Wassup people of the world! (Sian: you still sound like a Spice Girl....)
Sorry it’s been so long. I haven’t done a blog for 3 months. OMG, to quote Jamie (she says that a lot in Jump2!), big apologies and let me know when I can come back off the Jump naughty step. ( Sian: pack a picnic, its going to be a while......🙄)
It has been a really busy three months and I will endeavour to neatly break down the fundamentals into three halves for you! (Sian: and that's why I am the banker...)
March was all about our big road trip to Glasgow, to Celtic Park. A chance to finally see Jump! in the Celtic Super Store, next to the stadium and also take some photos with the big man himself - Joe Hart. I’ve been suffering with a bad back for a while now and so the actual 6-hour journey up there was total agony. My dodgy back also accounts for me walking like a Home Bargains Ian Brown in the JG Nolan TikTok video that chronicles my momentous entrance into the store, searching for a copy of Jump! (Sian: Search it out on @JGNolan3 on Tiktok, honestly, its worth it. If ever Liam Gallagher and Ian Brown had a love child....)
Other highlights of the trip were having a chat with Joe Hart – I’d forgotten how tall he is! Mind you with my crippled back I was hardly stretched to my full 5-foot 10 glory!! When I was younger, like 16, so gosh, about 20 something years ago (Sian: ....okay, pinocchio!) I was still only about 4 foot 10! I was tiny. The ultimate dream was literally just to make it to 5 foot at one point. Being over 5 foot just seemed like everything. It’s all I thought about, dreamed about. I even fatally mentioned to members of my household (much to their amusement) that I would hold a 5-foot party when I eventually passed this iconic milestone. I think the roughly sketched out plan was that I was going to invite other people who………. were …………. roughly 5 foot themselves or perhaps…. a bit less (Sian: I seem to remember that it was going to be a party for you and our 4 foot 9 Auntie Jennie! The only adult that we knew who you could 'tower' over....🥰).
Hmmm do you know what, I hadn’t really ironed out the specific logistics to be honest. I was so desperate to reach 5 foot that if I had been some sort of bizarre card game or game show I would probably have “dealt” at 5 foot 2.
Me: Do you know what Jim, I’ve had a great day out and I said before we left today I’d be happy with 5 foot 2. And we’ve got a brand-new teas-made. Cheers.
Jim Bowen: What a smashing lad. Ladies and gentlemen, give him a round of applause.
But I didn’t deal, kept my nerve and landed the jack pot- 5 foot 10! I never did get the speed boat
though …
And what else? Oh yeah, the stadium tour, where at every opportunity we would sneakily pull out
our Robbie Blair team shirt and quickly take the perfect shot. He got everywhere! (Sian: Yep, I have zero shame.....🤷🏼♀️) So hopefully you have seen a few of these iconic shots popping up on my growing TikTok!! More to follow.
One night on the trip, myself and Sian ventured out to one of the local hostelries in search of some
characters, a bit of local grit. We weren’t disappointed. We initially started chatting with this nice
amiable lad at the bar. But then he disappeared to the toilet and returned with this stocky chap in
jogging bottoms, a vest, a pool cue and a pint of lager. Armed with the thickest Glaswegian accent I’d ever heard, he launched into his opening enquiry.
“Which one of yez has writtin a booooook?”
Was it a question or a threat? What had I done? I felt like I had been transported into a scene from
Taggart.
“Me,” I squeaked, eventually, like Oliver Twist.
“I have.”
What a pitch! I was really selling the idea of Jump! to the locals. I was really motoring now, truly in the zone…….(Sian: I should have helped at this stage.....but, to be honest I was having WAY to much fun watching him flounder! 🤭 Sibling jokes never get old!)
He continued.
“So, what’s your booooook about?” he said pointing his pool cue in my direction.
I was getting braver and more confident with every second.
“It’s about football. It’s a kids’ book. About a kid who plays football.”
I had well and truly smashed it. A successful career in marketing no doubt awaits me if the writing
lark doesn’t take off. What more can I say…….(Sian: I think we may need to make a sacrifice to the writing Gods....and, can I just share that I had a lovely time in said hostelry and I look forward to returning! The locals were fantastically welcoming 💚💚🍀)
So, what about April…. Ah yes more editing of JUMP2. The fun stuff. It was actually fun re-reading
Jump2 and Jamie’s exploits again, as it’s been a while. But after about 10 hours of continuous editing the fun element was seriously on the wane. You have to look at it so microscopically, it’s almost painful. I also hadn’t realised that there are about 4 different punctuation dashes in the English language, all with a different name, a different length and a different purpose….
What would the medieval writers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles have made of it all? The monks who painstakingly etched out the comings and goings of the Anglo-Saxon Age for hundreds of years didn’t use any punctuation at all. This wasn’t unusual in the Anglo-Saxon period (see what I did there!) as the full stop and comma hadn’t been invented yet. Surely, the poor monks must have almost passed out trying to proof read that whopper! Even the great Jane Austen was a bit lacking in the punctuation department and the original drafts of her classics don’t really contain full stops at all, just a sprinkling of dashes and capital letters whenever she wanted to hammer a point home. As an aside, I once wrote a song, which among other things, was about forming a band, which included Elizabeth Bennet’s sister Mary on keyboards. Maybe I’ll play it to you one day…….(Sian: available in our TikTok shop soon......😉)
May has mainly been taken up with making more TikTok videos for JG Nolan3. I f you haven’t
followed me yet, please do! There I go again, yet another sales pitch. I’m braver behind a keyboard! (Sian: you marketing maverick!)
Come back Rab, I didn’t mention my TikTok handle……….
My favourite one, I think, involved me attempting to hit a squash ball from the top of The Wrekin, a full 8 miles towards a neighbouring peak, Haughmond Hill. As if this wasn’t tricky enough, the
challenge difficulty factor was upped further by me having to run back the full 8 miles and then catch the ball as it descended back to Planet Earth. I just about manage it - a testament to my almost bionic levels of speed and fitness. Anyway, for future videos I’m currently investigating whether it is possible to hit a squash ball in such a way that it pierces through the fabric of time itself and ends up in a parallel universe many years from now. Any ideas where the ball could travel to? Let me know…….(Sian: I have a feeling that may not be the last we hear of that idea...JUMP4: A Squash Ball Odyssey? Back to the T, On the Edge of the Tin......okay, I'll stop now...)
Anyway, until the next time.
Cheers
JG
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