith within seconds of us walking in, and a lot of young ladies flirting with us all, which was quite strange. Darren on the other hand looked relatively convincing and had several older gentleman flirt with him, completely unaware that he was actually a guy. It was quite amusing.

Back at the time of my life I was quite socialable and was joining in with the party on the dancefloor.....which is something I rarely do these days, and the only disappointment of the evening is that Cubes was dead. There was only about 30 people in there, which included about 15 of us, and two of my friends from football at the time, Dave and Luke, the latter of which gave an extremely shocked reaction when he saw me dressed as a schoolgirl.

Rik - As you can tell, he didn't join
in the schoolgirl theme.

As I said earlier, I was massively into rock music at the time, virtually none of which I listen to these days because, well, quite frankly I got bored of it, but hits from System of a Down, Linkin Park, Adema, Kid Rock and various other names from around the rock scene at the time are blaring out as the night continues.

More men are flirting with Darren, and even Svarc gets a few men interested in him. One of the most amusing moments of the evening came at around midnight when myself and Darren are in the toilet and then a random bloke walks in, sees two guys dressed as schoolgirls taking a piss and you could tell that he didn't know how to react, after about 20 seconds he scurried into the cubicle. Myself and Darren had a bit of a chuckle about this.

The night is finally starting to come to an end and it's been a great night but the randomness doesn't stop there, oh no. We're walking home over Pelham Bridge and we want a group photo so we all stop in the middle of the bridge, and this random guy patiently waits for us to take the photo but that's not enough for various members of the group as we invite him to join in the photo, so now, in an evening that was well and truly random, is a guy who none of us know in the group picture of those of us who were left at the end.

Since then I've only really kept in contact with Charlie and Ellen, both of whom I see on a semi-regular basis. I rarely talk to Darren or Svarc, I don't think I've ever shared a conversation with Rik, although me and his girlfriend (Debbie) get on quite well.

Also, I went back to Cubes recently for the first time in a long time and you know what? Nothing has changed. It's still a shitehole and still stinks of sweat and wet-denim, but it's our shitehole. The best nights of my life were spent there and I will never forget them.

I've never been happier than when I was with that group of friends the 2005-2007 period was the happiest I have ever been. Those days were awesome nothing will ever compare to it.

The end of night photo
Random guy, RIk, two girls I don't know, Ellen, Dean, Svarc, another random girl, myself and Debbie.

Fear, the most genuine emotion

Hello all

I'm not going to talk directly about what I was afraid in this specific blog, but I'm going to talk about fear.

Whilst you can force yourself to fall in love with someone, another can influence you to hate someone else and any other situation involving emotion, I've found the only true emotion is fear. Fear doesn't lie to you, you are never fooled into knowing you're afraid of something, fear doesn't discriminate, fear doesn't care who you are, fear is the only emotion you know you can trust.

Taken in 2004 with my friend Jamie on "Air" at Alton Towers
One of us is afraid of heights.....not too obvious which it is.

The aren't many things I am afraid of.....heights is certainly one. I've always had a fear of heights. I've been to Alton Towers three times, and a mix of rollercoasters and the heights from the high-wire transport system have seen the friends I'm with get nervous at my shaking. I am terrible with heights.

I am also not keen on the dark. I would stress that I am not afraid of the dark, but I am not keen on it because you never truly know what's that, it could literally be anything. I'll grant you that 99.9% of the time there will be nothing to worry about, but that doesn't stop me getting nervous.

Then we get onto Thursday 21st June 2012. It was a day where what I am set to announce on July 2nd was told to several people who I work with by my manager. Again, I'm not going to say what it was (not until July 2nd anyway), but all of a sudden I went from being generally laid back at work to all of a sudden being an emotional wreck. I became incoherant and struck with fear and had it not been for being taken away from my desk by Claire and Amy, I would have had not come back around as quickly as I did.

Today I discovered that whilst I can control all of my other emotions, fear will always hold the upper hand.

Oh well, until next time.

Peace out!

The time I never thought would come is here.....

Hello all

I spent my Thursday evening with my half-sister Sarah and it resulted in me having one of the biggest internal debates of my life.

For those of you that don't know, I am adopted and have been from just a few weeks old. I was adopted from the Wood family to be a member of the Jackson family. Just under two years later and Samantha was born, later renamed Sarah when she was adopted out to the Barradell family. I had always known I was adopted but never really gave it a second thought before Sarah got in contact with me, basically introducing herself and we met up.

Skip forward 15 years, I'm now 27 and she's 25 but our relationship has never been particularly strong. It's never really felt like we're brother and sister because despite looking reasonably similar, we don't have that much in common. She's always felt more like a friend rather than family, and the one BIG difference between us is our attitude towards the fact we were adopted.

As I said earlier, I've never really given it that much thought. The only times it's ever more than a fleeting thought  is when I see Sarah, but other than that it rarely crosses me mind. Sarah on the other hand has always been curious and found myself 15 years ago and now our mother, Janice. I've known for a while that Sarah and Janice knew each other and that they see each other on a regular basis, but when I saw Sarah earlier she mentioned that Janice has written a letter to get in contact with me and it's bought up something which I never thought would happen, a turning point.

I could go one of two ways, I could just go with it, see what the letter says and then reply and then take it from there whether I would want to build a relationship with her, or I could just completely ignore it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry or anything that I was put up for adoption, I have no feelings of hate or anything towards Janice, far from it, but I've always said that I have no interest in really getting in contact with her, BUT I never expected to get anything from her.

I am really conflicted with what I want to do. I think it would be harsh not to write a letter in return, so either way I'm going to do that, but do I want to build a relationship with her? Do I want to meet her? Do I want to get to know her? These are questions that all of a sudden seem very real and right at this moment I don't know what I want to do. My gut instinct tells me that the answer to all of those questions is no, do I ignore close on 28 years of having a certain feeling only to then flip over at the first sign of it becoming real?

In a year where a lot of things are changing for me and I have a lot of hard choices to make, this could easily be the most difficult decision of them all.

For one night only..........

Hello all

In August last year I retired from playing football. I was 26 at the time and felt my best years were behind me and given that I was quite crap anyway, it was the right time to call it a day. It was a sad day for football.

My old profile picture on the FC Vodafone website
Taken in August 2011, just before I retired

I remember being completely clueless when I was first asked to play football in the first few years of school. As I didn't really like football at the time, it was always going to be difficult and despite going to a few football matches early on in my life, it wasn't until I was about 8 or 9 that I finally got into the sport properly and became what could best be described as a "keen enthusiast".

Throughout my life I never really settled on one position on the pitch. Being left footed I did have a slight advantage as I was pretty much the only leftie where ever I played, and I was often used as either left back or left midfield, but ended my career playing as a striker.

As a defender I was actually quite reasonable. In one particular 6-a-side team me and Mark Lovely were placed in defence and combined with the goalkeeper, we kept nine clean sheets in a row. Without sounding big-headed but me and Mark were a brilliant defensive partnership and in 15 games together we only conceded 4 goals and that aforementioned nine game clean sheet run was ended when both of us had been substituted off of the pitch and the team conceded within two minutes of both of us going off.

As a striker I was very much a "behind closed doors goalscorer." My scoring record in training sessions was fantastic. I played for four sides in the Sunday Leagues of Lincoln and Newark and my record in training was an average of 3 goals a session, which I was highly pleased with......but in 27 actual games for those 4 sides, how many goals to you think I scored? Precisely zero.

I think I was a good passer of the ball and when I struck a ball correctly, I could score some of the most stunning goals you'll ever see. I scored with a volley from 40 yards once, which I was very pleased with. I'm not actually a half-bad goalkeeper either, granted not as good as someone who plays in goal on a regular basis, but I'm not awful.

However, I have some very big flaws as a player. My fitness levels have always been shocking and my effort on the pitch isn't great, but my worst quality on the picture is a lack of composure. My composure was shockingly bad and god knows I had plenty of chances to end that goalscoring drought. I was getting at least one opportunity every single game and the one that always haunts me came when I was representing Flintham in the Newark Alliance Division Two. We were playing Vodafone and it was 1-1 when we were awarded a penalty.

The 6-a-side team with which I had an excellent defensive record.
Top : Julian Soons, myself, Dan Taylor, Matt Harris
Bottom : Mark Lovely, Julian Burley, Rob Makepeace

A guy called Tom took it but I had little faith in him scoring so I decided to start a few steps back from the rest of the pack. As Tom started his run I started mine, which meant that by the time he kicked it I was already at near full speed running into the area......which meant that no-one would have caught me. As expected the penalty was saved and it fell to me.......I'm about 4/5 yards out and I could do several things with it.....I decide to boot it as hard as I could and it sailed high and wide....the goalkeeper was still grounded. It was about as open as an open goal can get. Even now I'm not sure how I missed it and it haunts me to this day. What made it worse was that from the resultant goalkick, Vodafone then went and won a penalty down at the other end and the game eventually finishes 4-1.

I left Flintham a few weeks later. Flintham were quite bad and in a six week spell our results were 0-9, 0-9, 2-4, 0-9, 1-12 and 0-9....infact we lost every single game from October onwards, the majority by a huge score. It was the final 0-9 defeat that saw the manager in the changing room slate the entire team saying that every single one of us was to blame for that defeat....which I took exception to as I only played 10 minutes at the end and we were already 8-0 down at that time. I subsequently quit the team in a less than amicable fashion.

My next port of call was Collingham FC. I had been promised games, which is something I never really got at Flintham. What followed was more frustration as I rarely played again, with two of the only three games I played for them coming against Flintham (winning 3-1 and 4-1).

They decided to use me only as a linesman, even when they had no other subs....and they did not understand the offside rule. Offside is not when the ball is received, it's when it's played, and the amount of times the opposition scored when the defence were stood claiming offside was ridiculous. Infact, it was the day of my 25th birthday that I quit as again I was the only sub and was asked to be linesman.....and even when someone got injured I still wasn't bought on.

That was it until May 2011 when a new Vodafone team were forming and I went along, scored ten goals in my first three training sessions before then tearing an ankle ligament playing a match with a few friends down a park. The worst part about that injury was it happened three days before I was due to have a trial with Gainsborough Trinity from the Blue Square North. I still turned up as one of the other Vodafone players also had a trial, but he didn't get offered a deal in the end.....nor did anyone else for that matter.

Sporting the Flintham FC kit
Taken in 2009.

It was six weeks before I was able to even start to run again but then no matter what I did, I couldn't score and the attitude of the manager was shocking. He was one of those "one rule for one, one rule for another" type of people and I hated it, and the last game I played in saw him decide to put me at right midfield, a position that I had never played in, and then he constantly abused me throughout the game for not using my right foot....even though he knows I'm left footed. I don't technically quit, what I did was tell him to shove his football team where the sun doesn't shine and I stormed off.

At that point I decide that due to the ankle ligament injury and always coming away from matches injured that it was time to call it a day. That was in August 2011 and I haven't even kicked a ball since. Now it's June 12th and I am now scheduled to play in a match on Saturday evening.

If you wish to see what will turn out to be the last ever football match Nathan Jackson will ever play, come along to Rustons on Newark Road in Lincoln on Saturday evening. Tickets are free, but I'd recommend standing behind the fence as my wayward shooting is prone to hit people in the face.

I wanted to get angry....but couldn't

Hello all

As some of you know, I have a big announcement coming up on July 2nd and in preparation for what it relates to I had organised a shopping trip with my friend Michelle.

Now, I have mentioned Michelle in this blog before, more precisely in the "Bantre Bus" blog when I mentioned that I had known of her for a year but had never had a conversation, well after that blog I decided to add her on Facebook and try and have a conversation. That was about 6 weeks ago and we've had the odd conversation and I do quite like Michelle, she's unlike any friend that I already have and that's a good thing.

So anyway, this shopping trip with Michelle was organised to start at 11/12ish on Saturday but I get a message asking it to be pushed back to 1pm as she was feeling a bit ill, which was fine by me. So after a bit of mulling around Lincoln, it gets to 1pm so I wait at the agreed location.......

1:15 - Ok, she's a little late but I'll let her off.....afterall, she is doing me a favour.
1:30 - Bit of slack timekeeping but oh well, I'll sit and read my book.
1:45 - Oh, that's quite a random fact (it was a book of useless facts), *looks up* Oh, still no Michelle.
2:00 - "Sir, can you please move along or we'll have to ban you from the Waterside for excessive loitering!" ....What? all I'm doing is waiting for my friend.....who, by the way, is now an hour late.
2:15 - I wonder how long people on Facebook would wait? General consensus being that I should have left after 15 minutes. I want to stay because I have a lot of patience but I don't want to end up wasting the only day off that I had for a while.
2:30 - Looking at it logically and it seemed she wasn't going to come....there's a train in 15 minutes.....fuck it, I'm off. Even now I feel bad leaving though.

So I'm there on the train home and to be honest, I was quite annoyed, however, I was strangely not angry. I get back to my flat about 45 minutes later and there's a message from Michelle on Facebook where she explained what had happened and to be honest, I could have easily got very angry, but I didn't, which surprised me, as I would normally have gotten quite angry.

Maybe it's because I had been listening to Sound of Arrows (I've included two of their songs in this blog entry) for the three hours leading up to that, or because I would feel bad getting angry at a girl who has been awesome since we became friends, but I don't know, I just didn't get angry.

I've been mellowing out in recent months and don't get even slightly annoyed by stuff that used to bug the shit out of me. I used to get angry all of the time but now I don't. Now I just let things slide, I just, I don't know, tend not to give much of a shit anymore. I think I spent most of my life taking everything far too seriously, so me mellowing out is definitely a good thing.

As I've been getting older and slowly creep up on being 30 (still just over 2 years to go) but it feels like it's only a short time, I have also noticed that my tastes have changed.....most notably in music. I used to only really listen to rock music, but I've started going right off that now and have been getting into synth pop, such as the aforementioned arrows. Maybe that's helped towards chilling out.

However, I think it all stems back to a conversation I had a few months ago with my boss. On the most basically level she made me realise that if I can't control the situation, why get angry about the result? What's the point in getting angry about something I can't influence, and I think that's what happened her. Other than physically picking Michelle up out of her bed and plopping her down in a shop, there was nothing I could do, so why get angry about it.

I have spoke to her a few times since and it's all good between us as far as I can tell. Hopefully that shopping trip can be rearranged for the near future.

Peace Out!

It's been a while

Hello all

I trust all is well?

It's been a while since I gave an update really with what's happening, so for those that give a shit, here it is.

So where to begin? Well let's go with work. As well as my job at a well known telecommunications company (I'm not sure if I'm actually allowed to mention who it is, but I'd rather not risk it), I now work at a pub in the evenings and that's certainly been a baptism of fire. I don't drink myself and it's been a while since I was serving people face to face, and given I haven't actually been probably trained (was just put at a till and told to serve people), it's certainly been an interesting few shifts there so far.

It's been a struggle if I'm honest because I'm not used to asking questions on how to do things. I know my day-job pretty much inside out having been in my specific department since it's beginning in 2009, so to go from an environment where I am confident in what I am doing and saying, to a place where I know precisely sod all, is something I don't enjoy. Don't get me wrong, it's learning new skills and everything, so it's good, but it's taking a while to get used to asking questions.

Other than that I do enjoy the job, it's a good chance to meet new people and start with a blank slate. As I didn't know a single person that worked there, no-one had any preconceptions about me, I can just get on with my job and share as much or as little information as I want. Infact, I've been very careful not to reveal too much about myself in the eight days I've been working there at the time of writing......I've made the mistake in the past of letting people I've only known for a few days know some pretty personal information about me.....but not this time.

My England vs France ticket....given that I'm not using it, it is now effectively a useless but of paper.

So, on from something new to something which has gone out of the window and that is me going to the Ukraine. I had tickets for the England vs France game in Donetsk and I still wanted to go, but the apparant danger, expensive flights and lack of a hotel within 20 miles that has spaces has just seen my interest disappear, so I am not going to bother with it. It's just not worth it for 90 minutes worth of football.

Infact, I'm not missing football at all now. Yes, I'll watch the Euros, when I'm not at work anyway.....but other than that I'm not that fussed. Over the last few years I have fallen a bit out of love with football, and I'm not in a hurry to get my new season ticket at Sincil Bank for next year.....I will get one, but not that fussed about it. I'm not even going to any friendlies with the exception of Eastwood Town, which is a place I've wanted to go for some time. I had a job interview there whilst I lived in Nottingham, and I have kept an eye on their results since. Other than that I have no plans to go to any other friendlies....and given that one is only 3 miles away in Collingham, it says it all. When I can't be bothered to travel from Newark to Collingham, it tells it's own story.

And that leads me neatly onto living Newark. It's ok, I do like it surprisingly. There's not a lot to do but it's quite an interesting place to live surprisingly. I live near enough in the town centre and because of this I hear all of the drunks after their nights out...some of them shouting at the top of their voices.....you'd be amazed what I hear during the night.

It's not to hear a lot though, my flat only has one layer in it's windows, so I can hear virtually everything.....so when the Morrisons delivery truck drives by at 5:45 EVERY SINGLE SODDING MORNING, I sure as hell know about it. It's kind of strange because I like two floors up, and yet because of all the sounds getting through the thin windows, it sounds like I'm on the ground floor, oh well.

I still haven't met three of the other four tenants of the building. The other person is a bloke from Birmingham who I've spoken to twice. As far as I know the flat opposite me has a married couple in it, the only below me belongs to a girl in her mid-20s. I know what she looks like having arrived in the building about 20 seconds after she did and walking by her door (whilst she was trying to get in) as I was walking to mine. The final guy lives on the bottom floor and this mother-fuckers seems to think it's ok for him to use my bins. The garbage truck came by last week and I went to put my trash can out....and that fucker had put all of his Stella bottles in my bin....I took them out and left them on a box outside of his door. FUCK YOU, IT'S MY BIN!!!!

I guess I can't really class myself as young now that I'm complaining about someone else using my bin and as I mentioned in another blog, I am certainly starting to mellow out. Stuff that used to bug me really doesn't anymore. When I say stuff, it was very petulant stuff as well, it wasn't even worth worrying about and yet I did, it was insane. Now I'm far more chilled out and I think my boss at the telecommunications company helped in that as she has basically taught me that there's no point in getting upset over stuff I have no control over. As Jodi used to say "It is what it is."

That leads me neatly onto Miss Wilde. It's now been eleven weeks since me and her stopped being friends and it's kind of strange because I can't really shake thinking about the situtation and how it all came about, but I'm glad it did. I am now a far stronger person because of it and what it has taught me is not to put too much emotional dependance on one person. I did it with Marinda (Maz) and I did it with Jodi, I'm never going to make that mistake again because that emotional dependance on someone eventually crippled everything that made those respective friendships work.

Me and Jodi were friends for 10 or so years and to be fair for the majority it worked very well. We would talk for a few hours every day for a few days and then it would be two/three months worth of silence, but then all of a sudden last July we had a discussion and I don't know what happened, I think I fell in love with her, and unlike previous occasions, she was online nearly every day, meaning I didn't have the two/three month gaps to get over those feelings.

I became so emotionally dependant on Jodi that it became inevitable it would become too much for her and you know what they say, familiarity breeds contempt and to be honest, I think she probably hated me for a while before we eventually stopped being friends. The fact she stopped even asking how I was makes me obvious that that was the case, but would I change how I acted ? Would I try and stop myself from falling in love with her? No. As I say, I am a far stronger person now because of this experience, and it's just a pity I had to put someone else through shit for me to make this epiphany.

As I say, I'm no longer sad about what happened with Jodi, it happened and there's nothing I can do to change that. I accepted pretty early after the argument  that me and her will probably never be friends again and I'm cool with that. I've been cool with it all along but there isn't a day that goes by where I don't think about the argument or the friendship I had with her, but I look back now without regret. I'm not saying I hate Jodi, far from it, but I certainly got over the feelings of love and as I say, I am stronger for the experience of the last three months.

I'm not sure if Jodi still reads this blog as the hits from Canada have seriously declined since our friendship ended, but if you are reading this Jodi, I hope you have a good life and I hope you find happiness.

Anyway, so what else is there to talk about? Not a lot really, so I'm going to leave it there.

Peace out!