Today was a complete contrast to yesterday, warm and sunny right from the start. I woke up at about 8 and spotting that my phone was about to go flat I went and switched the genny on and made myself a cup of tea. I had a wander up to the bar where I found John B holding court as he does in the early morning of SoL. After breakfast and a couple more coffees I was ready for the first problem of the day! Galley Beggar were stuck in traffic and had no idea how long it was going to take them to get there. Two of them were hear and setting up but the rest were still awol.
Luckily at the moment Marty O’Reilly and the Old Soul Orchestra rolled up. I asked them if they’d be interested in going on now and they said it’d be great as they had another gig to go to – so that#s what happened with Marty’s drummer using Galley Beggar’s kit. I have to say they were very good and hit the spot that sunny Saturday morning – so much so that I bought their CDs off the girl who was going round selling them. At the end of the set Marty wandered off stage into the audience and was soon followed by the rest of the band who finished the song a la Coal Porters in the middle of the audience.
Thankfully Galley Beggar had arrived by then and were soon on stage although we were now running about an hour late.It seemed everytime we caught up a bit something would happen and we’d lose it again! Jouis were up next but I didn’t see a lot of their set.
Woke up at 7am and got up to start packing everything away. I had all of the cables from the bar plus the cables to the four parcans stripped out and the lights down (and a couple of cups of coffee) before anyone else surfaced. In the end I had everything, except my tent, packed away by about 10am – just as it started to rain! Typical!
I stayed till about 11:30 to help Jay get his sound system into his van. It was a right pain in the arse because the rain was streaming off the stage making it difficult to get anything on or off without it getting wet. Eventually I set off to drop the cables back at Keith’s house and then I filled up with fuel, bought some lunch and headed off on the long journey back home – which I ended up doing without stopping getting back around 6:15 giving me just enough time to unload the car before I had to drive through to Consett to pick up Sarah who’d been to Legoland Manchester with Ben.