Aye oop!

Well, another event-packed week in rock; as I’m a bit pushed for time today, we’ll just give you the news headlines – carefully avoiding any mentions of the current headline staple fare of Tr*mp and Br*xit – not to try and avoid being contentious, because we are pretty sure that anybody with views significantly different to ours on these matters will have got stuck at the word “contentious” – but because actually we have very little interest in the Scunthorpe-based Olympic ice skating hopefuls Ethel Tramp and Neville Broxit.

 So, if you’ve quite finished being a bit weird, here is the week’s news…

 Transport News

• Alan’s little blue van has been feeling rather poorly lately, but after a bit of seeing-to by our local garage heroes, is feeling much better now, thanks very much for asking.
• Ben’s little blue car, on the other hand, suffered a terminal engine-blowing-up episode on Thursday, such that his facebook status has now been set to “pedestrian from Yorkshire”. We’re considering setting up a Just Giving page for him – if anybody has any money they don’t want, please get in touch.

Celebrity News

• Singer news – we had a lovely farewell lunch with Rosa, culminating with her walking away with a huge sparkly box filled with presents, cake and sweeties, with a tear in her eye and some stolen cutlery in her pocket. We’ll miss her, but we’ll be keeping in touch, and we’ll keep you posted as to how she’s getting on.

The Arts

• On Saturday, we played at the Officer’s Mess at MoD Lyneham for their Valentine’s ball, with talented daughter Lil singing. It was rather a posh do for us, there were lots of bow ties and formal dinner jackets in evidence – rather oddly complemented by several pairs of unmistakeably Rupert The Bear trousers. We were rather pleased when they all jumped up and started dancing as soon as we started the very first song; rather less so when they all went and sat back down again for the second one. Still, they were back up for the third one, and stayed that way for the rest of the night, making full use of our array of silly props, and proclaimed the evening to be a wild success. It certainly was from our point of view, as they insisted on buying us drinks, and when we protested that we couldn’t have any more because we were driving, they simply bought us a bunch of bottles to take home. Other audiences, please take note.
• This Friday, it’s Alan’s younger brother’s 50^th birthday (and if you, like us, are wondering how he can have a younger brother who is 23 years older than him – well, that’s just how things are) – and we’ve been asked to play at his birthday bash. He also asked if Lily can sing a few acoustic numbers, so (since they’ll be there anyway) we’ll be getting the rest of the offspring up to play for a bit as well. Because we can.
  
• Finally, after what seems like forever searching for a permanent replacement to fill Rosa’s sparkly shoes, the happy news this week is that we have found a rather lovely candidate who fits the bill perfectly, and who (remarkably) also appears to be prepared to put up with the rest of us idiots. We have yet to start serious rehearsals with her (if indeed we have ever done anything seriously), but we’ll be able to provide more details soon.

In the meantime, watch this space…

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