www.ianedmundson.co.uk

January 2nd 2016:
Happy new year, cyberstalkers. Last year ending in a fine style with Wizdom playing our last show of the year at The Millstone in Darwen to a pretty impressive crowd. We appear to have picked up a wedding gig on the back of it, which will hopefully be nice (It wasn't - they were timewasters). This year's work starts tonight with a re-scheduled show at the Talbot in Burnley (we should have been there on the 15th, but we were double-booked). Looking forward to the show.

January 3rd 2016:
Hello there. Last night's show at The Talbot, Burnley was great fun and we'd like to thank all the people who came out and gave us the best start to 2016 we could have wanted.

January 4th 2016:
Hello there. Wizdom's diary has undergone some startling transformations today, due to a venue double-booking us (two already in the first week of the year - both dates ended up rescheduled), so it's always best to keep an eye on the band website for proper details of where we are playing.

In other, more interesting news, this is today's newly-recorded tune. My version of Crowded House's 'Don't dream it's over'. I started it with the intention of it being a further recording collaboration with my friend Dave Disley, but the guitar parts and key didn't suit him, so I opted to complete it by myself, as I had already recorded it in two different keys and had re-learned the solos. We have agreed to move onto something else, which I have started some of the prep work on.

January 12th 2016:
The year is not going that well. With the extremely sad passing of David Bowie, we have lost one of the very few truly great music icons. I was lucky enough to see him in the flesh three times. Play his music. Keep him alive. Don't let him just become a faded memory. God bless him.

January 25th 2016:
The House Band upstairs is getting far better than what we have left down here. Buffin from Mott The Hoople, Glenn Frey, Jimmy Bain. When is this going to stop?

January 27th 2016:
I finished the third in my series of Slade live concert photobooks yesterday and ordered a copy to proof check before making it widely available via Blurb. I am quite proud of the three books. There will be one more in the series.

Ian Edmundson's Slade concert photobook.

Ian Edmundson's Slade concert photobook.

February 4th 2016:
I find it amazing that landlords and landladies at certain venues somehow can't manage their diaries. You would not believe it could be so impossibly hard to write down the name of a band next to a date that you have actually given to them over the phone, or by a text message. So far in 2016, my band has had a number of double-bookings and also a cancellation at practically no notice. I am beginning to get a bit fed up of some of these venues' sloppy management. I do this for a living and when a venue pulls us for another band, I am out of pocket. It doesn't take a mental giant to have a diary in front of you and to write the right thing in it when you speak to someone over the phone or by message.

February 15th 2016:
I went to watch Suede in Manchester the other night. One of the best shows I have been to for a good while.
Have booked for Ian Hunter in Holmfirth in November.

Rising Force appear to be lurching back into geriatric rock and roll action for one show only on April 30th 2016 at The Phoenix Club in Farnworth. We are having a few quick rehearsals in the run up to that (starting March 17th).

In important news, I've been working on a new version of one of my old songs. I have re-imagined the overall sound to make the guitars a bit more 'grungy' and have altered the key from A to E to give it depth. I have returned to the original demo approach with the choppy guitar on the left. Very much a quick 'work in progress' .

23rd March 2016:
Sadly, for personal health reasons, I have been forced to withdraw from playing with Rising Force at this year's States Gig in April. I was really looking forward to doing the show, but I am extremely likely to be going into hospital for a necessary operation before the show date and will need at least a couple of months recovery time. This also means that Wizdom will be taking on a deputy bassist to cover my absence, or to take over from me, depending on whether I am able to come back full-time or not. The workload is quite heavy and this is something I won't know for sure about until I make a decision later on in the year.

This last week I completed and published the fourth and final Slade live concert photobook, covering the period 1981 to 1983.

I have also put togther a a 62 page 25x20cm photobook of photographs from the Status Quo 'Frantic Four' reunion tour at Manchester Apollo in April 2014. This book was only made for me to have my own personal copy, but I am allowing a few friends to order it - up to April 9th - then the book will be taken off sale. I have not set the book up to make any profit on it.

10th April 2016:
I played a show in Stockport with Wizdom this weekend. I am still getting over an infection that had me in hospital recently and it is affecting my chest and my voice. Hopefully some meds will sort this out. No drinking for me at present.

16th April 2016:
A quick photo of my newest bass, bought at the small guitar shop Eric Clapton used to pop into in Ripley, Surrey.

24th April 2016:
This year continues on in its hideous fashion. We have just lost Prince, a superb musician and songwriter who I was fortunate enough to have seen play live in concert a number of times. I am so hurt by this. I recorded the song below in 1987. It's not a particularly fantastic recording of his song, but on a day like today, it shouldn't just sit unheeded on a hard drive somewhere. I'd like to be able to do a Prince song with Wizdom, but they aren't really that kind of band.

26th April 2016:
After a blood test and biopsy in March, I was diagnosed as having prostate cancer. It came as quite a shock to me and I have not posted about it before because I wanted to get it dealt with, rather than have people worried, or looking concerned at me. I had told only a few really close friends and I am so grateful for their support.

Yesterday I had surgery at The Christie in Withington to remove my prostate gland. Today will probably mainly consist of learning to sit up again. I have managed to get off my bed into my chair and it feels like something of an achievement.

My symptoms that led to me getting checked out? Lynda said I went to the loo a lot. Nothing sinister in that for me, as I drink coffee professionally. But Lynda said I should go and get checked and I am grateful she did so (several times) before I got on with it.

All men of a certain age should really ring their doctor and arrange a quick PSA blood test. It took me five minutes to pop in and have it done. Our NHS is something we should be so proud of and do our best to protect. I don't have a single complaint about how I have been dealt with from day one. Every single person who has dealt with me has been superb.

Prostate cancer CAN be stopped if found at an early enough stage.

Telltale signs: Blood in your pee. Peeing often. Feeling like peeing often with little result. Getting up in the night regularly to pee. Any degree of erectile dysfunction.

It takes a few minutes to contact your doctor and ask for a blood test to check your PSA level.
I advise any male on here aged 45 or over to do it. Better safe than sorry.

If the PSA Reading comes back low, repeat the blood test annually.
If the PSA Reading is higher than 4.5 then a biopsy of the prostate gland will be needed.
This involves a local anaesthetic and 12 snips being taken from the gland.

The options (if cancer is found by the biopsy) are:

A) A course of hormone tablets to reduce the testosterone in the prostate gland, followed by a course of radiotherapy, which I am told is rather uncomfortable. It does not stop cancer coming back in later years - in fact the radiotherapy can cause cancer. I would add that following option A makes the cancer inoperable at a later stage if it returns.

B) The complete removal of the prostate gland, via keyhole surgery, which is a one day operation with discharge in the next couple of days and a 4-8 week recovery period. There are a number of side effects but cancer cannot re-grow where an organ has been removed.

Option B looks fairly daunting, but I think anyone diagnosed would want the cancer gone.

7th May 2016:
Well. I'm home from The Christie hospital. I was in far longer than was anticipated, due to some slight complications following the operation. I still have tubes and things coming out of holes in me that will need to be removed at some point. I will need to to attend as an outpatient for a while. I can't thank them enough for their incredible level of care and professionalism - from every member of staff who looked after me on every occasion. They made sure the care I got was the best, even if it meant an x-ray in the middle of the night, or a CT scan that was needed, that I got within a couple of hours. I owe them so much.

I will not be gigging for a little while and I wish Jake and Mike, my bandmates (and the three dep bassists) all the best until I am in a position to make the decision whether to return or not.

15th May 2016:
Well, I am getting over the after-effects of the operation and nearly there as far as having all the tubes and pipes and such removed. Once I am tube and pipe-free hopefully, my innards will start to work properly again. No gory details of that here!

16th May 2016:
The band have suffered a couple of recent cancellations. I do sympathise with the landlord at one of the venues who has had a nasty fall, causing him to cut having bands for the time being. However, The Greyhound In Barnoldswick dropped a very short notice cancellation on us, just because there is a music festival on in the area. The band has replaced that show with one on that night at one of our favourite venues and told the venue to get stuffed for future shows. It just gets on my wick when that happens.

On a lighter note, the last tube was taken out today.

23rd May 2016:
Enough of this lying down and avoiding it all and enjoying myself.... I have been considering my musical options and have decided to get back out with the band, or I will just end up not bothering - and I intend to re-start the Jolly Nailor Jam Nights on June 5th. The Wizdom gigs booked up to then will be covered by the very able Mark Conroy. Looking forward to being back out there again in the land of the living.

15th June 2016:
I am now 'back up and running'. The time off after my operation was much needed and really good to have and I have to admit to myself now that it was getting to be touch and go whether I even wanted to come back to playing with the band again. I think I was getting a bit depressed about the whole cancer situation and also quite used to not doing the same old repetitive Groundhog Day band thing, just for the money. I forcibly made myself get back onstage because not doing so would have been like me just giving up. I had to do something, or I would have just rotted at home in a chair. So, anyway, I'm back on stage and there is the usual 'inter-band discussion' about stage volumes - the bass player is always too loud, apparently. It depends where you are onstage as to what you hear. That's the struggle, which I am evidently losing, looking at the video below!

Utterly embarrassing videos like this are out there which don't even have any bass on them.

Being in a covers band means that you have to be a bit of a jukebox and select your material carefully, so that you are playing safe crowd-pleasing favourites to the audience. We do get a number of really good suggestions made to us for covers and the other two members generally consider them when they are put to them by the punters, but they don't get taken up, as Wizdom do what they do. I've suggested things and most of those ideas haven't been taken up either and I have simply given up suggesting new things. So it looks like my route for playing music that I personally like will be via jam nights and home recordings.

Talking about creativity... I am getting back into recording and have a list of about 10 songs I want to do. Some are re-works of my old songs that I want to have decent new finished recordings of. More on that later.

I played a last minute dep gig with AIM at The Cask and Feather in Rochdale the other night and that certainly WAS my jukebox, as I was singing all of the songs, so I picked them and that's what we played. The best gig of the year for me so far.

The one I love / Caroline / Roll over lay down / Don't believe a word (slow / fast) / The boys are back in town / Back in the USSR / Substitute / Rebel rebel / Shangalang. // Roadhouse blues / Rockin' all over the world / Sharp dressed man / Walkin' by myself / Rosalie / Tush / Whiskey in the jar / 20th century boy / Purple rain / I saw her standing there / Born to be wild / I'm a rocker / Tie your mother down / Dakota.

We went down really well. The most enjoyable one-off gig in ages. I'd love to do more. More on that later.

26th June 2016:
Two shows with Wizdom this weekend. The first night was at The Cross Keys in Barnoldswick. A good crowd came along. Thanks. The following night's show at The Punch Bowl in Earby was notable for another new song suddenly creeping into the set. We got a request to do some T.Rex and so we played 'I love to boogie' (admittedly not one of Marc's most memorable hits, but it was on our list anyway). When we were asked for another, I volunteered to play and sing '20th Century Boy' and used a cheat sheet (from the jam night) for the lyrics. That one appears to be staying in the set. It's nice to actually get something 'new' into the set.

18th / 19th / 20th June 2016:
Wizdom played at The Seven Stars, Harwood, on the 18th. We actually got a new song in 'Wishing on a star' (originally by Rose Royce, but we are following the Paul Weller edited single version). We had all gone away and learned it and after quickly tidying up a couple of small parts of the arrangement at the soundcheck, we played a decent enough version of it in the set. I reckon it's one for the first half of the show. On the 19th, we played to a good crowd at the Lane Ends pub, near Burnley. Nice to see some of the local followers get down to see us. The 20th saw me hosting an emotional final rock jam night at The Jolly Nailor, Atherton.

Of the ten songs I am currently recording, I am up to full backing tracks now on two of them. I will probably do another two backing tracks, then have an afternoon of doing vocals.

7th July 2016:

I recorded a version of Dave Edmunds' 'Every time I see her' yesterday. Here it is.

I have also added some Malpractice recording videos to the home studio page that I had forgotten about.

8th July 2016:
I got a letter from The Christie today regarding my PSA level following the removal of my prostate gland. I am cautiously happy with what is said. A couple more reviews like that one and I will be able to breathe a little more easily. I don't like to count my chickens, etc....

14th July 2016:
Yesterday I read that the NorthWestBands website is going to be closing down. It's been a great resource for finding gigs and keeping in touch with venues. I have created a forum at www.nwmusicians.co.uk and an associated Facebook page to try to fill the gap and keep the live music scene together.

19th July 2016:
I sold the half of my Hartke bass rig that wasn't getting used this week. It went quite quickly, despite a couple of timewasters. I did however, buy two Epiphone Thunderbird basses (on the right in the photo below) that will probably cause much suspicion in the band.

About www.nwmusicians.co.uk... It is immediately becoming apparent that this is going to be a time-consuming thing and I think people are expecting it to replicate all of the features of the NorthWestBands website. That's not going to happen, as I firstly seem to be having great problems managing to find a way of creating a shared updatable gig guide page. I have tried embedding a Facebook events page list in the forum or a web page. No joy. Suggestions of a Google calendar are too complex and users would hate it. Embedding an Excel spreadsheet in a page doesn't seem to be a goer either. I will persevere with what there is for the time being. It will only be there until NWB is revised, anyway.

27th July 2016:
The new weekly Jam Night with my exciting new band, The THREE, starts at Bar 110, Tyldesley on August 14th.
Lots of fun to be had, come on down. Watch out for The THREE gigging later in the year if I can slot some dates in.
We will certainly be doing a number of dates next year.

26th August 2016:
The Morris Dancers, Colne.
After a year or so of waiting until the others declared that they had finally learned it, since I first suggested it, we finally ploughed through Cheap Trick's 'I want you to want me' for the very first- and last - time. It didn't work at all, so if you weren't there - sorry, you missed it! It taught me a lesson about not expecting other people to show the little bit of respect to take the trouble to learn a song that someone else in the band (me) has played about 500 times so far.

30th August 2016:
My time with Wizdom is coming to an end. I will instead be playing with my band The THREE.
We are now taking bookings and details will be on the net later in the year. Web page now here.

4th September 2016:
I am pleased to be able to finally announce that I am now officially no longer the bassist with Wizdom. Wizdom's adverse reaction to me even looking for gigs for next year for The THREE, has made my mind up and I walked out, straight after what turned out to be a final gig in Rochdale.

We did do some good gigs and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to travel a lot and play at a lot of good venues and to have paid for quite a few guitars. All good things come to an end and so has my time with Wizdom. I wish the band well for the future, but it's not for me anymore.

11th September 2016:

Last night, The THREE played our first full show at The Polished Knob, Todmorden. What a great little venue. People who like their rock music. As for the stage debut, it went very well. I stumbled on some of the words, like you do when all of a sudden you find yourself doing all of the singing, but on the whole it went down excellently.

It is a lovely change to be able to do requests for songs people want and take ideas on. Looking forward to doing a lot more of the same.

21st September 2016:
I have just updated the Recording Gear page of the site. I apologise for neglecting that page, in case anyone is actually interested in it, as my home recordings are quite central to what I am going to be doing from now on. My new band, The THREE, are not going to be out all of the time, so I can get back to enjoying myself musically and recording some songs, hopefully getting some new collaborations under my belt. I have a good number of tracks already recorded, which are just awaiting vocals being added and I will keep you posted with that side of things as I go along.

The last full track that I recorded and finished off in a day (quite recently) was a submission for the Del Amitri covers CD which is currently being compiled in aid of a very worthy cause indeed - supporting Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Scotland.

I am obliged to keep the details of my song under wraps for now. I am quite pleased with it, but I am sure that a whole bunch of other quality submissions are going in, so it's not a done deal that I will get on the album, especially as more and more big-hitters rush to put their names down to contribute their versions of songs.

Deacon Blue, Fran Healy from Travis (Nothing ever happens), Kris Dollimore, Bryan Tolland and Andy Alston from Del Amitri, Eddi Reader from Fairground Attraction, Nami Bedford, The O's (the support act on the last del Amitri tour), Kate Rusby, The Halton Quartet, to name but a few are all taking part. Oh yes, some dodgy bloke called Justin Currie, whoever he is, has also donated a song that was originally meant to be included on his forthcoming new album.

UPDATE - The album is now available HERE..

Many thanks to Dave Howell for putting the promo video below together for The THREE.
I think it fully captures the loveliness of the band.

23rd September 2016:

JIM LEA - THERAPY
Slade were a really huge part of my life at one point. I was a big fan during their heyday in the early 1970's and stuck with them through the late 70's and early 1980's when their career was at a low point, but they were still doing a superior live show. I used to go to lots of their gigs all over the country and was regularly admitted to afternoon soundchecks and spent quite a bit of time with the band, as a few of us were regular faces and could be trusted to behave properly.

Like most people who kept up with them, I definitely rejoiced when they started to hit the charts again and had a few decent hits. That meant getting into soundchecks became less frequent, but we completely understood. In the latter part of their career they became a studio band, having stopped playing live entirely and I still dutifully bought their new records, even though they were more like Jim Lea albums, as he took over in the studio.

After a final burst of chart activity in 1991, the classic line-up of Slade split up and Dave Hill took the band over, recruited Don Powell on drums and carried on as Slade II. I went to watch them for a while, but a static, risk-free setlist and no surprises made me give up on going to see them. Not to mention the rather brusque treatment we got from Dave Hill, who was completely up himself, and their sound engineer when supporting them on one show.

After Slade's demise, Noddy Holder and Jim Lea dropped totally out of sight and started a long radio silence, which remained unbroken except for Jim doing a single live show in front of a paying audience in 2002, which I attended (although he did play another one, that never seems to get mentioned, in his village for a protest against a road development). I treated Nod as retired (like Jim) and left him to it, even avoiding his 'Evening with...' show, when it came to Bolton Town Hall. His 'Nobby's Nuts' adverts did little for me personally.

In 2007, Jim Lea released a very accomplished album called 'Therapy', which was a refreshing change of style for him. He did nothing except a couple of interviews to promote it at the time and it has just been released again in September 2016. There are three unreleased bonus tracks and a live disc with most of that 2002 show in the package. The new bonus tracks come without much in the way of information about them. One is a basic demo which Jim didn't feel he could improve on with a re-recording. Another is a more recent digital recording, but from when exactly we are not told. I managed to snag a signed copy via PledgeMusic.

Hearing the three new songs made me think a little about how the guy I used to be able to chat to, back in the day, and myself have both changed. The chatting 'relationship' is no longer there at all. I have no contact whatsoever with him and haven't had it for years. I seriously doubt he would remember me at all - there were thousands of fans, though I did get some pretty privileged access back then. We have all moved on.

The extra songs on the Therapy album are like a postcard from the past to a slight extent, as I know that they are not newly-recorded work. But I don't know exactly when they were recorded, so I have to gauge them on the freshness of the material. It's not 'of a time' or dated at all, which is very pleasing. Reading Jim's sleeve notes has made me realise that when he is talking to the reader, he is sort of making a broad general statement about what we have bought. It's not a conversation of any type. I do feel slightly sad that that chatting relationship from years ago disappeared entirely, as the band were lovely people back then. I have no inclination to approach any of them now, as two of them are no longer in Slade and the two that are just drag the name through the mud.

The signature on the album cover bothered me slightly, as it isn't an autograph that I have actually picked up myself from him personally and that just feels a bit weird, to be honest. It's impersonal and not what I was expecting to feel on seeing the signed sleeve. But I can be happy that the music on the CD's remains excellent. Buy it here.

26th September 2016:
A long weekend of gigging. Due to the after-effects of my operation earlier this year, I find myself really tired out a lot of the time. People keep saying, "well it WAS major surgery" at me and seem surprised that I got back on with things so quickly. Like I've said before, I felt I had to make myself get back on with it, or I would quite happily have just stopped playing bass in public.

On Friday, I was so tired before the gig at Whittles in Oldham that I actually felt physically sick in the car on the way there, but I got a burst of adrenalin as we got set up and ready to get going and the gig itself turned out to be really good. A very enjoyable evening.

The same thing basically happened on the Saturday, near Rawtenstall, but without the much-needed burst of adrenaline. We didn't have that much of a crowd in, as it absolutely bucketed it down with rain in the area (like it always does in the Rossendale Valley) and there was football on TV, though those who were there were quite appreciative. It's just nice to have a buzzing crowd in front of you, as it gives you something back that translates into energy. I pretty much struggled my way through that gig as I was totally pooped and overheating when I arrived at the venue and was worried afterwards about driving a fair old distance to a guitar show on the Sunday morning and then doing the jam night later on.

As it turned out the guitar show didn't happen, as my mate didn't feel up to going either and the jam night turned out to be really good fun, though I was again pretty weary when I turned up and unloaded. As there weren't many players in at the start, we looked at what songs we needed to tidy up a little from the last two gigs (as we are still finding our feet with some of them) and also tried some songs we hadn't played together before - Stairway to Heaven, Always the last to know, Allright now, Don't waste my time, I can't explain. Quite a promising sesh.

9th October 2016:
This morning I got another letter from The Christie, similar to the one shown on 8th July. An 'undetectable' reading.
You can't ask for better than that. All the more reason why people should get themselves checked out.

I just found this on You Tube. I'm not on it much - typically the bassist is ignored..

19th October 2016:
Channeling my inner Dave Edmunds with my new Radiotone 335 guitar.

23rd October 2016:
Some Bad Habits video from 1998 and 2001 is being added to the live video page.
Some rather good Flamin' Slade video from 2007 is also on there.

A promo video from 1991 for a single I released. Oh My God, I looked so much younger then.

Tonight The THREE played a show in Rochdale, at a venue I haven't been to for some time. Suffice to say it was a roaring success and we are booked back for next year.

3rd November 2016:

Well, I am a few gigs in now with The Three and my initial worries and the panic I had about singing all of the songs have now cleared up. I am hopefully handling it reasonably well. I can get a good vocal balance in the PA with this band and so I don't have to shout to get my voice to actually in the mix like I used to have to put up with. Sound-checking and stage volumes are no ordeal or issue now, either (no guitarists brought close to tears during the soundcheck), so that's an utter pleasure.

We are working on the diary for next year and it's going a bit slow, as I didn't come away from my last band without the contacts that they'd had, as for some reason best known to them they didn't want me to approach the same venues. Ironically, the first place that I approached gave us an immediate pay rise, from what they were on.

An excellent evening at the Atherton Arms last night. A nice big and very receptive crowd there. Lots of a buzz about the band on the night. We were offered another jam night at a local venue, but would have to agree to a suitable midweek night. We have also got a spot at the Bent and Bongs Beer Bash next February.

12th November 2016:

I spent quite a bit of time this evening going through a bunch of videos that I had put up on my YouTube channel recently, removing the drummer's name details from some of them - at his request. I think it's a shame really, that I had to do that, as when you go, you're a long time dead and when your name isn't out there any more for things you've done, then you're all gone. None of the performances were awful, or amounted to war-crimes. Still it's what he wanted.

CURRENT LISTENING:
The first two Crowded House albums (deluxe reissues with bonus discs).

16th November 2016:

I had to wait six whole years for last night's brief reunion of The Kerbcrawlers to finally come about.

4th December 2016:

I still keep getting the odd message from people that I know asking if I am playing a show at one venue or another that week with Wizdom. This is because my former band are still using my image on their event posts on Facebook. I wish they would not do this, as it is totally misleading. They did not want me "to trade on having been in that band" when booking future shows for The Three, which was the final straw that made me walk from the band - yet they do it. It was nothing at all for me to boast about.

I can categorically state that I will not be playing with them ever again. I have no association with them at all now.
My show dates are here.

We are not sending Christmas cards this year. Instead we will be making a donation to the lovely person (Bianca Filip) who rescued our Oscar from an awful life on the streets in Romania. He had been living on the streets for some time until she managed to catch him and take him in. She does this for a lot of dogs and they come to the UK to be rehomed. He is now unrecognisable as the dog that we saw in the photo of him in the shelter there.

- the 'Bowie eyes' thing Oscar has going on in this pic is just a trick of the light -

2016 has been just a bit of a crap year. We just lost Rick Parfitt and that was simply heartbreaking. David Bowie and Prince, likewise. A lot of our musical 'heroes' are getting to that age where they will be falling off the perch. So sad.

On a personal level, my own experience with cancer has changed me greatly. I'm glad that I have not been one of this year's death statistics. My wife has had heart problems, which are hopefully under control now, though her health leaves a lot to be desired. A couple of my friends have had very serious health issues and have had to go through some pretty hairy operations and follow-up treatment and are probably just as grateful as I am to the NHS, which needs protecting from this evil Government, who just want to sell it off to their mates and privatise it.

My daughter Rachel's Wedding was the main highlight, as well as leaving the rather repetitive and unfulfilling Wizdom to get The Three going. I am now playing with two very capable, talented and flexible musicians who are in tune with what I like, which was really not the case before. They were making me ill. Going out of the house to play at gigs doesn't make me unhappy now.

There are a few days of 2016 left. Thank you if you have been reading my blatherings and drivel during the year.
Please folks, be careful crossing the road. Don't do anything silly.
See you in 2017, all being well.