..And a Happy New Year to all our readers!

This morning, driving in to work, I was rather perturbed to see that – even though it’s still some 353 days until Christmas – some people have got their decorations up already!

Still, we hope you all had a lovely time eating and drinking to excess; plus whatever else takes your fancy, of course.

We certainly enjoyed the break, we even managed to squeeze in a few gigs – including a jolly evening in the Portcullis in Fishponds just after Christmas; where, because Lou had texted me earlier complaining of a chest infection and warning that she wasn’t sure her voice would last the night, as a precaution I took along our emergency spare band – the erratically mighty Polar Bear Cheese Pirates From Outer Space. In the event, Lou’s voice held out fine, but since Dem’s folks had turned out to see us, we put the kids on as well anyway. (I have finally arrived at the conclusion that the real reason folks are so fond of their grandchildren is because they know that they are putting their parents through exactly the same trauma and exasperation as the parents put the grandparents through years before. Which I am sure is the only reason why my offspring seemed to get louder applause than AUF did…).

And, just a couple of nights ago, we were royally entertained in the Trident at Downend, where we had been pre-warned and reminded that we’d have to stop at 11:00 due to “neighbour issues”. Thus we duly stopped playing at the allotted hour, only to be told by the bar manager to “Keep going for another half hour, sod the neighbours, this is bloody great!”

It’s always nice to receive these unsolicited testimonials.

And it was good to see our bonkers mate Tiff again, as well as a bunch of her accomplices who were behind hijacking various Santa Claus and snowmen figures from around the pub to dance around with…

All in all, a rather jolly start to the year; alas no gigs coming up this weekend; the reason being, as it was explained to me, that “Stuart isn’t going to Cuba” for the next couple of weeks.

Okay, well, that clears that one up, then.

Meanwhile, from the dusty back of the joke cupboard, I found this lurking behind a grimy disused Breville sandwich toaster*…

The revered Indian political and religious leader Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath.

This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis

Did you miss us?

Square On

A

*It has been observed that the Breville sandwich toaster has evolved a rather unusual life cycle, which almost always follows the same stages: –

After an initial embryonic stage packaged in a nice clean shiny box on the shelf of a supermarket (or, more commonly, an Argos warehouse), the device is eventually purchased and relocates itself into a kitchen, where, for three weeks, its new owners subsist entirely on toasted sandwiches. After this, they will never eat another toasted sandwich again.

Following this fertile stage, the sandwich toaster enters its “chrysalis” stage, where it hides for a period of between two and four years at the back of a dark cupboard, protected by a thin coating of grease and an accumulation of dust, after which it emerges blinking into the daylight to find itself perched near the back of an old wallpapering table at a car boot sale. Subsequently, it may (if it is a lucky sandwich toaster) enter a second three-week manic fertile sandwich-making stage, before reverting to its chrysalis form for another two years, and then finally fulfilling its destiny in the “Small Electrical Items” skip at the local recycling centre.

Nobody ever asks it if it wants to.