'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!

'New Videos On Youtube & J.R.R. Tolkein'

Well folks, I have been working like stink since returning from Grassington and have now uploaded two videos of my adventures there to my Youtube channel, Maybrick44. Sadly, we bloggers are no longer allowed to posts video links as part of our posts here and so you will need to actually visit channel Maybrick44 to view the films. While you are there check out the video for my Christmas Video Single this year, 'Heart Full Of Joy' - I uploaded that a few days before I went on my break but forgot to post about it here, until now!

One of the other places we visited on the holiday was Harrogate. Now, I thought Harrogate was a quaint old Yorkshire village like Grassington but actually it is nothing of the sort! We only had about a couple of hours to look round and I did not get to see very much at all because I came across a record shop en-route to the main part of the town and got no further!

Before that, however, I had browsed in a few of the charity shops on the far reaches of the town centre and found a few 'christmassy finds' including a hardback book all about the letters from Father Christmas that J.R.R. Tolkein habitually made up and sent to his children each year.

Aside from, 'Lord Of The Rings' I know nothing at all about Tolkein and had no idea that he was a 'Christmas person'. Mind you, I suppose its not much of a leap of faith to think that a fantasy writer who pens tales of elves, goblins and made up lands might be a 'believer' in Father Christmas and do all he can to spread the word and keep Christmas alive, is it!

The book has lots of lovely colour photos of the letters themselves and of the paintings and drawings that J.R.R. sent with his letters. He even went to the trouble to paint fake stamps on the envelopes and fake post office markings! The letters themselves (which date from the 1920's) are great fun to read and paint a calamitous picture of life at the North Pole and I can only imagine how magical it must have been to have had J.R.R. for a Dad! Mind you, I've been pretty lucky with mine as well - even if he does HATE Christmas!

I only paid £1.50 for the book so I reckon I got a bargain as I've not seen nor heard of it before?

Christmas time is THE perfect time to believe in fairy stories and I plan to take the book with me on Friday when I go to my monthly Storytelling, Poetry and Song evening at Horum (The Steelyard Collective - check them out on Facebook) and read out a few of the best of J.R.R.'s festive tales!

'Great Fun In Grassington'

I had a lovely time up in Yorkshire at the Grassington Dickensian Festival! Its rather a LONG way to go from Hastings for a two day break but well worth it in my opinion.

Grassington is a traditional Yorkshire village full of those quaint, olde-worlde stone buildings and its situated high up in the hills so the air is always fresh and clean. I was lucky this time to see real snow on the rooftops of the buildings while I was there and the scenery all around Grassington was also similarly festive looking with its dusting of the powdery stuff!

Even luckier was the fact that none of the pavements were slippery or dangerous as the amount of snow in the area had not been enough to lay on the paths and roads just 'decorate' the tops of things. This was just as well as there are lots of cobbled stone walkways and paths in Grassington and there are a few steep-ish climbs on your way around the village, which could be quite a hazard in bad weather.

Grassington is not very big and you can walk around the market in the town square and look at most of the stalls in around an hour if that is all you want to go there for. The Dickensian Festival works though because of the spirit in which the locals 'get into' both the Christmas spirit and the swing of dressing up in Dickensian clothes!

I met the Town Crier while I was there and he was delighted when I congratulated him and the people of the village for making Grassington the 'Murray Walker of Christmas Attractions'. When people are enjoying themselves and are happy to do all they can to create a lovely, old-fashioned Christmassy environment the enthusiasm they give off is infectious and so most of the fun in going to the festival is in the 'hanging around' to soak up as much of the atmosphere, hear as many of the carol singers, brass bands and other musical performers as you can and watch the many different Morris Dancing groups that 'do their turn' throughout the day.

I took over 100 photos (some of which you can see here) and have a good deal of fun footage to edit and upload to my Youtube channel (Maybrick44) as soon as I can. If you take a look at those films you will see what I mean (I hope!) and get a flavour of what it feels like to be in Grassington on a cold December day.

I was especially lucky to get the footage I did when I did as the longer the day went on the more packed the place became! While it was nice to see people enjoying themselves it does make 'taking your time to savour' something more difficult when you are constantly likely to be in somebodies way. My advise to you therefore if you want to experience the festival in a more laid back and leisurely way is to arrive as early as you can...

During my time in the village I ate a LOVELY warm bowl of Apple crumble and custard (£3) to keep the chill of the season at bay AND went over to the local school where they were selling a variety of fresh cakes, teas and coffee's (another £3). Some of the school children were dressed up as 'urchins' and one of them was ringing a bell and calling people over for 'teas, cakes and coffeees!'. I spoke to some of the mums who were taking part and joked about the use of child labour and had a few nice words with an elderly couple while I sat and munched my chocolate cream slice and drank my tea!

There was also a Tombola but I forgo that as I didn't want to have to carry anything. Back in the village there were regular calls of 'Chesnuts! Hot Chestnuts!' from the street sellers and I managed to listen to a REALLY good Choir singing 'Joy To The World' as well as hear one of the brass bands play a festive take on Jona Lewie's, 'Stop The Cavalry'.

There was also a HILARIOUS double-act of 'Scrooge' sitting in a wheel around cart with a blanket over him and his 'Mad Hatter' like 'friend', who was wheeling him. 'Scrooge' was in a good mood and taking much pleasure from abusing people, wishing them ' a horrible Christmas' and 'singing' Christmas carols as badly and off-key as he could to annoy people!

As the light started to go so the many twinkling lights around the village began to come into their own and just before it was time for me to go it actually started snowing! What a perfect setting for a festive break, eh?

P.S.) I also handed out a few free copies of my, 'A Nod To Mr. Dickens' Christmas album while I was on holiday. My old mate, Alan Gaywood was on my mind as it was his CD collection that paid for the trip and I felt he would appreciate me showing a bit of kindness to some of the BRILLIANT and Christmassy individuals whom I felt were going the extra mile to make Christmas brilliant for others. Hopefully, Charles Dickens would approve of that sentiment as well! I even wanted to give a copy to Scrooge and his 'friend' but they disappeared and I couldn't find them again!

 I  did give a copy to the lovely ladies on the 'crumble & custard' stall (they were also selling other things including mulled wine) who were kind enough to pose for a photo and  also to one of the mums at the school. She had a small boy there and I told her that he would most probably like, 'If Santa Was A D.J.'!

It will be interesting to see if I hear anything from any of the people I spoke to and gave a copy of the album...

I'll write more of my 'adventures' in Yorkshire soon...