I have a piano! It is teh awesome.
Dee got it from an online place for my birthday. It”s a Korg SP-250 (stage piano), digital, full size and with that fancy-pant hammer-action that makes it feel like a “real” (analogue?) piano. So. Very. Cool. It arrived yesterday, and it was all I could do not to fob off work and come home for it!
Last weekend we visited London”s “Tin Pan Alley”, the music-strip in the West End. We found the piano there, but for about an extra £100 — no thanks! So for £50 cheaper we got the piano and a stool from DV247. Not bad at all, especially since we had to wait less than a week for it to arrive!
Funny: the evening after visiting Tin Pan Alley we went to a Jazz night at the 100 Club on Oxford Street … and the pianist had the same piano! Very cool — before Saturday I”d only seen it in pictures, then over the course of a day I got to play with one (in the store) and listen to someone hammering out frenetic melodies and slammin” chords, as we danced and jived (unlicensed, of course) in any free floor-space.
The weekend before that, you may know, we spent in the Cotswolds — picturesque English countryside, tawny rough-hewn stone for walls, houses, people (okay, the people weren”t made of stone, but wouldn”t that be cool!). We stayed in Bourton On The Water; Dee tricked me because I thought we were going to drink bourbon on the water! Still, getting away for a relaxing weekend was probably better. Probably.
The town itself is billed as “the Venice of England”, but the locals didn”t take too kindly to me tying a bunch of ducks together in the shape of a gondala and paddling along the little waterway that twisted through the township. The ducks didn”t mind, and gave me lots of little friendship-bites to show how much they respected and admired me.
The countdown is well and truly on now — we both can”t wait to get home and see everyone, and eat decent fish and chips, and feel sunlight, and drink cold beer.