Basildon (and on)

7.30 Saturday evening, just outside Basildon. A blindfolded man is led into a darkened room. Everybody knows why he's there, apart from him. The lights go on as the blindfold comes off. His face is a mixture of astonishment and horror. There's a loud bang. No going back now...

...as the rest of his band play 'Happy Birthday'. Well I did my best to make it sound like something out of 'The Long Good Friday' but actually it's Glenn Sissons's 50th birthday party at the local leisure centre. His band are the splendidly named WHERE BEAGLES DARE (I think you'll agree that's a great name!) who are playing first, then we're doing our X-Commitments set. Amazingly Glenn knew nothing of all of this until they took his blindfold off- he thought he was going out for a meal. He was the bassist in The Illegal Eagles and has also played with Suzi Quatro and The Love Affair amongst others, often with our drummer John- hence our connection with him. I'd not met him before but he seemed a splendid if rather bewildered fellow. His band are good too- material ranging from U2 and Green Day to Squeeze and Joe Walsh with excellent harmony vocals from everyone in the band.
Our set was a bit... strange. Neither Squirrel or myself were going through the P.A. system so were obliged to play much louder than normal which didn't go down too well with certain band members. I must admit I rather let it ruin the gig for me which I'm really annoyed with myself about- I've done enough shows to know that these things happen sometimes but I still managed to blame myself which didn't really help my evening go well; and I've just had Squirrel on the phone checking that I'm ok so I must have looked pretty unhappy when I left.

Yeah, I'm alright. I was pretty unhappy when I left but that's mainly because I felt like I'd let myself down by getting annoyed about it all. After Wednesday's debacle in Whitehall (that sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story doesn't it?!?) I was looking forward to playing but, once again, things conspired against us. Ah well. We're playing in Leatherhead on Friday. That'll be a good one.