From dawn till dusk

This is the view out my teaching room window at Aquinas college, those purple trees are everywhere over here. They are called Jacaranda trees and when they shed their leaves it looks like they are casting a purple shadow on the ground.

And this is the sunset across the road from our house last night, my camera doesnt do it justice, it was like looking at a sunset on mars!

Spiderbaby!!!

Finn got bitten by a spider a few days ago, it wasnt a poisonous one so he is ok and he is on medication to bring down the swelling, but the exact same thing happened to Peter Parker at the start of the spiderman film which kinda made me think what it would be like to be spidermans uncle?!?!?!

A walk in Guildford

We went for breakfast and a stroll in a little town not too far from our place last sunday morning, its a really old town (by ozzie standards) which was the last stop of civilisation before you had to undertake a 800km trip with your donkey and cart to go gold mining.

There are some really old houses (again, old by ozzie standards) with lots of big trees and the like. I really liked this letter box.

And here is a street of some fantastic trees.

Monday Day Out With Finn

We spent the day out with Finn the other day, great craic! This posts theme is all about his vehicles

Here he is in a speedy green sportscar/shopping trolley taking the racing line through the shopping centre

And here he is going off road in his 4x4 super truck, complete with sound effects from the finn man himself, bbrrrrrrrrmmmmm bbbrrrrrmmmm

This is Finn riding co-pilot on my bike complete with police helmet, every time I rang my bell he honked that red squeaky horn, twas hilarious

And last but not least here is the gay-pride super-lovebot i made for him out of his building blocks.

Finn Update

We got Finn a seat for the bike the other day an dhe had his first go off it yesterday, he thought it was fantastic. More photos can be found here

Occupational injuries...

With all this time off i now have as a musician, i am able to do a lot more cool stuff, cycling, beer making, reading, beer drinking, eating, beer making and computer games. I love a good gaming session, but because i havent played intensively for ages I am getting a bit of whats known as "playstation claw", click on the above diagram for to zoom in.

Gigcam....

Remember that solo gig I did a while back, well here it is reviewed with yours truly getting a bit of media real-estate at the bottom right corner. I also managed to make it into this months Irish Scene which means I have been in every issue this year (bi-monthly) much to the annoyance of Jane and Adam. Tee hee hee.

Happy Saint Cecilia's day

Patron saint of music, St Cecilia has a bit of an unusual history but nevertheless tis a day of note in any musicians calender. Happy St Cecilias day everyone.

Random stuf update

I like cycling, its a fact, i have been cycling for years and find it an efficient/cheap an dhealthy form of transport. So today for my bike i got a baby seat, for the Finn man, it al looks good except I am having some second thoughts about the big red honker horn i got attched to his handle bars...

And here are two of my beers, in regulation bottles, about to be shipped off to the Western Australian beer competition. i dont expect to win and these beer were both experimental, but it will be interesting to get an experts review of my work. the last competition i entered i think was Feis Mathiu 2001 viola concert competition, which i won, and didnt even play a concerto, 5 mins before the show I penciled in "mov1", "mov2", and "mov3", above some contrasting parts of the song and managed to pull the wool over the adjuticators eyes monentarily. hahahhaaha.

Day out with the Fin man

We had a day out with Finn the other day, he is brilliant. On our walk to the shops, he insisted on stopping and smelling every flower he passed. Truly an inspiration to contemporary accellerated societey, he is wise beyond his years...

..then we got him lunch, which 70% of which resided on his face. To learn the 'way of the Finn', is an arduous task!

Here he is on theway home in a 'borrowed' trolley with his hat. We rolled him home with the trolley facing the other way so he could see where he was going, in an attempt to introduce him at an early age to the arbitrary concepts of quantum logic and inverse-time, too see where you are going, not where you have been.

And last but not least, this is the sight that greeted us the other night, a huntsman spider, after an intense period of deciding how to deal with this arachnid menace, we decided that it was best to leave him be, shut the door and hope he would decide to go away. No sign of him the following morning, but we are still on the lookout.

Skype

This skype thing is great, for those of you who dont have it, get it. You can chat away for hours, for free! This is a picture of Mick Hally's chin

The latest version of skype can handle video calls with little or no lag now so its pretty good quality. Here is Mick again and you can jsut make out the thumbnail of me in the bottom left. My skype ID is violacharlie so if you are ever online give me a shout, i am mostly online at weekends.

Sundays Gigs

I had a bit of a busy one yesterday, look at the amount of kit I had to lug around too. First gig was a 3 hour quartet gig in a fancy shop in town (kinda like brown thomas for those back home)on viola (which i still dont get to play enough of) then off to a wedding playing violin, hence the good violin in the green case, then off to an irish band gig, so I use my "stunt" violin for that one, the brown case, and the other two bags are leads and music. A lot of people ask me the difference between the violin and the fiddle, i have surmised a few analogies which help some folk understand what's the difference is?

* When you are buying it, it's a fiddle. When you are selling it, it's a violin
* The violin sings, the fiddle dances
* A fiddle is a violin with attitude
* No one cries when they spill beer on a fiddle

And because it can easily get to 50+ degrees in a parked car these days I had to carry all this stuff around with me to each gig. It was like being a one man band!

This is a picture after my 11 hours of giggery, a well deserved pint and a well fiddled with fiddle

Happy Birthday Oliver

It was Olivers birthday last week, he was 1 and took us all out for a great big meal.

Here he is at the head of the table keeping an eye on things

This particulat resteraunt had the worlds largest pepper-mill!

And later back at Olivers house I got to hang out with Ernie the muppet, look at him guzzling that wine.

Live footage....

This one just in from the birthday boy Finbarr, who is an 18 year old with 23 years experience at it.

We played at Janes end of year recital the other day, i featured as viola AND page turner (naturally i stole the show with my epic page turning). One of the pieces was the mozart flute quartet in D and the other three players were:

James Charles is the guy I do some relief teaching for, he runs the tres classique website and is a general legend in the Perth music scene. He learned how to play the french horn just so he could instruct his brass section how to breath through particular sections, and he is a pretty good french horn player now too. His website is here.

This is Andy Patrick. He does all the same stuff as James, teaching and gigs etc, he runs this site and is also the president of the Australian Strings Association AUSTA

And this guy is the worlds most jammiest viola player who is doing a gig with Eric Idle in a fortnight.

Look what I found

Right around the corner from whisky in the jar avenue.....