Dear all,
A ludicrous ‘it could only happen to Dan’ story coming up but first let me bring you up to speed. I am almightily knackered after a drive-tastic weekend with little sleep but some great gigs made it all worthwhile. Best of all was Friday’s gig in Reeth with the mighty Alistair Anderson. The man is a phenomenon, an amazing presence and such a great night. Apologies for my rather downbeat last blog, but this sure as hell put a smile on my face! Lots more to come with Mr Anderson next year I hope.
Next up was Manchester and the parking ticket story (see later). Anyway, it was an unusual gig as it was a restaurant performance at Jack Spratt’s but it was really nice. It was great
to knock out a lot of instrumentals I hadn’t played in a fair while. A big variety of stuff and appreciative audience so thanks to you all. Finally, Walsh and Pound began the farewell trail with a gig at the Bedford in Sidmouth which was excellent. It was weird being in Sidmouth out of festival season but really nice so thanks everyone for coming and to the people who made the gig happen.
So then, the parking story. I turned up at the relevant road in Manchester about an hour before the parking became free. I therefore walked up and down the street looking for a machine to pay at but could only find one which for reasons I will go into shortly was unusable. Therefore I deduced that it was probably ok to just park given that there was no way of paying. There wasn’t even one of those daft ‘pay by phone’ things. After I’d performed and returned to my car a chap who was waiting outside the pub said ‘you’ve got a parking ticket pal’. And by george he was right. I was rather miffed and I shall now tell you why. You know I said that machine wasn’t really usable, do you know why that was? I tell you what I’ll show you…
You will notice that where one would normally stand and use the machine is in fact a hole in the ground filled with wet cement. This is clearly a minor inconvenience coupled with the fact the machine was not actually on either. But that is a hole in the ground! How in the name of [expletive] was I supposed to pay?! That’s an actual hole in the ground! Why?!
I have emailed the council including the sentence: ‘I walked up and down the street and could find only one machine which appeared to be off and rather more to the point was impossible to access because work was taking place on the ground and it was therefore a hole filled with cement.’ I shall see what their reply is but I suspect I’ll end up paying. Or, what I suspect will happen is they’ll take just over 14 days to get back to me and then I’ll end up paying and therefore pay the full £50 rather than £25. Cosmic.