Blog entry number: Dalmations.

Where are we, then? What are we up to, eh? Are you hungry, are you? Are you hungry for more? Are you? I am.

Where are we, then?

Well, we signed off on one or two things last week. That’s good. Nothing like ‘OMG Phoria are whatever big now’ kind of stuff, but really good and exciting stuff nonetheless. We’re proud and happy to be working with everyone we work with which is a great position to be in and we feel very lucky especiallyinthisphaseofourcareer, which we can only hope is the early phase. Imagine if it isn’t. Imagine if this is the late phase. Imagine.

Go on.

Shit, isn’t it.

I mean…that’s it. The waterwheel just keeps spinning. I didn’t know it had it in it. Still the music pours out of the speakers, still there’s a frequency that needs tweaking, a spread that needs balancing, a trinket that needs placing just on the edge of the mantelpiece so despite the comfortable chair and fine whisky we’ve laid on for you there’s still this little sense of urgency in your chest demanding that you don’t let the little thing fall off despite our telling you specifically not to touch anything before we left the room to go and find our special lubrication provided to us by a time travelling future gravel-as-auto-erotica entrepreneur.

That’s where we are. That’s how we’re trying to make you feel. Don’t touch it. We left it there on purpose. It won’t fall. Or will it? Your synapses are telling you it will. But will it? No. Trust us. Oh, hang on…

Repeat.

Repeatitagain.

We’re on this list, which is good. Very nice people at Gigwise. They’ve been really supportive. We like them. The whole list is great and it’s lovely to be among those names.

If you trust their opinion, here’s the facebook page of our next gig in London. Get it up on your feeds and that and hopefully we’ll see you there.

Sez has started pumping out playlists for everyone to get their well-used little ears around. Here’s one.

This week?

Sort more stuff out. Keep everything moving. Build a house out of litmus paper.

It’s Monday, and I’m sorry for that. If anything big happens, I’ll call you on a dog's bones.

Tim

I enjoy it, anyway.

We’ll start at the beginning, then, as is the fashion.

Not that there’s much of a middle. Or an end.

Oh good: I can relax.

We hit Bristol last week and we’ve only just recovered. Thanks so much to everyone who came. Start the Bus is a great venue – really friendly and accommodating. It makes a difference when you get a good crew and a good vibe before the gig. The crowd grew in numbers while we were onstage, too, which is always good. Yeah…basically it was good and everyone was friendly and had a good time, is the crux of the matter. A bit of a non-story. This whole ‘starting at the beginning’ thing has fallen at the first hurdle to be honest - although that in itself would imply a linear narrative, which of course this inevitably has as it is, like music or baking a delicious cake, something that you cannot help but experience as something persisting through time, meaning you’ll naturally apply your own sense of narrative to it. If you didn’t recognise that I didn’t start at the beginning at the beginning (which I actually did) then you wouldn’t be able to say ‘He didn’t start at the beginning’ when your friend asks ‘What’s the first thing you notice wrong with this?’ Mileage may vary by tolerance and/or imagination.

But you digress.

It’s been a funny old week. One of those where not that much has changed but you feel like you’ve been up to loads. What that does mean is that you’re filled with the enthusiasm of busy days but with very few meaningful stories to tell if you, like me, were stuffed from a young age with a suspicious modesty and a tendency to slip subtle hidden messages into your blogs. It’s like life: at the end of it all you’re just left with a dull hangover; your brain feeling like a well-wrung dishcloth and your body blalaaaaaaaa

BLALAAAALALAALALaALAALA

aaaaaaaaand your tongue fingers licking at a keyboard with nothing much to say, but a sharp and distinct urge to say it, as usual.

Look, we’re a way in to the week, now, OK?. Oh no, it’s only Tuesday. We’re, like, a day away from the beginning. That was good, wasn’t it? Remember when the week was new and fresh and exciting, just like every Monday? It’s somewhat erotic, isn’t it? That first thrust into the week ahead, teasing Tuesday like a FILTHY WHORE?

It’s not, is it.

Music.

The band.

Enjoy yourself, whatever you’re doing.

Tim

Exactly the kind of thing you should expect in the 21st century.

There’s a chill in the air, isn’t there?

               

                Valentine’s wishes to those of you having a tough meterological time of it in at the moment. We’re on the South Coast, but are not seeing the kind of badness that lots of you are. Do be well, or ‘do-be-do-be-do be well’ as Fred Sonata would say.

               

                We’ve been all around the houses this week. A couple of days of recovery, a couple of days of great big work and more new songs for live purposes. Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes as always, new avenues and futures and all that as usual. The same old stuff in that everything is new. Consistence in novelty and excitement. It’s pretty good, really.

                I’m just putting together the last bits of my ‘Valentine’s day surprise’ for my loved one. It’s a 21^st century musician’s lifestyle simulator – the most realistic one yet! First I will succumb to an absurd desire to destroy my body and mind, then we’ll live in one damp room with nothing but books and guitars for company, and then this evening we’re going to feast on scraps of rat and cupboard shavings! Ooh, she’s a lucky girl. Then she gets to agree to everything I say and agree that everything I do is good so I don’t crumple into a pool on the floor, weeping into an essay entitled ‘What I want to be when I grow up.’

                I think the rest of the band have the same kind of thing ‘planned’.

                Happy Valentine’s Friday!

                Telston

                Tim’s top tip: One thing missing on Valentine’s day? i.e. human contact? Simply drink heavily and manipulate a hand puppet into a selection of depraved acts! Or, order a bunch of flowers delivered to your door alongside a card that reads ‘From yourself.xx’ Upon receiving them, immediately open the card, stare the courier in the face and declare ‘They are flowers from me that I sent to myself.’ The courier will run away so fast that they’re bound to knock someone unconscious in their retreat. Hey presto! A Valentine’s date is yours!

It was a gig and it is one that we played.

I’ve decided to write this while all the strange colours and shapes from last night are still somewhat vivid in my memory. Good, no? I’ve got my second coffee of the day on the go after just getting through my front door, so let’s start with the joys of gigging.

Those who came to our St. Pancras Old Church gig are very beautiful people. Thank you so much for your support. Nice venue, no? Interesting, fun...a little strange. I thoroughly enjoyed shaking all the religious artifacts with incredible bass power during soundcheck. And in the gig. Big shout outs to Cate Ferris (‘support’ act. She ‘supported’ us with her songs. ‘Suppooooooort.’), Louis D’aboville who sorted out that whole light thing we had going on, and to our fabulous string quartet who, despite playing instruments that aren’t made of buttons that go BBRRRRRRRRRVVVVVVVVVV, still manage to make music. Thanks to Communion, too, for putting the whole thing on. [If I weren't so knackered I'd put links on all those names, but I'm knackered (see earlier in sentence) and some of this bit is an edit, so I'm essentially writing from beyond this entry's grave. Woooooo-oooo.)

I’d like to say that my highlight was when the church bells from across the way started ringing during the quietest and most tender moment of the gig, but that would be my favourite moment in a kind of twisted way which, after having such a good time, I’m not feeling. My actual favourite moment was the end of Posture. We just smashed it and then ended up getting a tidal wave of reaction which, when you’re standing up there, makes everything go away and you can just drown in the flood of sound. It’s very difficult to describe how it hits you, if you haven’t experienced it. It’s like it goes straight through you and your mind kind of hooks onto it as it passes through and you suddenly find yourself living a mile or two behind your own skull. Awesome.

Look at that – a little sincerity, albeit dressed up as something hideous and garish so that I might protect myself from my own feelings. Makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Me, too. Let’s sit in this puddle we’ve made for ourselves for just a moment. Tum-tee-tooo.

So, one of the members of the string quartet, who I won’t mention by name because it feels odd to (and I don’t know why), suggested we head back to hers after the show for a little chill and a drinky-poos. There’s no other way to end such a fun night, really, so after a couple of trips to a couple of Greenwich’s finest twenty-four hour supermarkets we found ourselves fully boozed and parked up and inside the building. Inside a lift. The lift didn’t work, for a while, so we were then seven, closeted up close like those fish that come in those overly used similes. It was a couple of minutes after the fear hit that the door finally opened, us having gone nowhere and perfectly happy to consign the last few brushed-chrome moments to the funny bin.

Ah, stairs. Front door. ‘Let me just snap my front door key in half, and we’ll be in.’ she must have said at some point, someone failing to suggest that it might be better to unlock the door, instead. Do you have a spare? No. ‘Hello, flatmate? Where are you? I’ve snapped my key and locked myself out! Oh, you’re in town? Can you...’

No, no, no. No help coming. Rightly so. Not a problem. She was mortified. We, of course, found it funny. Jeb only wished we’d been stuck in the lift for longer so that this might have punctuated the evening even more effectively. She ran to get the ‘super’, which I can only assume means Superman because I believe Superman helps human animals who need the superior help. Hence: Sup ‘erma’ n.

We didn’t go with her, because no-one offered to. Ho-hum. We sat on the floor of the very well appoitment block and opened our beers, like everyone who crosses that line between the privileged and the redundant should. We laughed. We joked. We needed a wee, we tried to pick the lock, and we contemplated lowering Seryn down from the roof with my hair.

She came back, still horrified, no super.

Don’t worry – we’ve got a van, outside.

So we sat in the van, in the wind and the rain, and we figured out what to do next. I mean, drinking and laughing were the first two things, but then we had to figure out how to get a set of keys back from the centre of London at 2am.

Taxi.

Taxi booked.

More laughing. More drinking. More cold, wind, and rain.

Forty minutes passes.

‘Yes, Hi, we ordered a taxi earlier, just wondering if...OK it’s still on its way to him...’

Stupid laughs. Punning on the names of composers, the jokes far too scatalogical for a blog so sophisticated as this little brown bum. Let's just say that 'Rimsky-Korsakov' made an appearance. Not literally, obviously.

‘Hi, we ordered a taxi about an hour ago...’

They’re almost there, they say. Who’s got the baccy?

‘Yeah, ahem, we ordered a taxi about two hours ago and we still haven’t...’

Gluggety gluggety glue. Trewin found some extra-strong tape in the van, made a crown, and we started sticking things to his head.

The wind and rain were still battering the van, and here we were in this car park, listening to an awesome pirate radio station playing some incredible jazz and house. I don’t usually like the radio, but this I could get down with.

Glug glug.

‘Yeah, hi, it’s been three hours now and...’

Ahem.

‘What about [insert immediate despatch courier name here]? They’ll probably do it and it’ll probably be cheaper.’

Very good idea.

‘Yes, that’ll be twenty minutes.’

Twenty minutes later, it showed up. Awesome, truly awesome. We’re talking half-four in the morning, at this point. We were to subsequently learn that a taxi showed up at the location about half an hour later, with the taxi driver telling the person from whom the key had already been collected to ‘go freng yourself’, or somesuch. Ah, well.

So it goes.

Indoooooors!

INNDDDDOOOOOOOOORS!

Lovely flat, big sofas, massive double bass in the corner, laptop, various refreshments, post-gig-glow still in attendance plus the surreal nature of our time in the van...

We ended up laughing, laughing a lot, long into the night and watching the sun rise over the London skyline listening to Ella Fitzgerald.

It was difficult to know exactly when, as the night segued so gloriously into the day that I didn’t feel a click of instinct or routine, but soon enough the adults knew it was time for bed.

‘We don’t have any curtains in the house, so...good luck.’

Thanks.

So that was last night. I now have to stay indoors for the next five years to pay off the loan I had to take out to buy breakfast at a Costa coffee on the A23, so you won’t hear of any shenanegins like this for a long time.

All of us are having a well deserved rest. That was a big gig.

Thanks again for all your support, our dearest people.

Have fun, and let the caffeine start coursing its way through your system this Saturday night, it’ll help you write nonsense.

Tim

tunite

Right. Here I am. Just had a cup of tea, ready to head out the door.

It is Friday and it is gig day. First gig of the year. We're going to make your faces look like a mix between Robbie Coltrane and a crushed car. Oooooh we're excited. We're going to forget all the shit and smash our sound waves into your pants so everything flaps about and we think you're applauding the whole way through.

But anyway

So

And

What are you up to? Stop thinking about anything but us at St Pancras old church tonight. There's nothing else. New songs. NEW SONGS.

Together, we are stronger.

Tim

There comes a point in every student of topology's life.

                So here it is: it’s the weekend, everybody’s having fun, right?

                Maybe. We’ve got practice today for our gig (which will be the best gig ever, if you weren’t aware, followed closely by this one at the end of the month) with the string quartet. It’s always fun. Last time we got together we were practicing in Ed’s basement flat, watching him panic before their arrival like Hyancinth Bucket. While we’re all very very professional musicians, practicing with these guys is, for us, a bit like playing around with the work experience kid. There’s an element of ‘nooowwwwww....DO THIS! Yes! OK, nooooowwwww...DO THIS!’ and they do it and we all get a neon light switched on inside us that blinks ‘Cool’.

                The year’s revving up.We’re one twelfth of the way through.

                I spent a couple of days fixing Trewin’s computer. You know, the one with all of our work on it. You know, the one with the mountains of new stuff on it. You know, the only one we have that can run everything we need to make music. You know, the one our collective future depends on. You know, the one that Trewin uses to watch Esther Rantzen’s gimp safari.

                So I fixed it. It works, for now. Applause. I’m now bassist and tech support. Jeez. ‘Just like Jimi Hendrix’, I tell the fifteen year old inside my skull.

                And, if you hadn’t noticed, that garish blur of light called life keeps rolling past your eyes like the end credits to a children’s cartoon. You won’t get it back, but it’s not worth anything, anyway.

                Continue having fun.

Tim

                St.Pancras Old Church, London, £7

                Startthe bus, Bristol, Free entry

It's all meet, meet, meet.

                Good God, the bags under my eyes are heavy.

                We’ve got two very excitable people in our garden, sorting out the guttering and shouting about how ‘it’s like a fence at the Grand National up there.’ One has just passed through the living room/bedroom/everything room, and told me about how his favourite concert was when he went to see Pink Floyd in 1987. I’m sat cross legged on the bed, in my old lounge pants, wearing a stinky t-shirt, and so absolutely shattered that I’m talking in that low, groggy way that you do. I’ve also just woken up... Basically I appear absolutely wrecked, to the appropriately trained eye, and it’s only 9am.

                If I appear in a state of insobriety now, however, it’s nothing to how I was on Wednesday night – the whole band and a few other tag alongs had a big one to end a big day in old London town, popping between places where people wanted to talk to us about one thing or another. I think I ended up on one of my late night solo monologues – something which everyone I know has to go through with me at some point. When the sun is tucked up and the flow of the evening has trickled into an inlet, I always wonder how rooms empty out so quickly – usually right when I start talking. When the sun comes up, I realise what I’ve done. I walked home along the seafront in the wind and rain as punishment, mumbling ‘nonsense’ to myself. I flay myself publicly here, too. For shame.

                But the meetings were good. Very good, very enjoyable, and we got to see a lot of London. That’s all I can really say for now. I was going to write a bit about how I wasn’t wearing jeans, but instead a slightly lighter, brownish fabric that shows up liquid and splashes of water like nobody’s business. Going for a wee became a matter of very intense precision so as not to make myself look like a cow in the shade or perhaps a monotone Jackson Pollock (take your pick from those two). These things pop into your head when you’re meeting people. I’m not going to mention any of that.

                The men from outside have just gone. I always try and offer people tea, but after recent slips and...not needing any more mugs, we don’t have enough mugs. If I was to just make a drink for them in the one mug we own, I’d end up having to pick a favourite and, as every parent knows, that’s not fun. Essential, but not fun. I could of course have made them one cup to share between them, and then just put two straws in it. Well, they’re gone now. You live, you learn.

                So yes – things look good. Really good, actually. Apart from the crushing sense of shame and despair, I can look forward to the future a little. That’s rather novel. All the boys feel the same, as one or two raised glasses will testify.

                Right.

                They’re gone.

                Time to put the coffee on.

                Have fun,

                Tim

P.S. Come to this one, of course. Just don't invite me to any after parties.

                

Mo music, mo music, mo music.

Another week, another week.

It’s been social, it’s been fruitful.

Two new songs popped up out of nowhere (Trewin), which, as usual, put things in a mass of choice-al [made up word mine] crisis. It’s like Ed, Seryn, Jeb, and I are running naked through a forest (yes), skipping through the low-lying leaves and rubbing ourselves against the monkeys while Trewin, poking his blow gun out of a stealth drone, takes us down with sweet paralysing poison. We’re now on the floor, in the mud, all covered in drool and talking nonsense...and then the poisonous effects of Trewin’s darts take effect! (At that point I expected you to think that the drool and crap was to do with the darts, but then cunningly confound your expectations using ‘sentences’, which, if I was unsuccessful on my first attempt, I have surely achieved now.) WOOOGLADTOKNOWYOU

So the poison (songs) takes us off into a magical world of unreality (music) but leaves us still and shaking on the ground in cold jungle moonlight. Let’s just throw them all out, yeah? I don’t mean in the bin, I mean into the ether. Into the great beyond. Into the broad faces of those who love us. Let’s just bung them out and throw CDs like frisbees off the top of The Shard, hack the BBC news site and get the mp3s blasting out - changing all the headlines to things like ‘Jeremy Hunt finally sees moral and economic short-sightedness in non-specific Americanisation’ – making people happy and hopeful. Let’s slide our pieces through everybody’s letterbox. Let’s turn every streetlight into a projector, showing all of Jeb’s videos on a continuous 24-hour loop across the entire country for the rest of time. Let’s replace police sirens with ‘Once Again’, so anybody in trouble can just get a hug and be OK and then sit down with the police officer and have a chat and everybody can do the same and we’ll have a cup of tea, yes? Let’s have a cup of tea. And when the kettle boils it’ll sing a Phoria song. And Grandma’s slippered feet as she collects the kettle will play out a skittish little Phoria beat and she’ll dance and smile as a tear, rich with regained memories of hope, slowly forms in her eye, around which lays the cruel cartography of a life so hard until this moment. And  then the new octopus blasts a foghorn in her face.

And then we wake up. In the jungle. Trewin hovering around above us, having written another ten songs while we were comatose. And now we don’t know what to do.

But that’s OK.

It’s all very good news.

We’re very flattered to be mentioned on this blog list of the best tracks of 2013. Any list that has us at No. 1 above Arcade Fire and Beyonce is OK with us.

In other news, Jeb and I set up the band projector in our top-secret bunker the other night, and experienced this shotgun cartridge of a film:

I can only recommend you do the same (if you have three hours). It is a Friday, and all that.

Do stay well. Have fun.

I’m off to dig in the made up word mine.

Tim

Wh.oosp

I try and avoid all forms of activity, where possible.

Honestly, I’d rather stare blankly into space, thinking about nothing at all, than get up to make a cup of tea, or pull someone from a burning building. I’d rather sit and watch, and think about how I’d have done it differently, than actually do it. This is not so much a product of my own laziness, I tell myself, but in order to protect others from my often disastrously enacted actions. Like ‘fixing’ my neighbour’s oven.

After several internal band appeals, however, for someone to fix a private playlist on the ever useful Soundcloud, went unnoticed, I took it upon myself to fix it up, to make it all sprucely, to ‘sort it out’ as I believe the productive people say.

This is what led to what Ed correctly called ‘Soundcloud-gate’, the other day. In my haste to get back to avoiding all activity I accidentally rushed through the uploading process on three of the many tracks I was putting up, and made them public, which, unknown to me, sends out a blaring call on facebook for everyone to LISTEN TO THE NEW PHORIA TRACKS THEY’VE JUST PUT UP ON THEIR SOUNDCLOUD. 

Whoops.

Imagine my horror (I immediately realised what had happened, because, while I’m as dumb as the next man, I still haven’t read enough Government white papers  to have that level of fecklessness really rub off on me) as I sat and watched the play count rise over a period of about twenty seconds. ‘No worries,’ I thought, ‘I can quickly set these tracks to private and no-one will be any the wiser.’ I nipped one of them in the bud. One play on the play count. Whoops! Back to the main menu. What? The other two now have four plays. Quick! Another one bites the dust. HOW HAS THAT THIRD TRACK RECEIVED SIX PLAYS IN TWENTY SECONDS? Private. Done. Crisis averted?

Ring ring.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hello Tim. Yeah, I’m just clearing up this mess you’ve made. How’re you?’

At first I thought it was the local sewer maintenance office, but it turned out to be Ed.

‘Did you know it comes up on facebook whenever you upload a public track?’

‘No.’

‘Well...now you do.’

So, some of you got a listen. Luckily, two of the tracks are ones that we’ve flirted with publicising for some time. Not too bad. They’ve been up on Soundcloud before.

One of them, however, was a brand new sprinkle of joy. The ‘new sound’. A track from the new EP. This was the one that received one listen.

There is one fan out there. One fan, among the many of you. One, real, person, with ears, who has heard it. Who knows what they heard? Did they like it? Did they immediately remove themselves from the facebook group having succumbed to the last straw, losing all patience? Did they ascend to a higher plane of consciousness? Did they go and live in the middle of the ocean, hoping never to hear another human-produced squeak?

We may never know.

What we can know, however, is that I subsequently went to Ed’s house, apologised again, thanked him, and then maimed him sorely at Tekken II.

He didn’t know that would show up here.

Aside from all the screw-ups and flip-kicks, we’re getting stuff sorted for showing you our big one at St. Pancras Old Church on 7thFeb. We’ve got the strings, we’ve got the vids...we’ve got the power. You should come. Tickets. They're limited and they are selling.

So, that’s it. Another week done. New Year’s is long in the memory, but never fear – something is just around the corner. I have no idea what it is, but it’s inevitable, right? I mean, that’s what corners are for.

Enjoy yourself. Have a nice weekend. Don’t step on any snails in the dark.

Tim

8:14, if you use the twelve hour format.

Goodbye then, 2013.

You were the year of Bloodworks, of Red, of Croatia, of Heaven, and that misunderstanding behind the bike shed.

You were a year of joy, of happiness, of getting no sleep thanks to the Auto-bahn, of swimming in Lake Bled, of that My Bloody Valentine gig.

You were a year of pain, of frustration, of nearly-theres, of not-quite-rights, of bumbling bundles and of misplaced bass notes that ruined the whole song but that’s OK nobody noticed oh no hang on they’re all looking at me just look at the keyboard and pretend you didn’t do anything wrong oh shit what note are we on oh god I think it’s an F# but if I’m wrong it’ll sound so much worse than it already is 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 OK it’s the chorus coming up just relax get back and retrack the phatness yes there we are.

Oh shit no that’s not it where the hell are we oh yeah we don’t play the studio version when we do it live that’s ok just dance like you’re really into it don’t go red don’t go red have a drink ok move your arms and stuff move your neck in a really jerky way that’s cool.

Oh good the gig’s over who was in the crowd? Oh shit oh well they probably didn’t notice because I covered so well oh no hang on I’m still in my house I didn’t leave the house well OK let’s play video games then.

Oh no I just woke up in the hospital apparently the crowd came up onto the stage and knocked me out for wrecking the gig that’s OK we didn’t get an offer from the record people but the WWE want me so at least I’ll be richer than these other fuckers who can’t even make it sound good when their bassist is playing all the wrong notes and knob out all over that shop.

Oh no they’ll probably read this now what have I said I must learn some self control .

We can’t wait for this year. Everyone’s feeling it. I don’t know if this is just a feeling that everyone gets at this time of year, and I’m just applying it to our situation, but still...I can feel it.

Hopefully you can, too.

I saw in the new year with some good friends, in the rain, all of whom were wilfully helping a complete stranger who had passed out in the street and was throwing up copiously on himself. Honestly, I preferred it to spending that moment in the company of sweaty-armed strangers, my beautiful face pressed against their pits, and getting the funny eye from that guy hanging around the bar, playing with his belt buckle.

But then, I have an odd sense of humour/the good life.

I’m tired.

More EP news, soon enough.

Have a good one. Get back  to it, and all that.

Tim

santa bring me spare parts

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring, except for a mouse.

That knocking was caused by the clicking, with care,

Of hopeful young Trewin, who sat working there.

The band were all gathered, stuff spewing from their heads,

(not ideas but old drinks and cheap takeaway breads),

so all that we dreamt of was dismissed as crap,

and all went asunder, for a Christmas Eve nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

Jeb sprung from a hole with a grunt and a splatter.

Away to the window he flew with a flash,

and out of it fell, with a scream and a crash.

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,

chilled Jeb’s bloodied head, bloodied legs, and torso.

He stumbled and bumbled and lurched to his feet,

a trail of teeth; bones, curdled red on the street.

‘Mmeeerrrrr’, said old Jeb, as he lurched through the door,

blood covered his face, shirt, shoes; stained the floor.

Holes punched  through his head bared his pulsating brain,

though his skull was crowned white by the petrified rain.

‘It’s Santa!’ yelled Seryn with great childish glee,

and quickly manoeuvred to sit on Jeb’s knee,

‘For Christmas I want…’ Seryn started to say,

but stopped all a sudden, as Jeb’s legs gave way.

‘Gaarrrrgh!’ said the Claus now sat slumped on the stairs,

These things were the stuff of young Seryn’s nightmares.

He passed out and smashed his young head on the floor.

The wind proved his killer - decapped by the door.

The house now looked festive, though sounded like hell,

filled only with screams – no carols, no bells.

In the night, tints of laughter, as from afar I looked on,

through the sight of a sniper, should anything go wrong.

Trewin surfed downstairs, for something to drink,

stepped over Seryn’s corpse, not stopping to think,

that Jeb might need help, no legs, fractured skull,

Trewin thought of music, ‘These tracks, they sound dull…’

‘Ah-ha!’ thought the Trewin, ‘I’ve got it at last!

That section needs brass! A grand trumpet blast!’

Then I, like an angel, abseiled through the ceiling,

and sent out my own blast to send Trewin reeling.

‘But you hold no trumpet?!’ he screamed, hands on his ears,

as I kicked in his eyes, wiped spiked boots clean of tears,

‘I'm using my arse.’ I said with a smile,

before blasting another, with great rectal style.

‘THERE’S ONE MORE WHO’S BEEN NAUGHTY!’ I sniffed through the house,

Ed stayed in slumber, curled like a woodlouse.

So I left a timed bomb there to tick by his head,

Soon he, like the others, would be messy and dead.

Now, all alone, I stopped at the computer,

Exported the tracks, like some dark cyber-looter,

And sent all the songs to the good girls and boys,

So this Christmas day, was the Christmas of noise.

Alas, corrupt files, ‘Porn virus’, I knew,

The music was lost, but I knew what to do,

‘C:\sendChristmastohell.exe’ I typed in the datum,

so Christmas was taken, and ruled, now, by Satan.

‘Well done, Tim’, he said, as he lit a cigar,

‘The boys are now dealt with – you, child, will go far!’

But I knew what to do as I lined up my sight,

‘Merry Christmas to all,’ I said, ‘and to you, a goodnight.’

His horns away flew with the shotgun's great blast,

Dominion was mine - some power at last!

I repainted hades a shade of magnolia,

And Christmas? Under me? There had been none holier.

Epilogue:

Twas the night before Christmas, and Phoria were dead,

But hell gave ideas to my all-knowing head,

The power to raise all the band from their graves,

And use them as musical (and other) corpse slaves.

----

So that, if you hadn't noticed, is that.

Don't forget THIS, also.

Do enjoy whatever you do. I'm putting this up just before heading out for Christmas Eve breakfast with old friends. Leaving the house before coffee is not something that makes any sense to me.

Enjoy yourself, pity me, egg IDS.

Merry Christmas, from All Of Us.