Every year for a good few years now, Stephen and Christine have had as
many of us as available round to their lovely cottage for a
Christmas/New Year scran up. This year was exceptional, Stephen, who
fancies himself as a bit of a Jamie Oliver sort, cooked up this
tremendous feast for ten (below) from the raw ingredients pictured abov, without even breaking a sweat. Now some people
in the past year have made special efforts when they hear of my vegan
diet, to accomodate it with an extra dish or two at dinner, but Mordue,
even though I was the only vegan in attendance, made the entire spread
of only the fruits, vegetables, spices,beans, pulses and oils of this
world - it was ace, and gave me more than an idea or two for the
upcoming new year megascran.....
Minnis was there, resplendent in his own of form of acutely sane
madness, Crom was on top form, Jon and Ben of Sixela hung out and we
all exchanged practice regimen ideas. Al was flabbergasted when I
divulged the secrets of the Vessels writing process, Kat didn't eat an
entire circle of brie and Christine had especially selected me a
T-shirt that innocuously declared - 'Music is Evil'....
In this picture Al is very confused about the lack of Meat, Stephen is checking himself out in the reflection on the camera lens......
Christmas day at home with my Ma and my brothers... whilst two of my sisters celebrated with their in-laws (although Julie, now heavily pregnant, and David did put in a good show for the first half of the day) and one sister and her husband took to the skies to settle in Australia forever on Christmas day....
The morning saw us in church, the afternoon saw a mighty feast (including my homemade vegan cheescake, pictured, which my family enjoyed with some double cream) and the early evening saw some good solitary time with just myself and my thoughts, and a documentary about the historical truths of the nativity legend.....
Once again my family and friends have showered me with thoughtful and imaginative gifts and my Ma has spoiled us rotten with food and treats in her cosy home, and that to me is the true meaning of this time of year.....
Today was the last day of work before Christmas, and the last day we had to send off a batch of 300 calendars to a customer in Coventry in time for Christmas. We collected them from the finishers, who had been drilling the holes in the top that they hang on at around lunchtime, and only realised with an hour before the courier arrived that fifty of them hadn't made it to the finishers and were still sat at Footprint, conspicuously undrilled....
There was no time to return them to the finishers, so with a little help from 'SuperBen' (now MegaBen in my estimation) Sz and I set up this vice and drill system for drilling the remaining holes. However to ensure a clean bore, we needed a thin sheet of something woodlike to place on top. This handy Postman Pat placemat did the trick just right, and we had them all ready with three minutes to spare....
Tonight, we went to see the Pogues at the Leeds academy - a freebie courtesy of Pete, lead screamer of metal/history lesson legends Down I Go, and also sax legend for hire. This week sees him and his mates Tucker and Dan as the three part horn section of the entire Pogues Christmas tour, and what a show it was. My favourite bit was 'Rainy NIght in Soho' - Choooo......
I don't know what was better, watching the Pogues live, or sitting up in a hotel bar drinking with my brother Dave, Pete and his mates, and various Pogues, including the man MacGowan himself. And although it is true that MacGowan was drunk and almost entirely incoherent the entire time - he put in both an incredible performance at the gig and some solid conversation on the night. Like Pete said, people often mistake his constant slurring toothless raspy drunkedness for stupidity, which it is not, and the banter I had with him about Irish sovereignty, and 1930's vaudevillian race politics bear testament to that....
The 29th was the first birthday of the megaboon which it also shares with Tom - although he is older - this time last year we were flying out (or failing to) fly out to Minneapolis to record our album - now we're trying to write another one.... The day itself was sandwiched between these two nostalgic gigs - above, Middleman's triumphant return at the Brudenell, after having been away for almost a year because they got royally shafted by their management, and below - The Smokestack, playing a one-off farewell gig, because they never had a proper send off several months earlier when they broke up.... lovely stuff
Rachel and Issi and a horde of other tree enthused sorts have spent the last months preparing the Holy Trinity Church in town for their 'Out of My Tree' Exhibition - a week long installation of paintings and sculptures of trees and tree related things, culminating in tonight's tree themed open mic/story telling night. Tom and Lee loaded half of the Vessels rig into the church in the afternon and performed a specially comissioned ambient piece of'tree music' - a twenty minute epic of synths, noises and bird song, in four movements to reflect the changing seasons. I snapped this rather unrepresentative snap on my phone, at about midnight when it was finally their turn - must remember to bring the camera next time...
Estimates have ranged from between 200 to 500 at last night's megaparty, either way, there was so little room that this one had to spend the night out in the snow......
This was a great evening. The annual Cornerstone Winter Party. Every year we clear out the print room at Footprint (as Footprint occupies the ground floor of Cornerstone Housing co-op), moving the presses and booklet maker and tables and paper etc into the office and then sealing it off, so that when the anarchists of the nation descend upon the yard there's enough room for everyone. There is always a fancy dress element, and this year the theme was 'circus freaks' - so here are me Shizzer and Andy, dressed as the Spanish Inquisition, from Monty Python's Flying Circus - no one was expecting that...... I've included some youtube footage as well of the original, to give you some sort of sense of the ridiculous voices and catchphrases that we found it impossible not to adopt for the entire night:
However no overview of the evening would be complete without a mention of this little hitchiker who decided to camp out on Milo's (the cat) back. I cannot possibly do justice to the amount of time I spent thinking about this little blighter, and the ways in which his (if he was indeed a male), Milo's, and my life overlapped on this particular day.....
I had noticed it several days before, and had presumed it some kind of boil, languishing between Milo's shoulder blades. I decided to leave it until J returned from her jaunts, so that we could take him to the vet - good thing I didn't, for then it might have been too late....
It was Szymon who pointed out that the boil was in fact very much alive, and had attached itself to Milo to drain his blood - a little further research showed that once it was full up, it would simply drop off, and seek out some dark corner, potentially to lay up to 1000 eggs, probably in the flat.
Sz and I performed the surgery to remove the tick, using a pair of J's eyebrow tweezers, sterilised in boiling water, and some sailor Jerry's Rum, to prevent and infection, and to force the tick to let go. Once it was detached, I hadn't the heart to squash it (or the stomach - it was huge) so we left it to drown, hopefully painlessly, in some of the nicest Rum imaginable....
Did it suffer? Was it evil? Or is that just its way? - Although I know that everything that I own and consume has involved the death or displacement of one lifeform or another I did eventually come to terms with killing this little bloodsucker, although part of me for a long time wished that we could have just talked it through....
This gig was okay - Vessels played in the big Chill House in London. As
far as I remember I was in a fairly rubbish mood for most of the day.
This day was also the day that I saw my sister Paula and her husband
Joe for the last time before they moved to Australia on Christmas day.
They brought me their massive telly from their flat in London (thanks
other Jo for the lift) and I took it back to Leeds in the Vessels
Vessel.
The
picture shows Owen from Spokes - we played with them in Preston on our
tour last May, and when they had gone I discovered this lonesome shirt,
abandoned, unwanted, forgotten, and unfortunately a poor fit for my
skeletal frame - and thusly I have kept it with me waiting, longing for
the day when we would play with Spokes again and I could reunite it
with its owner, and then walk off into the sunset - that night was
tonight and does this man not look happy - he sadi it was like meeting
up with an old friened that you'd already accepted was dead, and then
gotten over it - much like Jack Bauer's loved ones had to do in season
5 of 24..... Yes - this shirt IS Jack Bauer....
