A smile is all it takes

With more energy and enthusiasm than Ultimate Warrior's entrance, I'm back.

I've decided it'll almost certainly be too hard thinking of a good Ultimate Warrior reference for the start of each blog. I might change it up and reference a different 1980s/1990s wrestler each time for amusement. There's much more mileage in that I think.

Currently, it's Monday evening and I'm sat at home. The key part here is that I'm sat at home. It's quite nice really, I get to sleep in my own bed for a couple of nights before heading off to Leeds for a couple more days. I think the current plan there is to stick around until we move into the house at the start of July and then I'll most likely be home for a good while, heading up to Leeds if there are things going on with drumming or when I just fancy escaping for a couple of days.

We did the Grassington parade on Friday which was a really good event. Despite reading some reports that suggested we'd get rained on (and possibly the event being rained off), we managed to survive with just a bit of drizzle early on, and by the time we got going we were in glorious sunshine. We had a group of four playing, and it was made even more impressive by the fact that one of the members had only been playing for a couple of days and we hadn't all played together until we started. All things considered, we sounded pretty good.

Getting back to Leeds on Friday evening was pretty chilled apart from needed to do a quick house-to-house job to borrow some jump leads after we had a quick problem with the Drum-mobile. Once we got back, there was enough time to get back to the flat, grab my bag and for Rachel to ponder what she wanted to eat on the way home. Couldn't say much about the coach journey...it was about as boring as you'd expect, I listened to some podcasts and drifted in an out of sleep. By the time we got back to Liverpool, it was about 1.20am. The taxi then didn't arrive despite us waiting until 2am before getting bored/cold/tired and jumping in a black cab. So I walked through the front door just over an hour after the coach got to Liverpool.

Africa Oyé was a bloody good day out. To all of those who attended, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. To those who didn't, you missed a very good weekend. If you don't live in the city, I suggest you check out a similar festival in your area (or come to Oyé in 2012!). They're brilliant events and a great chance to check out some of the finest world music there is to offer. I even left the event with a new hat to add to my collection, which is always a good thing.

Beatlife sounded absolutely phenomenal. I think the last gig I did with them could well have been the Lantern Parade last October. I've played since then in a couple of rehearsals, but to be honest, I went in not being completely sure about what was going on. Bit of a strange experience really, but it's pretty nice to know that the rhythms and breaks are stored in the back of my mind somewhere. There were a few points when I was a bit confused with breaks and whatnot, but for me, I just kept smiling and enjoying the experience of playing on stage to a rather large crowd.

The rest of the week is looking pretty good in Liverpool. Tuesday will have a trip to Mello with Smoo for some food and a chatter about the world before going to drumming. Since it's Senna day, I'm off to the cinema with Andrew afterwards to go and see the film once again. No doubt I'll still be completely enthralled by it and just as gripped as I was the first time. Wednesday should feature a bit of mini golf with Crawley and Hamling, who I realised I've only mentioned in my blog once or twice. In 46 entries, that's shameful and I'm very sorry about that. Sorry guys!

Crazy to think that I'm now just over a week and a half from being able to move into the house, which in turn means that it's less than three weeks until the British Grand Prix. I'll be honest, I'm getting more and more excited for it each day...which could explain why I'm downloading the entire 1996 season. Madness!

That's more than enough ramble from me for today really. Enjoy your evening!