Felicitous salutations to y'all on this the new year and the dawning of my time out of the nursery. Guess how many times I nearly but not quite slid over and fell on my arse whilst walking through this frosty winter wonderland on my way to work?! The highlight of my hols was Friday when I saw Courtney Pine down at the jazz cafe in Camden, I had a copy of 'Fold your hands child..' with me- recently purchased at a late nite record store when we found we'd shown up 2 hours early. Started off with a jazzy version of Nirvana's 'Come as you are', the rest of the evening was just a joyous noise for my untrained ear but apparently there was some Zeppelin and others entwined within. The rest of the time was spent watching late night Hitchcock with my sister, 'Rear Window' makes it almost possible to forgive James Stewart for 'It's A Wonderful Life' plus I had forgotten just how wonderfully papier-mache the villains of 'The Birds' were. And now a loud cheer for the wonderful people at RSPB or National Trust- whoever it was who now has my home town swarming with red kites. At first it was all top secret and only Mr Gibbons the farmer had any confirmed sightings but on one of my bored, post A-level rambles lo' above one hillock was a big eagle type bird with that concave tail kites have! For a good ten minutes I watched it until *BANG* both of us jump. What sounds awfully like a gun echoes for a second time from the house at the bottom of said hillock. A mental picture- red faced tweed infested Berkshire farmer "Ge' Offw my Lan'!!", some evil bastard who deserves to be hung up by his toe-nails has been poisoning some of the kites so maybe it's the bird and not me he's aiming for. In the end we both scarper just to be on the safe side (in retrospect I admit it was most likely a car back-firing.) And now Sinister these gorgeous birdies have found a nice little niche in the Chiltern ecosystem and are everywhere, along the roadsides, circling over admin's pub lunches, one swooping low over the back garden one Sunday- The End. Becky P.S. cheers to whoever posted that review on The Reindeer Section, have purchased accordingly. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+