Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Always slightly mixed feelings about this. I was brought up a Catholic (which sometimes is a sure fire way of turning you into an atheist) but soon decided I didn't share the whole Christian thing -and everything I've learnt about the history of that religion (or, by now, religions) seems to confirm this. But we need landmarks, points along the way where we can stop and reflect on where we are, the road travelled and the road yet to travel. So, we celebrate birthdays, the new year... Christmas.

In the last few years my sister had travelled from Venezuela to either Madrid or Lisbon and I would join her and her troops there and celebrate with them. They are not doing that this year so it will be a quieter time. Maybe I need those days on my own, not doing much. Might even get to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer which I missed on the cinema, read a lot, eat comfort food. And not think about thosed schools I teach guitar at and on how long I may be able to do that and how I may manage without them.

I have lived in this island for over half of a very long life now, but I still am Venezuelan in many ways, even if I don't think I could possibly live there now. It was great to have my first hallaca of the season -bought, alas; it is too much hard work to do on your own. Traditionally it is the whole family labouring for two or three days to get a batch of hallacas. It was good, though.

Madrid was good. With some limitations -very bad sleep and a rather bad back, a back pain that suddnely attacked me a couple of days before travelling over; on the day it happened I could hardly walk. Went to a doctor (and a doctor came to me, as one of my guitar pupils is a doctor and something big at UCLH). Was prescribed a few alarming painkillers and given some exercises to do.

Once there, tramping around the city with my sister and her troops was fun -up to a point when my back would say no and I had to cut the walking short. Walking a little bit seemed to make it better but walking for long periods of time made it quite painful again. So, I didn't do much in the way of long outings -one day we went to Alcalá de Henares and paid respects to Miguel de Cervantes who was born there and took the inevitable picture at the bench with Quijote and Sancho Panza.

One evening my sister took me to see Cirque Du Soleil. Enjoyed that enormously. Every aspect of it was interesting so that it wasn't just an acrobatic exhibition.

The journey back reminded me of my routine bus trip to school on the 393; children screaming, too little space.

Arrival was a disaster. As I was so tired and with a sore back.. that's how it happened. Pick up the suitcases at Baggage Claim and walk out to catch the bus to the train station... and realise I've left my rucksack (with macbook with my whole working life in it, ipad, a lot of other stuff) somewhere inside the airport or the plane. There ensued two frantic, stressful hours trying to find whether it'd been found -airline said no, lost property said no. Finally I spoke to this young guy (amazing hairstyle) at Customer Services who, instead of phoning people in there, went himself to check out and ... found it. A cleaner had picked it up. Phew.

Arrived home a few hours later than I anticipated, past 11 pm. Slept fitfully and stressed, woke up at 4: something when I had to get up at 6. Today, my first teaching day back at the more stressful of my two schools, was a long, long day.

Merry Christmas, all!

Currently with fellow Venezuelan friends of many years, having done Christmas dinner late on the eve as is our custom. I expect we'll have a second Christmas dinner at lunch-time today....part of our traditional Xmas dinner includes Hallaca (pictured), ensalada de gallina (or, in modern times, veggie equivalent), pan de jamón, various kinds of sweets and cakes and, often, quite a bit of alcohol....

.. or was. The decs on the tiny table-top tree in my tiny flat will probably stay there till February but otherwise it is all over, once more. Christmas itself I spent with Venezuelan friends in Kent, one more time. We had the Venezuelan Christmas dinner (late on xmas eve, although not at midnight), with turkey, hallacas, pan de jamón, and other Venezuelan and Portuguese (my friend's wife is V'zlan-Portuguese) foodstuffs, plus christmas pudding. The usual opening of presents by the xmas tree brought me a gin making kit. Not a still, mind. It was quiet and relaxed and I think I needed that.

On New Year's Eve I played at the londongothsluts's NYE party at North Nineteen organised by djpsyche, with encores with the help of sbp and Red; all this seemed to go down quite well. Took my guitars away and came back for the party, danced and caught up with people (and had a very good and illuminating conversation with Alicja, WOLJ) then got offered a lift to the Slimelight so I went ... leaving my bank card behind, at the bar. Luckily djpsyche brought it over to the Slime for me.. many thanks many times over, Psyche, for that and for the night and for thinking of me for the playing.

The ensuing tow days have been rather quiet, as they should be, but I have a maelstrom of things coming my way this January: two concerts (small and local but that makes no difference) to prepare, tax returns to get ready and a tax 'error' that HMRC claims there was in last year's return which means they want several hundred quid from me (and now I think they may be wrong or one of my schools may have deducted my tax but not passed it on -messy either way).

Last night, instead of going to AntiChrist (had perhaps one or two reasons not to want to be there), found me at German goth friends' near here, relaxed conversation and wine and playing with Luna the cat...

Today, meeting with friends for Sunday roast at a pub in Holloway, guitar practice and spreadsheets and a million little unreadable receipts to sort out....


xmas dinner at M's: hallaca, pan de jamón, turkey, 'taters and nips (not neeps)

A good evening at the Greenwich Union with a reduced contingent of the Gothsluts, after a day with only a couple of lessons and not a lot else -a spot of shopping at Sainsbury's, ini relation to which.. it must be Christmas. If I have to hear Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer once more... I'm not sure why I loath that song in particular, I don't mind, on the whole, the NYC 1930's Christmas song thing, it goes with black and white films in which real snow falls heavily outside while enormous xmas trees indoors are covered in baubles and fake snow.

I've said before that I go along with Dawkins' quip about being a 'culturally Christian' atheist. True, I don't believe in any of the bits of biblical legend any more than I believe in Father Christmas (does anybody still call him that, btw?) but I do believe they represent things that are important for us and markers -the mid-winter celebration is much older than Christmas. I grew up in my corner of the north of South America putting up plastic Nativities at Christmas times, as well as Christmas trees that were at first plastic and later came from Canada, putting lights and fake snow on them. Im not sure whether I thought both (pine trees and snow) were typical of the Middle East or whether I thought Bethlehem was somewhere in Northern Europe...

.. which come after episode IV, as in good Star Trek films:

part II:


part III:

There's two more (in youtube's site...)

[ Edit ] That was a fantastic fun evening . Even if the singing may perhaps have been ever so slightly out of tune at times >..<.

Pictures of miss_glitch's birthday dinner here

Pictures of cyber_child's birthday drinks here.

Christmas ticking along ok. Much driving to do between today and tomorrow, though, which I'm not really looking forward to. May I refer, rather, to cuteness posted by miss_soap:

http://gallery.mac.com/flavio_matani#100143

No captions yet.

They're also on Facebook, you know where to look.

These pictures came out particularly messy... carelessness costs photos...

Nah, the Xmas Dinner of Doom at the Rochester was fantastic. Pity I had to stay sober for several reasons -and had to make two disappearing acts, one to go to the Dev pick up an acoustic amplifier from Barrington -who made it back with me to the Roch, in time to see the marauding hordes singing Happy Birthday Baby Jesus again, and more carols, and miss_soap singing 'Jerusalem' (she has a beautiful singing voice, there's so much about people that you don't know). Also, I stupidly didn't charge my camera's battery so it decided to die just as I had in frame the perfect shot of andykniftonstanding with a loudhailer haranguing the masses exhorting the presents to sing the praises of m** f** baby jesus...

Today, lessons and guitar and a few errands. Should be a quiet day.