411 days. that is how long it is since i took a drink of alcohol. not going to bore you with all the details, i posted about that in the flurry of posts i wrote last year, only to say it is so easy now, i barely think about it. the really good thing is, i am not drinking as much alcohol free stuff now either as they contain carbs. a friday night while hosting a show may be two or three cans of Heineken 0.0% split into half a can topped up with diet lemonade (no carbs).
speaking of carbs and my diabetes, i am now fitted with a monitor, changed fortnightly by myself, which constantly reads my blood sugar levels. my diabetes nurse has full access to the records, i am recording what i am eating, and i have loat evwn more weight. gone down three shirt sizes and lost six inch from my waist and have finally got under 20st. still a way to go, but getting there, so you’ll be seeing more of me here, but less of me in the real world 😉
It was May when i last posted. reckon it’s about time i started again, seeing as facebook is just a burning skip of a place, and twitter/x is self imploding.
i have set up accounts on bluesky and threads, but they’re proving to be no much better, and old blogger friends have suggested blogging again. so here we go.
Had an email last weekend to let me know that Barrelhouse Radio is ceasing to broadcast today. Came as a bit of a shock, i can tell you, to myself, the other broadcasters and the listeners. The reasons are many, and all of whoch i understand from my time of using Live365 as SFR’s broadcast server. My last show there was Friday. Bad News.
But as i say, also Good News. I have kept the Solid Front Radio server going all this time, so ta-da!
Yes, the Total Request Friday Night Live show will now continue on SFR. Nothing has changed except for the website or app you use to listen. (i have been simulcasting the TRFNL show there anyway). So go to http://www.sfr.mixlr.com and listen direct from the web site, or go to where you get your apps, download Mixlr and search “sfr”. look for this logo
Once at either, if you click on the “Follow” buttiin, you will then recieve an email an hour before any show starts and another when we go on air.
And keep your ears and eyes open too, as there will be more news to come when it is all confirmed.
I spent an evening drinking with Keith Harris once. Let me explain.
My regular watering hole was Joplins, a bar situated in Ardsley House Hotel, a short walk from our house, and through the woods. Pre meeting The Enemy, myself and my ragtag bunch of mates were in there every night of the week. Tuesdays were quiz nights, Thursday was “disco” night. The rest of the week were just regular nights.
One of the benefits of drinking in a hotel were the number of events taking place in the function room of a Saturday night, and the fact that the toilets had an entrance via that room AND the reception area, so it was easy to sneak through and enjoy the entertainment in there. Well, that and the after hours drinking if you got talking to a resident and they invited you into the residents bar. which we did frequently. but i digress.
So there’s around a dozen of us, and we’re sat in the bar, minding our own business when someone spies a bloke, curly hair, brown leather jacket, sleeves pushed up (it was the 80s) Mr Keith Harris. Elbows nudge into those sat next to them and plenty of “is that? nah, it can’t be” whispers start to circulate between us. then one voice, quietly stirs…
“I wish i could fly, right up to the sky but i can’t”
And then the rest of us “you can, i can’t”
(kids, ask your parents)
Looking over to KH, his head had dropped, and i think we all thought we’d pissed him off, but then his shoulders started to move up and down, his head came up and he was laughing.
As he was sat on his own, we invited him to come and sit with us, an offer he gladly accepted, and we spent the night chatting and laughing. A naturally funny and warm hearted man, it turned out (i seem to recall) that he was marrying a local girl, hence why he was in the hotel.
It is eight years today since he passed, and whenever i see his face, it always makes me remember that night, and how nice and good natured he was to a bunch of strangers, albeit ones buying him drinks. YES, he did the voices (Cuddles the monkey was always my fave I HATE THAT DUCK) but it was a few hours of general chit chat like we’d usually have.
I encountered a few famous folks in Joplins. Harry Gration doing a Children In Need live broadcast, a plethora of Barnsley FC’s new players, the Nottingham Forest team stayed there when they were playing Liverpool in the FA Cup semi final that fateful Hillsborough day, the absolute C**T that was Paul Shane…
I haven’t written anything for a week or so. I have had nothing to tell you. That’s how interesting my life is.
I suppose the only real news i have is that it will be twenty weeks tomorrow (Friday) that i gave up drinking. This was a health decision. I’d been put on insulin for my type 2 diabetes and after a few bottles on Fridays while doing my radio show, Saturday mornings my guts would be all over the place. I stopped to see if that would make a difference, and it has. The strangest thing though, i don’t really miss it.
That said, The Enemy has been treating me to various non alcoholic beers. The Leffe is my second favourite, vey nice, but TINY bottles.
We went for a curry and i tried the Peroni. again, nice.
A friend recommended the Erdinger, which i’d put third, but my top choice so far, when i can get it, is the new 0.0% Guinness. I love it. They’ve done a heck of a good job with it
I am yet to try the draft version though, so watch this space. As for starting to drink again, I’m not sure i will. Last week i was craving a glass of Rioja, but it soon passed.
Not saying i’ll never drink again, but as it is, i don’t feel i need to, and have been out, been on pop and still enjoyed myself.
There’s good things happening in this town. That’s because there are good people in this town. Barnsley has always suffered from bad press and stereotyping, and i won’t lie, we can bring that onto ourselves, but lately it is a town in transition.
One such thing is CODAC, the Coal Dust Arts Collective.
In their own words:
“A real grassroots multifunctional creative hub, one without judgment or prejudice, a place that people can love and feel like it’s their own, a place where youth visions can strive. WE BUILD”.
You’ll find artwork, music and memorabilia galore, including quite a bit of rare and collectable stuff, and as i say, all for a good cause, to get the whole CODAC venture on it’s feet and running.
And if you fancy bidding on Lot #42, then do so… the fact that i am on the cd reading one of my own poems shouldn’t put you off.
Personally, i wish them well. Give them a follow them on twitter as @CODACSPACE
Way way back in the mists of time (or so it feels now) a few good people had a great idea. “why don’t we organise a charity gig to raise money for those less fortunate than us?”. Now they weren’t the first to do this by a long chalk, but they did it anyway. And more than that, they decided to do it here in Barnsley.
As soon as i got wind of it, i threw my hat in the ring, offering my services as dj. And so, We Shall Overcome was born, eventually going on to become something bigger than the original idea, with events up and down the country.
Two of those involved with WSO also set up the May Day Festival Of Solidarity,
I bought a new scooter last year. Brand new. Only the third i’ve ever had from new. She is a Royal Alloy GP125S (liquid cooled), she’s an automatic, i have named her Lola and i love her. as you can see in the above picture, she came from the good folks at A1 in Donny.
YES, she looks like a Lambretta, but i am under no illusion that she is. She is a Royal Alloy. She has a one off paint job with the base being the lightest grey around, with a deep royal blue contrast. (she looks white until she’s next to something white). I also opted for a Tasso Works exhaust and a custom seat, which is yet to be added.
She even made it into Scootering Magazine (the editor of the “Show Us Your Scoots” page is local and had seen me out and about)
Sadly, as you can see by comparing, the process of putting my photo into the mag dulled her paintwork, but i finally got one of my scooters in there!
Ive also started to knock about with the Sheffield Aces SC. I am still involved with the Pontefract SC, but work late most T
Another season, another set of hopes and dreams. We’re doing OK right now. More than OK. We’ve a gaffer in Michael Duff who seems to have galvanised the whole club, not just the players, the WHOLE club, and instilled a belief that we can be successful.
What the man has done with the team he inherited, and the new faces he has brought in is nothing short of amazing. The atmosphere at home games is crackling, i haven’t seen this in a long long time. We sell out oou allocation for every away game. As i write this, we are currently sitting in fourth, three points behind third place Ipswich who we still have to play, and only five points behind S*******d W*******y and Plymouth who sit in first and second. I’d say respectively, but cannot use THEIR name and respect in the same sentence.
I CAN say we’ve done the double on them and we ended their 23 game unbeaten run at home in a 4-2 thriller under the lights at capacity filled Oakwell.
Eight games to play. Twenty for points up for grabs. The Wendys and Plymouth are stumbling of late. Least we could hope for is the play offs, and they’re looking good, but could we fulfill a dream and make an automatic spot? Or even finish top? I’m not getting too giddy, but…
I do a radio show on a Friday night. Have done for a while now. It used to be on my own station Solid Front Radio. It’s now on Barrelhouse Radio. I shall explain.
For those of you who are unaware of my radio history, here’s a quick* “previously” like they do on the telly.
Way way back in the early 2000s i got my first pc through a deal at work (tesco). When it came, we sorted out our dial up connection (ask your parents kids) and off i went. Obviously the first thing i did was look up everything i possibly could that had any connection to scooters, which is where i stumbled across Scooter-Forums dot com.
Scooter-Forums was run by Andy Mellet Brown, otherwise known as Spider, who i soon discovered did a radio show via the Forums. I started to listen to his Sunday night shows, and became fascinated with the fact that he could actually do a radio show FROM HIS HOUSE! I know that it was only 20 years ago and in this day and age folks will be “dur”, but hey. One Sunday i mentioned in the attached shoutbox that it must cost a fortune to do, and Spider said not really. I was intrigued. A few emails later and i was ready to go with my own 30 minute show.
When i did my first show, it was with a pc and a set of headphones with a boom mic. Thirty minutes turned into an hour, which then turned into two, and then, when Spider decided it was time to move onto something else, it was me who he gave first refusal of taking the reigns. Of course i said yes. I ran it as Scooter-Forums Radio for a few years, and then when the forums started to wain a bit, and we moved to Mixlr as our broadcast tool, i changed the name to Solid Front Radio.
At one point we had 15 djs on SFR, but times change, people have families and real world commitments, and it ended up myself and Drunk Punk plodding along until i decided to have a 12 month break.
I returned and we carried on though, myself doing various live stuff out and about and teaming up with The Captain as The Rock n Roll Lounge, and then about five years ago i was told that there was an independent radio station being set up that was going to use the studio in Barnsley college. Of course, the chance to work in a real studio was something i wasn’t going to let pass me by, so i got in touch with Lee Barber, the station manager, let him know about me and he said yes straight away.
So began It’s A Mod Mod World on The Vibe. Every Tuesday for two hours between 6pm and 8pm i played my favourite Modernist music. And i loved it. Sadly the pandemic came along and we weren’t allowed into the college and those shows ground to a halt. What i didn’t know though, was Lee did a show on Redroad FM and had told their bosses about me. Turns out that i could pre-record a show for them to broadcast. This worked for me (apart from the recording, sooner do it live) so i set about doung shows for them. It actually ended up being TWO Rock n Roll Lounge shows a week, Thursday and Sundays at 8pm, whilst still doing my Friday night Here Comes The Weekend show live on SFR 8pm to 12am.
I did 147 shows for Redroad FM, but something else had come along, and it meant something had to give. Sadly it was Redroad. I had been approched by Barrelhouse Radio. Could i do them a show? Either recorded or live. I decided live, and every other Sunday from 10am. I had to keep The Enemy sweet, too many shows would have rocked our marriage.
Upstairs at Sime’s began, broadcast live from my home studio, which by now had grown massively, and was by any standards quite professional. It also dawned on me, that there was more scope for a larger audience for my Friday night shows via the Barrelhouse platform, so i spoke with Jake and Lee (the gaffers) and they said yes (and also made me a musical director for the station, gulp) . I had also worked out a way to simulcast the show via SFR so my long time listeners could still tune in how they always did. And that’s how Friday Night Live was born. But it grew. I have always enjoyed taking requests from listeners, it gives a show life, an interaction with an audience, it can make the show go off on some pretty odd tangents.
Last year Spider had returned to the airwaves and started a local community station in his home town of Heckington, so i offered to do a monthly show for him, and being someone who knows a good thing when he sees it, he agreed. Didn’t last long as work commitments got in my way, but the handful of Scene Not Herd shows went down well.
And so we find ourselves here today.
Currently, i do the Total Request Friday Night Live show on Barrelhouse Radio from 8pm, where i take requests all night. These have proved to be the most enjoyable shows i think i have ever done. The fact that i can fill four hours with listeners requests amazes me. We now have a dedicated bunch if listeners around the world, some of whom gather in the “Live Lounge” on twitter (get in touch @barnsleysime and ask, i will add you) where they drop their requests, and we make each Friday something special.
Sunday’s live shows are on a hold at the moment, i am broadcasting shows from my own archive on alternate weeks from 10am instead. And so there we are, that’s what ia occurring with my radio life. Still not getting paid for it, but still loving it.
At this point i must say a HUGE thank you to every single person that has helped me along the way, i really appreciate it and it has meant i have done things i dreamt of as a kid but never thought i’d ever get to do.
Should you wish to listen tonight, then it is so easy to do. there are various options to choose from, just click here: https://linktr.ee/barnsleysime
and if YOU want to request anything, then get in touch DURING the show via DMs on most social media, email simebhr@gmail.com or text 07842655396 (a big standard mobile number)
THE TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX 