The year the music died?

Image credit: christhebarker

2016 will probably go down as one of those years where sad news overshadowed the good – certainly that was true for me both in personal terms, which I won’t cover here, but also the seemingly relentless march of famous icons being taken by the grim reaper.  Just as we were coming to terms with Lemmy passing away at the end of 2015, in 2016 we’d be constantly reminded by social media of a glittering parade of cultural icons shuffling from this mortal coil.

David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Jimmy Bain, Terry Wogan, Harper Lee, Frank Kelly, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Frank Sinatra Jr, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett, David Gest, Victoria Wood, Lonnie Mack, Prince, John Berry, Nick Menza, Muhammad Ali, Henry McCullough, Anton Yelchin, Caroline Aherne, Kenny Baker, Dalian Atkinson, Gene Wilder, Pete Burns, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Rick Parfitt, George Michael, Liz Smith, Richard Adams, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

That’s not an exhaustive list, I’m sure, but that’s not really what I wanted this blog post to be about – but you can’t really do a review of the year without mentioning the elephant in the room.  As with seemingly most things these days it caused ruckuses on Facebook with folk taking to social media to express their sadness whilst others get irked at seeming over-emotionalness.  Certainly there’s a lot in that list who whilst I’ve never met have had huge influences over my life, and I felt genuine sadness at them moving on – some seemingly far too early, others having reached a ripe of age.

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Freeborn Al / 30th December 2016 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Lee Bonsall, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

Escapology..

static-logoA total diversion from my normal subject matter – but we’ve just had a really fun afternoon that’s worth talking about.  Back in March my Mum and Dad came up with the hugely original birthday gift of taking three friends and being locked in a room which we then have to try to escape from by decoding clues in there within a time limit.  Given the busyness of social calendars it took ’til this week for us to finally get it locked down!

So myself, Ella, Sarah and Paul met up to tackle Contraption – I was ordered by Ella that no rooms involving mannequins was allowed, and Sarah has an aversion to clowns, so when I rang up to book I made those points to the chap on the phone, and he recommended this room.  It was set up as a laboratory of a scientist, machinery and artifacts make up the clues you need to eventually solve the room to escape.

Our very first task proved quite tricksy to solve – it was actually pretty easy really, but then isn’t everything once you’ve worked it out?  We then had a series of finding objects, cracking codes and clues and eventually finding our way out of the room with nine minutes to spare from our allotted hour.  It wasn’t scary as such, but there were a few jumpy moments (especially for scaredy cat Ella!).

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Freeborn Al / 22nd October 2016 / Photos, Thoughts / 0 Comments