Friday 14th September 2018

Friday mornings are always the busiest day for me with the teaching - the first one don't need me there until next week, so just the two schools today (both had children in who were so loud...I may have to buy yet another drum kit - this one for teaching only). It was all quite exhausting. 

Then over to teach the Spanish family who, like the first lesson last week, continue to be my favourite family to teach. It's just little things, like whenever the son gets something right, no matter how simple, the mother jumps up, hugs him and tells him how proud she is of him. There's so much love in that house it's difficult not to feel moved by it. 

Quick catch up with Stu to discuss projects (and to give him a quick drum refresher lesson - for free, because we're such good mates now and he's helped me out a lot with gig contacts for America, it doesn't feel right charging him, especially when at least 40 minutes of the lesson was spent catching up), and then a bit of a bizarre evening...

My first session as a proper jazz drummer. This is for a little band I've joined with a bunch of teachers from the college where I teach drums - it's good for my career if anything else because we jam around the head of music's house. It's such a lovely set-up, my ego was enhanced considerably and we enjoyed wine and pizza...I was made to feel very welcome and ended up staying till gone midnight chatting to the head about music, comedy, life stuff - just a wonderful evening with people who I don't know, the only person I do know there is the chap who pays my wages for my Wednesday afternoon teaching. 

Even more to the point; it turns out I'm a really, really decent jazz drummer. I always knew I was jazzy, but this is actual jazz; smoky, proper silky stuff. I enjoyed that a lot more than I thought I ever would, to the extent that poor old A, who has had a tough working week, got woken up by slightly drunken me telling her all about it at 1am.