12. Obtain 40 albums in a single year (Year 4)

When compiling this list I was aware that there weren't a huge amount of albums from this year that I actually liked so I decided to include albums I bought last year that weren't necessarily released in that particular year. I also included compilations and soundtracks because I physically paid for and downloaded those too. I still, however, class EP under the "singles" category and not the "album" category.

Albums released in 2016

Band/Artist	Album
3 Doors Down	Us And The Night
Beatles	Eight Days A Week (Live at the Hollywood Bowl)
Brothers Osborne	Pawn Shop
Bruno Mars	24K Magic
Diane Birch	N O U S
Dierks Bentley	Black
Foy Vance	The Wild Swan
Gavin James	Bitter Pill
Haley Bonar	Impossible Dream
Heart	Beautiful Broken
J R Richards	Honore et Amore
Jack Savoretti	Sleep No More
Jake Bugg	On My One
Keith Urban	Ripcord
KT Tunstall	KIN
Lake Street Dive	Side Pony
Last Shadow Puppets	Everything You've Come To Expect
Lewis & Leigh	Ghost
Lissie	My Wild West
Lumineers	Cleopatra
Maren Morris	Hero
Michael Buble	Nobody But Me
Moulettes	Preternatural
Nashville Cast	Nashville Season 4 - Vol 2
Poets of the Fall	Clearview
Rooney	Washed Away
Sound Citizens	Swunk
Tegan & Sara	Love You To Death
Tom Chaplin	The Wave
Two Door Cinema Club	Gameshow
Ward Thomas	Cartwheels
We Used To Make Things	We Used To Make Things

My favourite album (not including The Beatles as this would be unfair) of 2016 was Brothers Osborne's Pawn Shop. A great country album combining cool upbeat tunes with melodic ballads - all beautifully sung with fantastic harmonies!

Other albums I purchased in 2016

Band/Artist	Album
Elle King	Love Stuff
Fiona Bevan	Talk To Strangers
Jose Feliciano	Grandi Successi Originali (compilation)
Kaiser Chiefs	Education, Education, Education & War
Nashville Cast	Nashville Season 4 - Vol 1
Scott Dean	Neon
Thriving Ivory	Thriving Ivory
Various Artists	BBC Radio 2: Sounds of the 80s

Just while on the subject of purchased music - a stand-out EP of 2016 for me was Zoe Konez (Between Darkness & Day).

A couple of stand-out singles were Forever Country by a great collection of Country music artists and bands and also I'm Glad It's Christmas (Once A Year) by Cold Callers.

2017 is already set to be exciting with releases from Ed Sheeran, John Mayer and possibly Haim to name a few.

24. Learn a ballroom dance (waltz or tango)

Christmas 2015 I received a great gift from my parents. My Mum scoured my 40 list for ideas and came across number 24. I got a voucher for dance classes with Dance2Gether and Mathijs could join in too.

We had our first lesson in Watford at Moonglow Studios with Samantha and I decided I wanted to learn to Waltz.

My face at the end of this video says it all I guess! So we're not as slick as those on Strictly Come Dancing but we made a damn good effort.

Our following lessons we did some more waltz and also tried some jive, which, to be honest, Mathijs couldn't quite grasp. I think he's better with the slower dances!

We did want to keep the lessons going but unfortunately life got in the way. Perhaps the fact that I'm posting this blog, finally, it might entice us to restart them.

21. Do something special with my niece, Lexie, every year (Year 2)

My gorgeous niece, Lexie, is five years old now...five going on fifteen! I had to plan my next afternoon with her carefully as I didn't want her to get bored. She really enjoyed the last afternoon we spent together Geocaching - the treasure hunt aspect of it was really exciting for her - but unfortunately, this year on the day I was spending time with her, it had been raining.

I went to pick her up and as I pulled into the driveway, she was waiting at the window with a beaming smile - she got very excited and ran to the door to let me in. She just melts my heart!

I had decided we would spend the afternoon at my place. She came in and her eyes immediately focused in on my Tower Bridge Lego. She really enjoys building Lego and is very good at following the instructions. She liked the fact that the bridge opened and that there were little Lego vehicles to drive along the bridge.

Lexie is also very much into Shakespeare and owns children's versions of some of the famous plays. I knew she liked Romeo and Juliet so I rented the movie Gnomeo and Juliet from LoveFilm.com. She really enjoyed the movie (this version obviously has a happy ending).

We then built a rocket ship out of a large empty plastic drink bottle, two smaller drinks bottles, wrapping paper and silver star stickers. We also created a launch pad out of a paper plate, tissue paper and plastic cups. She was very good at sticking the stars on. 

Our rocket!

We then had to make sure it could fly, so I filmed Lexie in slow motion a few times (mainly because she kept shouting "AGAIN, AGAIN"!). Below is the best video we filmed as she made a majestic leap!

I absolutely love spending time with Lexie and very much look forward to next year's 1 on 1 time.

Me and Lexie with our rocket and Tower Bridge behind us!

29. Post 40 online reviews (Part 1)

I  have finally set up a Trip Advisor account and have begun my task of posting 40 reviews online; which I feel will actually benefit the future of humankind. 

It started when I had exceptional service from a hotel we went to for my Dad's 60th birthday. We visited the Chace Brasserie at the Royal Chace Hotel in Enfield. I'd often driven past due to many hospital appointments at Chase Farm Hospital so thought it might be a good idea to try it out. We weren't disappointed. Read my review here. It received one "helpful vote" from a reader.

Royal Chace Hotel (Photo courtesy of Trip Advisor)

My second review was posted following an amazing meal at Iberica in Farringdon. Mathijs and I have an A-Z list of cuisines from around the world and so, for Mathijs' birthday, I took him to Iberica for Spanish food. We started with some great tapas and shared a divine paella. You can read about how we enjoyed the meal and service here. This review received two "helpful votes" from readers.

Our Perfect Paella

Sensational Sangria

What I didn't realise about Trip Advisor was that you can collect badges based on every review that you post. I just thought it was a great place to post reviews. This has now made it even more exciting for me to post reviews.

I love collecting badges (even virtual ones)

As you can see from the picture above, my reviews have had a lot of readers and I have one more review to post to receive a "Reviewer" badge (and 38 more reviews to hit my 40 before I'm 40 - three years to go)!  It also says on my profile that I have 233 points - 67 to get to the next level.

You can check out my profile here if you're interested.

30. Learn Dutch (Part 1)

"Why Dutch?" you may ask...well, I thought it would be rude not to considering my partner is Dutch. I would like our future children to be able to speak both English and Dutch. 

Three months ago, once I finished the Spanish skills on the Duolingo app, I made a start on the Dutch (I am not by any stretch of the imagination fluent in Spanish at all but my next project is the program my folks got me for my laptop which consists of oral/verbal tests - I get to wear a headset with a microphone - more about this in a future blog).

So far I have learnt some of the basics (Ik ben een vrouw = I am a woman / Ik ben een banaan = I am a banana / Ik ben een schildpad = I am a turtle (no joke, the last two were seriously on the app) / Ik ben het koken in de keuken = I am cooking in the kitchen / Ik spreek geen nederlands = I do not speak Dutch) all of which are important (belangrijk) phrases I will need to use in every day vocabulary.

Other important phrases include: Het is brood - It is bread / Het is lekker kaas = It is tasty cheese / Het spijt me = I am sorry / Ik houd van jou = I love you. I have now tailored the last one (as I have completed the "adverbs" section) to Ik hou zoveel van jou = I love you so much - yes I am romantic!

There are also some crazy words (other than schildpad) such as bezienswaardigheden = sights (touristy) / verpleegster = nurse / geneesmiddel = medication / kunstenaar or kunstenares (m/f) = artist, which don't seem to remotely have any hint as to what the word could be if you were just looking at the word for the first time.

The Dutch word for 22 (twenty-two) is one of my favourites because it has three of the letter "e" in a row - tweeëntwintig.

But I'm pushing on through the app and Mathijs often tests me by asking me questions to see if I can answer him in Dutch with the correct pronunciation. When we were in Holland this month I managed to order my own drink in a cafe - Mathijs was very impressed dank u wel.

I am currently on level 12 in the Duolingo app and at the same time I'm getting practice speaking with Mathijs and also trying to understand his family when they're speaking to each other in Dutch! I'm currently on a 90 day streak - full steam ahead to 100 straight days of Dutch learning! See below for some interesting sentences I've been learning.

19. Go to 40 different places 40 miles from where I live (Part 3)

Going back through photos recently, I realised I had missed out a couple of places before the last one in the last blog about this particular subject (with me so far?).

So, in the last blog about this (part 2) the last place I went to was with my boyfriend to Clavering in Essex, however, just over a week before this we had come back early from The Netherlands to see my brother in a pantomime in Clacton on Sea (2nd January 2015). It was also M's first panto - lucky him!

We went with my folks, Grandma, Carly, Daniel and Lexie and my cousin, Steven. Paul was playing Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk and it was a very modern adaptation.

WELCOME!

It was so heartwarming watching Lexie laugh the whole way through and I seem to remember at one point calling out for Uncle Paul.

What a cow! Obviously the animal on the far left - not Jack's "Mum"

Valentine's weekend in 2015, Matheus took me to Tortworth Court - I say "took", I drove! The hotel was in the Cotswolds so, as I was driving, I suggested we stop off for lunch 40 miles from home.  We stopped off in Wokingham at a pub for lunch.

The Three Frogs in Wokingham

We then headed off to Tortworth Court in the Cotswolds - it was such a lovely and chilled weekend - great hotel, great arboretum, great food and, of course, great company!

Tortworth Court Hotel

On 24th April I went down to Sandhurst to Mark Holland's parents' new place to record in his studio. We recorded another song in the studio.

I love what Sandhurst is proud of

I'm pretty sure it was "Under My Skin" that we recorded. Here's the final version of the track.

In May this year, Matheus went away for a stag weekend so I suggested to my bestie, Ruth, that we have an impromptu day out and that, perhaps, it should be somewhere 40 miles from us. Looking on a map and speaking about it the night before we decided to head to Marlow. Ruth had been before and said it was nice. So, we jumped in the car in the morning and headed out to Marlow.

A lovely little bridge welcoming us to Marlow

Poor man's Tower Bridge

Welcome! Bridged with Budapest? I didn't bring my passport

We parked on the main road and had a wander about the town, got a Starbucks and continued to take in the little town. We headed back to the car and we parked in the hotel that was very near the entry bridge - the Compleat Angler. We decided to have lunch there but we stumbled upon a wedding fayre. For a giggle, we decided to have a nose around the fayre and I ended up with a goody bag of booklets and leaflets. We sat by the River Thames and had a lovely lunch and chat.

Lovely view of Marlow Bridge across the River Thames

On the way back to the car I was drawn to something near the entry of the car park - the Chef's Herb Garden.

Amazing smells emanated from here

Number 13 out of 40 places 40 miles from where I live - we were invited to the wedding of our friends Tim and Katie which was in Surrey on 23rd July (last week). We decided to drive down and instead of taking one hour, it took two. We were not pleased with the M25 traffic to say the least but luckily we were only five minutes late for the service. Later in the evening we went to the reception in Little Bookham to a farm which they had decorated beautifully. It was a lovely place. It was wonderful to see our friends celebrating and being so happy. 

As we were leaving to go home!

A photo of the gorgeous happy couple!

I offered to give our friends Daryl and Lar a lift back to Borehamwood so they could get a southbound train to West Hampstead and walk home from there. I got them to Elstree & Borehamwood station with two minutes to spare but Thameslink let the train leave early so they missed the train and had to Uber home - regardless - it was a hell of a lot cheaper than getting a cab from another friend's place in South London!

27 more places to go!

8. Turn radio interviews with musicians into podcasts (Part 2)

So, I have a few more interviews to post in this blog, however, I can't seem to find the data for the last two. I sent myself the Audacity file from the radio station but the data didn't copy over with it. I'm on the case and will hopefully retrieve the data if I can (if they still have the same computers).

At least I have one to post right now which I thought I had lost forever and was so gutted but then I found the mp3 in a different folder on my hard drive - my interview with Jamie Hartman from the band "Ben's Brother".

I just listened to it again and really enjoyed the interview - it's probably one of my favourites. I've time-stamped all of the tracks in the interview so you can see what Jamie chose to play and chose to sing if you click the link below.

I hope you enjoy listening to this.

Radio Northwick Park is now Radio Harrow and you can find them on www.radioharrow.org. 

14. Donate £40 a year to charities (Year 4)

I must be a generous person because I've finished year 4 already in only six months.

I think this next one should technically be part of year 3 but, regardless, I have still raised over £40.

My friend Johnny Kellar did a bike ride from London to Cambridge to raise money for Tzedek's "School for Life" programme. Tzedek is the Jewish community's response to extreme poverty. I sponsored Johnny £10 for this.

Not from this particular bike ride but this is him with a bike!

The next donation I made came at a time of sadness. Someone who I had known for almost half of my life was taken from us by bowel cancer at the age of 52 on 8th November 2015. Keith Chilvers from Radio Northwick Park (now Radio Harrow) had been battling bowel cancer for three tough years but I'd never seen him as happy as he was with Kim despite everything he was going through. When my friend Charlie called to tell me the news, I was in shock at first and then inconsolable because, since I stopped volunteering at the radio station, I hadn't seen him for so long; I felt like I hadn't had a chance to say goodbye or at least get one last cuddle. A fund was set-up through Keith's condolences page on the Radio Harrow website in his memory to raise money for Beating Bowel Cancer. I donated £15. I have some fond memories of Keith which I shared on the condolence page:

Cuddly Keith was the most wonderful guy. I've known him, pretty much, half of my life since I became a member of Radio Northwick Park in 1999.

I have some great memories of Keith:

1. When Keith secured our lottery grant (sorry Wes) when he became Chairman (only a couple of days into the role - to be fair, Wes did a lot of the hard work) and I became Fundraising Officer.

2. Keith helped me put together some of the RNP quizzes. I will never forget editing the film scenes round together at your house and laughing the whole time (you never did give me the DVD ;)!).

3. When we worked on the Jack Petchey Foundation and other grant funding together. You really did know your stuff.

4. When you were really keen to create the "RNP Band" and we roped in Rich Whiteley and Hedley Knights. You were an AWESOME bass player. I enjoyed our rehearsals immensely. On the RNP gig night at Trinity, a certain drummer (Hedley) drank a bit too much before our set, but we still had a laugh even if his timing was off.

5. I felt truly honoured to be invited to your wedding to Kim. You both looked amazing and it was lovely to spend that evening with you both.

6. Our trek to Manchester to appear on BBC TV's Battle of the Brains. I think we had more fun trying to find the restaurant for dinner (thanks to a defective Matt Nav)!

There are so many other memories but I don't want to take up half of this webpage.

The work you put into RNP and then to Radio Harrow (after HCR) was incredible and truly inspiring. I could easily have seen you become Mayor of Harrow!

The photo of me giving you a big kiss sums up how much I loved and respected you. I'm going to miss my cuddles.

My thoughts are with Kim and the family - may you always find comfort in your memories.

God bless xxx

Me, Keith and Flora on "photoshoot" night for the new Committee in 2000

Also, in November, I donated £10 to Neil Crayne for taking part in the Winter Run 10K for Cancer Research. He seems to be becoming a bit of a running addict. I won't run in Summer, let alone in Winter. Good on the guy!

I sponsored Johnny Kellar £5 in April this year as he was putting the bike aside and putting on his running shoes for the Virgin Money London Marathon. Johnny has been a big supporter of my music and comes to my gigs regularly so I felt I couldn't not give him another donation. This time Johnny was raising money for Action Aid.

Run, Johnny, Run!

This month I sponsored my lovely friend, Selena's husband, Charlie for taking part in the Brighton 10K for Breast Cancer Care. Despite getting an injury half way, he finished in 48m 39 secs. That's impressive!

Finisher!

Denise Parsons presents a radio show on Radio Verulam in St. Albans and also runs live music events which I've played at this year. Denise is due to take part in a parachute jump with the Mayor of St Albans, Salih Gaygusuz, on 15th June (it was originally supposed to be 18th May but due to poor weather conditions it was moved) and they have raised over £2,000 for Crescent St Albans. The charity has focused on HIV support for 30 years - the last six years with no statutory funding.

All worthy causes I'm sure you'll agree!

28. Plant a tree

As you may already know (if you're an avid reader of my blog), the tree has already been planted but I wanted to give an update on its progress.  It seems that it is bearing fruit earlier than we imagined and perhaps, late summer, we might actually be able to pick some plums from it.

To give you a brief background; I planted a plum tree in loving memory of my Grandpa Monty.

One side of the tree

Another view of the tree

There's going to be a lot of plums and a lot of jam being made!

8. Turn radio interviews with musicians into podcasts (Part 1)

I've started to upload these but I'm having a difficult time with the uploading of one interview in particular.  While I attempt to rectify this I will give you the first instalment of these as I want to upload them in chronological order to my Mixcloud account - www.mixcloud.com/laurenrichradio.

So, some background: I joined Radio Northwick Park (Northwick Park Hospital's dedicated radio station) in July 1999 as a volunteer.  I started presenting the request show; moved into producing David Reece's show and then got my own show.  I started off presenting a 2 hour show - songs from the sixties (as I was obsessed with that decade at the time).  After a few scheduling changes and content changes I ended up doing a show based on brand new music and interviews.  I started interviews in 2007 on American singer/songwriter JJ Appleton.

In 2008 I interviewed Mia Silvas twice.  The first time wasn't recorded but the second time was.  She also kindly volunteered her services to play at the Radio Northwick Park charity gig night I co-organised.

I interviewed another great American singer/songwriter - Emily Zuzik.  I met Emily at a gig she was playing in London with another singer/songwriter I was a fan of.  We got chatting and I offered to interview her on my show (I'm pretty sure that's how it went down).

The next interview in the list wasn't music related so technically not a "musician" but it was an interview I was proud of.  In celebration of V.E. Day I wanted to interview my own grandparents.  I wanted to give them a unique experience and it was lovely to have them in the studio with me.

At the same time I was working full-time, doing the radio, writing my own music and managing a band.  I thought it would be a good experience for Love Revue to come into the studio with me and get some interview practice.

Sometimes the musicians couldn't get into the studio so, on this particular occasion, I conducted a short telephone interview with Patrick from the band Van Tramp.



The first time with a keyboard in the studio was with Holly Rose.  She and her manager came into the studio for an interview where there may have been a couple of accidental naughty words!



In 2009, my mate, Scott Dean had entered the Live & Unsigned competition and asked me if he could have a few interviews as he progressed through the competition.  I, of course, obliged as I was a massive fan of his music and voice.  Below are the three interviews over a four month time period.



The brother of a friend of mine was in a pop duo that launched a song that took over the airwaves for weeks in the summer of 2009 (not just for "15 minutes" - see what I did there?).  Nick and Mike from The Yeah You's came into the studio and were amazing.



That's all of the interviews for now.  Part two to follow in due course.  In the meantime, happy listening!



Radio Northwick Park is now Radio Harrow and you can find them on www.radioharrow.org. 

35. Buy and build the Tower Bridge Lego

I can't recollect when I first saw the Tower Bridge Lego.  It may have been in the Lego Store or it may have been an advert online.  What I do remember, however, is that I knew I wanted to build it.  It was a lot of money though.  I knew I'd be saving for quite a while.  Then, a couple of birthdays ago a clever friend of mine bought me a Lego voucher.  My last birthday I requested Lego vouchers from my friends and most of them obliged.  I decided to pay for the rest myself and bought it in January.

When the box arrived I got incredibly excited.  When I got around to opening it, I thought I would construct it like when I build IKEA furniture where I count out all of the pieces first to make sure I have them all.  However, at 4,295 pieces I quickly changed my mind.  Aside from the fact that in book one (of three) there didn't seem to be a list of pieces anyway.

The box

I decided I would create a video sped up of me building it which you can see below.  It took me a few days but it was great fun to build.

It turns out, in the back of book three...there's a list of all of the pieces!!!

As a Lego VIP (anyone who registers on the Lego website can be a VIP) I got points for my order.  I now have points to spend on more Lego...what to buy next?

I also recommend that you check out the Lego Ideas site.  You can login using the same VIP details.  It's a site where people upload their ideas for new products and you can support them.  To support the ideas you don't need to pay towards them, you just need to click to support.  The more support these Lego innovators have; the more chance their product will get the green light to become a new product on the shelves.  This project here is one of the ones I'm supporting.  It's a Beatles set.  Less than a year left to support.

BEATLES LEGO

Has anyone else reading this built Lego to "Tower Bridge" scale?  Are you an instructions person or a creative person?

What's made me even more proud is that my five year old niece is starting to get into Lego and can follow instructions very well.  I can't wait to show her Tower Bridge.

I find building Lego incredibly therapeutic and especially because...EVERYTHING IS AWESOME (see Lego Movie)!


The music in the background of the video is Matchbox Twenty's "How Far We've Come" live from Wembley Arena - 1st May 2008.

4. Take a drum exam (Part 2)

Since April I have come on leaps and bounds.  Gareth wanted me to take the Grade 3 exam in July but I wasn't confident enough so I worked and worked on the songs I was doing to make sure they were near perfect for the exam in December. 

There was no backing out - on 29th September 2015 I booked my exam.  I was determined that anything less that a distinction would not be good enough so I went to Mill Hill Music Complex to rehearse when I could.

You may recall back in April I posted part one of this blog.  At that time I was playing Chain of Fools at a slower than regular speed!  I had also thought that I might play All Day and All of the Night by The Kinks as my technical piece.  I found it quite challenging so decided on a folk song called John Barleycorn instead.

Sheet music with helpful tips from Gareth

I bought some smaller drumsticks to be able to play this song's dynamics better.  They were purple (of course) and shiny.

Gareth also notated one of the songs I wrote with Mark Holland (The Game).  I initially wanted to do "Cards" because it's in 3/4 time but because we recorded it without a metronome I couldn't be sure that it was strictly the correct BPM the whole way through.

Neatly transcribed by Gareth

The date I was given for the exam was Monday 7th December.  Leading up to this date I was getting more nervous so I practised more at Mill Hill and made sure I had at least one lesson a week with Gareth.

Here are some videos of me playing these songs at Mill Hill.  There's a tiny mistake in John Barleycorn because there's one bit I hadn't perfected until the lesson before my exam (cutting it fine).  You might not notice it but Gareth will and I certainly won't forget it.

Chain of Fools

John Barleycorn (Technical Focus)

The Game (free choice)

On the day of the exam I left a lot of time to get to Hatfield just in case of traffic so I ended up arriving incredibly early.  I went off to another room in the school with Gareth to have a quick rehearsal.  I absolutely NAILED the songs in the rehearsal.  There was no way it was going to be that perfect in the exam!!!

I was my usual cheery self walking into the exam but I was a bag of nerves inside.  The drum kit was in front of the examiner and when I sat at the kit, my back was to him.

The exam went so quickly.  I knew there were a couple of things I could have done better but all in all I was pretty confident.  A few days later I received my Examination Report.

I GOT A DISTINCTION!!!

There were some great comments on the report.

Chain of Fools - A solid groove at the opening with generally excellent timing and fluency. Fills played with accurate sync to backing.  Dynamics observed well on the whole.  Overall, an excellent attempt.

The Game - Excellent dynamic contrasts in this piece.  Good rhythmic control.  An engaging rendition overall.

John Barleycorn - Coordination was handled well with even kick/snare interplay.  Rolls executed smoothly with a good sound.  Improv fills tastefully judged.  This was a musical and well communicated performance.

Improvisation - An appropriate groove chosen here with some tasteful fills and variations employed.  A musical shape to the test with a good build. 

Then under general comments he wrote: Congratulations!

I was over the moon!  I knew if I worked hard enough that distinction would come to me!

I am now a Grade 3 level, Rock & Pop Drummer.  Will I continue?  I won't be doing any more exams in a hurry but I may still have the odd lesson when I can!

Me and my certificate (that I need to get a frame for) and a purple drumstick