Some guitar porn - sorry no nakedness :-)

So the time finally rolled round for me to increase my guitar collection! That is if you can call my battered Ibanes acoustic and my rusty Ibanez electric (in storage) a collection!

Well they are now joined by a true marvel. Its not the most expensive guitar I tried, it came in £500 below budget, which is either a fantastic saving, or a cheaper guitar (depending on your approach to the price vs. quality debate).

It is a Taylor 414CE, so here it is:

She is very lovely and sounds like a pure guitar should. Lovely and bright, just how I like it! I was hoping for a few technical gadgets to come built in, but the Taylor expression system that comes as standard pre-amp reproduces an exact natural sound, so no cool-tube, effects, mic, body sensors are necesary! Lovely!
If I ever get round to recording anything I'll put some decent quality clips on the site for all to be amazed at my new toy!

Dykes and bicycles

We've just (well recently) gotten back from a wee trip to Holland... or The Netherlands, although I'm still not sure what we're supposed to say, cos as far as I can figure, The Netherlands included Belgium at one point... kind of like calling Zimbabwe Rodesia, "cos thats what it was called when I was there" not that I've ever been to either...
anyway, yes we spent three days last week driving from our little cottage in Kent to Holland. It was so much fun. The Brits seem to think that driving more than 2 hours is frightfully tiresome, although spending longer than that going in to London each day is normal! So most are surprised that we enjoyed our 3 hours from Dunkerque in France through Belgium to Dortrecht in Holland. We went up to Delft where they make that gastly blue and white china, and we even managed to NOT buy any of it! Yay! Although we nearly bought some for our moms... sorry moms... we decided not to get you something more to dust!
We also hired some bikes in a place called Kinderdijk that is famous for its 19 windmills. So we cycled down the little walkway along the middle of the canal that the windmills pump their water into. It was so cool to see the fields on either side of the canal at a lower level than the canal. And we also stopped for a while to laugh at a field of lambs too! I know such sissies!
All in all it was a fantastic trip, not least because we got to drive across Belgium and got to see so much more countryside than sitting in a plance would have allowed!
I have also found the most fantastic holiday destination: a place called Knokke (I don't know if you pronounce the first 'k' or not) on the Belgian coast. It is like a super trendy, up-market, yuppy version of the Durban beachfront... just bigger! The beach is that lovely smooth sand and there is a very long promenade type thing all along the sea-front. Simply lovely. If only we had enough ££'s to afford to go there it would be perfect! Its not often you walk a few short meters from teh beach-front and find a Chanel, Armani and Dior shop laden high street... hohum
Now we are looking forward to our holiday at home in August! YAY! although everyone keeps telling me we're very silly for going back for yet another winter... 3 in a row this year... oops