Burns baby burn

This year I have to admit Burns night (or an excuse to pine for Scotland whilst drinking copious amounts of Whisky and listening to the staggeringly awful 'Pride of Scotland' (a double cd cause one disk just wasn't enough...)) crept up on me slightly. It was only last weekend that I realised it was on Tuesday and I hadn't yet made any plans. Last year we went all out with haggis, neeps & tatties, flags you name it. Sadly most of the haggis was left untouched so this year I decided to ditch the dinner element and try a different type of celebration. I was feeling literal at the weekend (and had just done a big prune of the trees in our garden) so I decided a bonfire (with hot toddies to warm those watching it) was in order. Proving that the best events are all down to the planning most of my friends already had plans (oops) but those that didn't (Lea and Rich) came round armed with beer, and our lovely neighbour Malc came to help me start the fire (I was a bit worried as it had been raining on and off all day). As the pics show we got it going okay in the end (by using most of the junk mail from the last month as firelighters) and had our own little scottish inferno. After the fire had gone out we headed back inside for some more warming whisky and tea and cake. I've still got quite a few tree clippings left so we might have another bonfire this weekend if I can find a few spare hours between practices.

A bit of reflection...

I guess I owe a bit of an apology to this blog. My posting over the last couple of months has been, if anything, sporadic. It probably didn't help that my camera charger broke (hence no pictures) and that I came down with the fluyest of flus before Christmas but life is rarely perfect. I hope now that I've recharged both my camera and my creative batteries I will once again be haunting these parts a bit more regularly (best friend Fi and I had a bit if a chat re the whole blogging thing and I reached a few blog/life conclusions).

My blog will never be as pretty as some of those that exsist, it's a fact, I'm not going to beat myself up over it, I could make it like that but I haven't really got the time and I don't really think it's supposed to be all about appearance (especially at the expense of content). To have something pretty was not why I started this blog, it was meant to be more like a creative look what I did/found/a recording place whereas for other bloggers I can see appearance has a lot more significance (and that;s great, I love looking at pretty things why should cyberspace be any different?). I'd love for every post to look perfect but at the end of the day if my posts help to convey even a tiny bit of what I'm trying to communicate to just one person then the time it takes me just to do my own entries (they still take a while) will have been worth it.

With this in mind this year on this blog I'm going to try and be less militant with myself (you must post) and also share more of the things that inspire me as an artist (I still feel uncomfortable using that term, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment)/writer and musician as well and trying to record my own thoughts/capturing my own feelings and times.

So here they are my current loves/slight obsessions...

This bangle I completely adore (in fact I was so helpless in the face of it's gothic beauty I accidentally bought it (oops)) it's from this fantastic etsy seller www.etsy.com/shop/ParAmourDesign . My friend Lindsay correctly identified the Edgar Allen Poe subtext but I stumbled across it while I was doing some research for some resin projecs of my own (it's amazing/dangerous what you can do with a google image search...)

TV show - Being Human - A werewolf a ghost and a vampire in a houseshare in Bristol. Okay they are no longer technically in Bristol (side thought - having visisted for work I think I can see why everyone likes Bristol so much, it reminded me a lot of the homelands of Manchester, but that could be down to the fact it was raining thin rain when we visited). First episode of series 3 was aired on Sunday, it watched it with cautiom as I loved the first two series. I'm not going to give you a spoiler but I will say I thought it was as good as the previous series and as an individual episide I found it very very good indeed. You can watch it on i player here www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y3756 (*joy*).

And last but by no means least a combined audio/visual treat. One of my favourite local bands Message to Bears made this stunning music/video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn8mc-_kaOQ

(the song is called Mountains). I think I love everything about it/it just confirms their brilliantness. Directed John Owen - Slate7films.com. Featuring Susanna Herbert and Steve Dolton. Bear myspace www.myspace.com/messagetobears

Introducing Stranger things happen at Sea

So here we are! A post about the fantastic band we managed to form on the making music supported 'form a folk band' course. The course took place over 6 weeks and people came from as far a field as Reading, Cambridge and Swindon. Although the main bulk of money was being provided by making music South East each individual had to contribute £60 towards the cost of hiring the SAE and recording. The SAE itself is a fantastic building in Littlemore (just outside Oxford). It was a mental hospital but has been bought by a music college and kitted out with all the latest recording equipment (plus a very beautiful piano, it was lovely, more info on the institute and their courses www.oxford.sae.edu/en-gb/home).

Each week our facilitator (and founder of Moreland Morris) Cat Kelly brought along a different folk tutor to help us with different aspects of our playing. The schedule looked like this 1st week Nick Cooke (in the photo, he is really sweet and told me the tune I wrote for the first week was excellent, I melted), week 2 Paul Satin (sadly I missed this as I was in Lismore), week 3 Pete flood (Benbe rhythm, scary), Week 4 - Will pound , week 5 - Jim Moray (regular readers of this blog will know I heart him, when put into the same room I was tempted to run away) week 6 - Maclaine Colston (who was (imhu) the best/most helpful of the lot, although I was a bit ill on this week so didn't play that much).

On the first week no one knew each other so we formed into groups with others we liked the look of. I managed to get lucky with an awesome flute player (Liz) and guitarist (Danny) (as well as my long suffering music friend Kevin who joined me on violin). A few weeks later we added to our merry mistrels with a melodian player (Aileen) and her son (Loz) who's a drummer (Loz's favourite band phrase "you've really got to give it some rice". LOVE IT!). The name came about as now the course is over (*sob* what am I going to do with my Sunday mornings now?) we are down to have some recording time (whih they needed a band name for, it was my suggestion and meant to reflect on the somewhat random way in which we came together) and possibly be entered into consideration for playing Oxford Folk festival (can you imagine??? How awesome would that be???) but I am trying not to count my chickens so I'll keep you posted...

Graffiti

Here it is the hotly anticipated press shot of myself and Sreeves new musical project, a duo, called writing on the wall, we shall be playing English tunes (half of which were written by me, always interesting, bars sometimes have more of less beats than needed, key signatures become confused...). Chris chose the name (apprently it has Belshazzars feast links, he has yet to explain to me what these are), I chose the look (I'm calling it the pre raphalite gypsy, think raggle taggle but beautiful) and the blank wall was borrowed from Trish & Malc (we tried taking photos at home but there was some kind of chintz in every shot, such are the perils of this house... :-). Chris has also written a very good (but quite short & to the point) bit of blurb for us : WRITING ON THE WALL are Vikki Rose (fiddle/vocals) and Chris Sreeves (accordion/keyboards/percussion). Vikki on Chris: ” the much imitated but never outdone musical maverick…my partner in crime”. Chris on Vikki: “if you want a job done, get Vikki to make you do it yourself”. Expect the unexpected!


I find it hard to believe I have only known Chris 3 months, he seems to have got the measure of me quite well already (plus he bought me back a book when he went to stay in the Keates/Shelley house in Italy, I was very miffed I coudn't go to but presents always help soften the blow :-)

Gratuitous shots of witchcat

Dave my housemate bought a camera in the January sales and short of a professional model guess who he's been testing it on???? Yes you guessed it the witchcat gets everywhere. The bottom shot was also taken on a cold day a week or so ago when Mabel was snuggling in the cover. All together now
Awwwwww who's a pretty girl?