Firstly, I’d like to inform you that…

Now a little about my past week’s festive shenanigans: Last Sunday was the Sunday Service Christmas Special it was a most triumphant evening.

If you’re a regular visitor to my blog you’ll probably have seen images I’ve shot for The Sound Gallery of local acoustic bands playing at my Sunday Service night at Verve Bar in Leeds. My pals & I have proudly run it for over 2 years now and we try to host only the cream of the local music scene and it’s great to see we’ve developed quite a following. The room, the sound, the bands & the music-lovin, regularly returning revellers all create such a special atmosphere down there and we try to celebrate this at the annual Christmas Special.

This year we had Elf hats & Santa cowboy hats, fairy lights & tinsel, mulled wine & chocolate money (Euros, for some reason), humbugs for the folk who wouldn’t wear their hats and an excellent stash of homemade mince pies from Sunday Service head groupie Holly. On the music front, we flew over from Ireland the excellent ODi (a band I used to once play bass for in another life) and brought back favourite Sunday Service acts from the past year for 2 songs and a Christmas Cover! We had 6 bands play in all and I joined ODi for a particularly tuneless rendition of Lenon’s Merry Christmas (War is Over).

Fortunately we encouraged enough audience participation to drown me out.

My good man Rich from Palooka swung in with a cracking ‘Winter Wonderland’

Spam legend Gary Stewart popped in and dropped ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’

Gavin Mart set fire to Wizard’s ‘I wish it could be Christmas Every Day’

And the lovable Man & Wife [who refuse to form a web-presence] played ‘White Christmas’ including an audience participatory whistle solo.

They came back for an acapella encore in which Dan split the crowd into 4 parts for a complex harmony.

It sounded so lovely that Clare said she thought her heart was going to burst. But she’d had quite a lot to drink at this point.

I was trying to take a photo of the ‘congregation’ when photo legend and pal Cris Matthews insisted I was in it. I had no memory as to why everyone pointed at me. But I’d too had quite a lot to drink at that point.

It really was such a perfect evening spent with friends and big up all of you that attended and continue to support what we do.

It also actually marked my 6th night of full-on Christmas Partying; including an ironic Xmas turkey dinner dance with illustrious members of the Randall Photo Network, a Leeds Guide Xmas-Casino-&-cinema-screen-Wii-Bowling-party, mulled wine with my VV6 homies, Saturday’s Acoustic Revolution Xmas Special at the Adelphi & Gavin Mart’s Advent Xmas gig at Left Bank (see Dan Wilde Video below) and the Xmas Sunday Service.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent weeks collecting and compiling Xmas playlists of old, new and reggae Christmas ‘classics’ for the Sunday Service. Today I bought a REAL CHRISTMAS TREE and then… as if I wasn’t feeling Christmassy enough… I look out the window and see this!