CostOfLiving

Well it’s been a while since I posted, so here’s a little update on the oddities of life in 2022. Although many have been saying that the Covid Pandemic is over, and don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait for it to be finished, it’s definitely not and is still affecting life in general.

Over the last couple of weeks a few more gigs or Tours have been cancelled because band members have contracted the virus, have seen the same across Europe and the US, it doesn’t take much for smaller bands to have to cancel or postpone things when a date or two are going to be missed out on. There’s bound to be some issues for venues too with regards to staffing.

This week sees the start for me of getting back on the train with regards to going to and shooting gigs, tomorrow night I have Dark Tranquility making their very long awaited Irish debut. Then at the weekend I have a trip planned to the HRH Blues Festival in Sheffield, all going well, with Bernie Marsden and Wilko Johnson Headlining each night.

Between working from home full time, health issues and the added problem of Depression over the last 10 months it really has been a messy couple of years, and it’s taken a toll psychologically. I did get away to the Uprising Festival in Leicester last year, but that was it, and have struggled to get the motivation to get out to things locally over the last couple of months. Leaving the house isn’t a problem, still walking regularly, and building up the distances again to 10km a walk, so that’s good, but for sanity and the soul I need to get back to gigs. Photographing tomorrow night and at the weekend, so that should be motivation enough, and a lot of additional work to do, but it’s worth it.

Hasn’t just been a lack of motivation with regards to getting out and about, it’s massively affected writing anything, review wise, for so long now. it’s a real struggle to finish things off, and you’d thing that would be the easy bit sometimes. But I’m trying to work on it from a different perspective and we will see how it goes.

This could well be the last year I’ll be able to do multiple UK Festivals, even for individual shows it’s getting more and more expensive to travel and get accommodation in the UK from here. At the moment I think travel anywhere is expensive, but it eventually reaches a line where it becomes just too much. Checking prices for later in the year and it’s much more than usual, when it starts costing as much as a family holiday it really would be too much. The cost of living generally is going to make things more difficult anyway, so when you have additional costs for everything travelling becomes less fun. So I’ll go out with a bang this year and hit as much as I can, along with the Indoor Summer Festival in Hamburg which I’m looking forward to immensely, will hopefully be a very exciting and interesting few months ahead. With gigs still getting announced every week it looks like you won’t be able to walk out of the house without hitting one, and it’s great to see pictures of full venues for shows with small or large capacities.

Not too long now until the outdoor Festival season either, so bring it on. Bloodstock for sure, maybe a day or two here and there aside from that…. would love to get over and bit a farewell to KISS at Download, even if it was just for the Friday night. Aside from all that we will be doing another staycation this year, trying the beautiful South West this time around to cover off another part of the Wild Atlantic Way. There will be day trips here and there and I need to get back to the Botanic Gardens soon.

Wishing you all a very happy, interesting and safe year to come, and Rock it .

After being very careful over the last couple of years, taking every precaution we could, pretty much keeping ourselves to ourselves it finally happened a few weeks ago, and we are pretty sure where it came from, but it is what it is. The whole family contracted Covid, it affects different people in different ways, but we were glad that were had been vaccinated and boosted as I’m certain the affects were nowhere near as bad as they could have been. Still, personally it knocked me out of commission for a week with one or two additional problems the following week. Recovering from anything takes time, but I guess we won’t know until the proper research into long Covid has been carried out if this is going to be a problem further down the road. It’s been frustrating, but what can you do, I can see both sides of the argument regarding opening things back up fully, but following the case figures here and in the UK it has to be said that their cases come down significantly whenever there is a change in restrictions coming that week, here the numbers are still kind of high, and I’m happy to have a hybrid working environment in place for the significant future.

It entered the house through our son, who picked it up at school, there is definitely a lot of cases floating around all schools and educational facilities. My sister-in-law has contracted it twice in 7 weeks and her pre-school now has cases among the staff again, so not looking good….. some of the numbers don’t seem to be adding up, but it’s certainly still out there, can see a point soon where if Companies have all of their employees back in Offices or Businesses they will start to lose Employees for chunks of time every few months, won’t be good for continuity of business and that’s for sure. As with everything else in the Pandemic time will tell.

For me the effects were lack of sleep, being blocked up badly for a few days and really bad headaches for a week, no loss of smell or taste like the older variants, and a bit of a relapse a week or so after it had appeared to be gone, which was a bit annoying. Let’s hope Omicron is the last of the major variants, it’s certainly been more virulent but I’m sure it’s a lot less dangerous to those who have been vaccinated. With all Govt guidance now pointing to all restrictions been lifted imminently, it will be interesting to see how things go, the changes in peoples attitudes and actions, will we see a large spike again in cases or hospitalisations (hopefully not), for me I still intend to continue wearing a facemask in certain circumstances, public transport, busy shopping areas and Health Venues such as hospitals, doctors etc…… in my mind it’s just a logical thing, having only had one cold in 2 years there appear to be definite benefits to it.

Our little man has been suffering at times from a condition I’d not heard of before he first had it, Cycllical Vomiting Syndrome, luckily it’s not a severe case of it, but at the same time when you add in his autism and the fact that he’s non verbal it makes things a lot more difficult. He continues to vomit and wretch until he goes to a state where he could damage himself, tears in the asophagus or even worse the stomach lining. It’s a very draining and worrying situation for us all as you can imagine, and requires a trip to hospital as he’s also very dehydrated by the end of it. Fingers crossed he grows out of it and we’ve now been prescribed some anti-nausea medication that will hopefully mean we can at least rehydrate him so an episode won’t lead to a hospital trip again. It’s a week since it happened and I’m still really tired, just getting too old, thankfully he bounces back quickly. Thankfully for me even being over exhausted it didn’t lead to an episode of my Epilepsy, and I remembered to take my tablets throughout.

Having had the Covid and then the little guy being sick I’ve missed a Festival and a couple of gigs, which is sad, but it is what it is, and look there are plenty more on the horizon, so next week will hopefully be my return to the local scene, and intending to bring the camera along, so at least I can update the website with some new photos 🙂

Andy Hekkandi of Swedish Sleaze Rockers the Trench Dogs at HRH Sleaze III in Sheffield, 2019.

I think all of this has taken a bit of a toll on my mental health again, have been feeling down again the last couple of weeks, it’s not been good, and I’d prefer not to mess around with the dosage of my medication to help with the effects. Hoping to meet up with friends later and that will help as long as I make it along to the gathering, meeting up with people and having a catchup and a laugh can’t be bad for your mental health. The medication has certainly helped me up till now, but perhaps it can only help with so many things at one time in your mind, I also need to get back out walking properly again, or back on the Treadmill, walking out in the fresh air helps a lot for me, and stops my mind wandering towards eating rubbish foods.

Anyway, as we finish off Feb 2022 and see horrific events on the edge of Europe the future is yet to be written, but all we can do is hope, pray and trust leaders to make better decisions to protect people

Lots of love and prayers to anyone affected by the events in Ukraine, I know I’m not alone in not being able to comprehend what you are going through in these crazy times. <

Tag: CostOfLiving

Why’s it so hard to just get out of the house these days ?

Getting over Covid, well at least this time around….. and a World gone mad…..