Up at the crack of dawn, and on the M1 motorway in our trusty band transport, suitably converted to suit our needs. We are meeting Alan and Jeff (who came over earlier, to do the tourist thing in Scotland and Liverpool) in South Shields, and Scott will be arriving into Gatwick and negotiating our wonderful train system up North…. poor thing.

We actually left way too much time for the journey, but you never know with the UK roads. We were in South Shields (a seaside suburb of Newcastle, by the way) by lunchtime. This allowed us to meet the proprietor, Terry Slesser, one time singer with Back Street Crawler (Paul Kossoff’s band after Free disbanded).

By the time Jeff and Alan arrived from Glasgow, it was time to get the gear in.

So, we dragged the equipment (up what seemed like a mile of stairs) after lunch, and I started setting up the kit and checking it (it’s been 10 months since I last played it, so I thought it would be a good idea). Scott appeared, somewhat bedraggled from the mysteries of RailTrack, just in time to sound check. And thus, we were a band once more!

Terry Slesser did a “turn” before we went on stage…. he certainly still has a great set of pipes too! The turnout was not what we hoped, but we went down well, and managed to blow out the cobwebs in good fashion.

After the gig, we were “escorted” back to the “hotel” (you’ll see why I used quotes in a minute) by a rather inebriated Mr. Slesser. To call this place a hotel would be to give hotels a bad name. In the UK, we have a quaint expression for places like this – Doss House (and that’s being polite).

My room was so dirty that I merely took off my shoes (leaving my socks on) and lay on TOP of the bed to sleep. There were no towels, the bathroom was next door (no toilet paper) and the shower room was next to THAT….. unspeakable.

HMMMMMMM Say no more.