Ho, ho, ho...!

Well, it's Christmas Eve, I'm nearly done. Just had the family round for Christmas Eve cheese and onion pasty - yum. Can't beat an excessive amount of pastry at any time of year but should set me up nicely for all the exercise I'll be doing over the next few days...oh god. Still, it was very good. Only half a hundredweight of mince pies to go.

Have a fantastic Christmas and hope to see you at a gig next year - the first one being at The Bull's Head in Barnes on January 13th with Steve Lodder on piano, Andy Hamill on bass and Mike Bradley on drums. You might recognise that as the 'A Swingin' Cat' posse. Excellent. And it looks like I'm going to be branching out further afield with my first Manchester gig on 5th March. More details soon.

Merry Christmas and a fab 2006.

Rx

Don't know what to do with myself...

After spending not inconsiderable amounts of time sellotaping together leadsheets, tippexing out errors and carefully writing in cunning rhythmic patterns in my best hand writing, ordering, re-ordering and re-re-ordering my set lists, I've suddenly run out of stuff to do. Well, that's if you don't count sorting out the hall cupboard, putting my photos into albums, washing up - and I need all that when I want to procrastinate from doing my composing and arranging homework. It's a delicate balance.

What an amazing night last night. I was a bit overwhelmed with all the people who came along to listen and be there. I was so chuffed to see - in a kind of blurry way - people from all different bits of my life. Family, extended family, family to be, someone I was at infant school with and have been friends with ever since, people from university, people from Accenture, people who've left Accenture, people I've met since I started singing, someone I haven't seen for over a year who travelled down with her husband and daughter from Harrogate (so chuffed to see you Barbara), one of my fellow Guildhall jazzers, my best friend's wife's brother and his mates, and even other people who I've met along the way, including Ian Shaw who I only met recently but feel like I've known at least my whole life. Really amazing. And the guys at the 606 made it a brilliant evening. Such a friendly place. I enjoyed every minute - which you might have been able to tell as I couldn't stop smiling. I try to act cool, calm and sophisticated but the sweat just doesn't allow for that. Coupled with the fact that I'm enjoying myself too much. I even threw in a few new songs and they seemed to do the business. Excellent. I really hope you'll all be there next time or they'll think the only people who were there were friends and family... ahem.

Anyway, only ONE more Christmas present to get, but it's an important one. Six years old, very wise and with exceedingly high standards - and why not, she's related to me... And my brother's birthday present. He has his birthday and Christmas very close together so there is always the one big or two small presents dilemma. I try to go for the two reasonably sized presents option as I think I would have been very disappointed with the 'this is for both' miserable cop-out.

As I remember I have a training session at 9am tomorrow morning, I glance over at the two 1.5kg tins of chocolates I've just bought for the festive season. Such a delicate balance...

Goodnight.

Rx

What a fab night...

Well, I really enjoyed that. Can't go in to great detail now as I'm totally knackered and have to hit the hay (after I snaffle down a few Shreddies) but thank you so much to everyone who came along to the 606. It made it a real night and a half - and Pete, Simon and Dave were amazing. Top band, top night, top everything. Looking forward to the next one...

Rx