May Week passes

I had a relatively light May Week; only four gigs, no ridiculously late/early starts and nothing mid-week.  All the gigs were for Casa (though not for lack of hassling Ball organisers about hiring Acuphuncture), and all went fairly well.  The only real events of note were a tripped fuse in the middle of our set at Hughes Hall resulting in an impromptu trad jazz moment with horns and drums (it also made me grateful that I always connect my amp via a surge protector: who knows what happens to the supply when a fuse trips), and the near total lack of realistic organisation on the part of the guys at Darwin ball, who assumed it took approximately zero time and space for a nine-piece band to set up, and that monitors aren’t necessary, despite what we told them beforehand.  Ah well, they’ll know in future.

For God’s sake, don’t join Facebook

It will eat your life. Seriously. I got an invitation from Alex Harris aaaages ago that I didn’t anything about (between this weblog and myspace I wondered just how much Web 2.0 I could take), then a couple of months after that a friend in New York added me… I caved in and joined. Now I’ve caught up with loads of old friends and random acquaintances that I’d lost touch with. I’m just saying, watch yourself, it might be more addictive than cocaine on a domino’s pizza.  That said, am I being a class snob by going more for facebook than myspace?  Is even having that thought a sign I should have my internet access taken away?  Probably.

To Lavenham… and beyond!

Kyla and I clocked up 90 miles of cycling over the weekend after a round trip to Bradfield St. George in Suffolk. Went went out via Six Mile Bottom, Clare, and Lavenham, which is actually where we’d intended to stay (check out the Angel Hotel; very posh). In the end there was no room at the inn, and scouting around for B&Bs we somehow ended up at the Fox and Hounds out at Bradfield St. George, an extra twelve miles or so further than my legs really wanted to travel in one day.

The only real thing of note was the puncture I got whilst passing through Long Melford.  As I looked down and saw the rear tyre flat on the road I suddenly remembered that whilst I had brought a puncture repair kit, I hadn’t actually brought a pump or tyre levers.  Kyla popped into the shop we’d stopped by to ask if there was bike shop nearby, and was told to head down the alley next to the shop and knock on a white wooden door, because a chap who fixes bikes lives there.  The shop people weren’t joking; the guy had inner tube extracted, patched and refitted the in less than thirty minutes.  We tried to give him some money (particularly necessary, I felt, given that we’d woken him up from an afternoon nap), but he had none of it and sent us on our way.  Obviously he’s some sort of cycling good Samaritan!  And he definitely saved our little trip from a disaster caused by my lack of preparation.

Iceland

Kyla and I, plus her parents, went to Iceland for a few days. A lot of my ideal holiday destinations were planted in my head when I was a kid, so usually involve dinosaurs / fossils and volcanoes. Iceland had earned its place on there after I’d read about the formation of the island of Surtsey, and now I think I’m clear to draw a line through it.

It’s a pretty crazy (as in, pretty and crazy) place. The midnight sun is less intrusive than you’d imagine, though it is just as confusing; it seemed wrong to shut the curtains when it was still light outside. However our room in Hotel Reynihlid came equipped with black-out curtains, so sleeping was no great hassle. (Get that Pacino, next time you go to Alaska spend a bit more on the hotel, maybe you won’t have any trouble sleeping!) We were staying near lake Myvatn, which is on the line where the Eurasian plate meets the North American plate, and next to the site of a fairly active volcano, Krafla. Mvvatn translates to midge lake, and it is named with good reason. One morning we planned to walk up a hill to get a good view of the lake. As we drove there we thought it was started raining, but quickly realised that actually it was insects hitting the windscreen, not raindrops. It looked like the surrounding countryside was undergoing some sort of six-legged sandstorm, and knowing that they’re non-biting doesn’t improve things; apparently they’re attracted by carbon dioxide, so make a bee-line (midge-line?) for your mouth and nose. We decided to find a different area to go walking in.

All told, it was a good few days away; a particular highlight was lounging around in a geothermally heated pool watching the sun edge towards a mountain range on the horizon.

On-stage disasters

Of course, no matter how much you practice your sight reading, if everyone in the band is working from a transcription that’s in a different key things are going to sound bad.  Very, very bad.  In one song we played think we had the horns working from a C part that I also had a copy of, so I was a tone out from them, but our keys player had a different transcription that was a fourth away from that… it was rather jazz, shall we say.

At least the rest of the gig went well, and I got to jump between guitar and bass fairly often, which was good (I just don’t get enough gigs on guitar at the moment).  Which is unlike what happened to some small unheard of outfit called the Police, as Stuart Copeland describes on his website.  That sounds like a nightmare from start to finish.  I don’t know whether it’s reassuring that the professionals can make such mistakes, or whether it’s galling to think that however much you work at it there will always be shit gigs.