I suppose I should update everyone on recent events too. Business is going quite well, and there has been a lot of activity on the CD Duplication front. We’ve had business from some top people PunchFunk, Subliminal, Tribal Sessions, Ministry, Power Promotions and numerous DJs and bands from around the country. Also, as of Monday this week, we’re now partnered with one of the top CD Replication plants in the world and certainly the biggest in Europe…Sony DADC, based in Austria. This is awesome news and should help us to improve and grow as a business.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about business too much as this is really just a personal blog, so back onto me. I’ve been doing quite well recently. I still need to fix my bike up so that I can go cycling up on the South Downs again. I really miss doing that and the sooner I sort things the better. My only problems are getting my bike to a shop that can fix it. There’s one in Felpham about 5 miles away from here, but he’s always booked up for 2-3 weeks at a time, which puts me off. Then I have to find a way of getting my bike there, and I can tell you…it doesn’t fit into my little car. Grrrrrrr. I hate logistics…and there was me, aged 15 at High School telling the Careers Advisor that I wanted to be a ‘Logistics Manager’

Also, last weekend I managed to get a pretty harsh head injury. I was hit in the head with a cricket ball at about 70mph, whilst batting for my local team. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time either, as I was just feeling good about batting again, like I could actually do something…and my teammate, Binky and myself were in the process of rescueing the team from an awful score. To my credit I wasn’t knocked unconcious, I stood up and took the blow…but I was forced to lean forward and I had to watch blood piss out of my head onto the side of the pitch. Not the prettiest of sights but I was amazed at how bright my blood was. The captain of my team ended up taking me to the local Hospital, which was at Haywards Heath. We were playing against Scaynes Hill (in case anyone wants to look it up on a map).

They gave me an assortment of stitches/glue to fix the wound. It seems like I was given a bit of everything! Because the wound was on my lower forehead, only just above the level of my eyebrows, they were very cautious with putting too many stitches on it for ‘cosmetic reasons’. The cut was Y-shaped (which only led to a big circle of doctors/nurses who all wanted to take a look at it), and they put 2 stitches, some steri-strips and some glue onto the wound to seal and hopefully fix it. I’m really hoping it doesn’t scar too badly, as I don’t want to look like that fucking Harry Potter idiot.

I have plenty of painkillers, not that I’m in a lot of pain but I’ve been told by more than one person now that they can help to reduce swelling and reduce scarring on the wound. I’m willing to accept that reasoning and wolf down some more painkillers!

I’d best stop writing now, but I am back and this blog will be spring-cleaned, links added etc, very soon!!

Matt

Ho hum…I’ve fixed a few links on here, now i’ve just got to work out where all my visitors went

I didn’t get to play cricket yesterday (doctor’s orders) but I still went along at about 4pm so that I could support the team. I’ve not actually enjoyed playing and being part of the team this much since I was about 14-15. The team spirit and attitude shown by people all season has been brilliant and I definitely feel proud to be a part of it.

The most suprising thing is that over half of the team is made up of 16-18 year olds. Our squad has the captain Pete (mid 50s), Me (nearly 23), Matt & Mike (21 twins), Binky (20), Will (19) and the rest are 18 or younger. We do occasionally have some of the older players in the first team playing for us, and this last weekend we had Brad (26) in the team. On the whole though, the average age in most of our games is 20-21, an excellent step for the future.

It was a bit disappointing that there weren’t more people around to celebrate the fact that we were promoted, but we didn’t find out until 10pm and there were only a few people left at the club playing poker at that time. I’m sure there will be bigger celebrations next weekend as it’s the day of the last league games and then a Curry Night in the evening.

I won’t be playing again next week as I’m off to my friend Steve’s wedding. It should be good fun, although I’m unlikely to know too many people there which is a little scary. I don’t really want to go alone and end up having to try and remember a whole bunch of new names! Plus, I want to get back to the Cricket club at around 5ish…so I might not go to the reception. Whatever happens, it will be great to see him take another step forward in his life and I’m sure that his marriage and relationship will last for a very long time

I had planned to play some golf with friends at lunchtime today, so that I could get out of the house and away from work for a few hours. Sadly, the weather was looking pretty crap by 11am, so I decided not to go. The other two guys still went, but judging by the rain we were getting within an hour or two, I’m happy that I didn’t. There’s nothing worse than walking around a golf course for a couple of hours, soaking wet.

I’m still not really understanding our pathetic excuse for weather. Bring back the sunshine!! It’s Steve’s wedding on Saturday, along with a party at the local cricket club celebrating the end of the season and our promotion! I’ll have to make sure I leave the car at home for that one!

Ahh well, back to work I suppose. Got a few sites to sort out and some loose ends to tie up.

This is what happened last Saturday…
I was really looking forward to my friend, Steve’s wedding last weekend. Everything was primed for it, had all my stuff dry cleaned and I really wanted to see him getting married and having one of the best days of his life. Especially with the fact that I missed his stag do because of the head injury.

Anyway, my friend rang me last Saturday to ask me if I could cover for his football team, and he promised me that we’d be finished by lunchtime, so that I could go to the wedding and have no problems. About 80% through the game, some absolute dickhead jumps in at me two-footed. I’m not the kind of person that jumps out of a tackle, so I went for the ball as well. Unfortunately he went straight over the ball and into my right ankle, turning it over and seeming to rip it in the process. I was down on the floor in agony for a good few minutes and it was obvious that I couldn’t carry on. A friend’s dad rang my mum and she took me into Hospital. They suggested (after a good 2 hours of waiting) that it was a fracture. This is at 1pm, so I’m just willing them to chuck a cast on so that I can then go to the wedding. So I sit by the X-Ray area…for an hour, then two….then three. At this point, I’d just be happy if I could make it to the reception. They took a ridiculous amount of time and the immigrant fella who finally did the X-Ray couldn’t speak any English at all. Absolute twat!

I got home at 9pm and by that time I had just given up. There was no fracture in the leg as predicted. Just really sore and an absolute bastard to get rid of!

The thing with Colt’s cricket, is that you nearly always get a manager who is just a dad of a player. They’ve barely played cricket in their lives and they don’t really have a clue about what they’re doing, how to instruct the kids and how to improve them so that they can play at the top of their game.

According to some of the parents, training for their kids has been very sporadic every week. Apparently, neither the manager or the team captain were ever at training. This leaves the 12, 13 and 14 year old players with very little training each week and no incenctive to improve their techniques or encourage their development.

These players are going to be the future of the club, and in 3-4 years they’ll be playing Men’s cricket, some of them maybe even sooner than that. They need the appropriate levels of coaching and encouragement to help them to move onto a more senior level of cricket and be part of the club which is growing and improving at a tremendous rate.

Both myself and Binky (Michael), feel that we could do a much better job with managing the team, and we will be putting ourselves forwards at the next AGM. Personally, I feel like I should be giving something back to the club who have been supporting me and encouraging my development since I was 9 years old. I may not be Kevin Pieterson or Andrew Flintoff, but I’m loyal, hard working and I’ll never give up in a game. If we can just get a handful of this team to come through with that attitude, they’ll find themselves improving very quickly and leading us on into the future.

Firstly, I’m going to stop pretending that I feel OK about how I look. I’ve put on over 2 stone since I’ve been working from home (a period of about 20-21 months now). This is completely my fault, but I kept assuming that if I ignored the problem it would go away. Well obviously…it won’t! I’m going to make a serious attempt to get back to my ideal weight of 13 stone. I think that means I have to lose about 30-35lbs! Ouch! Heh.

I’ve got a pretty good training schedule sorted out and I will be fixing my bike up sometime in the next fortnight, as a large part of the training will be cycling daily. I also need to grab some weights. I’d prefer not to join a gym at the moment as I’m not overly confident about the person that I am and I also can’t really afford to spend £35 per month for any of the local gyms to me. Going by my reckoning I should reach my goal weight sometime around next April. Maybe even before then! That would be perfect for me and it’s something I really want to achieve.

Being a guy in my early 20s, I need to wake the hell up and realise that these are the best years of my life. All this comfort eating bullshit and being lazy at home whilst I’m working isn’t going to help me. Once I move away from the peak of my body’s fitness, there is no going back. I’ve got to grasp this by the horns and fix it NOW! I’m 23 in 6 days time…I need to do this for myself.

Secondly, I want to fix something that I broke in January. I was an idiot and threw away the chance of something very special, because I became fixated and disillusioned by a person from my past. I’ve wasted the last 8 months of my life on them, and I should have realised at the time that it wasn’t what I truly wanted. I can’t believe that it has taken me so long to realise and admit this to myself. I also can’t believe just how much I hurt that person. I may write more about this in the future, it depends on how things go. I’m not going to think about it too much if I can help it, but it is definitely something that I want to repair and get back if possible.

Thirdly, I’m going to sort out my daily routine and become more organised. I’m currently getting up at very sporadic times in the day and this is really unhelpful for my work. I think part of it is to do with how unfit I’ve become as I’m feeling almost constantly lethargic all day. I will get past this and sort my life out.

Wow, it’s kinda sad in a way to see what I’ve become after nearly 23 years of life. I always hoped that I’d be in a much stronger position right now, but obviously I was quite stupid in believing that the magic fairies would fix things for me. It does feel good to get this all out though and I’m really looking forward to improving my willpower and taking back control of my life.

Oh and one last thing…I really do need to stop smoking at the weekends. Something which I’ve been doing for the past 2-3 months at Cricket mainly, but I also seemed to have picked up a smoking habit whilst I’m driving too. Not loads, maybe 10 a week but it’s still enough to make me feel disgusting.

I’ll just give a quick run down of what happened over this weekend…

Friday

Had a nice lie-in until about 10:30am. Woke up to find my mum cooking me bacon sandwiches (yay!). We opened all the cards I had from friends and relatives (thank you!), and then I opened the present from my parents. They bought me a black iPod Nano, which will come in rather handy over the next few months as I start cycling again. It’s always good to be able to listen to music on the move

My sister came home at around 11:30am and she gave me a selection of chocolates from an organic chocolate shop in Chichester. Very nice, but not quite what I need right now…I wanted to eat less sweet things, but I’m sure we can still enjoy them in moderation! We then went out for a round of golf in Arundel…well I say golf, but it’s more of a large 18 hole putting green. My sister, Jo, managed to go round the course in 74 shots…I don’t think I’ve ever seen her play so badly. It was extremely funny!

We then came home to meet my dad, and then we all went to Itchenor, where we met up with a friend of my parents, Martin. He owns a 37ft yacht which we all went out sailing on. It was the first time that I’ve ever sailed in anything more than those crappy Topper dinghies and I was extremely impressed. The weather was great, sailing was awesome, the views were wonderful aaaaaaaand we had smoked salmon sandwiches!!! Oooh and lots of alcohol There were a few pics taken, I’ll try and get some uploaded in the next few days.

We finished sailing at around 8:30pm and headed back home where we met my nan (lots of meeting people!!). We then had dinner in a new pub/restaurant built beside a local racecourse. It was a great atmosphere and the food was good too. I bumped into my best friend, Aaron and ended up sitting with him, his cousin and work-mate Darren after dinner. My family went home after that and I stayed out for a few drinks. Aaron’s cousin Dan bought me a couple of ‘birthday drinks’ which apparently contained…2 shots of Jack Daniels, 2 shots of Vodka and a splash of Coke. It was actually quite nice…although I’m sure it made me quite tipsy

Saturday

I woke up feeling pretty dead on Saturday, as I didn’t get much sleep the night before. My dad was a bit unhappy as I woke him up when I came home at around 3am. I had a Cricket match to play, so I figured it was easier for me to come home and get my stuff ready at home, rather than rely on a lift from Aaron’s house, when he might be lazy and not wake up until too late.

The game started at 1pm and we played Brighton & Hove. It was just a friendly match, but it was quite good fun, especially with the sunshine that we had. We beat them quite comfortably and I apparently hit the “shot of the match”, according to our old farts in the team

We stayed behind after the game for a few drinks and a discussion on the future of the club. Things are looking really bright for the next few years but the priority is definitely with bringing the young players through and helping them to grow into very good cricketers.

It seems that the game this weekend, will be the last one that is played until next season. We were going to have an inter-club game at the ground next weekend, but sadly this appears to have been cancelled as it wasn’t guaranteed that we could have 22 players available during the day. I’m hoping that more people will actually attend the Presentation Evening that is on in the evening though.

Sunday

Ohh I was lazy today actually. I woke up at around Midday with the intention of watching the football all day and lazing around in the lounge. I actually ended up doing a bit of work on my laptop first though. Then watched the Chelsea v Liverpool game. Pretty unhappy with the result as the team did more than enough to get a draw, if not win the game. Most pundits seem to think that Liverpool have thrown away the title with the defeat today. I guess we will see in 8 months time!

Jo’s new boyfriend, Olly was here again this weekend. I think that makes it 4 weekends out of the last 5 that he has been down/or they’ve been away. It’s quite an interesting one as he’s based so far away (lives in Gloucester/is in the Army), so he’s obviously either really into her or he just likes collecting points at the local petrol stations for all the miles he’s driving. Hey, what could be better? Dating my sister and getting a free DVD player with your points…. hah

We all had Chinese for dinner (takeaway not people). It was quite nice to sit around and have dinner, chat a little. I didn’t have any pudding though and came upstairs when I had finished as I had emails to read and some work to catch up with.
So yeah, that was my weekend. Not bad at all really

Yarrrrrrrrrrr