Music To My Ears.

At last we are home, the house is warmed up and though it's upside down and most of the decorations are still in the boxes, and we are just getting through the week and waiting for Friday to come around, at least we are doing it together. The to-do list is considerably shorter than it was, the christmas preparations are being simplified by the day, and I'm trying not to think about it too much when, every morning, Ru asks me, again, " how many days?" It doesn't really matter after a certain point what gets done and what doesn't, so long as we have the kids, very modest, expectations of a bit of magic covered. There will be plenty of years to follow when things are a bit less hectic, to have the perfect christmas I dream of.

So, even though the house still needs a lot of TLC and christmas-ifying, we have plenty of music to get our spirits in the mood. Yes, occasionally I will allow a bit of pop-style xmas music in the car, but in the house we are grooving to A Charlie Brown Christmas for a bit of jazz-ness and nostalgia. Sufjan Stevens is still AWOL, but will no doubt be unearthed in the next few days. Some Beach Boys would complete the mood I think...





A favourite daily treat of mine is John Kelly's programme on Lyric FM which coincides nicely with pick-up time. It's so nice to have my often obscure music taste covered on daytime radio and not on the 'graveyard shift'. Pity it's only two hours though. Anyway, every so often he plays something that just stops me in my tracks. The other day it was a beautiful, haunting song called 'Get 'way from my window', from an album called 'I wonder as I wander', by a man called John Jacob Niles who I can't believe I haven't heard before now. He seems to have influenced a whole lot of people. You can really hear Tim and Jeff Buckley in particular. So, this is my anti-dote when the christmas-ness gets a bit much!