Another year, another beer in The Hop with close friends while the rest of the country went to the polls. Head hurts... ouch...

Beatles tribute band 'Tragical History Tour' play a Saturday night downstairs at The Hop in Wakefield.

Oh dear, Lil's turned 21 which was an excuse for beer, cake, and lots of silliness with balloons and trying to use photo angles to make Lil seem taller. Bless.

Pop-rock covers band Big Day play downstairs at The Hop on a Saturday night with standards from all sorts of bands from the 60s to present day.

Almost over the hill but not quite - sat in the back of the Hop for a few ales to celebrate The Man In Black's birthday.

A fairly quiet Open Mic Monday for a change, including performances from Jenny, Seb, Ryan, Spanish Dave, and indeed yours truly who did a short piano set accompanied on bongoes by Si. Photos of me taken by Ryan Mitchell-Smith.

After a mad dash back to Wakefield, we both headed for some blues on a Saturday night at The Hop, Wakefield with Rod, Dave and Martin aka Dr Blue. Awful light (a single red spot) so I did a bit of colour-balance fiddling with these.

Another Monday featuring Ryan Mitchell-Smith, Jenny, Sam, a single launch from Scott Wainwright and an impromptu solo appearance by Harry Rhodes.

One of those 'falling into the pub' evenings, where Enid turned up for a few drinks and ended up stumbling out around 1am on a school-night. Oops.

Gethin Amoss of US band 'Ecstatic' did a solo acoustic set, gentle music which rounded off the weekend quite neatly.

An evening at The Hop with singer/pianist Nina Zagorski, with soul/jazz songs reminiscent of a softer version of Steely Dan. Very enjoyable!

Fantastic heavy metal and rock from Heaven's Basement on their UK tour, led by Johnny Fallen and Jonny Rocker. Includes scenes of gratuitous stage-diving and extreme noise.

After a heavy evening of gig photography, myself, Bez and Si went and had a few beers in the back room of The Hop. We bumped into Antonio and Elly as well, what a lovely surprise!

We were gigging at Escobar and had a couple of drinks before the show, then met all our friends at The Hop for yet more beers until the small hours. Joel had the fish-eye lens which made for some comedy shots.

Another alcoholic night in The Hop, Wakefield...

After almost 15 years, staff from Painthorpe House Golf & Country Club met up once more for a drink in The Hop, Wakefield. The numbers were far less than the 30 or so who'd promised to come but we still had enough folks to catch up on old times and get thoroughly mortal together.

A bit of a quiet one this week, but stellar performances from Seb, Matt 'Skint & Demoralised', Bernadette Dales, Blake Hemingway, Hollie Cooper and a few other folks. I hadn't been down for a while but managed to get some stonking photos with the f/1.2 85mm.

Bez's band Chat Noir played Escobar on Boxing Day, Tim and myself pottered along to see their set before we headed out to The Hop for more drinkies with friends.

Me and Si propped the bar up at The Hop from about 8:15pm thru to 2am, and were befriended by a mad woman called Ann. It wasn't so much carnage as a slow decline...

Sat in the back room of The Hop before our appearance, and then hanging around in the beer garden with Lou and Tony.

Another good Open Mic Monday at The Hop; not many new faces come along nowadays but there were the usual excellent performances from Seb, Ryan and co.

We opened an 'Unsigned Band' night at Escobar in Wakefield with a 40-minute set - a bit of an odd gig because we were opening for two rock bands! Following that, the band wandered down to The Hop where were performed two acoustic numbers for the remains of the Open Mic contingent. Ace!

Tonight's performances came from Bryn, Jenny, Sam, Seb, Scott Wainwright and finally a band called The Busketeers who turned up at the last minute to round the night off nicely - all compered by Ryan Mitchell-Smith.