Spare Room Be our guest…

Happy New Year!!! and that,

Well… the tour was good. I like playing music a lot and I got to do it every day for two and a half weeks except that one day off in Dunedin. I also like swimming and eating which I got to do a lot of as well. The weather was really amazing down south which was awesome for us but every now and then you’d hear a farmer comment on the weather forecast with deep, deep sorrow and I’d feel bad for enjoying it so much. At our gig in Marahau park (where the Abel Tasman track begins – I’ll do it one day, I will) there was a really drunk guy who kept yelling out at fairly regular intervals “let it rain!” and it became our catch-phrase for the rest of the tour so I guess we did our part for the farmers. Let it raiiiin!

Since the tour I have done lots of summer holiday things like everyone has. It’s been a good one. The tomatoes went crazy while we were on tour and when we came back they needed about three stakes per plant which is not ideal and now when I see my friend Emma’s tomato plants with their single, straight stem I have garden envy. I tell myself the soil is more fertile in Raglan but really I think they just have better gardening skills. But I discovered some apple cucumbers that survived the snail onslaught of 2007! Oh it was a happy moment.

I’ve been to some really good gigs. I saw Billy Bragg at the Leigh Sawmill. It was the most I’ve enjoyed a gig in a really long time. You know when you just feel like going crazy the whole time and you sing along to all the words and you know you look like a dick for it but you can’t help it because it’s your favourite? Yeah, like that. I even got my fan-stalk on and got him to sign some of my records. I saw him again at the Big Day Out and it didn’t translate as well so I’m glad I went up to Leigh. Saw some other good stuff at the BDO but from a frustrating distance because there was so many people there but oh well. Still great. And I’m going down to Wanaka to perform with the Eru Dangerspiel super group at Rippon and I’m going to Splore and it’ll be my first time at either of these festivals so……. woo hoo! Then Soundsplash in Raglan City. And then in March my first gigs with my band! I’m so excited and a tiny bit nervous but mostly excited.

Lastly- I have been reading that book by Bill Bryson about everything (I don’t actually like his writing style but it has lots of neat and apparently accurate information that I can understand about things I wouldn’t normally understand). I recommend learning about the universe purely because it gives you a good perspective on your place and insignificance in the world. And I don’t mean it in a “oh I’m so insignificant what’s the point and I’m depressed” kind of way. I find such a perspective very liberating because when something seems bad you can just think “really I’m just a collection of atoms that will one day be redistributed into the wider universe so is it really that bad on the scale of things?”. Now, my friend Eamon would say that that attitude is bad because it could be used to justify terrible things but I don’t mean it like that. I mean it’s handy for when you’re “sweating the small stuff”, but generally we measure things not on the scale of the universe but on the scale of our own human lives, so such a perspective does not hold any weight in a more serious situation, or in a court of law. But things like this can be a can of fucking worms so they’re hard to talk about. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have opinions about hard to talk about topics, right? Is it? Isn’t it?

Anyway- I have to go and do loads of laundry now and have a practice. Everybody come to my gig at the King’s Arms on March 1st! It’s gonna be great! Or Yot Club in Raglan on March 7th! Nau mai! Haere mai! Haere mai ki te whakarongo ki oku waiata hou! (I’m still learning. Kaua e judge me!)

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