music makes happy

Had a wonderful afternoon playing to a crowd of relaxed sun-warmed Brick Laners with Nigel of Bermondsey this afternoon.

I realised that making music that sounds lovely is important to me. And Nigel's music is that, particularly with Tamara's added harmonies.

The weather is stunningly beautiful. A buttery glow glides over every surface. It feels like a remembered late summer from childhood.

F is in the paper

He's currently in South Africa, his football team having won an all expenses paid trip to play with a local team. They won 1-0, with F in defence, ensuring a clean sheet was kept.
So proud of him!

This is the article explaining everything, which is in today's Evening Standard. This online version of the article also shows the film they made to win the trip.



Apart from playing football, he's been on safari, whale watching, shark cage diving and is going surfing tomorrow. He's also eaten a hell of a lot of free steak.

Here are some more pics on Flikr .

Bought the narrowboat

Wow.

Feeling pretty strange. Agreed to buy the boat in Henley. Have just paid £10,000 out of my savings and the rest to follow tomorrow.

I have never spent that kind of money in my life. And there is more money to come for the doors, the blacking, and the insurance.

Thank goodness I'm getting a pay rise!

Can't really imagine what it's going to be like taking my own boat out on to the river. God I hope I enjoy it, and that everyone else enjoys it too.

I can see a lot of weekends sanding, painting, sawing, sewing and so on coming up. And several mornings waking early, and venturing out on to the stern to watch the waterbirds as I drink a steaming mug of fresh coffee and munch on a croissant. WOW!

Bestival

Sorry haven't written for ages. Seem to be running around frantically. I'm really hoping that the boat will enable me to have some chilling out time.

Spent the weekend at Bestival on the Isle of Wight. Have had a total of about 14 hours' sleep since Thursday so feeling pretty spaced out, which is appropriate because "outer space" was the theme of the festival!

I went as Venus, goddess of love. Bought some fab red heart-shaped sunglasses that flash.

The festival was totally packed to the rafters with people in fancy dress. Surreal. Oxfam had a tent where they would dress you up and take your photo for a donation. J & K were Elton John and Kylie.

Saw F's mates Fight Like Apes who were BRILLIANT. Best band I've seen for ages. Really interacted with the crowd and got us going. The singer said "Ok, this is our last song" and the crowd started booing. She said "brilliant! After we play this song, you're going to really want to clap, but don't. Boo instead. I want you to chant 'Fuck you apes! Fuck you apes'". So we all did. It was hilarious.

Kraftwerk were also pretty cool. As F said, more like an art installation than a band to go mental to. But perhaps that's because I was so sleepy by that point...

Here are some pics.