Surviving Christmas...........

December 8th:
While we were all thinking we should be at the Quo gig, we were playing a highly satisfactory show at The Railway, Bromley Cross. The girls whose very nice bottoms made it to the inside photo of our Christmas EP sleeve were there, but we were too gentlemanly to point them out.

December 9th:
Another request for us to play a gig later this month came in before Ian E set off to play at The Three Pigeons, Astley Bridge. This was from a venue looking for a band for Monday 18th December - the guy who wanted us had seen us at the Old Cock. Sadly, we were not going to be available.

This evening's gig..... Again, the band played well. There was an enthusiastic crowd early on, but it seems the new landlord has unbanned all the idiots, so they were back in and fighting with each other. There was blood. Someone threw an object at Ian E, which nearly had us packing up and going home after three songs. The enthusiastic crowd thinned as a result and when we had finished playing, we voted not to go back there next year. A shame, as it's not a bad little place. It just needs the idiots banning again.

December 10th:
The two Ian's are parting with some equipment. Ian H is upgrading his amplifier to a LINE 6 combo - like Steve's - and is parting with a recent Gibson SG and another guitar, plus his Fender combo amp. Ian E is parting with a totally mint condition Yamaha APX5 12A 12string electro-acoustic that has hardly ever been used. If anyone is interested in any of these items, please email via the website.

December 15th:
The Bike and Hound, Hyde. A good evening's rock and roll.

December 16th:
The Cherry Gardens, Wigan - one of our favourite venues, with our favourite landlord (Russell). A totally bonkersmungous crowd - including our mates from rent-a-crowd who it was great to see. One of our best ever gigs, and we are pleased to be back there 5 times next year. Brilliant. Thanks very much indeed to everyone who was there.

December 19th:
The whole band descended upon the jam night at The Eagle and Child, Ashton to watch Howie and The Incredibles strutting their funky stuff. Unbelievable, we are in awe. They were the good news of the night - the bad news being that Ian E went in to drop some posters for our January 6th gig at The Colliers Rest, Leigh, only to find that they were cancelling all bands. Of course, the landlady hadn't actually thought of telling any bands that their gigs are cancelled. Ian asked when we were to going be told and she had no idea. The stupidity starts here.

December 23rd:
A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who came along to tonight's gig at The White Lion, UpHolland - one of our favourite intimate venues - especially our good mates in 'Rent a crowd'. A cracking night was hopefully had by all. We certainly enjoyed ourselves and played a marathon second half, which included a number of songs we haven't played to a pub audience for ages and a couple of requests from the depths of our vault.

December 24th:
It just remains to wish everyone a really happy Christmas and a great New Year. Cheers everyone from Col, Steve, Ian and Ian.

This Christmas was quiet on the band front. We hadn't chased anything for Christmas Eve or Boxing day. I went out for a curry on Christmas Eve with Lynda, her business partner and B's two children. We were home for 8.30, as we had gone early to avoid the rush in Bolton town centre.

Christmas day was spent with Lynda's mum (88 or thereabouts) and her daughter (22) at ours. A quiet day, apart fom having to go to the sandwich shop that she's opening soon later on to do some bits... Lynda was back in there on Boxing day while I spent the afternoon with my two. Out later with Rach and Paul to Shere Khan in Rusholme for another curry.

Christmas day was the day my PC decided to start dying on me again, so I spent some of the time repeatedly repairing Windows XP to get through whatever its latest crisis was being. No internet, intermittent logins and shutdowns at random. I had just finished work on a flyer for my web design business at 2am Christmas day. Fortunately I HAVE managed to rescue it.

After spending most of yesterday in the shop doing stuff, I ended up going to Comet near the Trafford centre to buy a new laptop. £500 down the pan.... Then I had to install all of the garbage that I use for building sites. Dreamweaver MX, Selteco gif animator, Photoshop 7, Ipswitch FTP - as well as Mailwasher 3 pro that junks all the spam I used to get.

No time really to muck about with the new Fender bass that I bought for Christmas. I have used it at a couple of gigs, though.

Today was more work in the shop and I mastered the pricing gun. Clint Eastwood watch out. 45p you're dead! We were in there from 12.45 to about 7.30pm. No rest for the wicked. She's having an open day on Saturday and the shop oens at breakfast time on Tuesday 2nd.

Tomorrow I am going to be back in work, explaining why people's JSA payments didn't arrive over Christmas. I am in 'voluntarily because a whinging git I work with and I were told only one of us could be off, so names would go in a hat. He told me he'd be going off sick if he ended up being chosen to come in, as his buses would be dreadful to get to work, so I was blackmailed into coming in. Not happy about that.

Saturday is the shop opening, which I will have to hover round at, making myself 'useful'.

New Year's Eve sees us do a gig near Halifax which I am slightly apprehensive about, as my lot want to be a rock band and have started to refuse to pay the game when we do club gigs thru our agent. I have to front the band and it's not on to have people muttering about having to do this Beatles song and that other wimpy song, etc.

I have been talking through this problem with a good mate of mine and now I am thinking of sacking off all the club gigs next year as they are too much stress.