We arrived at the school at about mid-day to set up for a 2pm start. Last year, we were playing in a covered porch area (see last year's pictures) This year we were housed in an open sided marquee (the gazebo) out on the main playground. So we were more in the thick of things and well sheltered in case it rained (it didn't!).
This year we were also allowed to park our cars near the "stage" which made lugging the gear around just a little bit easier.
We had set up and were preparing for a sound check when all the amps went dead. We traced the power lead back to the school and found that the tea ladies had plugged their electric tea urn into a spare socket on our extension lead. So that was all of our amps and effects plus a huge urn full of cold water all running off one 13 amp mains lead. It's a wonder Biggin Hill wasn't blacked out. Soon sorted though.
We were kind of expecting special guest Kenny Baker (he was R2D2 in Star Wars) to appear and open the fete. But he didn't so we did.
This gig is always huge fun but total chaos. It's all stop/start while different events are held. We decided to operate a "keep going 'till some-one tells us to stop" policy which worked quite well.
Those of you who have been keeping up with the band and its origins know that we aren't exactly a boy band. We all figure that if a band had appeared at our school fete when we were young, we would all have made a bee-line for it and we would have watched the group all afternoon.
Not so these days. The kids didn't even come over to pull faces at us or even shout abuse. The parents were a bit more interested though. There was one quite elderly gentleman who came over and sat right in front of us for a long time, tapping his walking stick to the music. Later, when I was walking around the fete, he stopped me to say how much he had enjoyed the music. Ahhh. In't that nice?
Looking forward to the Festival now. I can't believe we are two thirds of the way through the Summer tour.
Geoff
The Dude