I’m lay on the sofa totally exhausted from an action packed weekend in London.
I’ll skip thru the highlights in order to document what went down.
Michelle and I flew into Stanstead on Friday evening and were met by Wally Walton who took us back to his house in Northwood, which I now know to be nowhere near Wembley at all.
We met with his wife Donna and went for a few beers and some tasty indian snacks at their favourite local restaurant/bar.
Saturday morning and Wally and myself took his dog around Ruislip woods on a pair of Mountain Bikes. The dog was on foot. Obviously. It was muddy and fun. I like it dirty. Later that afternoon I was treated to a sports massage at his local gym by a woman who went out of her way to hurt me. She did. It wasn’t very nice but it did the trick.
Food, relax, movie on a lovely big 3D TV and then into the car heading for Brixton.
The Vocal Booth Weekender was another gathering of our crew at a venue I’d previously played at a few years ago and teaming up with Deep into Soul, a great night was had by all. You can check out the photos here. I was a little surprised at how few Deep into Soul people there were actually at the party, everywhere you looked it was pure VB Family so you can imagine the vibe was just right. Needless to say everyone appeared to go home on a high and Ted Lawrence, Ziggy Funk, Sean McCabe and Neil Pierce all had the crew loving the music. I even enjoyed spinning myself, would you believe ! (Despite being severely restricted with the tunes I had to play since I couldn’t play off my USB stick).
I tried to get to speak to as many people as possible but I also wanted to focus on enjoying the music, I know there were a lot of people I hardly spent anytime with, we can put that right in Brum.
The running joke on the way home (apparently, I don’t remember it) was me complaining about bringing 15kg of programmes over from Spain and only 7 people asking for them. Ha Ha, It’s on the fact sheet).
Sunday I was up relatively early with a bit of a sore head and after a few hours working on some websites, I decided I needed a beer to ease the pain. That was followed by more wine all afternoon, a delicious Sunday Roast cooked by Wally (I stirred the cheese sauce, no one was allowed to forget that !) and the end of the movie we had watched the day before. We then took to Pressure Radio for a guest show and had another enjoyable evening.
On Monday we took a cab back to the airport and arrived home safe and sound. It was great to be away from the kids but of course even better to be back with them. A Curry and an early night was the order of the day.
I now have 6 weeks without any gigs to think about until the Birmingham reunion, giving me time to hopefully complete all the VB2013 podcasts and also get through the website orders that come in regularly. I’ve got my eye on some DIY projects at home also, I may even treat you to some nonsense about that at some point.
Thanks for reading my waffle, don’t be a stranger !
8th Dec 24: The Vocal Booth Radio Show
2 hours of forgotten gems and the occasional piece of buried treasure from the vinyl archives.