Jon Millican's Blog

Bonsoir! Je suis en Bergerac maintenant how.. exciting!

..so today that meant lots of fun stressy times with everyone trying to make double sure we were all ready for going (which we were, but that didn’t seem to change the hectic worrying ) Then we got to the airport, checked in, all the usual business… although I have to say I was surprised at security that it’s now “all electronic items in a seperate tray”, uh-oh that tends to be rather a lot with me…. but hey ho, so long as they know I’m not intending to blow up a plane any time soon

So after a couple of hours on a plane, we arrived – and realised that we had no map of the area – convenient! …but fortunately the hotel was only a kilometre from the airport so we could easily walk it…..

………or not. Turns out whoever was advertising it had neglected to point out that “a kilometre” meant about 3, and along a major road that you couldn’t exactly walk with a load of cases…. so back to the airport it was to find a taxi.

Aaaand surprise surprise, there were none left (this airport is so tiny that baggage reclaim didn’t even have a carousel.. just chucking them down a ramp instead… so you wouldn’t expect many taxi!)

But anyway, we finally got a taxi to come out from the town to take us the whole 3km to the hotel… and got charged €16 for it!

….aaaand now we’re here, and little else to report. Hotel’s quite nice – 3 person room turns out to have stairs up to the double, meaning i’ve practically got my own room nice little surprise. Looking forward to going to the villa tomorrow though.. good ol’ HPB. A bientot tout le monde! ..sorry that this has pretty much been a rant about transport

Right, so having had nothing much to write here for a couple of days, I think I”ll give you all (i.e. anyone reading this (i.e. probably nobody – I’m not expecting anyone to actually care enough to read all this (unless they’re stalking me (hence the title)))) Ooooh embedded brackets are fun XD

ANYWAY, thought I might give a brief synopsis of my life since exams…

Sooo my exams finished stupidly late for a year 12 due to me having taken a few more than normal… which seemed like a good idea at the time…. until a few weeks before them… but anyway, a couple of days after that I went down to Cambridge with school for the open day, staying in 2 colleges (for me it was Queen’s and Gonville and Caius – both of which looked lovely). This trip was actually amazing – a load of my good friends, staying in college accommodation together – just like student life… just without any work… or much student-i-ness… so really just fun times . Also, apart from all the mates I already knew, I met Chris, and after an intriguing dispute over Chairs and Size (of rooms), which I lost due to an inconvenient Bible.. a beautiful bromance blossomed but more of that later…

So after having spoken to lots of Computer Scientists, looked at various colleges, and fallen in love with Shakeaway.. we unfortunately had to leave, so back up to Harrogate we went and lived happily ever after.

…until the next week. National Festival of Music for Youth in Birmingham with St Aidan’s Chamber Choir, St John Fisher Concert Band and Harrogate Music Centre’s Area Band, with a Harrogate concert in the middle just to shake things up a little . Unfortunately none of the groups I was in won any awards, but hey ho – c’est la vie!

Argh this blog entry seems to be getting pretty long now….. but ah well so long as no-one reads it, nobody can accuse me of being boring

Riiight this brings me to Tuscany – the Chamber Choir tour. This was AMAZING! So many awesome people and good times! …a little too hot, but amazing nonetheless. Of course in the concerts I was practically evaporating dressed in all black in close proximity to a bunch of others, but it was worth it! The last concert in particular was absolutely gorgeous. Particularly when the year 13s sang “O Magnum Mysterium”; the whole setting and the music and the acoustic was just beautiful!

Oh and how could I mention Tuscany without mentioning fans. I, slightly oddly, fell completely in love with them after figuring out how to flick them open smoothly. Once I actually started using them for their true purpose of keeping one cool, my fan and I were inseperable! (this isn’t as weird as it sounds! It started with buying one for my girlfriend… and just kind of developed from there..)

Now a couple of days after Tuscany, I was taken off to the moors to do my dreaded Duke of Edinburgh Gold expedition. Weather forecast in hand (lots of rain!) I pulled on my rucksack and trudged off with my group. Fortunately the weather held out for all of the days (nights were a different story, but when a tent does it’s job right, you tend to be ok ). Our groups planning also meant that, after 2 pretty nasty first days, we could pretty much relax on the last two – having got most of the miles over and done with on the first two. The whole experience was really fun though – such fun times with my group, all of whom were amazing to be around, and there’s something unbelievably satisfying about arriving at 1:30pm to a campsite on the 3rd day (also happening to be Louise’s birthday), and then at 11:30am to the finish on the last day. MAN was it fun gloating that we arrived in the morning, despite having planned to arrive about 4pm

So finally we come to this section of the summer. My actual holiday! Normally I’d be working as a web-designer, but after such busy times, particularly having missed lots of my friends and girlfriend, and with a holiday to France right in the middle – there just seems no length of time to work this holiday. I’m thinking I need the break anyway though.. has been knackering times! So far it’s been an amazing week and a bit though! Immense bromance with Peter, Charlie and Chris developing, lots of sleep, seeing Hannah lots, Will’s party, etc etc etc. Soooo I think that’s you caught up on my entire life now! If you’ve actually managed to read all this, well done – award yourself 20 gold stars – they’re exchangeable for hypothetical food, money and hugs so save them up nicely! Au revoir mon ami!

So, I guess now that I have a blog – I am now a “blogger”… not gonna just talk about my day each time though – who really wants to hear what I had for breakfast… or that I got some new shoes…..

..however this evening I went to a concert at Harrogate Royal Hall by Arcadi Volodos and it was phenomenal! I won’t write a long detailed review, as I couldn’t consider myself nearly musically educated enough to do him, or the music, justice – but I was astounded by what he could do with both his fingers and the piano. It was captivating from start to finish, and he came back with 4 encores at the end! Looks like I’m going to be practising piano hard for a while until his effect on me wears off – piano recitals always seem to have that effect on me. Oh, and then after such an amazing concert, I was able to shake his hand at the end!! I’d love to say that I won’t be washing that hand for a while after that… but unfortunately I already have…. ah well.

It’s such a shame, though, that such a concert (and his only concert in England this year) only sold around 200 tickets. So poorly attended, for such a great man. I just hope that it won’t have put him off playing here again!

Over and out

Hello World! (sorry, couldn’t resist a little programming reference )

So, this is my new blog… finally tired of creating my own websites – might just stick to doing that for clients put my efforts where it counts and all So hopefully WordPresss with some fun themes (might create my own at some point) should suffice for.. well… very little

I guess this is just gonna be a blog then… once I’ve explored WordPress a bit I may be able to upload some music stuff – I tried a music blog before but it failed a little because I hadn’t put any effort into design, or an auto-uploader or anything…. ftp updating is just tiresome! ….anyway I’m getting a bit geeky with this talk

Soooo aaaanyway – might finish there for today, will put something else on… erm…… sometime Just a little warning that when I write – it’s generally a bit confusing, although hopefully amusing occasionally….. I just pretty much put down my train of thoughts which makes writing very… easy……. but a bit….. odd! But hey, that describes me pretty well I mean…. I guess you’d need a few more words than just “odd” to describe a person, but it’s a good start anyway . From the rest of this post you’ve probably figured “geeky”, “eccentric”, and hopefully it’s made you feel good about yourself …at least any writing you ever do can’t be as unstructured and pointless as this

Hopefully this will actually post to Facebook too……. hopefully………………

Adios tout le monde! Auf wiedersehen jusque.. erm…. tomorrow (oh and I enjoy switching languages – even though I can only really speak 2, I attempt many )

Hello World! (sorry, couldn’t resist a little programming reference )
So, this is my new blog… finally tired of creating my own websites – might just stick to doing that for clients put my efforts where it counts and all So hopefully WordPresss with some fun themes (might create my own at some point) should suffice for.. well… very little
I guess this is just gonna be a blog then… once I’ve explored WordPress a bit I may be able to upload some music stuff – I tried a music blog before but it failed a little because I hadn’t put any effort into design, or an auto-uploader or anything…. ftp updating is just tiresome! ….anyway I’m getting a bit geeky with this talk
Soooo aaaanyway – might finish there for today, will put something else on… erm…… sometime Just a little warning that when I write – it’s generally a bit confusing, although hopefully amusing occasionally….. I just pretty much put down my train of thoughts which makes writing very… easy……. but a bit….. odd! But hey, that describes me pretty well I mean…. I guess you’d need a few more words than just “odd” to describe a person, but it’s a good start anyway . From the rest of this post you’ve probably figured “geeky”, “eccentric”, and hopefully it’s made you feel good about yourself …at least any writing you ever do can’t be as unstructured and pointless as this
Hopefully this will actually post to Facebook too……. hopefully………………
Adios tout le monde! Auf wiedersehen jusque.. erm…. tomorrow (oh and I enjoy switching languages – even though I can only really speak 2, I attempt many )