Good Things!

Things have been a bit busy lately, mostly because that job I thought I definitely hadn't got? I did! This means I'm moving down to Oxford at the end of January and have been trying to sort myself out.
Obviously I did the most important thing first which was to contact Mabel Gubbins and ask if it was Ok if I came along to their rapper practices and they said yes, provided I like cake and gin. I do not see this being a problem so that was sorted fairly easily. Am now in the process of carrying out the second most important thing about moving which would be trying to find somewhere to live. Have resigned myself to a flat-share, at least at first, so need to have a major declutter over Christmas (a major, major declutter! Not getting rid of any books though. Never again!). Have never tried to flat hunt for somewhere over 3 hours away so that's interesting (even leaving aside all the restrictions the weather is causing!), never mind never having lived south of the Wansbeck! All a bit exciting really.

Going to be very, very sad to leave Mons Meg (although since I hope to keep dancing with them at festivals and whatnot when I can, it's not really leaving, more, not being able to make practices) and will miss the cinema outings with the usual crowd. On the other hand, not having to make so many long distance trips can only be a good thing!

Speaking of long trips, went down to Manchester last weekend for a friend's birthday. Megabus trip down wasn't too bad, only half an hour late despite snow (although those buses do not get any more comfortable!) but coming back...! Bus was supposed to leave at 19.30 on Sunday. We'd checked the information on the website and learned that the service was starting from Manchester instead of London due to the weather and yet, somehow, it managed to break down in Wolverhampton for 2 hours and the only reason we knew that was becuase my friend contacted their main office. I realise the station wasn't manned at that time of night but surely they could have passed a message on through one of the drivers of their other services? Have to say I've reported one of those drivers as well. While we were waiting for the Edinburgh bus, another megabus pulled up so we, obviously, assumed it was the one for Edinburgh. When we politely asked the driver, not only did he tell us it was actually for Leeds, he then proceeded to call us stupid. Possibly he didn't realise that his display was frosted over so no-one could read his destination but there was no need to be insulting. I usually can't be bothered with those kind of things but I was not in a good mood by this time anyway so reported he gets! Of course, when our bus finally turned up, it was having problems with it's brake lights so they had to call for a replacement when the mechanic called couldn't fix it so we were stuck there for another 2 hours. To be fair, this driver was lovely, keeping the engine running occasionally so we were warm and keeping us informed of what was going on so at least there's that. The replacement coach finally set off and we got into edinburgh at around 6 in the morning, 5 hours and 20 minutes after we were supposed to arrive. Fair enough, these things happen and the weather was bad but the lack of information while we waiting at Manchester really wasn't great. Just to add insult to injury, I suspect there may be a small leak in the toilet plumbing system over the luggage hold because my bag smelt fairly strongly of urine when I got it out of the hold. That got well and truly scrubbed when I got it home!
Manchester itself was fun, lovely to see old friends again and I came back with blackberry gin (yummy!) , a microwaveable elephant and a microwaveable clanger. (Felt like I was lavender animal smuggling as I came back up north. Fortunately, bag was pretty waterproof so they were unaffected by their trip under the possible leak!). Have microwaved the clanger since I've been back but haven't yet worked up the cruelty to microwave the elephant. He's just too cute and fluffy!

Last night, went to see Phil Cunningham's Christmas Songbook with Heather. Great fun evening. Lovely songs, hilarious banter (including Phil, after finally locating his glasses, hunting for his guitar tuner (apparently he has to buy a new one every year) then pausing before asking 'does anyone know what all the little glowy lights mean?') and truly, truly awful jokes. (My particular favourite being 'what do you call a man with one foot in his house and one foot outside? Hamish!')
Off to see the Mozart Festival Orchestra do Carols by Candlelight at the Usher Hall tonight so looking forward to that.

In other good news, found the 1957 recording of the Mikado on Amazon for £1.58. It was available for download so I did! Am now a happy gremlin. I already have the 1973 recording which is well enough in it's way, but the 1957 version has far better timing and also has Thomas Round and Ann Drummond-Grant who are far superior to Colin Wright and whoever was playing Katisha, whose name I can't remember at this moment in time.
I also watched the recent Phantom of the Opera movie on Youtube and confirmed that I really only like Andrew LLoyd Webber musicals for the dancing and the spectacle. Some interesting casting choices though. The lassie playing Christine had her voice dubbed by a very good singer but it was a shame that it didn't really match her speaking voice. Gerard Butler as the Phantom was hilarious. He really couldn't make the high notes (why did they not dub him too?)and was completely sung off the screen by the lad playing the other love interest (the Compte de something?). He had an amazing voice (same lad who was one of the villains in the recent A-Team movie apparently. Seems he was a musical actor before he went into films) so it just exaggerated how bad Butler was. Became unintentionally funny very quickly.

However, best news of all, Mons Meg is going to DERT! We have snaffled a Stonemonkey dancer and just have to rustle up a musician (which I'm currently in the process of doing). The fact that I'll have left Edinburgh by then is completely beside the point, I'll still be dancing with them, it'll just make pre-DERT practices a bit interesting. Huzzah!