Sharments III

Some of you may have noticed that there were only, like, 4 updates over the Christmas period and, well, I'm not going to apologise because a) one of those four was huge and took several days to put together, and b) the me who comes up with this kinda-daily wit gets December off so I was on my own for the duration of the festive season.

But a month tends not to go by around here without something happening, so here's a quick run-down of everything that's been going on around here over the course of my unwritten hiatus.

THINGS I MISSED-MAS

• I dug out my book of Christmas carols for Bb instruments and went busking for the first time ever, and then I did it again. I made like £25 altogether, and given that I was only playing for about an hour at a time before deciding it was too cold and going home I think that's fairly impressive.
• I also played a couple of more organised gigs; one was at the Atrium, and was part of my course, and the other one was at CAI, and just for fun. The uni gig saw me dressed as a last-minute blind mouse (complete with 3D glasses and embarrassing white shorts) and playing my horn as part of a 7-piece ensemble. Our theme, as I believe I have noted on this blog several times, was songs from the Shrek movies, and we played them with so much fervour and aplomb and other words of which I'm not sure the meaning that the crowd went quite wild for it. The CAI gig was, in Cliffey's words "like being in the living room", except I had slightly more authority because I was on a stage.
• Obviously Christmas happened. I ate lots of turkey and chocolate, and so did you, hopefully.
• There was a bit of a boiler issue in the house - I was home for Christmas by the time it presented itself so it was left to Pete and Cliffey to sort it out - whereupon water from an icicle dripped down into the floo or something, I dunno. It's all good now I think. And I didn't get off totally scot free, either; a pipe burst in my parents' house and we had to get a plumber out on Christmas Eve, right in the middle of Cars on BBC1, to stop the water coming up through our floorboards.
• I got drunk again, possibly.
• There was hell of snow and it was pretty at first but then everyone decided that it was a damn nuisance that meant nobody could go anywhere. My socks were perpetually soaked and my trip to see my grandparents in Liverpool was called off just in case we weren't able to get back. It tried to snow again yesterday actually but everyone was like "Oh HELL no" so the whole thing was called off.
• The Co-Op and its myriad reduced items are awesome. Fab lollies for 10p folks. Let's give them a big hand.
• Um...everybody got lots of presents and generally had the best old time.

If anyone can think of anything I've missed out, well, it'll have to wait until next year.

Joel.