Something is a changing!

So after a fantastic weekend at Hammeredfest, I came away feeling uplifted and happy with everything. Then the post festival blues hit on Sunday and I had a sudden moment of 'oh, I'm sad now'. It happens after you spend a weekend enjoying yourself with fantastic people. But you soon realise that it won't be long until the next fantastic weekend and you get to see some, if not most of those people again soon, so no need to be sad.

However, when the sadness hit it didn't come alone. Oh no, it brought post festival lurgi with it too, or actually in my case, a form of tonsillitis. Now the daft thing here is, technically it's not tonsillitis but the Doc said that it's the closest approximation he can make for self inflicted swollen tonsils with vocal strain and the remnants of a cold I thought had past! I don't do things by half, eh?

Upshot is, I got horrendously drunk on the Friday of the festival. Not something I'm proud of as I always make a complete tit of myself when drunk. We had attended a friends chalet for their 'Power Ballads Party' and once the songs started I, in my inebriated state, simply had to outdo everyone in earshot and across the Dee in vocal loudness. Needless to say that will be how I got the vocal strain. The hangover the next morning was not nice in the slightest, and probably aided in swelling the tonsils. But it was all my own doing, so I'm not looking for sympathy, far from it. In fact please do tell me off as it was very stupid.

So I am banned from singing until no earlier than this Sunday and then only quietly so I can write lyrics. Otherwise I have to rest until Monday and then ease myself back in to ensure the chords have had adequate recuperation... I'm such a div! So the long, and short of it is, I can't be doing that to my voice and it is probable that if I get tipsy/drunk/gazeeboed (thanks Michael McIntyre for the last one) again I'll end up doing the same thing as I'm a competitive sod and stupid to boot.

So, dearest reader, I'm going teetotal. Yep, that's right, you read it correctly I'm giving up alcohol completely. And it scares the bejesus out of me, but here we go. The way I see it is this, most musicians don't throw their instruments around and soak the in mildly acidic fermented products that strip them of things they need, rendering them useless for a week. So why am I doing that to my instrument? In fact to sing the whole body needs to be looked after as it's the casing the instrument is carted around in. I really should look after it a bit better, don't you think?


So there we have it, I'll let you know how I get on :)

K
x

HammeredFest

Well that was fun! No, seriously. We had the most fun this past weekend at Pontins Prestatyn for the third installment of Hammerfest.... Roma victa. I was tempted to start talking to those in Roman atire in Latin, but I don't think they would have got the joke ;)

So we all rocked up around about two in the afternoon, unpacked, got ourselves some food and then headed to the third stage to check in with Peter, our stage manager, and the event crew. I have to say we had the nicest people again crewing for us, very helpful, very chatty and always stopped for a chin wag through the rest of the weekend. We got ourselves set up and ready to roll, but first a DJ and Dirty Rose. In the meantime various friendly faces and twitter pals had started to turn up and much screaming of 'oh my god, hello lovely, hello darling' was heard, mainly from Owen.

6:10pm came very quickly and we were all set up to take the stage and kick things off a little early. The set went well apart from a few minor hiccoughs.

Glyn lost all power to his amp and when the power returned it set it back to clean. So after a little jiggery pokery he got it back to distortion and blistered his way through the Lies solo. My mic receiver got knocked and it decided to change channel... thankfully at the end of a song. So reverted to a lead mic for the remainder of the set. How I didn't trip over the lead, or trip anyone else up I'll never know.

As it turned out, the band that were headlining stage 3 that night didn't turn up, so we were asked to pad out and extend our set if we could. So, in true Triaxis style, that's exactly what we did. We threw in a cover of The Wickerman which had the entire crowd singing the chorus back to us, and we finished with Aurora (which as it turned out was the favourite of a number of people). The pub area was absolutely heaving and the feedback that we had after our set was very positive. All in all, we were very happy with how the set had gone.

The rest of the weekend was a hoot. Catching up with old friends and making new ones, seeing bands that we enjoy and spending time with some of them. Yep I think Hammerfest was a good weekend overall.

Now to shift this thick throat that I have developed (touch wood it's not tonsillitis) and time to carry on writing and preparing for the next gig... April 9th in Liecester.

K
x

Rediscovering my Yooff!

So after a depressive period during 2010 that forced me to get a grip of myself and discover why I was taking everything so damned personally, I realised that there was one thing utterly missing from my life..... simple childlike fun.

As a hobby I do live action role play. Yes I dress up as an Elf (it use to be a Russian gypsy and before that countless make up hours to obtain the look for a Geisha Orc - don't ask it's a fantasy world and I like it), I run around a scout camp between various tented camps, swig mead in the character tavern and generally have fun. However, I am also staff and a responsible bod at these events so I can't really relax and kick back until time out by which point I just want to sleep.

The band is a source of continuous enjoyment but that too will always come with it's stresses and strains, as does running any business. That said there is more enjoyment than stress where the band is concerned so that is always a bonus. The gym for me is fun but also a means to an end in that it aids on the weight loss and keeping in relatively good health.

However not one of these things constitute as childlike fun. All these things have adult responsibilities attached to them and there in lies the problem. So after chatting to my counsellor (yes I have one of these and I must say it has been the best thing I have ever done), she suggested that I put the fun back in and get on a swing in the playground. Well, having always stated that the family moto is 'I may be getting older but I refuse to grow up', who am I not to take the sage advice of my therapist and put the childlike fun back?

So before Christmas I had the harebrained idea that for my birthday I would like to book a soft play centre. Unfortunately as the idea was late in the day and we had many gigs and the tour to contend with, that idea went on the back burner. But I am booking it this year.... yes 36 and I'm booking a sleepover party in a kids soft play centre. You know the ones with huge slides and climbing frames with all that spongey wipe-clean stuff?

Yes we can take a stereo so we can blast out metal as we act like 10 year olds and as it will be a private booking on their licensed night we can take some beverages.... what's not to love about this idea? Oh and we can sleep over... WIN!

Just after Christmas I received a belated yule present from my hubby.

An adult size space hopper. I had one as a kid and now I recall why I had such toned limbs.... it's hard work but hilarious. I adore it. I use it when I fell a little 'meh' as the kids say today, and get on that bounding up and down the hallway or around the dining room. Immense fun.

The latest thing I have purchased in my rediscovering of my childhood fun are roller-skates. Not these inline jobbies that have been everywhere for the last 20 years but good old fashioned quad wheeled roller boots. In fact these are the pair that I have bought and am waiting delivery of.

They are almost identical to the pair I had when I was 8 years old. Most kids had the skates that you attached to a shoe. Imagine how posh I felt having proper boots like Olivia Neutron Bomb had in Xanadu? (I love that film.. even though it's crass). I adored my roller boots. I lived in the damn things during the summer and when it came time to throw them as they were wrecked they had been superseded by those damned infernal inline skates and quads were a thing of the past. I was gutted.

But now 26+ years on and I own them again.... I can't wait to get down Aberafan beach and make a complete tit of myself on the half-pipe trying to do the tricks I could do as a child. It's going to hurt, it'll be fairly embarrassing but most of all, it'll be heaps of FUN :)

K

x