Letting The New Year In

On New Year's Eve, Creeping Bentgrass took to the stage at Coast Rider's Bar in Blackpool. It's become a bit of a tradition at Coast Riders to challenge us to do songs we don't usually do. Sometimes we are told in advance and have a chance to do a full backing and sometimes it's a song I've never heard of, leaving me to busk as best I can to whatever David is fondly imagining to be the tune... We did ok with Falling In Love With You but then came something called Seven Spanish Angels which I'd never heard of... Oh, and the one we had prior notice of was Lee Marvin's Wand'rin Star which tested how deep I could go!

A great night as always at Coast Riders - we are now proficient at previous challenges Running Bear, Penny Arcade and even my attempts to play Ravel's Bolero go down well! Happy New Year! We will be back at Coast Riders on 27 February for a charity night.

Gig Report Catch-Up!

My respected colleague and sometime crooner has pointed out I have glossed over a couple of gigs without a mention. So duly admonished I now add a few photos for your delectation and approval...

Both of them were at one of our favourite venues: Coast Riders Diner and Bar at South Shore in Blackpool. Therefore the backdrop to the photos of us on stage may be somewhat similar to others already on these pages.

This was New Year's Eve, 31 December 2014. We had been asked to play out the old year and there were many familiar faces in the audience! You can tell from the next photo that we enjoyed ourselves. I have to say that 2015 was well under way by the time we left the premises!

The second event was Miss Franny's special birthday in March. She can be seen below talking to her brother, Bob. Surely, she should be listening to us???

Christmas and New Year Gigs

A couple of gig reports. Fran hadn't picked her camera up for the first one but yesterday David gave me a disk of photos taken by Jeannie so I can now include a report here!

23 December 2010 saw us at the Wyrebank Banqueting Suite in Garstang, battling snow and ice to get there to play for a rather unusual event.

This was a pig club - a group that had reared a pig and was celebrating this night with the fruits of their endeavour. A meal of pork sausages and mash with plenty of sausages was followed by a sale of yet more sausages and a raffle - no they had other prizes for that!!!

Generously they invited us to sit with them for the meal and whilst David and I hardly ever eat much before a gig, (belching down microphones is never good...) it was an excellent meal.

Then we played for the rest of the night before slipping and sliding back on the ice to load the car in rather cold temperatures! Oh - and we were given a big bag of sausages as a bonus! They are rather yummy...

Last night we played the New Year in at Lancaster Golf Club. As I tuned the guitar just before starting I hit the end of a string with the tip of my thumb, feeling the string go right down into my thumb.

Muttering a surprised "Good Gracious!", I had to stick a plaster on the end of my thumb to avoid getting blood all down the neck of the guitar which would have gone sticky and perhaps not looked as aesthetically pleasing as I'd have liked.

Unfortunately the only plaster they could find was designed to cover the whole of the upper torso... Still, after a couple of songs I was able to take it off and apart from a mild soreness the thumb performed it's usual task of keeping the neck of the guitar pressed against my fingers with no problem!

And what a night! The dance floor filled as soon as we started to play and as we counted down to midnight there were balloons, confetti, cheers, hugs and kisses all round. No sausages though...

New Year's Eve at Eccleston

We played in the New Year at St Agnes Social Club, Eccleston.

We had a fabulous night at this very friendly club and enjoyed a Jacob's Join buffet and a tough quiz based on recognising the first three words of pop hits. Even we struggled - and the act contained a few of them!

The first raffle prize winner wanted to take away the prize he had donated, because he said it was a good prize!

The MC, Len, kept us all entertained during the break with some very witty banter and we managed to fill the dance floor and have the audience singing along with us. At midnight we listened to BBC Radio 4 as Big Ben's chimes struck the turning of 2009 into the New Year and we played Auld Lang Syne and then You'll Never Walk Alone before another half hour of dance music.

A great way to spend New Year's Eve!

A very Happy and Prosperous New Year to all readers. May 2010 be filled with laughter, health, happiness, good friends and good fortune.