Monday 21 November 2016

The FC Tour: Bramdean Village Hall.

When the local parish magazine uprates its advert for your gig from half a page (see previous post) to a full page, you know you're in business. Either that, or they haven't sold enough tickets to fill the village hall. It made no difference to us either way, we loaded up the Stealth Trailer just as Storm A for Arsebandit (or whatever it was) hit the south coast, and we headed down to Bramdean for the penultimate gig of the Fingers Crossed Tour.


 
 
We've played a few village halls over the years, and Bramdean qualifies as the most well-kept and spick'n'span of the lot. Beautifully decorated, clean as a whistle, and with high ceilings - I can remember it being used as a badminton court in the 1960s.  We did worry a bit about the acoustics, but our worries were diverted to the fact that the playgroup had not in fact been thrown out, and all their stuff was indeed still onstage, behind the curtains, and, yes, we were going to have to squeeze ourselves in between the tiny chairs, wetwipes ("Hmmm, very handy" said the huge pianist), bean bags and toy lionesses.
 
Luckily, we're down to a five-piece now, so once the monitors were delegated to tables just in front of the stage, we had loads of room.
 
A quick chair count suggested that 44 tickets had been sold, and everyone was in and ready to go by 8.15. Off we went, and the first dancers hit the floor after only a couple of songs. Despite fears of being rusty after a few weeks off (and without rehearsals), we played excellently. There was a pause for the raffle to be drawn, and to devour the world's simplest and best ploughman's supper (huge pianist nicked a packet of wetwipes from the playgroup before tucking in).
 
We over-ran our 11.00 finish by forty minutes, by which time everyone was one their feet, most of them doing line-dancing (which works really well as a way to get even the most reluctant Astairs and Rogers away from their tables, although it can seem a bit incongruous to be line-dancing to the Stones).
 
A huge thank you to the Bramdean Village Hall Committee for inviting us and feeding us, and letting us play with the toy lionesses.

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