Drinking in the past and astronauts of the future!

 This blog has been going on and on for years now and as such has seen many different guises. 

Beginning as a travel diary for the trip of a lifetime, that began on a bus and ended up as multiple lone road trips through the 50 states of the USA. 

It settled down atfter 1000 days when Buffy and I headed to England to live. Then it settled even more when we moved back to Canada and went back to work full time - 1700 days after getting on that damn bus. 

Now, 3861 days after the journey began, the blog has evolved from a one-person travel odyssey into describing and detailing the general and everyday little family life of us 4 weirdos. 

I realised after looking through a few of the recent entries how much the blog makes me reminisce about simpler, drunker and sillier past times and how many little things that happen every day, can remind me of days long ago, when the mere thought of having kids had never entered my tiny booze bloated brain. 

Back in the 90's, life consisted of messing about with army mates, in some far off army camp in Germany, Evenings were spent in a bar, on the way to a bar, or coming home from a bar to go to the bar that was still open (24 hours a day) on camp. 

We did some good drinking back in the day and being young, stupid and indestructible (in our minds at least) we would drive  - everywhere.

We drove very fast, often drunk, and normally listening to some sort of dancy/rave/techno/indie music. We were paid well for doing little work and we had the freedom and time and money to pretty much buy anything and do whatever we wanted - so we did. (I actually bought and wrote off a BMW I owned for about 6 months when I was aged just 22)

Heres the photos

It wasnt the only car crash I had back then. But that was life!

Anyway. last night as I grabbed myself a beer from the fridge I was reminded of a weekend a long time ago and something strange that happened......

It was around 1995 and I was posted to 7 Armoured Brigade - Just a 2-minute drive from the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp. I lived where the green rectangle is and the Red rectangle is the dreaded concentration camp. It is true that birds did not fly over the old camp! Weird. 

Now in those drunken days, we thought nothing of driving quite a way to find a good night out. Sometimes to other countries - When I was based further West, we would drive to Holland or Belgium for a night out most weekends.

Anyway, Hannover was about an hours drive away from Bergen, so we would pile in a few cars and race to Hannover - more specifically - Rainbows Night Club. 

Rainbows, was a huge industrial-sized warehouse-style nightclub, with multiple dancefloors and musical styles as well as about 4000 or 5000 crazy Germans with a small sprinkling of British Squaddies belting the night away until the early hours. 

One thing you could ho here was grab a table somewhere and buy a full crate of beers, leaving them there to grab one whenever you liked. None of this 'only allowed 1 drink at a time nonsense'. 

I actually found an old video of Rainbows and you can see what kind of club it was!

Look at 3 mins 10 - That's definitely a Squaddie dancing!

So a car full of us got there around midnight one Saturday evening and bought a couple of crates of Becks - returning, again and again, to grab a 4th, 5th or 6th bottle while we got slowly drunk and danced the night away. 

However, after a few beers and with the room spinning around us, we noticed that this evening we had somehow been supplied with Bleifrei beers - That is Non-Alcoholic Becks beer. But as we hadn't noticed we had carried on as if we were getting drunk. I remember feeling drunk, being drunk doing drunken things and only sobered up when we realised that we were in fact 100% stone-cold sober. 

It's one of those things that you cant plan to try - If you know you are drinking tax-free unleaded near beers, then you won't feel drunk. But if you think you are drinking full fat smash juice, then that is how you will feel! Smashed. Until you realise that you aren't!

We had been having a brilliant night and when we realised we weren't drunk we tried to catch up, but it was about 5am and closing time, so we had to go home fairly sober and try to sleep off a non-hangover! That's a hard thing to do!

Anyway - what's this go to do with nowadays and the beer I got from the fridge?

Well, to cut down on my drinking I have sometimes been substituting real beers, for non-alcoholic beers and the best 2 I have found are beers we used to drink back then - Grolsch and Becks and to be honest - If you like Becks, then Becks Bleifrei - is the best Non Alcoholic beer you can get. Not only is it non-alcoholic, but it's also cheaper than real beers and tastes just as good as real Becks. The weird thing is I can't actually find real Becks here in Canada  - Just the unleaded version. Oh, well. It will have to do! 

How I miss those old drunken days and how surprising that staying sober actually brought back so many good memories!

Back to the real world and life with Hannah, Buffy and Oliver. 

Well  - as expected they are beginning to grow up - 

Hannah is climbing - she is so chuffed to get to the top!!

Oliver is trying to crawl

and trying to walk

On the other hand, Hannah often either forgets how to walk or just won't bother -so she gets a tantrum on and we end up stood over her half laughing and half frustrated at her craziness - This is what she is like sometimes after lunchtime nap. (This is a gentle one)

In the last few weeks she has also been just amazing - She is getting better at counting and talking all the time and is able to recognise and name about 10 letters of the alphabet - D-daddy, M-mummy, H-Hannah, O-Oliver,. G-Grandma and Grandpa, X-Xray, S-snake, A-Apple and W-whale and I- at the last count!

Even her emotions are expanding - the other day she said 'I want mum to be happy', which made Buffy cry a little!

She also seems to have a genuine interest in sciencey things. In the last few weeks we have been watching the Rocket launches by SpaceX and Blue Origin and she genuinely likes them and asks about them a lot and even expects them to land properly. 

I am really happy that she likes this type of thing and when we sometimes pop out to the local DIY superstore (Rona), she always wants to head for the fridge that has a wifi enabled tablet in the door - we sit there and watch rocket launches on Youtube! 

When was the last time you took your 2-year-old to the DIY store to watch rocket launches on a fridge door? You never did? Well then, you sir,  are a bad parent!

 We watched both SN10 and SN11 from Space X take off and crash - she loved it.

I am excited for her and Oliver that its highly possible and maybe even probable that sometime in their lives they will get the chance to ride in a rocket just like one of these. (Hopefully without the explosions) 

Two future astronauts await!