We demolish a Piñata at Xmas

Here's a quick video of the demise of a Piñata that our friend Jo Smith gave us for Xmas 2007.

Everyone had a whale of a time trying to crack it open.

It also records the demise of our broom handle, which was never the same after everyone used it to bash the living daylights out of the poor hapless piñata.

Xmas 2007 on our deck was a lot of fun, and low impact for everyone because we bought all the food (cold meat and seafood platters) rather than cooking a roast. (What crazy person decreed that you had to have a hot roast for Xmas in Australia in the middle of summer?)

Full marks to Josh for busting it open. We knew you would, Joshie.

Warts and All (Live, Unrehearsed and Unedited)

One of the highlights of my week is my jazz music lessons with a fantastic musician named Brian Hayes.

Each week I bring my WX5 and he teaches me as he plays along on Guitar, Sax, Flute or Clarinet. I find it really enjoyable, and am continually amazed at his wonderful musicianship.

Late last year, Brian suggested we record our session. He played some tunes on his guitar, and got me to improvise on the WX5, playing whatever I wanted. I made lots of mistakes, but we decided to record it "as is", and these songs are the result. We called the collection "Warts and All".

Thinking of Lizzie / Elephant Blues / Cheeky Liquorice / Black Brassy Blues / Frightfully Flugel
Laid Back Fanfare / Morning Reed / Not Quite Danny / Saxsquito / Sunset Blue

For each song, I chose a different voice on the VL-70m synthesizer - the challenge being to select the most appropriate voice, and to play it in such a way that my style suites it. I find brass, clarinet and flute voices fairly easy. Sax voices are difficult to do well.

If you can look beyond my mistakes in these songs, I hope you can get an idea of how much fun this is!

I made this!

We are staying at a nice hotel. So when they gave us fresh towels this evening, I couldn't resist my happy cruising memories and made this towel animal!