Imperial Hotel Great Yarmouth Golden Wedding

We are still in a state of shock and disbelief despite saying goodbye to Dave at the funeral at St Faiths on the Thursday. Nigel and I have had a lot to deal with and I will be blogging in a lot less detail for a while. It was, of course, our first gig since Dave passed away. Nige had lined up Martin to dep and I had spent some time in the week organising the special music and set lists for this 50th Anniversary do for Pat and Norman Robbins. I set off in nice, sunny conditions with a bit of time to spare so I could deal with the unexpected at the other end - but I was still a bit edgy. I arrived just after 6pm, parked up in the tight hotel car park and went in to meet up with Janine who was organising the room. She showed me the route down an alley at the back to bring the gear in. The playing area was tight so I knew it would be a one guitar gig. Nigel arrived and we loaded in getting most of our gear in the room by the time Martin arrived. I had to set my Bose up in a corner - little did I know this was to generate boomy low frequencies later! Martin soon had his drums set up and once again wisely elected to set up his lights to complement the low light atmosphere that Janine was creating. I got a bit hot and bothered fixing a reverb fault, due to a mains lead being out and then Nige noticed the send lead was in the wrong T1 socket! I liaised with Norman and Pat to check times and re-assure them we would do their specially requested start. By the time we had a beer it was getting close to showtime so we went to get changed in a spare event room. I was flapping a bit and couldn't get my tie right first time and so we were a couple of minutes late taking to the stage. We opened proceedings with “Aniversary Waltz” and then played through the special intro numbers “Too Young”, “Around the World” and “Love Letters in the Sand”. Lights were low so reading the music was a bit of a problem and the on stage sound was dominated by a boomy bass sound from the vocals and guitar, but Nige ventured out front and said it was OK there, so we ploughed on with a variety of songs chosen by Pat and Norman and some chosen or just improvised by the band. I can remember Nige called “Lets Dance” by Chris Montez and we just winged it never having done it before! And that was the pattern for the night music wise. We helped provide a mic for speeches and we judged the fancy dress and played right through to midnight when Martin sang an incredible “You'll Never Walk Alone” which had them all singing along. We got such a great reception that we did “Saw Her Standing There” to encore. We had been so busy during the evening that we had had little time to dwell on poor Dave, but once we had packed up and loaded I can remember summing it up by saying something along the lines: 'Well done boys, it was a busy night and that helped us deal with the emotions around Dave not being there. Sure I missed Dave but I also missed Jenny - I didn't realise how much of my gear she used to move at the end of a night!' But to tell the truth I was physically and emotionally exhausted and I had to stop and give myself a good talking to on the way home - because all the signs of dozing off at the wheel were there and that rarely happens to me. Finally got in to bed about 2:30am. Later in the week, we got a nice email thanking us for our very professional show under the difficult circumstances we faced.