A surprise gig

Merry Christmas :)

It's a bit of a tradition that Ben and I catch up for dinner with the Reading crowd sometime between Christmas and New Year. (By Reading crowd I mean people Ben went to college - aka senior high school - with.) As it happened we had a very nice dinner on Boxing Day at a place called The Jazz Cafe in Reading. The place was empty so we had the small restaurant room to ourselves. Best of all, they had a jazz pianist playing, so in effect we had our own private pianist. He was excellent, and played lots of numbers we enjoyed bopping along to in our seats. I must have bopped pretty enthusiastically, because Ebru started demanding that I get up and sing a song. To be honest, I really wanted to - it was a brilliant opportunity to sing informally in front of people I knew, so I didn't need much persuading.

I got up and sang 'All I want for Christmas is you' - the Mariah Carey version, slightly adapted for people like me whose voices don't span four octaves.

It was great, I got a huge round of applause and lots of compliments and felt really good. So good I wanted to get up and do it again. So I did. This time I sang 'Nobody does it better' (Carly Simon). I sat down again, but it wasn't long till everyone had me up singing a bunch of songs. It had been so long since I'd done that that I couldn't think of any songs to sing! I ended up doing 'Cheek to Cheek', 'Let's stay together', 'Blue Moon', 'I only want to be with you', 'These arms of mine' and probably a couple more I can't remember. A veritable set list!

It was a really wonderful experience, everyone was really pleased I'd done it and kept giving me compliments. I guess I feel a little rusty and my confidence has suffered for it but this little surprise gig has really inspired me to learn more jazz tunes and revive and revamp my songlist. I even exchanged cards with the pianist... who knows, I might even gig professionally with him one day! My dream is to have a regular gig in a jazz bar, say one night a week, so this really was a taste of a dream come true... Thanks to the powers that be!!

Me and my legwarmers

My colleague Claire finds it hilarious that I wear legwarmers when I walk to work. It's friggin' cold, that's why!!

Anyway when she saw me she started singing the theme tune from 'Fame' and demanded I do a high kick for the camera. So here it is. Effortful expression and all. Plus a close-up of said legwarmers.

Ah, I love the work wind-down to Christmas :)

Feeling royally shitful

(Warning: moan alert)
I woke up this morning with a splitting headache, stomacheache, nausea and dehydration and thought I may have food poisoning. This is on top of taking all of last week off for a throat virus, which also sapped me of my strength for half a week a fortnight ago, and for an entire weekend a fortnight before that.

I am really over being ill! Can't I have a break from it, please? :(

A really lovely album

It's been a weird couple of weeks. Weird mainly because I've been ill and taken a week off work. When that happens it throws your sense of timing and reality off as your whole routine is put on hold. And being thrown like that when Christmas is approaching is really weird as you lose touch with the outside world's excitement building up. One day everything's normal, a week later you leave the flat and there are decorations everywhere, in people's windows, on buses etc. Not that I mind of course... it's lovely :)

But in the midst of all this strangeness, I have been listening to a gorgeous album over and over again. It's called "Neptune City" by Nicole Atkins, who Ben randomly found on MySpace a couple of years ago. We've been entranced ever since.

Neptune City is dreamy and lovely and magical. My fave song is "Maybe Tonight", the first track. It really sums up how I'm feeling at the moment... that mystical wonderful things can happen and are happening. Love and Fate and mystery. Love it. Thanks Nicole, you're a gem!