Good times

Last week was a decent week, one of those actually really good weeks which had the promise of being stressed and busy but actually all falls into place splendidly. I think Christmas has a lot to do with this, I'm not 100% feeling the festive vibe just yet but mere glimmers of it keep appearing, which is more than enough for now. Last Wednesday I played with The Lunar Pilots at the Bull & Gate in London, in what I thought was a pretty weird night. With my equipment going in Paul-the-keyboardists car I was free to take it easy and get the train down, but naturally this resulted in a little confusion and I was late - I must stop being late for soundchecks, it's very unprofessional of me. The event itself was actually part of a band competition, but with these things it's always healthy to forget the competition aspect of the evening and just play the show to those of you who were kind enough to make the trip down. We seemed to be on heavy rock night, which was far from ideal considering our keyboard-lead pop ideals, and as a result I generally felt a bit old being there, but we played well (video footage of the whole gig can be found at www.myspace.com/thelunarpilots by the way), and I got a text on the way home saying we got through our heat to the next round. Again, competitions mean nothing to me, but it does mean we have another decent London show in the bag for next year which can only be a good thing.

On Friday it was the two performances of our Christmas show, On The 12th Day Of Alex, in Cambridge. Although my plans to turn the venue into Santa's Grotto didn't really come off (we put one or two decorations up, but time was against us), I'm still really thrilled with the way it's worked out. Okay, so I never planned to be in it, write it and drum in it, but meeting the challenge feels very rewarding. The first performance sold out, the second one very nearly did, and generally we ticked all the right festive boxes, we seemed to make a lot of people happy and most importantly raised a good few quid for charity too. It's the last performance tonight in Peterborough, which is likely to be a different show altogether due to the rowdy nature of the audience, the different stage-layout and the fact that we've lost our soundguy so my old mucker James has to step in without even read the script. Could be interesting, but either way we've achieved a lot with this play in a stupidly short amount of time - that's largely down to the wonderful acting abilities of Colin, Vaughan, Victoria and Heather - I must keep this cast for Edinburgh.

Christmas shopping was completed in a hurry on Saturday morning before watching Cambridge United win (which cost me £17 to watch! Crazy - it's a non league match...), and then yeserday I was straight back in the studio for a very long, but highly successful session with Our Painted Nature. I'm really excited about this band - there's a bit of a buzz about it all within the group, and although yesterday's mammoth session (complete with exceptional guest violinist, Neve) at Half Ton Studios was tough, our first demo recording is sounding like a cracker. Huge thumbs up to our engineer, Rob Toulson (my bandmate from Eureka Stockade) for having so much patience, a lot of engineers would have given up on us, but it's gonna be worthwhile.

It's all good you know, the band for the New Years Eve gig is complete (James, Keith, Martin Ryan, Matt Corrall and me), and although I still haven't written the panto for next week (*slight* panic) I'm sensing good things are on the cards for 2009 - I will achieve those things listed at the bottom of this blog. And my contract at work has been extended by a month, and it's Christmas day on Thursday...sometimes life puts you in a position where you just can't complain. Merry Christmas.