I will survive!

Writing on the wall (the duo with Chris Sreeves and myself in it) survived our first public outing this weekend with a 20 min set at the form a folk band showcase concert. (More info on http://www.makingmusic-southeast.org.uk/events/?29-Form and more on my experience here Alice is thinking of doing it again this year, so def the person to speak to if you want to get involved!). We ended up playing a mix of material, starting off with an unaccompanied ballad (found by Chris but involving me singing on my own without accompanyment, scary!) and then in no particular order, a balcan dance tune, a French tune, some jazz and few tunes that I'd written (I'm trying to upload 'the dots' onto a sharing site at the mo, when I suceed this blog will be the first place I post the link) as well as some good old English folk and a fairly famous cover.

It was a lovely day weather wise on Sat so I was fairly convinced no one would come (and indeed Jam didn't make it due to a terrible case of tonsilitus, ouch!) but we were lucky enough to have Chris' wife Julia, my former housemate Maddie & her boyfriend Jonny, my current housemate Dave and Fi, Nick, Alex and Alex's grandparents. So quite a sizable crowd. Although I play a lot and teach I've never been that fond of playing in front of people, so this year I decided to tackle the fear! We had a bit of nerves practice by playing a practice gig last weekend (exactly the same set as this weekend) but in front of Julia and James. We then faced the fear even more fully by asking for honest feedback from our nearest and dearest. Julia realised how nervous I was and very sweetly brought this to the gig for me (she owns a small antiques business and apprently saw this and thought of me).

We had an ex BBC soundman manning the desk and the concert was being recorded so the live recording may one day see the light of day. Also the ep which I did with the band I formed on the course (Stranger Things Happen at Sea) is at final mixing at the moment and should be available soon. We got some lovely comments after the show, most seemed to be about my singing (I sing round the house all the time but I've never really done it in front of anyone, so a good time to face that fear as well). Chris recorded a few takes of me mid song in practice (just so I could hear what I sounded like) and then sent me the following of what my voice looks like, pretty isn't it?!?

Photos of my first foray into menswear

My good friend & workee colleague t'other Vikki has just got the photos back from her wedding. So here rocking hankies and cravats made by yours truely are the boys. Looking very smart don't you think? I'm going to give myself a little break from the sewing now for a bit, have lots of knitting projects to get started with , my wood project is going great guns (more on that in another post when I've recharged my camera). I also have a few other ideas (mostly to do with resin) that I've been putting off for a while now. This weekend Jam and I sorted out most of the back garden and planted most of our veg seeds (we were finally thwarted by lack of compost, school boy error on my part that one) but the top of my to do list is to get well, still sneezing/getting cold sores (usually happens when I'm tired/stressed so am going to make a concerted effort to give this period of illness the heave ho, not least because it's the form a folk band showcase thing this weekend, eeeek! My dad has however already put his cravat order in for his birthday, July is a while away yes?

Alice!

I have been wanting to watch Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland for a while now, I completely meant to see it at the cinema but alas life got in the way... Also there is that strange thing that when you live in Oxford with the Alice glass window in Christchurch and the Alice shop you tend to find yourself quite involved with the whole tale. So although 95.99 percent of me wanted to see it (Tim Burton's films being quite wonderful) a tiny bit of me felt protective of the original/story charcters. This obstacle was however removed by Jam who rented the DVD for us to watch while house/cat sitting for his dad. Marvolous! The whole thing was a beautiful conjouring, the world, the characters and the costumes being completely Burton while still retaining their essence from the original tale. Personal favourites were as ever the cheshire cat with the ever present smile, the mad hatter (what's not to love), Helen Bonham-Carter was magnificent as the red queen (before watching it I was unsure about her being computer generated, but her character is so strong you don't notice it after a while, and she gets all the best lines ('nothing like a nice warm pig' fabulous)) and bizarrely for the first time Alice. In previous versions I've always found her slightly annoying but I really liked the character in this version (possibly the fact that she gets mucky and turns down suitors rather than remaining pristine, not too keen on the ending, but I suppose you can't have everything). The rest of it absolutely worth a watch, so good in fact I may have to buy the dvd. Another Burton classic (and if you still don't believe me here is the trailer to convince you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9POCgSRVvf0)!