Weddings are brilliant

I don't know about you, but I'm currently very much of the opinion that weddings are brilliant. Not only did Anders & me recently attend the very beautiful and wonderful wedding of our good friends Anna Ray & John, but we also celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Yay! Go us!

Anders got to DJ at the wedding and played some brilliant tunes to a room full of people high on wine & ceilidh dancing. The highlight for me wasn't Brass In Pocket (despite the fact that I drunkenly demanded it at an inopportune moment) it was the final tune of the night... We could've been anything that we wanted to be from Bugsy Malone. An inspired choice Anders, well done! I loved seeing the bride & groom dancing 20s-style with lots of happy friends & family - a golden moment. It also turned out that Anna Ray (like me) used to watch that film every day when she was little and knew all the words, so she loved it! What a great film it is too.

Anyway, here's a pic of us living it up at the wedding in beautiful Ross on Wye:


We also stayed in a lush cottage, got to hang out with lots of our wonderful friends who live in London and who we don't see very often AND we got to go canoeing in the rain. Magic.

Last weekend me n And popped up to Masham, which was where we got married last year. The Yorkshire Dales are brilliant. If you haven't been I'd recommend it. You can now get goat's cheese and probably even felafel, but that's all surface gloss, underneath it hasn't changed in 50 years. We went to the oldest sweetshop in Britain at Pateley Bridge and I reminisced about happy times there in my childhood. It's a lovely part of the country and very well stocked with tea & cake, if you like that sort of thing. We also discovered a mutual love of darts. Yep, me and Anders were living the high life on our anniversary! The only thing that was a bit weird was that I chose to take a book with me which turned out to be about a vaguely sinister boy living on the Yorkshire Moors (God's Own Country by Ross Raisin) which lent the whole weekend a slight air of menace somehow! This is it, I'd recommend it unless you're going to stay on the Moors for a romantic first anniversary weekend:


So, last night it was Anders' 32nd birthday (yes Anders, 32... not 31) and we met lots of dear friends in our local. I've been living practically next door to this pub for nearly 1 year and yet I haven't been in since before the smoking ban. That's bad isn't it? Anyway, we had a major darts tournament involving a game called "Killer" which is AMAZING and lots of darts bouncing off and hitting the floor. We were PRO. I nearly won apart from Bones had brought a ringer in and so Simon walked off with the glory. Still, at least I didn't go out first like Tom Whalley. SHAME!

I'll leave off this ramble now, hope you have a good week,

Becky
x

Thanks James & Angi!

Just wanted to pop up a quick post to say that the Marble Valley gig @ the Chameleon was amazing, and to say THANKS to James & Angi from Fists who made it happen.

Before the gig I had never heard of Marble Valley, let alone heard their music. To be honest I'm not 100% sure I've ever even heard Pavement before. So, I went along mainly to see friends and the music came second in the priority list. So much so that when I was sat downstairs talking (ask Joey Chickenskin for his new favourite euphemism for this) and someone said "I don't know if I can be bothered to go upstairs" I nearly agreed. I'm so glad I didn't. This was one of the best gigs I've been to in AGES. Life-affirming and just so enjoyable, I'm really glad I made the effort and climbed those 14 or so stairs!

If you haven't seen them then they are coming back in October i think. Their music was great, it had a sense of humour without being jokey and they were clearly all really great musicians. Especially the Maracas guy who played them with real intent! Steve West (the lead singer) was great, really funny and charming and somehow mesmerising, despite not being really "performance-y".

This is a bit rambly because I'm rubbish at writing about music and bands. Safe to say I enjoyed it so much that I bought the CD and me and Tom went to ask Steve West to sign them. I said "Tom you go first I'm a bit shy" which Tom took as a cue to say to Steve West ... "Steve this is Bex, she's really hot for you, will you sign her CD?". Tom, you are a total bozo. I really wanted to say something childish like "No! Tom thinks you're hot not me!" (Especially because earlier in the night I had compared Steve to a monster - in an admiring way, not a harsh one!). BUT, when he turned to look at me I couldn't say anything at all. He had such a lovely big face and soft gentle eyes, and he said "I'm a shy one too". I couldn't say anything, I just meekly gave him my cd and waited til later to berate Tom for being an idiot.

Ramble over, thank you James and the lovely Ang for bringing some new music to me and for putting on one of the best gigs I've been to in AGES.

Love Bex xx

p.s. I haven't read this through so if it's mental and full of typos I apologise!

Jumpers for Goalposts

Hello!

I really like Jumpers for Goalposts. Me and Anders had an action packed night last night. Well, first off we ate soup and watched a bit of telly and then I made us late by refusing to stop watching Come Dine With Me in order to go out into the real world and have fun. Then we raced into town armed with a large viking helmet, a box of craft supplies and a bag of records along with layers and layers of clothes, hats scarves etc. We dropped off the supplies at the Alley Cafe with Tom & Nick and went ice skating on the square! Ice skating is brilliant. We aren't brilliant at it, but it's brilliant anyway. I would love to go ice skating on a proper frozen lake one day, but for now skating round market square with some drunk showy-offy people will do.

Jumpers was, as always, brilliant. It was a christmassy theme so everyone made nativity scenes for the creative competition and some lovely people sang Christmas songs. Ashley Askins did some sterling work with some singalong carols, supported on backing vocals by Joey, Alyssa, Jaynie and Rob... not that they were asked... just kidding, it was beautiful. Joey also did his Nottingham Christmas song which rules and uses the word Beeston. He also demonstrated a marvellous falsetto taking the Kirsty McColl part on that Pogues Christmas song (too soon!).

The last live performance was my favourite though (sorry everyone else) because Nick Nock, Mayor of Gun City, did "All I want For Christmas" by Mariah Carey which is my favourite ever Christmas song. It really snowballed until Nick (the 3rd member of Hello Thor) was saying "now it's the ladies turn!" and "just the men now please" and we were all singing "ooooooooooOOOOooohhhh BABY!". I wanted it to happen 20 times in a row, but Nick felt he'd already been a bit self-indulgent and finished off.

Actually, I lied above, the last live performance was an entry to the nativity which was really really really really really really really strange. It was a mini play, one minute long and featured a pregnant man named Roger, a drunk man shouting "Vikings" and some stuff about "the system". They won a prize for the sheer effort which had gone into it. Second place was won by Jaynie's crew for their Reversible Super Jesus and first place was won by a Prog Rock Christmas from the minds of Jenna and Rachel of Kathleen & Lily's. I'll post some pics up when I've found my camera and loaded them online.

Tom played some great music, danced like a wally and didn't talk to girls.

Thanks to all the Jumpers for Goalposts people for a lovely time.

Bex
xx

p.s. I forgot to mention that my favourite entry to the Creative Competition was a baby jesus with a paper chain umbilical cord. It was the best one by miles and should have won all the prizes. But, then again the prizes were rubbish (GOLD coins, MYRHH-th (a kenny everett record) and FRANKENSTEIN comics and FRANK-INCENSE, Frank Sinatra endorsed incense. Like I said, rubbish) so maybe it's best that it didn't win.

Mask Mayhem

Hello!

We went along to Jumpers For Goalposts at the Alley Cafe last week and witnessed some truly disturbing activities...

The creative competition was about making a summer-solstice-wicker-man-creepy-mask and these were the results:


Competition Entrants (I want to make a joke about how this is them without their masks, but I'll refrain...)



The person who made this proudly declared themselves "The Winner"... they weren't. They came 3rd. However, it is an amazing creation.



Look at what it does!



2nd Place was Joey Chickenskin who won an album for old people couples which made me feel a bit sad... good sad, but sweet old people break my heart a bit, so that album got me big time!



Victory! Alison came first with her amazing elephant mask creation. Look at this photo... that's real victory for you, that's how you should celebrate when you win something.




Tom was really funny when he became "Prize Master". When I mentioned this later he let me into a little secret... he's a "prop comic... like Joe Pasquale", and those prizes were great props. An old couples album, a mug with an alsatian on it and the triumphant hand with a bee on it... as modelled by Anders:



Anyway, it was lots & lots of fun, so thanks to Tom & Everyone at the Alley Cafe for such a great evening!

Bex
xxx

Nottingham on Radio 1

Hi!

Just wanted to let you know that Steve Lamacq's In New Music We Trust show on Radio One featured a bunch of Notts stuff last night with the segment hosted by the lovely Tom Whalley from NotInNottingham!

If you go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/innewmusicwetrust/stevelamacq/ you can listen to this week's show again and hear Fists on national radio, as well as a bunch of other great Notts bands!

love

Becky
x

Random Friday night in Nottingham

Well, I hope you had a nice weekend? While our lovely Supernight colleagues were making their way round the East Midlands spreading the Fists gospel, me and Anders were enjoying a nice weekend at home. Just thought I'd share a couple of moments with you.

We went for dinner on Friday to celebrate my lovely sister Katie's birthday. We ate at Bodrum on Mansfield Road, which I would really recommend. Great food and service. I ate a lot of chicken and it tasted good.

We then trotted off to enjoy the delights on show for "Light Night", organised by the City Council. We missed most of it because we were too busy eating, but we did get chance to go on the ludicrously-named Nottingham Eye. Ludicrous name, wonderful thing to do. We really fell in love with Nottingham all over again and remembered what felt special about this city when we moved here nearly 10 years ago. I'd recommend a night time visit, and take more than two people with you so you get the carriage to yourself, it's better that way.

Our last visit of a busy evening was to see Spokinn Movement at the Maze, courtesy of The Hustle. As a rule I'm not a fan of live hip-hop, I generally just feel like i'm being told off what with all that shouting, however, this was really good. Not best ever, but fun and friendly, which goes a long way.

Finally we went to Tom Whalley's house, which is always fun, even when he doesn't have any biscuits. However, as we left we came across a man sitting on the pavement next to his gate. Now, me and Anders have faced this situation a couple of times before and we're quite practised (along with Nick) at making sure people get home and don't freeze to death on our chilly streets. So, we swung into action with a cheery "Are you alright?" only to be fixed with a beady stare as the man removed his earphones and declared "I'm listening to Goldfrapp!" as though this explained everything and we were rather rude for interrupting. "Fair enough" we said, and went home.

Hope you had a good random Friday too.

Love Becky

x

p.s. two film recommendations - avoid Sweeney Todd and go see Juno