Tempus Fugit!!

It flies, it flies

Can hardly believe how fast the past few weeks have gone.

I've been so busy.

Done some pottering on the house which is good. We have the electricians in today until the end of the week. Quite excited to get this bit done because then we can go almost full steam ahead on painting and creating and seeing some of the fruits of our labours.  Plasterer is booked for next week and he is going to do the rendering at the front of the house too, which is a relief as the first chap never got back to us.   

My very final Heritage assignment was submitted last week amidst much jubilation on my behalf.  Tomorrow I start revising for the exam my last hurdle to get over this year.  Then I can assign all of these lovely books to the bookcase where they shall sit and look pretty gathering dust.

I received a very thoughtful gift from Lily a few weeks ago that I had meant to post about. I saw the book when it first came out and meant to get around to buying it but like a lot of things it slipped my mind. So it was a delightful present to receive.  There are some great tips in there for would-be runners like myself, not just about running, but about nutrition and having the right mental attitude. A very useful gift indeed. 

The end of April saw two wonderful gigs. The first being Richmond Fontaine at the Greystones in Sheffield, which, despite being about 7 miles away from me,  is fast becoming my local in that it's the pub I've spent most time in this year.  All band related I quickly add.  I don't often go to gigs on my own but sometimes there is someone who I really don't want to miss so I bite the bullet.  It's times like these that mobile phones and social media come into their own, something to do in the interval when everyone else there seems to be in a group and there's no-one to chat to.  Anyway, back to the gig.  The support was Fernando, a stocky grey haired troubadour  originating from Argentina.  He played acoustic guitar backed up by Daniel Eccles on electric guitar. A worthy support with some great tunes and lots of interesting banter between songs.  Best part of the set was Fernando and Dan really digging into the music with an intense face to face play down.

Willy Vlautin

Dan then joined the line up of Richmond Fontaine for their set which consisted of 3/4 of the new album 'You can't go back if there's nothing to go back to' and some back catalogue tunes.  It was great to see Willy Vlautin, Sean Oldham and Freddy Trujillo who I'd seen in the same venue last year in their Delines incarnation.  Whilst Willy writes songs for both the bands, and his subject matter is the down and out and less than angelic there's a very different feel to each of the bands.  Willy is lead vocals for Richmond Fontaine, I love his voice, which has a  kind of southern, slow, adolescent vibe to it.  As well as the stories in the songs there are plenty of anecdotes in between to keep us smiling.  Rumour has it this was their penultimate tour, with a few last dates coming our way in October. I'm sad I only really just got going with them, although finding some consolation in the hope of some more Delines shows in the future and happy that Sheffield is one of their go back to places.

The second gig of the month saw the return of the much missed Milburn.  A local Sheffield band who parted company around 8 years ago.  Any subsequent gig that any ex-member of Milburn undertook would hear the crowd shouting 'Milburn, Milburn, so it was thrilling that they decided to do a four night residency at the 02 in Sheffield.  Becky and Rob went to all four shows, Simon made three, and despite me having tickets for two I decided to restrict it to just the one night. It was a great night too, so good to hear all the old songs and Sheffield celebrated so well. It was great to see the smiles on the lads faces too as they performed on stage, so obviously humbled and happy that the Milburn legacy has lasted so long.   

Milburn

Work has been extremely busy and tiring recently. We are way behind with letters, which means those of us who are fairly up to date have to help out other departments.  I don't mind helping, sometimes its a nice change to type about  people with  ailments other than arthritis. It's slower work  getting used to new voices and new terminology and consequently a lot more intense.  We barely come up for breath and I swear our little fingers have smoke coming from them some days. Perhaps not surprising I've not felt up to blogging much recently, sometimes the last thing you want to do when you get home is sit in front of a computer screen again. Still, tomorrow sees the end of this shift pattern although it will be straight into revision mode for the next lot of days off.

Just three more weeks though!!