Jaunts and gigs

Boxing Day walk with Purple Lady and The Luminosity in Weston Park was followed by a delicious breakfast at The Farmer's Daughter.  

The weather is delightful this week, which means lots of time out of doors - best spent sitting under the shade of the lime tree in the garden drinking gin and tonic and reading my book. 

Being one of those mad dogs and English people who are the subject of song, I also go running in the middle of the day up the Pinnacles.

Unfortunately the jog was a little longer than usual - as my shortcut track had disappeared into the long grass and I din't fancy trying to find it when this is exactly the sort of terrain in which snakes like to conceal themselves. 

 

In the evening we watched a horror film, because I like to keep myself awake when I'm really tired and I need sleep... I quite enjoyed it as these things go. The cats remained unperturbed, as evidenced. 

I had a few cultural outings with friends this week, to an art gallery, a museum and a gig. The other two have separate posts of their own, but here's some pictures of the gig. It was a New Year's Eve tribute band night covering '80s, 90s, 00s, and Emo Hits' that started early (about 3.30pm) with a band playing Violent Femmes songs called Femmes of Violence. Of course they played Blister in the Sun, Add It Up, Gone Daddy Gone and finished with Please Do Not Go. They were all having a great time, particularly the drummer who had quite a remarkable side to side skipping action and bucket fulls of energy. 

They went off stage at the end of their set and then half of them came back on as Freedom of Choice to perform Devo songs. I must admit I don't know a lot of their music, but I recognised Gates of Steel, Girl U Want, Freedom of Choice and, of course, Whip It. The band played with total commitment and irony, taking themselves as seriously as the audience did, which is quite the achievement when wearing flowerpot on head. The photographer paid tribute to the tribute band by wearing a plastic red beaker on his noggin. As I said, serious artists. 

Photographer paying tribute to the tribute band

The band we really came to see was Death to the Pixies, in which our friend Little Em played - you guessed it - Pixies songs. They are a really good covers band and I danced less like no-one was watching and more like none of my limbs were connected to my body.

The bloke from the Devo tribute band enjoying the set

We stayed for the Living Colour and Blink 182 tribute bands (Taliesin and All the Small Things respectively) and then left to walk home - safely tucked up in bed by 10pm as the tribute bands for Live (Contraband) and Hoodoo Gurus (Red Hector) partied on. What live wires we are!

Apparently there are 64 trig points in the ACT - I have decided to try to make an effort to bag them all this year. So I began with Purple Lady on New Year's Day with a quick jaunt up Mt Painter as it is the closest to my house and I felt it would make a good start. 

Purple Lady and me at the top of Mt Painter

I spent the rest of the day reading and checking my reading app to see my data for the year, some of which is as below.

These delicate flowers, which I believe to be some sort of iris, have bloomed overnight in the front garden. I think they're pretty. Happy New Year!