Month: January 2020

Fishy Happenings

My third gig with Strangefish last night. It was a long day…

I started at 7:30am – I had planned to be at the venue at around 10:30 and with a 2 hour journey ahead I needed to be ready.

Freshly showered and breakfasted I set off – only to make much better time than originally planned. Aren’t the motorways dead on a Sunday morning (apart from the mandatory middle lane owner’s club).

My route took me down the M6 Toll… And since I was on the “posh road” I thought I’d call into the country’s most exclusive service area. Only because you have to pay a toll to stop there.

Norton Canes Services. Britain’s most exclusive motorway services.

After a brief stop I carried on to The Robin, arriving there at about 10:15. The organisers and sound guys were already there so I loaded my gear in (my bass amp was being used for all bands).

The rest of the morning was pretty much spent waiting for the rest of the guys to arrive, and since we were partaking of a full soundcheck (our gear was being used by a few bands) we were rather lucky!

The rest of the day was pretty much spent fooling around and socialising, although I did have a walk into Bilston in an attempt to find a sandwich of some variety. I failed. It was closed. All of it.

Mexborough or Bilston? It’s hard to tell. One has trams…
A bit of socialising with the guys

Come 6 o’clock we started getting ready for our performance. That, of course, involved blowing up inflatables (we have a thing about inflatables in this band)

Bob found the golfing supplies…

The gig itself was superb. I’m sure more photos will be coming soon, but for the moment all I have is a few camera phone ones. There were some seriously good cameras in there though.

We take our bows.

Back on the wagon.

After a rather shocking 3.4kg of weight gain over Christmas, I’m back on the wagon to becoming a healthy weight again.

I’m now just 1.6kg up on my late November weight and as you can see from my picture my rather slimmer profile is back.

Amusingly every time I post a picture in this suit I get loads of questions about it, so I thought I’d answer them here.

  • What is it made of? PVC
  • Where is it from? ASOS
  • Can I still buy one? It is sold out
  • What about the shirt? Also ASOS
  • Is it hot/sweaty to wear? Absolutely – although it depends what I’m doing in it – onstage it’s melt territory.
  • Is it noisy? Yes. It squeaks and creaks when the pvc rubs against itself.
  • Can I try it on? Absolutely not. I’m very possessive about it as it took me many years wanting one before I finally got one. It’s the driving force behind me keeping my weight in trim!

If you have any more questions please feel free to ask in the comments.

So the weekend begins!

After what seems like an age, the Strangefish gig weekend begins. Today is the chilled day before tomorrow’s festivities.

I’ve got one final run through the set to do today to add a bit of polish to the songs, but generally I think I’ll be ok at them.

The stage wear is sorted… This t-shirt. Not sure which jeans I’ll wear it with though… Might do white, might do grey. Might even do leather. But I’m definitely not doing my double dyed black ones as I’ll just look like a body floating in the air!

Gig the Second

Two in a row is always tiring. The second one was Easington; a small town on the Durham Heritage Coast just north of Middlesbrough.

So yet another journey up our favourite dual carriageway, the A19, and a fairly easy ground floor load (with possibly the weirdest load in door) and we were up and running.

Back to two sets for this one. I much prefer 2 X 45 minute sets as you get into the flow much better.

No silly rules regarding smoke machines again, so we set two hazers up on stage in an attempt to balance the haze across the full width of the stage.

As per usual the first set was the more dressed up one. Double breasted suit for me. I do rather like wearing suits these days.

The first set was very well played, although there was no dancing at all.

The second set, a less dressed down affair, on the other hand did gain us some dancers. Amazingly, they didn’t start until about half way through though!

Yet another really nice club, and as we found out later, about 90 regulars were missing! Apparently there were two coaches in Scarborough on a trip! D’oh!

We’ve been put forward for a re-booking – a complete different situation to when we were with our previous agent. It feels great to get good feedback!