Eating, drinking, being merry, oh and working too

Yep, it was an interesting weekend, as anticipated…

The Caribbean party on Saturday was great fun, someone had gone to a lot of effort to set it all up, as did most of the guests with their fancy dress. We played in a marquee, scattered around were surf boards, deck chairs, inflatable palm trees, that sort of thing. Outside there was a cocktail bar serving rum punch and melony drinks and things, a barbecue cooking the hot food for the buffet, and the poshest portaloos I’ve ever seen; carpets, full-length mirrors, piped muzak, wooden loo seats and so on. Luxury. Anyway never mind the toilets…

The evening started with drinks and canapés with a steel-band accompaniment. Bit of limbo dancing by one of the steel band, and then by volunteers from the audience making fools of themselves. Buffet, charity auction (for a holiday in the Caribbean), then our band. We played well and the booze was flowing freely so everyone had a good night. With the excuse of it being a theme party I got the chance to wear a dress for the first time at one of our gigs. I bought it off Ebay last year and never had the occasion to wear it, but it seemed just right for this evening, I knew it would come in useful one day…

It was a great night, but a very late one, so bloody hard work too. We had one day to recover from that and were out again on Monday, an early start this time, it being an afternoon gig. The weather in Lancaster was pretty good that day, so that was the main thing for an outdoor gig, and therefore we had a respectable number in the audience. We got a great reaction from the audience and lots of lovely compliments. The singer’s dad shot some video so hopefully we will get some of that onto our website soon, which I will post a link for when we’ve got a bit more on it, as it’s still under construction really.

With it being an early start we were all ravenous by the end of the gig, so we decided to go for our first ever "band curry", back in Kendal. Was nice to chill out together, and feast on Indian food, and then go for a few drinkies in some of our favourite haunts. The guy who had played keyboards with the band for a couple of gigs before I joined, came into the restaurant with his wife for a takeaway, so we invited them to join us and have a sit-down meal, which they did; the more the merrier.

Anyway I’m just about recovered from all that gigging and eating and drinking, but I think it’s about my bedtime now. Here’s a few pics for you, more in my album, full members only of course: http://gendersociety.com/perl/community/communityalbums.cgi?action=openalbum&albumid=9980160650604&ownerid=9970154724712

Can anyone tell me how to make those links appear shorter?!

Thanks to mum for taking pics at Lancaster!