"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.