Check out our new postman

Here is a few photos of Fin getting the mail the other day

He's very usefull for a 2 foot human

He even throws away the bills, very usefull!

And here he is with his favourite train-set at his grandmas.

Weekly news

Hello there blogfans. Another week has passed in the blink of an eye, what have i been up to? I did a few gigs, a recording with Courtney Murphy, had a great week of teaching and wore my fancy new pink tie that Jane got me at every available opportunity. One more week till holidays AND my mom is visiting soon, so very excited about that.

Anyhoo, back to this weeks news. Here is that long awaited half'a'wine barrel that we use to store wood blocks for our vestibule

And whats this? Its me in the midst of demolishing our bathroom, all new stuff is arriving tomorrow so I have the enviable task of bashing the bejaysus out of the tiles with a sledgehammer. Very therapeutic.

And this is the latest technological addition to the gaff. Its a cd/dvd player which is just small enough to fit in right under that amp i got from Wayne next door which fits exactly into the space left by the drawer. I had to bash out a section of the wine rack (note a general percussive theme throughout my DIY efforts....) so that it would fit nicely.

And lastly for this weeks update here is Fin kicking back in the kitchen checking out Babe (that movie with the talking pig) on the portable.

Another week rolls by

Ahoy hoy. Well, its nearly July, where has the time gone?!? Its been another pretty busy week, lots of music stuff going on and I still haven't gotten organised enough to get back into regular blogging. 2 weeks till the holidays so not long till we are back to the ol daily updates.

First up, i just would like to tell the world how much i like peanut butter. I woke up saturday morning around 7am, had a student at 8 so got washed and spent half an hour listening to tchaik 5 and eating a peanut butter sandwich revelling in the fact that life doesnt get much better than that! Did I mention that I was still slightly drunk from the party we had the night before at Janes parents house.......

Check out this dude at the wheel. Tis Finn and here he is taking his new wheels for a burn.

Check these guys out, tura new music, I did a cool gig for them last night, on viola, in a sort of electronic chamber music style, non-linear structures for real-time interactive musical works, or in other words, a whole load of semi-organised noise. I was in three pieces, one of which was based on prime numbers, one on french impressionistic painting style I think, and this one, based on a multi-scoring , we were all given the same chart and had headphones with a laptop randomly telling us what section, part, style and speed to play, it was up to us to choose the articulation (pizz, con legno etc.) I had a great solo playing an a minor scale just using the wood and great big bow strokes perpendicular to the bridge so it sounded all squeaky and wierd, then followed it with an earthshatteringly loud bartok pizz, open C, THWAAAKKKeeeeeeeeeeeiiing i think is the technical term. Twas pretty cool, you can get a recording of it here for as long as it stays up.


Thats all to report from this week. Oh, we discovered a really cool polish resteraunt down teh road from our house, we were there a few times before, if you are in Perth, check them out.

Do not adjust your set...

Normal service shall resume shortly.....

Another week has flown by, cant believe its mid-june. What have I been up to. A succession of gigs and concerts, on top of a hectic week of teaching etc. I haven't been on the computer since I wrote the last update last weekend. I am too busy, I have been accepting all manner of work since the start of the year, saying yes to everything but its all gotten a little bot too much. I dont even have time to brew beer at the moment! So I am in the process of streamlining my work a bit and getting a bit more particular about what gigs I do etc. So stay tuned fans, normal service shall return.....

To keep you amused and make it worth your while for logging on this week, here is a sketch I penned down between lessons last friday. I was trying to leave it as a answering machine message on certain lord of the rings fans phones in Ireland, you know who you are. Ja'know the way you dial 087, then 5, then the rest of your number and it goes straight on as a message? Well anyway, thats what I spent half an hour on friday doing and it seems not to work for international calls so here you go. (to be performed in your finest DJ radio vernacular)

....hello there and welcome back to the frodo baggins show here on middle earth FM. We just heard the latest realease from 'boppin elrond and the high elves of rivendale' off their newly released green album, and just before that we had 'the gandalf jazz quintet' and their old time classic, when i´m 64, hundred. coming up we will have with us live in the studio 'Bilbo and the dwarven wanderers', playing hits from their latest album and plugging their new tour of the misty mountains including what is sure to be a sell out gig at the mines of moria, in what the fans are calling Balrog-stock, but right now we have the mount doom tuba trio with special guests playing a progressive bebop harmonica/bagpipe fusion arrangement of that old Gershwin classic 'Ive Got The-one-ring-to-rule-them'. The time is 820, stay tuned for news and sports coming up next............

The amazing weekly update of interesting stuff....and aahhmmmm....stuff

Hello blogfans. Been another hectic week of music and fun. A few gigs here and there, got booked to do some outlandish contemporary music stuff at the end of the month and we demolished our fence and put up a pure fancy new postbox. Our white picket fence was infested with white ants (who eat wood from the inside out till it desintegrates) so it had to go. I had great fun tearing the fence down, it was like a mr. bean sketch. It was raining and i was between gigs, we had a skip which was being collected the following morning so i put on a hat and gloves and went for it. I pulled off the first two pretty easily so decided it was time to increase my productivity and try kicking the pickets down, so i took aim at the picket at the far left, big kick, it stayed put, but about 10 pickets at the far other side of the fence went flying onto the road, a kinda 'slam the door and the boot opens' scenario....well twas hilarious at the time.

Second on todays amazing update is this bunch of beers that Jane picked up for me at a fancy beer shop near our place. Look at that bottle on the far left, its in the shape of buddha. They were all pretty good, a really nice honey wheat beer and a puerto rican ale, but none were equal to my most recent stout, which has been named ambrosia (not the rice pudding, but the drink of the gods)

For the first time ever, i have two stouts on tap. Both are my best recepies, and both are pretty good, but we 'pepsi challenged' them simultaneously the other night and the one on the left won hands down. I even dropped a pint of it up to our neighbour 2 doors away, Liam from Offaly, who has been regaling to his buddes for about a year of how his neighbour, a cork lad, has improved on guinness. Well, one sip of the good stuff last thursday night and Liam was convinvced, so much so that he had to come round for a few refills. Below we can see the two lines, both loaded with a bounty of the black stuff ready to serve.

Well, thats about all for this week, sorry for the lack of updates this month, been really busy and away from the computer for days at a time. School holidays are coming up in a few weeks so regular service shall resume soon. Signing off for now, this is Perth correspondant Charlie Mc Carthy, weather and sport is up after the break, the time os 9:52.

The hounds

I was minding Fin the other morning, playing with his trains and stuff, and when I turned around the dogs were on the ground posing for their next blog shot.

And there is Fin in the background, he had a sleepover the other night, twas great fun and a great excuse to watch loadsa kids cartoons on the telly. We were all sitting around the table on saturday night having a roast and we are pretty sure he said "charlie". He says all sorts of things now along with their respective sound effects. Things like "Duck, quack", "car, vroom vrooooom", and my favourite "pirate, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarr".

Testing the new equipment in the field..

Here is my violin and pint holder getting field tested at a classical gig last week. Both items passed all expectations and gained full operational status.

Here is the "cockpit" settup again, the only way this could get any better would be with another drink holder.