I had one of the best weekends of my life this week and witnessed one of the saddest. I found a girlfriend that I adore and am absolutely crazy about while one of my closet friends, a veritable brother; lost his.

The weekend was tinged with sweetness and sadness for all concerned. Its soul tearing stuff to see a couple that had been as close as family to me fall apart. Writing this I’ve realised I’ve changed; in times past I would have said “such is life” but I doubt I will ever say that in such a context again.

Although with all the sadness of the weekend I discovered an absolutely amazing girl (I’ve mentioned her before! Hi Hazel ) who did me the honour of accepting to be my girlfriend and trusting me enough to believe I’m not an axe murderer in my spare time

In my life I couldn’t be happier because I found someone just like me

My friend Paul (oh he of the cat loving fame) took a few pictures when we went for a walk as a group during the weekend, which I subsequently did some work on:

Deer in Jenkinstown Park Kilkenny:

Floating Arches:

“Its for you Deer……(sorry)”:

I never got around to plotting out my adventures over the weekend so I’m going to give a bulleted summary (since my browser crashed and my nice detailed description of 30mins with it ).

Friday:

• Got back to Kilkenny.
• Was used as a test subject for many fine Whiskeys.
• Had a chance to catch up with my brother Ross and his family.

Saturday:

• Hung around with Kev and Tara.
• Followed Saturday ritual by visiting Unlce Sam’s.
• Watched a bit of Barbarella with Tara and Paul (still not sure whether its comic elements were intentional).
• Went to a cracking gig in The Pumphouse with the Happy Medium Headlining.
• Crashed on Pauls couch.

Sunday:

• Attended a family get together.
• Wrote a special poem
• Headed back up to Carlow.
• Took these photos:

My Brother Ross:

My Grandmother and My five Nieces:

All in all life is good! I’m happy

Seriously where does the time go? It can’t be another Monday already!! Well my weekend since my previous post was great fun. I went over to Kev’s Saturday night; Paul came over and we just hung out. Went out for a few pints too since Carrie was home and we wanted to see her before she headed back to Wales.

Paulie crashed in Kevs too so the two of us ended up lying on matress’s till 5am talking about life and laughing at its many odd occurences. Yesterday was same old same old; hung out with Kev and Paul till around three got home; created a custom cd cover for my cd from Ryan’s and posted it (hope you like it miss ) Then jumped on the bus and headed for Carlow.

When I got back to the house in Carlow I was informed by my Swedish housemates that we now have a cat. She wandered into the house on Friday night and the guys started feeding her; she now comes back every night, climbs into the sitting room, and curls up on the couch. Lovely little animal; thankfully our land lord told us that we were welcome to keep animals if we wanted so it won’t be an issue if she’s seen in the house.

She’s on young cat and still fairly small we’ve named her Trevor (yes I’m aware Trevor is a boys name) we felt it was a fitting tribute to our departing housemate. Heres a few pics I took:

Life is good

Apart from the gig today has been great! just relaxing and taking it easy! Spent this evening playing my electric guitar (its great to take a bit of a break from my acoustic and let it rip on occasion ) and browsing the internet at the same time (see fig.1 )

When I wasn’t playing guitar or browsing the internet I spent time playing with my dog Pippin; I suppose I haven’t mentioned Pip yet; he’s a wire haired Daschund (sausage dog) and I have a habbit of talking to him about life the unverse and whatnot (don’t be alarmed…… everyone does it ) I took this picture of him at Christmas time (If you’re wondering why he has a bow around his neck its because my twin sister likes to torture small animals for fun on feast days ) 

I got the recording back from the Gig in Ryan’s on the 27th and I couldn’t be happier with it although it does seem strange in parts where I’m engaging in friendly banter with the crowd and all you can hear are my replies! Its was really weird hearing myself recorded properly for the firt time! I have to say a big thanks to Paul Harmon for mastering it and Kev for doing the sound engineering, lads you’re legends! but you know that…… you got the drunken new years eve text message :P

Now I just have to make that special copy

And maybe a pit of poetry…………..

GIG: 

Its silent up here;

They’re waiting, expecting, anticipating.

The weight is on you now;

Don’t screw up.

Make a mistake;

Just keep going thats all.

Bright lights make you sweat.

Or is it nerves?

Good crowd tonight;

Can’t let them down.

Start with the easy numbers;

Build up  bit of confidence.

Nothing like a gig.

Happy days! Its Saturday, the gig went well, and I’m relaxing at home after a great night. The gig was great craic and I’ve never been as proud as to have been playing with two of the most talented musicians I have ever had the pleasure to play with Maurice Ramsbotton and Peter Doran.

I took these photo’s at the gig last night :

Such a brilliant Night!

Well now that I’m back to my good ol’ free college broadband I can finally get round to putting up some photos of the gig the other night. Gig was good and I got some useful pointers on performing that I’m going to implement into my next performance. These are as follows:

• Make a Set List (Thanks Kev)
• Focus on the mic and relax more; don’t hide away (Thanks Maurice)
• Work on song structure a bit more (Thanks Paddy)

Hopefully these will help me improve a bit more; and hopefully I won’t have a cold for the next gig (next Friday). I just uploaded these pics from the other night!:

Maurice Ramsbottom – Guitar Hero!

Kentar (thats me!) playing support for Maurice!

Kevin Reade sound engineer extraordinaire! (full time legend)

Paul Harmon……… likes Cats & Radiohead (and recording the gig; thanks man!)

A shadow of my former self………

I uploaded a 12 second clip of me playing redemption song in Ryan’s (found it on my camera!) its not great but I like it. (Warning you should only watch this if you have broadband or some such; its approx 6MB in size) Hopefully it’ll work……….

Click HERE: for Kentar’s 12 sec rendition of Redemption Song (I would advise BROADBAND!)