Special Xmas things

Well, hello there. 

  The Special season of 'Christmastime' is forcng itself upon us once again with a sort of angry glee as it pounds us to a pulp with horrifically Christmassy music.
  Your very own 40 Horses have been dragged into this macabre spectacle.
  Comedy duo Morgan and Parkin have requested our presence on their Christmas show with our rendition of a christmas song. We're not sure yet what song we'll be doing but we've sort of shortlisted it to 'Stop The Cavalry' or 'I Believe In Father Christmas'. You'll be needing your irony goggles.
  Either way, you'll get to hear the result soon.
 You can get a bit of Morgan and Parkin here 

Variation on a theme...

In 1956, Angus Waltham was on safari in Tanzania with his parents. On a hike through the bush, their group came across the dead body of a lioness with a small cub trying to nurse from it.

The cub clearly stood no chance of survival alone, and although their guide recommended that they leave the cub to its fate, Angus managed to convince his parents to let them take the cub back to Dar Es Salaam to live with them at the embassy. Angus called the cub 'Ndizi', after a famous Tanzanian sportsman.

For a little over a year, Ndizi lived at the embassy, often to be found playing with Angus - The boy and cub became inseperable, and Ndizi grew from a small cuddly animal into a much larger killing machine. Although there were no serious incidents at the embassy, after a few close calls where some live-in servants were badly scared by Ndizi, Angus' parents told him that the lion had to go. Angus reluctantly agreed, and with many tears, Ndizi was loaded into a cage on a truck, and sent on a long road trip back to Mikumi, where he was released. Initially, Ndizi tried to follow the truck, and wouldn't leave them alone until one of the guides fired a shot from his rifle into the air to scare Ndizi away. Angus never forgot that cub or the amazing events of that day.

Eight years later he was travelling through from Udzungwa to Dar on business when the jeep that he was in suffered a puncture. In the heat of midday sun, Angus and his driver changed the flat tyre, and as they lowered the jack, and stood back they heard a low throaty rumble coming from behind them. An adult lion had managed to get within 15 meters of them.

The large lion stared at Angus and sniffed the air, then slowly walked towards Angus. He couldn't help but wonder if this was his childhood friend from many years ago.

As the lion came close enough to touch, Angus summoned up his courage, reached out his hand and let the lion sniff his palm. The lion reared up on it's back legs, placed it's massive paws on his shoulders, looked Angus in the eye, and then bit his face off.

Probably wasn't the same lion.

(shamelessly stolen from http://www.bunchacunce.org/)

"Thanks for attending.....bye then"

 Another evening another gig. This one was a support kindly offered to us by the Nottingham band "Blood Orange" at the Running Horse Notts.

 I once again and in spectacular style couldn't find Darrens new paradise in the wild so spent another hour tear-arsing around identical country lanes, swearing and hunting phone signal. Once found though we plodded off to Nottingham to repeat the procedure in some of Nottinghams less welcoming estates which was rather more perturbing then the dingly dell had been.

 The gig itself was a stripped down affair as our shiny new drummer was off doing a radio session for someone or another, so it was just myself, Darren and our other shiny new fellow Mr Martin making his 2nd ever live appearance and 3rd ever, well, appearance at all. We ploughed through various yet to be classics in front of a largely indifferent bunch of cheese rockers. God bless them, if it aint in tight trousers and sporting girly hair then they don't know what to do with it. Not even shouting at them had any effect. they were nice, but lacked that certain...energy you expect of other living beings.

 My personal highlight was breaking the unwritten law of if a gig is sparsely populated you have the good manners to watch the other bands. This, for us wasn't an option as Martin and I were knackered and Darren had a curfew to observe. The main drawback to leaving was to do so we would have to walk between the playing band and the lack lustre audience, gear in hand and coats on. There was no way to make a discreet withdrawal.
 For reasons I will never know Mr Martin and Darren chose the most obvious, most likely to draw attention to us moment to leave. Just as Blood Orange had finished another pop/rock classic and thanking everyone upon their attendance. It was then a sheepish troupe of us trundled past, guitars in hand and very politely conducting our compliments and goodbyes in the middle of their set "bye then, thanks for letting us play".
  It was poor form and for that we apologise. Mortifyingly funny though. :D

Pick a card...

So, two gigs in one day. Darren had moved house. In fact, out of a house and into dingly dell and no one had seen Ben since sunstock. Doddle.

A quick exchange of phone calls and a basic plan was in place. I'd pick Darren up and head for the first gig "Rock at the Lock", where we'd meet Ben, decide on a set list of awe inspiring pop/folk/soul/prog and that'd be that.

We'd arranged to meet Ben at 1pm. I set off armed with some vague directions for dingly dell at 12. I arrived in the fairy glade around 1.30 after a delightful jolly around leicestershires finest villages. All that was left was to battle a particularly crappy sat nav and find this here "Rock at the Lock". Well, in a carbon copy of our first visit to the Steamboat Inn the sat nav took us down some dead end 15minutes away from the venue.

We arrived 5 minutes before we were supposed to go on (and 3-0 up in the football! :)  and was told it was running an hour late so there was no mad rush. This knowledge fresh in my mind I headed back to the car to listen to Forest stuff Derby 3-2. Darren, Ben and Rich re-appeared freshly adorned with passes, upon which was the legend "Artist". The graphics on the passes are beyond description so.....

it was almost as if the 90s never happened.

Anyway, we played a pretty decent set with such classics as Counting horses, There, Open, Circles and a good few others to a largely indifferent crowd awaiting the next version of "summer of 69".

So, off to Thringstone. This, promised Darren, would be a more receptive crowd of people who enjoyed their music and appreciated the creative process. Also, he said, it was much more like a proper festival stage.

It was two lorrys parked next to each other. The crowd.....that was mostly old women and old blokes sitting about half a mile away, in a line just outside the refreshments tent.

Immediate reservations aside it turned out quite well. A good turn out from our lot and a gradually growing crowd meant it could go down as a success.

With re-newed vigour it was back to Dingly dell for tea and crumpets and to toast another glorious day of doing card tricks for dogs.