Christmas has gone and the goose is now on a diet

What an enjoyable Christmas time. Thoroughly enjoyable, if not a little lazy.

It's not often you get a few weeks to kick back and drink copious beers with your mates, which is probably what is so attractive about Christmas, if you can look beyond the turkey dinners, festive films on TV and trad music on the radio. The conglomeration of all this has made for, once again, a cracking December.

I got back a day early from uni, surprised my mother to such an extent she didn't even recognise me - which was slightly annoying (although probably has something to do with the disguise of Santa Hat & Beard I was donning). A lot of effort went into planning that little heist and when we executed it, the under-whelm-ation of the whole thing was poor. A very disappointing surprise, but fear not, I have bigger and better ones in the pipeline.

It actually reinforces the idea that if you're genuinely not expecting something then you get the most. My Mum didn't have a clue it was all going on, and she got her son back a day early! Take that theory to town nights out. We all thought they'd be blinkin' awesome - seeing everybody and relishing the good times together and for the most part they were.. once or twice... then we fell into the mis-assumption that every Banbury night out would be superb over Christmas, and how wrong we were.

ahab at AKA on our first night back, awesome!

In fact, at 3am, sat in my kitchen with my best mate Connor after an abysmal night out, the penny dropped as to why I'd left not a few months earlier! It's great to see everybody in bursts and I never tire of seeing Connor and the other pals in my home 'wolf pack', but I did find myself going up to some people on the last Banbury Xmas night out and saying: "hey mate!-how's uni?..".. then realising I had seen them not a few weeks earlier and I'd already heard about their uni!

Alas, the promised land of manchester is what holds such uncertainty and promise and thus, makes every night a right stormer!

Still, brush aside a bad night out, the majority of my time back home has reincarnated a 'best of:' attitude, I've taken the fantastic components of my life here over the last few months, brought them together, and enjoyed the best bits in a home-coming compilation. Lovely.

I've spent some time doing a some tutorial demonstration videos with my mum and the dentist she works with, chuffed to bits with the results, which will be uploaded soon. Also been doing lots of DJing over Christmas, some fun stuff at AKA, but especially enjoyed the New Years Eve gig I did at Tysoe - raucous crowd and lots of dancing! Top night!

However, time to head back to the promised land now though, my work here is done (if you call work sitting on your ass watching Sword In The Stone and Series 1 of Misfits) and it's time to head back to the hard work and generally enjoyable toil of Manchester life. I was going to say here: time to kick some ass in 2012, and do it better than 2011, but that means a lot of kicking!...

Although.........this sums it all up well: the wise words of John Mayer talking about 4th album Battle Studies 'following' acclaimed 3rd album Continuum (skip to 15s)



"You don't follow it at all, you just leave it and step to the side and begin something completely new".

What a fantastic philosophy to adopt for the new year. Time to turn a new page and forget about bettering 2011. It's a new leaf.

Have a great 12 months, and don't forget to subscribe to the new podcast I've just launched with my pal Producer Anthony!



Just quickly (always nice to end on a musical note).. this week Gabrielle Aplin is one of our featured musicians on the show...... a real talent, no?





Ciao x