Seasons Greetings!

One of my New Years resolutions is to get to more gigs, the other is to keep in touch a little more regularly than I have been! I hope you all had a really great Christmas with your families and New Year celebration doing whatever you did. Read on if you want to hear what I got up to!

Christmas

I went to Rugby in the Midlands to spend Christmas with James and his folks. We took the speedy Virgin train from London to Rugby on Christmas Eve with bags full of presents and arrived to a lovely dinner. Afterwards James and I braved the cold and tried to hit a few of the local drinking holes - only to find giant queues at all of them! After attempting to stand in a squashed corner of one establishment we gave up and hit Threshers (bottle shop) and got some cider and headed home to drink it and watch Dig - brilliant music doc about the rivalry between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Woke up Christmas morning and Santa had certainly been advised of my whereabouts - I was absolutely spoiled rotten by James and his folks! After a scrumptious bacon breakfast and phone calls from all my family (apart from my badly behaved brother!) we headed to James' cousin's house to spend a few hours with the relatives. They are all so nice and welcoming and we all enjoyed a few beers and ciders despite the early hour! His aunties gave me some really cool fingerless gloves that fold over to become mittens and a gorgeous photo frame and some Jacob's Creek wine!

We then headed back home and proceeded to open an absolute mountain of presents each. I was so overwhelmed. James gave me an original Fools Gold by Stone Roses on limited edition gold vinyl - it's my favourite track of all time so you can imagine how happy I was! He also found me a 'Maximo Park: A Certain Trigger' banner SIGNED by each and every one of the band members!!!! It's brilliant. There are just too many other presents to list but I was very spoiled.

We had a beautiful turkey dinner which was absolutely divine and then finished off the night watching It's a Wonderful Life together in front of the fire. The only thing that would have made the day better would have been to have all of my family and friends there!

Boxing Day

After a mammoth sleep we all piled into the car and headed off to the Cotwalds which is about an hour away from Rugby. We saw a few areas including these;

http://www.the-cotswolds.org/top/english/know/villages/bourtononthewater/index.html
http://www.the-cotswolds.org/top/english/know/villages/stowonthewold/index.html
http://www.the-cotswolds.org/top/english/know/villages/moretoninmarsh/index.html

It was magic!

After our day out sightseeing, we freshened up and went for a walk into town for a great curry and a few drinks. All in all it was a great Christmas and Boxing Day - completely spoiled and thoroughly enjoyed!!!

New Years Eve

After much pondering we finally settled on going to Herbal (cool drum and bass club in East London) for a good old Hospital Records night. The line up was pretty classy and included the likes of my favourite High Contrast, London Elektricity and Cyanitic. Great tunes and I got to home-boy style touch knuckles with London Elek - nice!

Before we headed to the club we went up the road to The Alwyne (guess who we saw Pointi??) and also dropped into The Baring for old times sake (Jason still works there can you believe it??).

My head had definitely felt better than it did on New Years Day but I pretty much just lazed around and watched episode after episode of That 70's Show, Scrubs and Extras! Bless freeview digital set top boxes.

So... looks like the festivities are all done and dusted for a little while. Got my birthday coming up soonish and we are heading to Birmingham for the weekend before to see Bloc Party!!! And then we will be back in Oz in March for a two week break. Hope to see you all then!!!!!!

Take care xxx