Sorry but hurricanes in Hawaii or floods in Bangladesh constitute a severe weather warning. Not  a few inches of snow! It seems to me we simply invent adventure in the UK just to keep our little lives spiced up with some harmless adrenalin.

It’s a different song but the same music to that same vibe that invents some make belief drama in the celebrity world. Call me a conspirator if you like but let me tell you about some real adventures unfolding right now. Guys such as my mate Gaz who has just set off round the eastern edge of Europe, visiting some of the schemes  working at the frontline of the terror of people trafficking. Then there are other friends about to adopt and another mate soon to leave for a 4000ml  walk fund raising for Pump Aid. Now these are real adventures, about real people with real needs.

Yes I love the snow and a few photos of a little drama on our roads spices life up a bit, but sorry not going to be taken in by this garbage.

PS. Yes I know, before the comments flood in, Hawaii doesn’t get too many hurricanes. Just put it down to artistic licence.

Yesterday I stood like a demented man, hollowing at the TV screen as my football team pulled off the surprise of the season.  At such moments all reserve is abandoned as grown men hug each other and all other woes are temporarily forgotten. All the newspapers are devoured the following day and somehow ordinary people on their way to work have a new spring in their step.

What is it therefore that ignites such passion? Yes it’s the thrill of the underdog rising to the big occasion but more than that surely it is that my city, the place where I grew up and with which I identify with, is in the limelight. Everyone notice for where I belong matters!

Maybe for you it’s not sport; it might be the history of where you live that pulls on you. Alternatively it could be the network of relationships that you belong to, or the pain of moments gone that rise up on such occasions to shout out loud. People and place is massive for us all. This can either be captured and channelled in a way that is hugely positive, or it can turn into tribalism, nationalism and other such distortions of our never ending search for identity. Corporate identity, what we are together, is I would suggest (and as most of the world outside the West believes), more important than what we are as individuals.

So another year begins and I sit in front of my PC asking the question who else might rise this year to capture the story of where you live and the people and place that matters most to you? Wondering whether we will continue to leave it to the overpaid superstars of sport and entertainment to tell our story, or whether a new sound can begin to emerge?

I suspect the match yesterday, incidentally between Leeds and Manchester United, could prove to mark  the turning point in a ten year period of decline for the club I follow. Players on the football pitch marking out a moment. A multitude of other moments deserve to be marked out where I live, and I suspect, where you live to. The thing is the cameras wont be there to do it for us.

Take the opportunity; mark out your moment. Let a new sound start to rise.

Sir Arthur C Clarke, the writer and inventor wrote his own epitaph just months before he died, saying of himself , “he never grew up and he did not stop growing.” Now I would love that to be said of me in ten years time, as we tipple out of this decade just beginning. Yep Steve still hasn’t grown up, but he’s still growing!

So thanks for sharing my indulgence of the last few days as I have looked back through this last decade. For every misfit and maverick, mystic and crazy adventurer I am so grateful. May the story tellers start to rise in this decade to come to tell of a new sound beginning to emerge. Not a borrowed sound, the re-working of someone else’s story, but the unique stories of this crazy melting pot of humanity that we are all caught up in.

Yes I am aware that the start of a New Year is not what it could be for so many. Some friends of mine will be spending it in the hospice, caring for their daughter in law. Another friend has just this very moment had her wedding ring removed as she continues to let go of her husband Alan, who’s tragic death I posted on some weeks ago. Others I know are without work. I myself, at this moment in time, have no work in my diary for next month.

The challenges of life press in and one day we might get it together but hey, we’re still growing up!

Have a good one everyone.

A friend of mine recently gave some money to his kids, with one proviso; the money had to be spent on adventure. I like that! Maybe we should have an outbreak of giving this next year on the condition that all monies had to be spent on the unknown, the wild and the reckless. It would be more than interesting to look back in a years time and see what new pathways had opened up.

Over these last days I have been posting on lessons learnt and things to be grateful for during these last ten years since the millennium. Today I want to name the story tellers. Yep those who understand that life is so much more than a nonsensical jumble of words. Those who realise that there is a place for comma’s, full stops, question marks and most definitely exclamation marks. Those who realise when a new paragraph is needed and when in fact it is time to put the pen down, take a long break and wait for the start of a new chapter.

Now for someone who was never any good at punctuation that is a revelation. I used to live life in one gear and in one direction. Not any more. No, for this decade I have been learning, probably more than anything else, about the power not of words, but of story. Timing, and therefore the punctuation of life, is crucial in good story telling. It has taken me most of my adult life to appreciate that.

Now I understand.

So today I am completely grateful for all those who have helped me these last years to know where the comma’s needed to go, when it was time to put a few questions in, and when it was actually time to let the pen run and run, allowing the story of life to tumble out in a wonderful spontaneous  flow.

Ten years ago I was just one guy walking my way with an odd friend or two the width of this country. Across the M62 corridor we went, little understanding of what we were doing or why; just carrying a desire to know more of the nature of journey and the steady rhythms of life that, for me,  could  only be connected with out on the road. I had no idea that a walk of a couple of hundred miles would lead into a journey that spanned four continents, with a small but significant number of others going way beyond the notions I first began with.

Today I am looking for something fresh to emerge that carries that same power of story. I cannot pretend that  Stories from the Street is within a million miles  of  what I first had sight of; those days in Damascus when a faithful friend dragged me along to the story tellers coffee house. But then who would have guessed those ten years ago when I first walked out of my door that I would end up on the journey of these last years.

So today I am grateful for the story tellers, and that includes many of you reading this post today who have journeyed with me these last months. The odds on Stories from the Street ever making its mark are hugely against us for it is a road less travelled. But hey, I am still up for giving it a go. And that needs an exclamation mark!

Why is it that somehow adventure seems locked up to the public school mountaineers and adventurers? Those with an unbridled sense of confidence and I suspect a natural belief that money never need be an obstacle to the never-ending quest to push the boundaries of life?

Perhaps its the very best of that imperialist legacy that declares nothing need be beyond us and if we want it just go and get it. Well this post is dedicated to all those who have never climbed a mountain in their lives and would curl up in a ball at the thought of shooting some rapids or walking to the North Pole, but have nevertheless tasted the thrill of adventure and the unknown path! Yes right now I am grateful for all those people I have come across these last ten years who in the ordinary events of life have discovered the capacity to venture into the unknown and to make decisions that cut across the social norms and well-defined boundaries of life.

So today when I lift my glass to drink, as I surely will do, it is to the adopters and carers who refuse to keep charity in some nice comfortable box but open wide the doors of their homes and their hearts. To those who refuse to settle for a safe journey through career to retirement, exploring all the possibilities that life offers on the way. And to the wild and crazy dreamers and fanatics who believe that there is more to life than 9 to 5. John C Calhoun said this, “The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.”

So here’s to the the wild and fierce fanatics, and all the possibilities of the next decade.  Absolutely no copyright on adventure! It’s there for us all and we need never step outside our front door to find it.

Walking down through Northern California during 2004 we came across the remnants of the hippy movement of the 60’s. Now worn out and suburbanised the left overs of this incredible people movement can be seen on the North Californian shores. Some might poke fun and laugh at those who went in search of love and a different way to live. Me….well I felt strangely sad for I love life’s dreamers and hate the status quo.

Over the last ten years, as I have gone in search of values and truth that can only be found in the desert places of life, it is the wacko’s and the slightly ridiculous who I have found myself drawn to. Those who walk away from careers in banking or architecture in order to pursue a different way of living; those who tuck a 1st class honours degree into the draw and happily give themselves to charitable work on the West Bank, or those who, perhaps tongue in cheek, stand in their little domain and advocate shoplifting on behalf of the poor.

So today, as I look back on the last ten years, I am completely grateful for the wacko’s and misfits. The modern day monks and hermits who live on the edge of life, refusing to fit neatly into the suburban box marked out for them. Those whose  lives are a mystery-even offensive to others simply because……. well they just don’t fit. Yes they often mess up and like all searchers never seem to be able to settle but wouldn’t life be oh so boring without them.

It will soon be 10 years since we all gathered to celebrate the passing of a millennium. Whether we gathered in one of the many  spectacular locations for the cosmic firework displays or simply, as we did, in the back garden of a friend, I am provoked to look back and draw on lessons learnt, listing the gratitudes of the journey of this last decade.

So that is what I am going to be doing over the next few days. I encourage you to do the same, for staying grateful keeps us sane, or at least me. It also keeps us in touch with our story, and if we lose touch with that what do we have left?

This has been the most remarkable ten years for me. Twice to China to adopt, the wonder of seeing my eldest daughter married, the adventure of walking across Europe into the Middle East, the challenge of having to change trade four if not five times to keep body and soul together, co-author of three books, observing my second eldest daughter tenaciously pursuing a career in acting, the honour of helping to start the most amazing of children’s charities here in Leeds- the more immediate highlights of the most incredible decade of my life.

However I want to begin on a sombre note, for tonight I am completely grateful for those who these last ten years have taught me so much about how to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I used to keep death as far away from me as possible………. don’t we all. Never going near hospitals if I could help it I avoided all things that forced me to face up to the reality of the one certainty in life. Now, having tracked with good friends over these last years I am discovering the richness of the final journey.

So tonight I want to begin my gratitudes by saying how grateful I am for the Scott household, the Moore family, Micha Jazz and the Dyke’s. Incredible people who have allowed me to share in some small way in the most heart-rending of situations. My life is all the richer for your generosity of heart and your willingness to live lives in the open.

Thank you seems so shallow in the face of appalling suffering and unanswerable questions.  You have enriched my life hugely however, and for that I am massively grateful.