Back home for a British Christmas

This time last year we were frantically running around the beaches of California trying to finish filming our xmas extravaganza video, ‘The Twelve Days of Eggsmas’ (to relive the magic, see here). We were wearing flipflops, singing in ‘all-American’ bars, and, whilst missing our traditional British Chrimbo, having a marvellous time.

Now we are home. The hills out the back of my mum’s house where I am staying (bless you mum) that I once thought were a pretty bracing walk now look flat as a pancake.

View out the back of my mumsy’s house.

That there in the distance is a hill. No, really, I promise.

In the three and a bit months we have been home, we have attended a beautiful wedding in the rolling hills of Hampshire, been paddleboarding on the local canal, attended a funfair, visited the vast majority of our favourite people in Manchester, London, Bexhill, Bristol, Devon, Somerset, Paris and our local area of Alton, done a gig dressed as a pumpkin, made sloe gin, dressed as an elf for a Christmas grotto and been swimming in the sea THREE times (twice without a wetsuit…. hardcore!) I shall leave you with a little montage of all these fun things and until the new year, wish you all an amazing festive few days, full of warmth, smiles and jolly good times…

LOVE LOVE LOVE xxxxx

 

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Sensational Santa Cruz and Coo-el Capitola!!!

We arrived into Santa Cruz on Christmas day, intending to stay maybe a week or so, and we are STILL here…..

We were warned it is ‘one of those places’ ‘you’ll never leave’, but….well, it really IS.

Santa Cruz Pier

Surfey People.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The place itself is gorgeous; surf, beach, lovely little town with quirky shops, buskers everywhere, skateboarders doing their thang, the first day we walked around town a huge lorry (truck) drove past with the word ‘PEACE’ emblazoned on it’s side blasting out ‘What the world needs now is love sweet love’ from its speakers. YES! But the people we have met here have REALLY made it trickier and trickier to leave.

Slightly South of Santa Cruz is the little town of Capitola, it is TINY, friendly and beautiful:

Overlooking Capitola and it’s little pier.

By night.

The back of the bars, overlooking the ocean.

The first little gem we met was Andy, a Londoner who has ran bars in America since the 1980s.  He has that CLASSIC Eastenders accent, twinkly blue eyes and a massive heart. As soon as we chatted to him about what we were doing he said, ‘come back in tomorrow, I’ll get you lunch and we’ll sort out a date’. He hadn’t even HEARD us play!!!! His bar the Britannia is almost RIGHT on the beach, his Fish and Chips are as British as can be and every time we play there we have a right old giggle:

https://www.facebook.com/britanniaarmscapitola?rf=177764612279929

The Brit.

Our other ‘regular’ is The Fog Bank, billed as Capitola’s  ‘Funnest Bar’ – and it is a GEM:

Amy, the owners daughter and bar manager LOVES music (she can sing too) (and shake an egg like a trooper!)  has a heart of gold and basically wants us to play in her bar AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. We have no problems with that. The view from the back terrace is GORGEOUS, the fish tacos are delish, and the juke box is TOTES RAD. they have music here almost every night- really good stuff too, and the blues jam on a Sunday is a delight; an awesome house band and a beautiful menagerie of people, all ages, all SORTS of tie-dye and beard, all dancing together in a smiley, sweaty frenzy. http://www.the-fogbank.com/

Aside from these two beautiful places, we have gigged in San Jose and Boulder Creek, and played a couple of AWESOME jam nights- Rich has been helping to host a Reggae Jam at the Crows Nest, a beautiful bar in Santa Cruz Harbour, and we had some fun at the Reef Bar in town as well (see slideshow below!) But it is the people we have met at our gigs that have really made it for us. We have been dirt bike riding with a man named Mitch McMurray, who has the best redneck moustache you really wouldn’t think a twenty-something year old would be sporting, but somehow he makes it work, got on a 12 foot surfboard with a man named John- literally WITH him, yanking me upright and holding onto my hand as I squawked and squealed down the waves, been out in the woods and to the Sasquatch museum (ha ha haaaaaaa… AWESOME) with Kelly and Vince, shared an open fire with Julia and Robert, had some excellent chats with John aka Whiskey Leavins http://devilsownpiss.com/ and danced, squeaked and shook the night away with some amazing characters, including one lady who, when describing our gig said ‘You guys are sooooo, symmetrical. You’re like liquid yoga’.

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

But we are preparing for our final week in this vicinity, gigs this weekend at the Britannia and a final Fog Bank gig next Thursday and then it’s off into the real world again, to find more awesome beans to party with….. Thank you Santa Cruuuuuuuz!!!

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Busking and Breaking Down….

Boo!

I must admit it has been rather a MIXED BAG since our last post, we reached California:

Woohoo!!!!

Saw one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever witnessed in Trinidad:

Wowzers!

and reached San Francisco:

We caught up with our gorgeous friend Bonnie who works at Skywalker sound- GEORGE LUCAS’S studio, and mixes sound for Disney films:

Bonnie and Rich

On leaving San Francisco we got about 14 miles South on highway 1 and broke down going up a hill…. Our ‘marvellous’ breakdown company ‘Good Sams’ turned out to be devils in disguise and refused to help tow us off the highway for TWO DAYS!!!!!!! (Don’t worry, a sternly worded email has been written, received, and apologies have been made)… We ended up with a parking fine and a warning from the SHERIFF that he would tow us off the hill in 72 hours:

yikes!

Luckily Good Sams got their act together and poor old Harvey was scooped up, tail between his legs, to a garage:

Poor old Harvey.

In a nutshell, we thought they fixed it, they hadn’t, on the way BACK to the garage we overheated (a totally different problem to the initial), Rich spent a week trying to fix the overheating problem, broke a few other things on the way:

Oh dear.

Eventually fixed it, took it for a test drive and of course the FIRST problem reared it’s ugly head again, and now we are once more, broken down at the top of a DIFFERENT hill. Hopefully Mr Sheriff will steer clear until the garage can fit us in again on Monday.

We managed a spot of busking to fund our mechanic bills last weekend and ended up having a great time. Lovely lovely people gave us lots of money and danced in the street with their children and Timmy. We felt a bit better after that. And could afford to buy ketchup and mayo which we had run out of. DISASTER!!!!!

We now face every English-person’s nightmare-

WE ONLY HAVE THREE TEABAGS LEFT.

So busking it is tomorrow, to earn the right to a proper good brew.

There are worse places to break down dear readers, Pacifica has a gorgeous beach:

Pacifica in the background.

Sunset over the pier.

and friendly people, however we REALLY HOPE we can bust a groove out of here soon……

Still, it’s all part of the adventure….

 

Our First American Performance!!!

We reached the U-S of A about a month ago, and after a few teething problems with Harvey the RV (including breaking down in the middle of a dual carriageway and being pushed off the road by a couple of lovely passers by and a fireman) we are finally FULLY EQUIPPED to gig.

 

We made our way to the coast road, the 101, and experienced some incredible sights and some awesome humans throughout the mighty OREGON.

Yaquina Bay Bridge, Newport

On arriving into Newport, a tiny little coastal town with a soundtrack of gaffawing sealions:

Pile of seals.

We popped into a little pub by the name of the Bay Haven.

The mighty Bay Haven

A lovely man named Steve let us jump up on stage that night to see how the locals took to us, and we emerged unscathed, with a gig the following evening.

For those that know us, you will be well aware our act ranges from nice, sensible, lovely songs, to out and out raucous singalong-a-squeaky-hippo-dance-around-and-shake-an-egg-madness. So we were slightly nervous as to how this would be received, cross-cultures. What we learned was that the yanks are just as ready to grab a shaky banana and have a full-belly-laugh, heckling, singing, dancing, crazy time as those across the pond…….. JOLLY GOOD.

So thank you, people of Newport, for an excellent evening, and America- we are ready to ROCK AND ROLL!!!!!

 

PIGGY POWER!!!!!!!!!!

Calling Pig lovers across the land!!!! Unite!!!!!!

Erm. Hello.

For those trusty Brits still following our antics overseas, GOOD ON YOU!! Thanks guys. And for the marvellous new friends we have met– HOORAY!!! You found us! We are still in the VERY EARLY stages of preparing our epic travel around the North American regions, for example, we still don’t own a keyboard or any microphone stands yet, BUT, we will get there….

So far, we have a home:

Harvey the RV

We’ve had a nice swim in the Pacific:

Cold, but beautiful.

Seen some MASSIVE trees:

Canada’s widest tree.

An even MASSIVE-ER pumpkin:

Yes.

And some gorgeous sights:

Awe inspiring.

Two numpties on a harbour.

We arrived in Vancouver on September 15th, and are about to depart for the US of A in a couple of days to start an almighty drive SOUTH (not stopping till we find a large and consistent yellow orb in the sky)…..

Check out the rest of this sight for some new recordings, and befriend us via the medium of facebook here

https://www.facebook.com/timmytheenglishpig

BIG MASSIVE LOVE to all of you!!