'Merry Christmas!'

Well, todays the day! I hope you all have something fabulous lined up to make the day a memorable one. My Christmas is not going to be a spectacular event this year but at least I am not flooded out like a lot of poor souls and spending quality time with loved ones is never time wasted...

Funnily enough though I have been thinking about the years I spent Christmas on holiday the last day or two. Its always refreshing to travel and see a bit of the world but as my Christmas holiday to Kufstein in Austria proved, the grass (or snow in this case) is not always greener on the other side.

A department store in Kufstein. Typically for my luck they were closed while I was there!

I was going through a bit of a depression in 2007 and so decided that the best thing I could do was to book up a Christmas  break and head off to the land of snow and mountains. At that time I was in work at a music merchandise company called 'Masons Music Ltd' and the workload up until Christmas there was always incredible. Virtually every day would involve doing some overtime and the amount of phone calls we used to get was amazing. It was hard work and very tiring but my boss was a great bloke and was always very generous to us all at the end of it. He used to take us all out for a meal, give us extra wages AND let us take a present from the warehouse so putting in so much effort was never difficult just tiring.

Anyway, with all that work ahead of me I knew that I needed something to look forward to and so a holiday to 'Kufstein' in Austria in a 4 star hotel seemed ideal. Snow, snow, slopes, fairy lights, carols and MORE snow was I felt sure to be on the agenda and a 4 star hotel should be quite a swanky place to stay as well! To be pampered and to be forced to be jolly and make new friends seemed like the ideal remedy to my woes...

Snowless Kufstein - Nice lights though!

As ever, however, things did not quite go to plan! Sure, Austria had all the snow anyone could want but Kufstein itself was almost snow free. My idea of soft, crunchy, fluffy snow also went out of the window as an excursion to Kitzbuhel on Boxing Day proved when all I found there was a wet and quite dirty looking place where no where was open! Salzburg was lovely but it was just one day out of seven and the 4 days of traveling there and back on a coach almost killed me...

Worst of all though was my 4 star hotel. The 'luxury' I expected to find turned out so bad in fact that I made the following two videos to upload on Youtube when I got home...

Things did not start out well from the minute we arrived at the hotel. My name and the names of another couple were not on the guest list and because of that I think they and I ended up getting the 'spare rooms' usually designated for our drivers. The fact that neither of our drivers ended up staying at the hotel seems to back this up though they might not have chosen to do so  because they'd been there before!

A friend of mine always tells me that I become very funny whenever I get depressed. The upside of this story is that both of the videos above turned out to be huge hits on Youtube. Because of this I really got the bug for making films and as of now have over 240 on my Maybrick44 channel! I wouldn't want to put you off going to Austria for Christmas because it is a beautiful place but if you do go make sure you go for longer than 7 days if you are traveling by coach because for three days actually there the traveling spoils it. If you can, stay in Salzburg because it has a lot of winter charm and is full of festive atmosphere. Be VERY careful where you stay though and make sure you check out your hotel online BEFORE you book up.

I DID get my 'revenge' on the hotel staff though because I had packed a complete Father Christmas outfit into my case and came down Christmas Day dressed up in it. I went in to where they were holding the disco, took over the mic and made a few speeches/had a few jokes with the people I knew from my coach. NO ONE realised who the hell I was so it was quite hilarious really - the staff did not know whether to grab me and throw me out or not!!!

Me as Father Christmas in Kufstein, Austria 2007

This Christmas story does have a happy ending though. Aside from gaining a new interest in making films I got some great footage and pictures of Salzburg and the Von Trappe Mansion (The Sound Of Music?) which I subsequently used for the artwork of my 'In Words, In Music...Of Life, Of Death' poetry/music album. Some of the other footage I got on that holiday went into my videos for 'Its Christmas Time' and my latest festive song 'A Winters Tale' so all in all it wasn't a disaster just not the uplifting experience I hoped for at the time...

Merry Christmas! xxxx 

'The Story Of The Snow People'

Remember I told you earlier about my love for the Church-in-the-Wood nature reserve near Hollington, East Sussex? Well, I made this rather silly but I think quite inventive festive promotional film for my album 'Timeless' there in 2010. After a particularly heavy snowfall that year the whole of my area was covered and Church-in-the-Wood was as near to the fictional beauty of Narnia as it is possible to get in the real world...

Walking through the woods I came across something that really made me laugh ( I won't tell you here what it was else it will spoil the fun when you watch the clip below)! As soon as I finished laughing I knew I had to come up with something fun and so I decided to do a 'Brian Cant', make up a story to tell and make a little film to enable me to share my festive discovery. 'The Story Of The Snow People' was the result and I think I did a pretty good job building up the tension! I think kids will enjoy this as well and seeing as I don't have any of my own its kind of nice for me to think I might be making a few tiny tots smile.

Anyway, take a look! If you don't think much of the story or of my acting I'm sure you will gasp in amazement at how beautiful a 'winter wonderland' Church-in-the-Wood looks...   

'A Snow Story'

This is a video I put together a few years ago. 'A Snow Story' forms part of a poetry/music concept album entitled 'In Words, In Music...Of Life, Of Death' and is all about how young you suddenly feel when the Christmas spirit grabs a hold of you! I wrote the poem after catching a snowflake in the palm of my hand while walking back home from work one day. I am a HUGE fan of Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol' and think it the best story ever written. A lot of my Christmas musical pieces are thus inspired by the Dickensian era and I love to evoke thoughts of the simple Christmas gifts people used to give to each other back then. To think how magical an Orange might be to a poor boy or girl in Dickens time is still for me an inspiration and I often yearn for life today to be less complicated than it is...

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little film. It was filmed  at the nature reserve at Church-in-the-Wood, Hollington, Hastings on a magical 'Narnia' like wintry day. I use Church-in-the-Wood quite often to film videos as you will see if you check back here regularly. The music was composed by the brilliant, Harvey Summers and recorded at Broadoak Studios - more about him and there later...enjoy!