Musical outings

It’s been a very busy first couple of weeks to the new semester, and as such the time has simply flown by; exam season seems like such a distant memory! The new term started with a fantastic night out in which I joined some friends going out on a joint History and English social which allowed me to get back in my beloved fancy dress. I was pleasantly surprised with how many people recognised me as Ziggy stardust – one even knew that I was actually the character Aladdin Sane, an extension of the Ziggy Stardust brand created by David Bowie.

A few days later it was time to restart band activities with our first practice session in nearly three months! This was also the first time we have played as a four-piece, finally adding a bassist in the form of my housemate. During the summer we set up the drums permanently in my student house, allowing us to practice as much as we liked. However, during term time I’m not sure my housemates would appreciate hours of metal music being blared from the living room, so we booked a two hour session in a much sought-after practice room down in the city centre.

Whilst most people chose to go as pirates, I went for something a little bit different!

We practiced a few of our old songs as well as introducing several new ones which we had written in our time apart. Although it was immediately evident that some of our tightness as a musical unit had slipped, it was still a productive and ultimately fun session. The key will be to continue with these jams on a regular basis, which is definitely easier said than done when trying to find enough free time in all of our very different schedules.

 Tuning up

The face of pure concentration – trying to master a tricky beat

Friday 31 January was Chinese New Year (the year of the horse to be precise), so as a house we decided to celebrate it with a homemade, albeit small-scale, Chinese dinner. It’s a very rare occasion where we get to cook and eat together as a whole house and it would be nice to do it more often. I know of a few student households where each person takes it in turn to cook for everyone else, although I don’t think that would ever work with my housemates; we all eat at such different times with varying degrees of cooking (in)ability!

Preparing for our Chinese New Year dinner

Now that it is February, sports societies have begun to return to their normal trend, and for me that means the intramural badminton league has started up again. The first match for my team (Physoc Mens 4) was against a side called Legends of Awesomeness and as you can imagine they were pretty good, managing to beat us 3-0. Unfortunately I had to miss our next game on Sunday morning, as I woke up feeling under the weather, so I hope we can find time in the next couple of weeks to rearrange it!

James