Finn meets Santa 2007

Finn went off to meet santa today, but he was afraid of his beard so Jane got to meet santa too.

Gig of the year

Yup, the day has arrived. I am just back from a rehersal of "not the messiah". I was grinning like an idiot from start to finish. The monty python ethos has always been "and now for something completely different", and this music certainly keeps that in mind. 50's do wop, swing, rosinni, mozart, bob dylan, bagpipe quartet, its got it all! More gig-cam shots to follow, dress rehersal tomorrow.

Special treatment...

We had a small party yesterday, christmas cocktails and stuff, to try and get into the christmas spirit, and we went out for a meal. I decided, after a few beers, that if I wore my medal i would get special treatment in the resteraunt. Here I am selecting my wine for the evening. No special treatment occured, although I did get some funny looks from the guy in the bottle shop when i told him I was an olympic trapeeze artist....

More ozzie delights

They eat a lot of stuff here that we dont have back home. Here is one of them. An innocent looking pizza and a few beers you think? Close, its a crocodile pizza! It tastes like a cross between chicken and cod. Really tasty!

the lads

Its been a while since we saw any of finn and reilly, so here they are hanging out in the bar.

Car-cam

ok, its a bad picture, taken whilst driving on a cameraphone, but you can just about make out that vehicle. Its a stretch harley!

Gig-cam

Here is another wierd one. We were booked to play for a meal on the stage of a theatre. It was surreal. I reckon with a bit of clever marketing you could have charged people to come and see it, taking reality tv shows to a whole new level!

Black Velvet Band moves up a notch

Check this out. We did a concert the other day, a full on irish folk music concert, for a packed cinema. Its an old style cinema and we were on the stage. We played for just under an hour.

check out our parking space, right next to the mayors!


And here are the tickets to our show, hot property i can tell ya!

KC's- chippercam

Yup, everyone knows its my favourite chipper in the world, KC's of douglas has always impressed and I have yet to find its equal over here in Oz. However, for a bit of nostalgia the cuz sent me this link the other day. Its their live direct security feed. So for all you KC lovers who miss their incredible food and unpredictable operating hours then check it out.

Presents from Finn

We play in the Irish Club every week here in Perth, its like a social hall crossed with a pub and it has a big box of toys at the back of the room for the kids. Finn found a transformer there last week and "aquired" it and gave it to me as a present for my transformers collection. What a guy!

Finn's new favourite hobbies

He had his first tinkle of the ivories this morning. He likes things with buttons, DVD players, light switches anything that he can press, so you can imagine how excited he was to see this row of buttons!

He is strong enough to open the fridge door now, look at the first thing he pulled out and gave to me. Good training that!

Dear oh deer......

On the way back from Margaret River we stopped off at the local bambi ranch.

They had all sorts of products, deer meat has 1% fat so they can do a lot with it, and yes i did say to the guy working there "i'd like some sausages, are they dear?", his glare penetrated my idiotic grin like a ten pound hammer

There were a few other things there too such as kangaroo salami and emu ham, all tasty. In fact, Australia is one of the few countrys in the world who eat their national animals

We came away with a bunch of stuff, the sausages were my favourite. All will be cooked up next tuesday as we have Venison Night.

Monopoly Party

It happenned eventually. After 12 hours of wine, beer, cucumber cocktails, wine, beer and wine it was decided to go home and play monopoly.

Here is Jason getting revved up for a killer game of shrewd negotiations and decisive business finesse.....

Here is Jason in jail, for the first time.....

Here is Jason bailing himself out of jail for the 4th time, this was around 4am, carolyns marker had evolved into that wooden manaquin and the property tycoon with the matching red hotels is I.

More......

This is Jason pouring us a few glasses in Vasse Felix, one of the first wineries in the region. We were helping Carolyn set up for a gig there and the owner came out and said "help yourselves there lads". Not bad!

You cant beat the straight forward attitude of ozzie advertising. In an age of political awareness, nanny-state rules, the ozzies still find a way to keep it real.

General thumbs up to the cucumber cocktails from a wine bar in margaret river called Wino's.

And here is Jasons main from the watershed earlier that day, i think it is trying to escape. CLAAAWWW

Day 2: the watershed

Day 2, we all went off to a winery. The way it works is simple, you walk in the door, have a selection of all the wines they make on site, then buy whatever bottles you want. It is quite common to spend a day visiting several wineries and sampling everything in site before buying anything.

Here we are in the Watershed, an amazing place. We had a party at Carolyns the night before and we got chatting to a guy who turned out the be the chef at this place, Solomon Rainbow Yeats, an amazing guy. We told him we had already planned to go there the following day and he said "just order your mains, ill look after the rest".............

Here is the mildly hungover Jayno delighted to be facing into another day of wine related activities.

This was the starter, incredible food, Sol is an artist! This tasting plate had 5 different starters EACH, incredible, really incredible food. I had kangaroo for the main, the lads had fish and jane had the beef.

And this is the deserts. That one on the far right was curry ice-cream. Tastes a whole lot better than it sounds!

More holiday snaps

Here is that ocean point again.

There were a fair few observation platforms like this with telescopes so you could see ships, whales and lots of water.

And here is the photo of the year by Jane!

And here is another one of the sun right behind the lighthouse