Tag Archives: new years eve

05-05-2015 – Guitar Madness

May the Fourth Be With You.

No, no, I’m not a day late, I’m just really early for next year, okay?

Right, well we hope you enjoyed your sunny Blank Holiday weekend; mine was quite chilled, actually, thanks for asking – with Dem away down at Land’s End with the two most maniacal offspring, I managed to get a cheeky half hour in the guitar shop playing away on the lovely items hanging on their wall…

Unfortunately the upshot of all this is that I now need another guitar… If anybody has any suggestions as to how I can justify this to the Internal Finance Committee, I’d be glad of some assistance. READ MORE

27-04-2015 – Awwwww, bless!

Beneficent salutations faithful readers.

Well, it looks like my predictions from last week’s were fairly accurate; with daughter Lil at the Mail Coach on Saturday, things did indeed get quite lively towards the Tina Turner end of the set; by the end of the night, several of the lovely locals were queueing up to buy us drinks, and to tell Lily she was “fabulous”. I reckon next time we’ll just let Lil wheel out a shedload of her musical theatre tosh, and they’ll be sobbing in the aisles.

I will be, for one… READ MORE

20-04-2015 – The Slightly Weird Weekend

Wassup homeys [editor’s note: Al clearly thinks this is trendy and current but I think it’s just verbal dad dancing, I would rather go for “Dear esteemed reader” or something … class!]

This rawk’n’roll thing keeps getting weirder.

Friday night, Ben & I rock up to our allotted venue, namely “Auberge” in Abergavenny. We stroll inside, it looks a bit too designer for our liking; still, the staff are friendly enough, and direct us to go round the back to haul our kit in. We lug the first armful in through the back gate, and ask where they want us to set up. “Over by there”, they point. READ MORE

13-04-2015 – Wales

Aloha!

And, as what passes for a tropical heatwave in the UK slips away into the familiar springtime grey chill, and another weekend devoid of gigging fun slips quietly past (Well, actually, I had a very pleasant weekend, as it happens, thank you very much!) at last we can look forward to a relatively normal weekend coming up – i.e. one with some gigs in it!

Friday 17th April – Auberge, Abergavenny
Now, having spent some nine years living over the bridge up in the mountainous peaks of South Wales, I happen to know in advance that Abergavenny is the name of the town, which presumably means that Auberge is the name of the venue. Although it does sound rather more like the name of a fictional Belgian detective, or possibly even some kind of clever figure skating move, than the name of a pub in South Wales, which usually tend to have sensible names like “The New Inn”, and “The Old Tavern”, and possibly even “The Middle Aged Hostelry”. In any case, I think it’s fair to assume it will be a rather more upmarket establishment than the ones we used to frequent over there. I recall one time going in the local miner’s club, (when they had only recently allowed women to actually go and order their own drinks) one of the more elderly staff in up in the valleys expressed concern at my beloved Dem going up to order herself a pint at the bar… READ MORE