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.

How to Feel Festive

So we're flying towards Christmas and I have officially started to feel festive.  I am the sort of person who enjoys Christmas.  I don't like the fact that it seems to start in October, but I am more than happy to fully give in to the Christmas feeling from the second week in December.

This year we had our traditional early Christmas Dinner and gift giving with Fra and Jennie.  We do this every year before we all head home for Christmas. I cooked turkey and we ate, drank and felt full rather than merry.  It's a bloody great tradition and I love it.

In addition to this probably the most festive thing we have done in the run up to Christmas has been going to see an Adults Only screening of The Muppets Christmas Carol.  It was awesome!  Mulled wine, drinking games and The Muppets - very festive.

The Bear visited Rina and I last night.  He brought me a Christmas/birthday present - Batman: Noel. It is a Batman retelling of A Christmas Carol and is beautifully drawn.  It was also very kind and unexpected.  He's a good bloke The Bear.

It is Wednesday today and the staff Christmas do is tonight.  That will be fun.  I will partake in the free beer and have my dinner and then head home before it become rowdy.  It always does - the way good Christmas dos should!

Friday sees Rina and I head home.  I can't wait.  It has been ages since I was last at home and it is brilliant to spend time with my family (that and the fact I have two nieces means I get to enjoy having kids around - which MAKES Christmas).

So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and see you in 2012!

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.

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....

First and Last

Sunday saw the first Glasgow Derby of the season (there is no "Old Firm", there is only Celtic and a bunch of animals) and the last BBQ of the season.

Having the last 9 months pretty much consisting of doing up our flat has had some significant bonuses.  Very near the top of this list is turning a scruffy yard into a garden.  Rina and I gambled and invited some people over on Sunday (The Bear, Fra, Jenny, Alistair and Jade).  We were mostly lucky with the weather - what little rain there was ended up being kept off us by the tree at the end of the garden (a small benefit in comparison to the amount of conkers and leaves it drops in to be cleaned up!).  I made BBQ sauce - from scratch. It was awesome.  I also got a wee bit drunk - but that's all fun.

As for the football game.  It was shit. 2-1 up at half-time followed by a second half of complete capitulation by Celtic.  That's all I'll say about that right now.

So the BBQ has been put away, the outdoor furniture washed and stowed and the garden has said its farewell to summer.  And a great summer it was.

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.

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.