Wow, That's Been a While!

So much has happened since I last posted on this blog I thought it would be wise to do a quick update. 

The most significan personal development for me is that I am now married.  Actually, last Sunday saw my wife and I celebrate our first anniversary.  The wedding was an amazing experience, one that far exceeded my expectations.  We were married at Pinewood Studios on the only sunny day in a rainy week.  It is funny how focussed on things like the weather you become in the build up to a wedding.  Wedding and flowers if I recall correctly.

The wedding was followed by our honeymoon in St Lucia.  It was a beautiful place, but probably less luxurious than the Maldives in my opinion.  We had helicopter transfers though which was a brilliant experience.

Post wedding was settling down to a life of no wedding-planning.  We just enjoyed being married really.  We booked flights to Australia as my new father-in-law was unable to make it to our wedding for health reasons.

The end of the summer saw The Fat Disciples do our first gig - a set of covers at a friend's wedding.  I think The Bear described it best when he said that we were one-nil down at half time, but it finished a stunning two-one victory to the FDs.  We invited the groom up on stage to sing Live Forever (a favourite of his), this got the crowd on side.  Finishing with Killing In The Name seemed to go down better than expected as well.

The Australian trip saw me spend my first Christmas away from home.  My mum decided to have Christmas a week early at home, so we flew over for that before flying to Oz.  Our trip was amazing.  We experienced record temperatures in Sydney and had an amazingh New Year in Melbourne.  The trip made me realise that I really want to live in Australia, at least for a little while.

Since that trip we have been planning for our move.  It is proving easier said than done.  We want to keep our flat in London, so we need to save up to allow us to have money behind us in Oz.  That is alongside the fact that we are planning to take up to a year to get there.  More saving....

But plans are afoot.

November

It seems the weather has finally realised that we are approaching winter as the days have become cold and crisp and my breath visible.

November has been relatively busy - we have finally had the wardrobe installed in our bedroom (although the bed has yet to be delivered) and i had my 36th birthday. 

No Fat Disciples in the month due to lack of finances, a bassist in Thailand and a drummer in Poland.

I went to see Nosferatu in the Prince Charles Cinema with live music by Minima. It was really, really awesome (and the cinema was packed).  The same cinema is hosting an Adults Only screening of Muppets Christmas Carol in a couple of weeks.  That I am really looking forward to.

Celtic seem to have turned a bit of a corner.  Two wins in a row, one of them spectacularly convincing whilst the Huns have dropped points two games in a row.  This season may just have some legs in it after all....

I've been getting round to the last bits of Christmas shopping.  My parents are sorted, as are my brothers and my nieces.  Just my sisters to go.  Rina and I will be paying for a coffee table that extends into a dining table as a gift to each other.... I've always wanted one of those... Saying that, I am now the proud owner of an ipad - my birthday present from Rina!

Just 5 short weeks until 2012.  2011 has been a full-on year.  I am looking forward to Christmas with my family, because after that it is just a quick 6 months to my wedding.

Holy fuck.

Life Drawing

Last night I went to a Life Drawing class for the first time.  I have really started to feel the love for drawing again and have decided to attend this class to make the most of this.

It was good to get to work at an easel again.

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We haven't had Disciples for a couple of weeks.  We are due to rehearse tonight and I suspect we are going to have to cancel. The Bear is ill, Al and Holly aren't replying to texts and Dal doesn't want to sleep beside The Bear if he's ill or The Bear's ex-missus who is currently on The Bear's couch. We'll see what happens in the next hour.

Ink on Bristol

The weekend is approaching.  For all the cool kids the weekend starts on Thursday.  It's a bit disappointing, but there is no Fat Disciples practice tonight.  A friend of mine and Rina's from work is leaving to go back to Oz, so we are going for Korean food in Dotori tonight.  It's a really cool restaurant in Finsbury Park that serves awesome sushi.  If you go, go for the sharing platter as your option - its like a degustation menu. For £25. Awesome.

Not too sure what this weekend will hold.  I have recently been doing a bit of drawing (as an RSVP to a friend's wedding).  I get the love of drawing in waves. I am in the middle of a big drawing-love patch.  I thik that this weekend I will try to draw a comic strip that shows what i did this week.  It may be cool or it may be dreadful, but whatever it is it means I will be hearing the scrape of pen and ink on bristol this weekend.

Fish and Chips in Wembley

I work all over West London.  Currently I have 5 offices I am in charge of.  There is an office in Uxbridge, one in Wandsworth, another in Hammersmith, and Ealing Broadway office and one in Wembly Park, in the shadow of the stadium itself.

Whenever I take over a new office I make it a personal quest to locate the best fish and chips withing easy reach.  This can prove challenging (Hammersmith has one where the chips are amazing but the fish is breaded - I mean, seriously!?).  The best Fish and Chips I have had near an office I ran was in Stratford.  Hardly surprising, I think that a bad chippy in the East End would get burnt out!

Today is the first Friday after payday and that makes it "Fish and Chip Friday". I am in Wembley and am delighted to report that the lunchtime offering was superb.  There is a Chinese takeaway (stay with me) opposite Wembley Park station called Wok and Roe.  And it does brilliant Fish and Chips.  They use a very crispy batter and keep drizzling it over the chips (much like tempura) which results in a magnificent crunch.  And the chips are ace too.

I am now at my desk and my hunger is sated and I will likely doze my way through this afternoon.
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It was Fat Disciples rehearsal time last night.  No Holly (she got stuck at work), but a full turn out otherwise.  The knowledge that we will be moving towards a gig has really focused me.  Last night I played some songs that we have rehearsed hundreds of times the best I have ever done.  My announcement of that seemed to make The Bear bemused.  It was then off to the pub to see the end of Spurs humping Shamrock Rovers.   Celtic drew with Udinese, which was a good result, but did need the ref to give Udinese a soft penalty to get the draw.

The Bear and I will be visiting The Worlds End near Finsbury Park on Sunday to see about hiring their room for the FD's first gig....

Quincy, Chickens and Antiques

I had a great weekend.  I love weekends, and they are all, to some extent, good. But this weekend was great.

It started on Friday night with a mad rush from work to the flat to grab Rina and a bag with some clothes.  Then it was a dash on the tube to Marylebone and onto the train to Warwick.  We were off to visit Ads and Sara.

Ads was the first person I met in England when I moved here from Norn Iron. He was a skinny Jim Morrison-a-like in my halls of residence.  Sara was on my course at uni.  She was all stripy tights and metal.  They were clearly made for each other.  I introduced them and the rest is, well, it's ongoing - but they are married and have been for years and they are amongst my closest friends.

Our train to Warwick was delayed.  I didn't really notice because I was watching Indiana Jones (Crystal Skull - the shame).  Friday night was a chilled affair - pizza and chat.  It's really great to catch up with old friends. I love that you feel instantly comfortable in each other's company - and regardless of the time apart, you could have been chatting like this yesterday.  Except, of course, that you haven't been, and that is why you talk for so long.

Saturday made me feel a little middle-aged.  We all bundled into Ads' car and headed to Stow-On-the-Wold, a little town in the Cotswolds.  It's a pretty little place, a town that seems to be from a different age. Slower and rustic.  Like being in an episode of Last of the Summer Wine.  Interestingly, I am pretty sure we were the youngest people in the town.  We had a nice (but bloody expensive) lunch in a pub that claims to be the oldest inn in Britain.  That'll be another of those then.  If you ask me, it didn't look that old.  After lunch Sara and Rina went off to browse the antiques shops and Ads and I went to the pub.  After a couple of drinks Ads and I went into a charity shop where I bough a tambourine for the Disciples.  Let's see how that goes down on Thursday!

Saturday night was dinner in and a DVD.  Sara and Ads cooked a wicked roast chicken and we watched The Girl Who Played With Fire.  Good movie, but very long.  I think it suffered from the film-makers' need to be very faithful to the book.  I reckon you could have comfortably shaved off 30 minutes.

On Sunday the girls went off to an Antiques Fair at the Warwick Exhibition Centre.  Ads and I sat in the lounge pondering what to do. Should we walk the 5 miles to the pub we were planning to meet them for lunch, or do something else.  Well, suffice to say as soon as Quincy started on the telly the decision was made.  I used to watch Quincy LOADS at uni.  Watching this episode I remember why. It is absolutely Awesome!

Lunch was in The Stag in Offchurch.  This is a pub that has built a reputation for its food - which was very good.  I had smoked sea trout. The girls had roast pork.  All the food was ace....but there is something a little soulless about a gastro-pub. Or is that just me?

All that was left was the train home and a Tesco Chicken Pie for dinner.  Rina and I watched Aussie Masterchef and Rizzoli and Isles and then it was to bed - knowing that in a few short hours work beckoned.

Top weekend though!

Change....

It was another three-man session in the Bush Studios last night for the latest Fat Disciples rehearsal.  No Al and no Holly (who were both on holiday).

It was a fairly straight forward affair - a run through of most of the set list (no ballad-rap) and then onto jamming around some new ideas.  We came up with a workable basic structure of a song that definitely has potential.  What was particularly funny about this song is that it required relatively little guitar work, but a ridiculously fast rhythm.  I love when The Bear has to get up out of the drum stool to stretch after a frantic song.  This one I think is a keeper.

We came up with the basic bones of the song by playing round with the voices on my Boss GT-8 effects pedal.  The thing is amazing - hundreds of sounds, each of which can be edited and changed to you preferences leading to tens of thousands of potential sounds a guitar can make.  I use 3 of those voices.  Clean, slightly distorted and very distorted.  Very rarely will I play with the others - but I did last night and look what happened.

Change......good.

Clash of the Titans

Celtic play Athletico Madrid in the first leg of their (in by the backdoor) UEFA Cup tie on Thursday night.

The Fat Disciples have a practice on Thursday night.

Clash of the Titans.

A Tale of Beers, Bears, Basslines and U.G.C

Lat night the Fat Disciples had a rehearsal.  It was not a full band effort - Holly was at her granddad's funeral and Chris is holidaying with the future in-laws, but Dal, the Bear and I were there.

I get a bit of grief from the band about my insistence that we drill our songs.  I refer to this practice as "UGC" or Under Gig Conditions.  Yeah, it's a bit geeky, but we need to practice the songs we will actually play if we are going to do anything approaching a decent gig.

The Bear doesn't like UGC.  The Bear is a creative soul who flourishes when we come up with new ideas.

The UGC run-through was OK.  The songs definitely need Holly singing.  My flat efforts were dreadful.  To think that at one point we thought I would have to sing if we gigged.  That would not have been good.

After running through the set The Bear got his way and we started to play around with a couple of bits-of-songs that we have messed with in the past.  No real progress made, but fun to make a loud noise.

The most creative moments were when Dal and I swapped instruments.  Dal played lead in Shamoogatron - the band he, The Bear and Chris used to be in.  He took the Les Paul Studio, whacked on the Wah and started rocking.  The Bear wanted a repitive bassline  that we could work around, I provided that.  We jammed a bit and recorded the efforts.

I then started playing a simple but catchy Bass Riff - around D and F#.  Dal and I swapped back - he carried on the bassline and very quickly we had the makings of a good bluesy song.  It came from nowhere, but made sense - with The Bear's frantic beat and Dal's bouncy bass and me playing a fuzzy 2-chord riff.  We recorded this as well and I'll try to work it up into a full song before our next rehearsal.

I am still a firm believer of UGC, but sometimes The Bear's insistence on trying new stuff pays off.

The Fat Disciples

I am in a band.

To be more precise, I'm in my mid-30s and am in a band that have never gigged. We are The Fat Disciples.

I've played the guitar for over 15 years. In that time I have got reasonably OK at it (that is not false modesty, rather sad reality). I LOVE playing the guitar. I have an awesome Gibson Les Paul Studio that plays like a dream. It's chunky, heavy (in weight) and makes me look cool.. For a pudgy ginger man.

The Fat Disciples are me on lead guitar, Chris on keys, Dal on bass, Holly singing and the Bear on drums. We play fuzzy bouncy songs and are working our way towards our first gig. There are no delusions of grandeur within the Fatty Ds. We have no hope of being signed or touring, but we are definitely good enough to play in front of people - or at least are willing to hire a room so we can.

In fact that is exactly what we decided to do. So, after a couple of years practice the FDs will (hopefully) be playing to a group of our friends as part of my birthday celebrations in November.

We rehearse on Thursday nights in Shepherds Bush and now we have booked this in the practices should become more interesting.

We'll see if The Bear can focus....

More on him later.