'A Chatty One!'

I am in total disarray this year with Christmas! The time seems to have flown away and I have failed miserably to buy all the presents I need to get and write all the cards I need to write! For a 'Christmas person', like me this is really bad!

Thing is, not only have I been running short of cash I have been drained of energy this year by trying to keep up with an ever lengthening list of tasks I need to do. My room is a BOMBSITE with boxes all on the floor and CD's all over the place, I have been under pressure to write as many articles as I can for, 'Hastings Town' magazine (which I enjoy doing but it all takes time and energy) because the amount of people contributing has gone down at the moment, then there is my voluntary work as, 'The Clean Up Man' to do as well as housework and of course I had a few days away in Yorkshire! To add to the 'workload' this year I also had the mail out of my Christmas CD, 'A Nod To Mr. Dickens' to get sorted as well - though I managed to do a great job on that, I'm glad to say...

Reactions to, 'A Nod To Mr. Dickens' have been great in general and a friend of mine in Canada put up her Christmas tree soon after receiving the album in the post in November and posted a photo of it on Facebook so it certainly helped her get into the festive spirit! Normally, I get myself organised and ready for Crimbo in good time and aim to have all my gifts bought & wrapped and cards written ready to give out/deliver/send by Dec 1st but it just hasn't happened this time. That's a shame as I LOVE being free to enjoy all of the Christmas lights and atmosphere that there is everywhere at this time of year. Battle (a few miles from my home) is MAGICAL at Christmas and I usually make a bee line to go there, browse the shops, have a cup of tea and a slice of cake (in honour of Worzel, of course!) and wait for it to get dark so I can marvel at the twinkling lights on Battle abbey and enjoy the HUGE Christmas tree in the Market Square.

During my time in Skipton I came across a lot of BRILLIANT musical street performers and managed to get a few photos of them to share here. Sadly, I did not get names for some of them - even though I did speak to most! That's typical me, that is! One lot that I did get a name for though was, 'The Sundancers' who told me that they had a few tracks available to listen to on Soundcloud. Unfortunately, though I have found a few artists with that name I haven't been able to find them but you can hear a snippet of one of their songs in my 'Grassington Dickensian Festival Fun - Part 3' video on Youtube.

The Sundancers

The guys voice was amazing and sounded much better than it comes across on the video when you were listening live. I was gobsmacked and asked if they had any CD's for sale after just one song so I hope things work out for the band and that they get noticed soon. It never ceases to amaze me how many wonderfully talented people there are in the world - its just so sad that there isn't room for all of them to make a living out of using that talent...

Four festive lovelies are all smiles!

I also met some festively attired and smiley girls that had been playing some nice Christmas music and congratulated a BRILLIANT group of Carol Singers on their amazing harmonies.

Smiley and youthful carol singers!

I was well chuffed to note how young they all of them were! Maybe the traditional Christmas I love so much isn't on its way out just yet, eh!