My, that was a busy weekend.
There was a slightly inauspicious start on Friday, whereby Stuart arrived outside the gig, and promptly reversed into a parked car – a nice shiny Audi, as it happened. This brought the owner bursting out of his kebab shop, to inspect the “damage”, and insist that, even though none was visible, it was “quite common to have serious internal damage that doesn’t show on the outside”, so he “had no choice” but to take down Stuart’s details etc. Well, whatever. Thus mollified, he went back inside, and presumably, that will be the last we’ll hear of him.
Once we got inside, we found that they have rearranged the furniture so that the band space is rather less than the meagre amount previously available, so it was something of a three-dimensional-Jenga-puzzle squeeze to fit us all in.
However, Imbecile Alan has done his bit to save some space, by forgetting to bring the lights along. Fortunately, we managed to find in the toybox some finger lights (we’d forgotten about them!) and there were just about enough of them still working to provide a feeble semblance of a light show – nothing that would trouble Pink Floyd, you understand, but curiously appropriate for a bunch of fools in a dark pub.
We managed to get through the rest of the night without mishap, and even managed a few cheeky encores before collapsing in a heap for a breather; after which we set about attempting to unravel the tangle of cables and drum stands and equipment.
Saturday was a busy day spent carrying heavy things around, moving Emma from nasty pokey small flat to new gloriously spacious house residence – we finished just in time for me to get home, load van with band equipment – including the lights, as a special treat this time – inhale some food and set off for the Golden Fleece.
Happily, they have not contrived to make the space any smaller, so setting up was rather straightforward, and as usual, the punters were rather good fun there – so we ended the night very tired but rather pleased with the day’s accomplishments. And THIS time, we even got to finish the Iron Maiden tune without me breaking a string…
I also now have secret powers over Emma, as only I know where each of the fifteen thousand boxes currently spread throughout her new house actually are…
We’ll be taking a rest next weekend, to give Em a chance to hunt for her kitchen utensils and underwear. I have informed her that this information is available, for a very reasonable fee…
We’ll keep you posted…
Square on
A