More music Sunday

It's a beautiful day outside, but we've once again chosen to sit in the bedroom and record Chimovski tracks - it all for you, folks! Dedication or what?







Here is buzz doing a rough take of Come and Get It... The ironing board kinda ruins the cool factor, but this is a home, not a studio, so what to do?! I should get my surf board in there, or maybe my new Bustin long board once I've figures out how to get it over from NY...

Simple sounds

Been recording more chimovski this week, trying to get a few more tracks nailed before our next gig, which is Friday the 3rd April at Dead or Alive in Bar Rhumba on Shaftesbury Av. Should be a good one as it's Rich's birthday that weekend. Jim is having a party on the saturday too so it might be a mad weekend.








Went to comedy at the Arts Club on Frith St on Saturday- was very funny and a cool venue, though I wasn't reduced completely to tears as I often am. Must go to more comedy, laughter is great.

Boiler Man

Poor engineer dude is here from British Gas....his afternoon started badly with a difficult to maintain and repair boiler that had broken down in some poor old dears' house, leaving her with no hot water and no heating. He toiled all afternoon, when I called to find out where he was, he said he was looking at bits of a boiler all laid out over the floor....so I waited patiently, just hoping he would come today so that I wouldn't need to wait until tomorrow. And come he did, at about six thirty, and he's still beavering away in the kitchen trying to get my boiler to work properly...

I made him a cuppa tho' so he'll be right as rain soon.

Just been reading through the Howies blog, those guys still rock. I'm sending them some jackets back on which the zips have broken....I'm hoping their design team will find it useful to see where their jackets fall down and make them even better.

Snow fun, comp winer and more.

Well, Manu Chao was awesome, I was right to be excited! Following that Leah and I headed to Sri Lanka for a lovely holiday over Christmas, with Bobby, Netta, Laurie, Beth and Family...I should post some photos thinking about it.

2009 has started well. Chimovski played an awesome gig at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town. We managed to get 99 people down to see us so the place was heaving - they had to open the doors at the back so that the people who couldn't get in could see! I'll try and sort out video and photos soon. We're playing again at the Bullet Bar in Camden on the 26th Feb.

This Monday serious snow hit London, which meant my office was closed for the day, which was a nice surprise. Went for a nice walk with Jesse and Katharine through Regents' park and up to Primrose Hill. The snow was perfect for snow-balls and snow-men. This lead to everyone rolling MASSIVE snow balls, until they couldn't roll them anymore, and they lay dotted about the park like some kind of strange art exhibition. It was a shame to see the number of discarded bin-liner bags all over Primrose Hill. People are SO lazy.

From cold snaps

I had a result today as I found out that I'm one of the winners for this months Core77 1 Hour Design Competition. You can see my 'Freedom' entry here. Always nice to win something.

£120 road sign

This almost invisible congestion charge sign ended up costing me £120 last week since I missed it when I drove to work to return the hire car that I'd rented for the weekend in order to go to Wales. Unfortunatley, due to a crash on the M4 we didn't make it to Wales and instead spent fives hours on a Friday night driving nowhere in order to end up back home.

The really painful thing is that the hire company, Capital Hire, have charged £50 + VAT to photocopy the congestion charge letter and send it to me. OUCH.

The sign should be bigger, it's stealth! If the van on right was on the other side of the road you wouldn't see it at all.

Chimovski return to the Stage

A big thanks to all those who made the French Revolution in London party last night and gave support to us. Was great to be back on stage playing music, we've got some great new songs and it felt really good to be up there. Hopefully I'll get hold of some photos soon.

We're working on the website, so that should be live soon, and we're still recording so we should have some more stuff for your iPods soon.

Woken up at 5am

This morning I was woken up by an alarm at 5am. First it infiltrated my dream and I found myself outisde an enormous skyscraper office block with the same alarm going off. We were trying to turn it off by switching various sockets on and off, but to no avail. Arrrgh, failure dreams, must mean something deep and meaningful.... ;) Anyway, when I woke up the alarm was still going off and now I cant get back to sleep, so I'm up. Hurray.

Finally took delivery of my Dahon Speed P8 folding bike on Friday. I had to go to the scariest industrial estate ever, which is to be found round the back of Wormwood Scrubs prison on Mitre Lane in case you want to go for and 'extreme walk' some time. Since the bike is a folder it allowed me to unfold it there and then and ride home, which seemed to impress the lads working for the courier company no end! Riding a folding bike is a little unnerving at first since it's easy to believe that one of the many quick-release hinges could leave you in a crumpled heap of folded wheels and pedals at the least bump in the road...however, so far so good and it's great to be riding again - public transport sucks! While not the smallest or quickest folder, the Dahon offers great value for money and looks great too....well, for a folder anyway.

Mrs Leah Bazalgette and I are happily settled back into our lovely flat in Maida Vale and she got confirmed at Cunning last week so is feeling a lot more permanent now. We've the In-Laws/Land-lords staying at the moment, i.e Neela and Zarook, which is great, though it's a little odd to have other people here all the time! Looks like we'll have Leah's sister Tasha move in after they've gone too, though I think I've managed to convince her that I'm a total anti-TV fascist, banning all but Radio 4 from the media streams.... well, I'm not that bad, but Hollyoaks really isn't my idea of interesting or relaxing TV. In the mean time Leah and I need to sort out our own space I think, and having to share this flat will no doubt galvanise us into getting our sh*t together.

Off to Wales this weekend to introduce Neela and Zarook to proper cold...

engaged!

Ok, I kept it from you last time as I wanted a moment to tell friends etc, but Leah and I got engaged on Los Roques! Yup, I popped the question on our first day there, after all the stress and agro of Mexicana we found ourselves alone in a beautiful place and I thought 'It's got to be here or Hackney...'!

So now Leah is away in Sri Lanka organising tons of stuff for the big day, which is scheduled to be the 29th December of this year! It's very very exciting, we're planning to try and have a beach wedding in Sri Lanka and it looks as though a good number of our friends will be able to make it along.

I'm currently down in Wales escaping the hustle of London, which I was finding way too much after the freedom of traveling. Don't have a job yet so being in London is doubly stressful, plus with Leah being away I was kinda lonesome! Here the weather has been amazing, wonderful blue skies and still warm weather - what a treat after the last week or so of miserable drizzle in the big shitty. My poor mum has broken her femur after being knocked down by an Alsatian in the park the other day whilst walking her dog. She's now laid up in hospital after having had a hip replacement operation, and I've bought little old Misty the dog down here with me. She's pretty blind and deaf so has been wandering around bumping into things the whole time, but I trimmed her fringe and that seems to have made a difference...

Today we went skinny dipping in the river! Been ages since I've done that and it's still loads of fun!

Los Roques to London City

OK, it's a broad title, but then it's been quite a while and now we're back home in London after lots of adventures in Venezuela, and Mexico for that matter.

So after a prolonged period in Cumana we finally made our way West and ended up slap bang in the centre of Caracas, the city we'd vowed never to visit! However a reasonably swift taxi ride took us out of the city and through the mountains to the sprawling town of Caita la Mar where we stayed the night before heading out to Los Roques. We were booked to stay at La Parada hotel, but they are crafty and ship you off to some hotel right on the industrial docks when they are over-full - nice. Explore we did not, though I did manage to get a ride to a Bodega to pick up a couple of bottles of wine for our up and coming romantic dinners!

At 6am we were already at the airport as we had to pass by the Mexicana airlines office to pay for the first leg of our journey home before catching our 8.30 flight to Los Roques. After much arduous and painstaking investigation (while in Brazil) we thought that we had found the cheapest and basically the only way to get back home from Mexico without requiring further Visas for Leah, and the extra $1100 (US) cost to our budget would be painful but livable with. Unfortunately we were in for a nasty surprise as due to a communication breakdown on the behalf of Mexicana, the price quoted when we reserved the ticket was no longer available and instead we were slammed with over $2000 (US) worth of airfares and taxes! Of course our protests, tears, reasoning and pleading fell on deaf ears, "computa says no", and with no time left to try and explore a cheaper option we handed over my credit card and left to find our Los Roques flight feeling thoroughly cheated.

So with that rather nasty taste in our mouths we left the international terminal and headed to the domestic one to catch the short flight over to Los Roques, which, being described as Venezuela's most beautiful Caribbean destination, we hoped would cheer us up somewhat! And indeed as we began to spy the white sands, clear waters and sun soaked islands from the plane window the stresses of the morning ebbed away and our smiles returned.

From Los Roques

On Los Roques we spent our time either sitting by or paddling around in the beautiful water, snorkeling and generally taking it very very easy, conscious as we were that these would be our last few days on our wonderful adventure through Argentina, Brasil and Venezuela. We were looked after wonderfully by Dona Carmen and her crew, and the ever helpful Libia appeared as if by magic whenever we needed advice on a tour or had a boat to book. I think I'll let the photos do the talking for the time being...

From Los Roques

The journey home was long and pretty arduous, especially as Leah was basically taken to a secure area for 9 hours in Mexico, where she had to ask for an escort even to visit the bathroom! Fortunately I was both allowed to stay there with her and leave to go and find us food - I'm sure she'll be writing more on that when she gets around to blogging. Now we're back in London and feeling pretty shell shocked, but enjoying seeing our friends again and trying to decide which stories to bore them with first...