Je Suis Un Rock Star

Friday night saw me and my guitar at the Thatched House in Stockport, 3rd on out of 4 bands, and we were very good. The last band on were not good at all, which makes me wonder why they got paid and we didn't. This was a general opinion held by everyone there, and not just mine! Hey ho.
Saturday night saw me and my guitar at the Lion in Castleford. Again, we were very good, even with a pa we had to cobble together from various bits and pieces of our own, as the venue didn't have a pa.
The journey there and back was a nightmare. I was wedged between speakers in sub zero temperatures for over two hours in total, and now I think I have frostbite.On the way home (at 1.30am in a frozen northern wasteland) I made our drummer take all the stuff he sticks in his bass drum OUT and then I wrapped it around myself and was slightly less than freezing, but only just. So I used my old standby trick of falling asleep till I got home.
This may explain why I have a very sore leg and arm today ;-(
I also emailed a couple of pictures of Felix looking nasty to www.mycathatesyou.com but they haven't appeared yet. She is very disappointed.So here is a nice one of her so she doesn't feel too bad..

Psycho Sock..Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

It had to happen. I work quite long hours and I got home, watched Corrie (ack, Katie Harris is HORRIBLE) and then...DID HOUSEWORK. Including WASHING. On a school night no less. And a pink sock got in with the whites. I say whites. I mean 2 multi coloured (but proven to not run) duvet covers, a Ramones shirt, a Laurel and Hardy tshirt, some knickers of dubious origin and a Leeds United towel (why is that in my house at all??? Nothing against Leeds, after all I work there, but this is a football = Watford FC house). And most important of all , three pairs of white school socks that him indoors/Angus Young wears on stage. And two of the pairs of Angus footwear are now pale pink. But not the other pair. Nor the white Ramones tshirt. Nor the knickers of dubious origin. So what's going on there then? Selective clothes dyeing.
Him indoors and his truck are away so he doesn't know yet, but I have never seen Angus in a pair of pink socks. I expect I WILL though.
Moral of the story? Don't do housework. As if I need an excuse ;-)

Thai-d up !

Last night 16 of us had a Thai banquet in Moseley. I have no idea what the courses were called but it was very nice indeed, and there was LOADS. Everything seemed to have fresh coriander on it, which I love, and the waitresses were dressed in authentic Thai costumes. Passing plates about between 16 people was a bit difficult though.
Aside from that, life has been occupying my time. My band played a gig (we were excellent, as ever), the other band played a gig (and I played sound engineer again), work rolled on, I have half painted the bathroom tiles, got a new Sky remote, killed one of my pcs with a screensaver (note to self - remember that you are an IT professional and don't download any more screensavers...)entertained a strange cat that invited itself in for supper, read a lot of books and just generally carried on being me. Nice.
Oh yes, and the back gate fell off and needs mending and the roof is leaking. When I was painting the tiles in the bathroom, I had to take the side off the bath, and at the back I found some very old wallpaper indeed, still attached to the wall. It must be pretty old because the layer beneath is green distemper! I will try and scan it in at some point, but its a bit tatty and aged. I am estimating 1950s or thereabouts.

The day the tree came down...

...was today. All the decorations are down and packed away for another year. I like Christmas and its sad to see all the glittery stuff come down but there you go.
And what did I do this Christmas? It was a lazy-fest actually.
Christmas Eve was spent indoors eating and drinking. Christmas day food was Russian themed this year. Chicken patties, cabbage and vodka. Neat. In a shot glass. Just the vodka I mean, not the food! You had to toast the food, then the plates, then the condiments, then the chef, then drink a double vodka neat in one go. Several times.
The vodka was FREEZING as it snowed a lot on Christmas day



and we stashed the bottle in a pile of snow.
Boxing Day we whizzed over to my in laws and went to the pub for our lunch, where I had something called "smothered chicken". The smothering bit was CHEESE. Lovely. Got very drunk on all kinds of wonderful drinks, and ended up playing "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" all night.

The rest was just eating and drinking and being ill - I have flu and I feel ATROCIOUS. Never mind, it will all be gone by the time I go back to work!

2 more days off and back to normality. The cats will be relieved. They haven't been able to do whatever it is they do all day when there is no one here, and they are getting a bit fed up of humans hanging around all the time.

I got loads of good presents, mostly things about or containing faeries of some description. My best one was this:



although I liked this one a lot as well:



See him sitting amongst the rubbish in my house! He waves his paw up and down (he has a battery in him) and the paper attached to his paw says "money". He certainly worked because him indoors found a pound in the pub and we cashed in all our loose change in one of those machines you get in supermarkets, and it came to £179.83!