Dear all,
Well since my last blog, Will and I finished our Live Music Now work in Lincolnshire playing concerts in special schools through the week. It was a real joy and a couple of times a real eye opener. I must pay special mention to a school that was for children who had been exluded from mainstream schools on the grounds of violence, so you can imagine what we might have been expecting. The children were amazingly well behaved and very friendly and welcoming and it became so clear how much the school turned the lives of these children around and how much the staff cared about it all. It was a wonderfully rewarding gig as well as some of the others where the children were simply beside themselves with joy and fun at our music (a strange reaction I know!). We’re also doing Live Music Now this week working in special schools in Durham and it is a challenge, a real challenge but with great rewards.
In between, I was in action on the gigging front beginning with a Walsh and Pound gig at the Pave in Hull. It was a good laugh and many thanks to the organisers for putting us on and spreading the word so well. I must also make mention of the two tables who were simply unable to shut the hell up during the gig and particularly to the gentleman who criticised me afterwards for pointing them out (which I might add was much to the amusement of the rest of the audience). Mate, if you’re reading, given you had to check with me that it was you and that you only knew because someone on the next table who had shut the hell up had to tell you I feel really quite vindicated.
Anyway, it was a good gig! Next up was a Friday night off of all things which was spent in a cocktail bar..marvellous…followed by a weekend of Irish music guesting with singer Alan Kelly. This week after Live Music Now, Will and I are back in action in Nottingham before a weekend of Alan again and a good old covers fest with Simma at Nancy’s.
Briefly, I saw a sign on the back of a lorry today that said ‘DO NOT PUSH’. Would one attempt to push a lorry?! Anyway the main thing I wanted to comment on was a hilarious moment from my recent visit to WHSmith, not normally a noted hotbed for hilarious moments. They’ve recently introduced self service machines and as with all these confounded contraptions they essentially don’t really work properly. Of the three that were there, only one was actually functioning correctly so I, like many other people in the queue simply waited for a human cashier. One member of staff informed the store manager that these two machines were not working and asked if he could come over and fix them. He walked over very calmly and quite simply bashed both of the dysfunctional items to high heaven with a single blow of the fist and then calmy walked back to where he was! Let’s face it we’ve all wanted to do it with our computers I’m sure but the incident still caused me much surprise and amusement!