Blog: Moon Horse In Croydon

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After work yesterday i met a PAL for TEA and CAKE in Covent Garden - it was WELL SWISH, and included the traditional Sighting Of A Celebrity When A Pal From Not London Is Down. This time it was Gok Wan, who I was VERY pleased to realise has a personalised number plate featuring his own name. Well done Gok Wan - he is from LEICESTER so, as far as I am concerned, can do what the HECK he likes!

Less delightful was a HORRIBLE journey to Croydon on ludicrously CRAMMED trains, so I arrived at the Green Dragon WREATHED in sweat, not all of it my own. Mr S Hewitt was already there, and over some MUCH needed beers we discussed the plan for the evening. Incredibly this was ALREADY the FOURTH time we would be performing Moon Horse and we had a few adjustments to agree and learn up.

Soon it was time for the gig, a Freedom Of Expression night, to commence, and it did this with the traditional Sam's Advice. Sam is now eight years old, so you'd expect his advice to start to become more Grown-Up and Thoughtful, but I don't think anyone was expecting him to start off with "There is no purpose in life." GOOD LORD. Blue Peter is clearly a lot BLEAKER than it was in my day!

The only other act on were a "band" called ruM who were like a cross between FREE JAZZ and Proper Old Folk Singers In A Rural Area. That MAY sound like the worst thing ever, but in fact it was BRILLIANT - two blokes armed with a trombone and a saxophone doing, well, FREE JAZZ with the occasional bit of Old Folk (a version of "Nobby Hall" which EXHAUSTED the audience with LARFS) and even POETRY which was done with such CHARM and PLEASURE that it all worked BEAUTIFULLY. It's not often you see something THAT different from the norm at gigs, and it's even rarer to enjoy any kind of act THAT much. We had quite an act to follow!

I'm not sure that we DID follow it entirely adequately, but we certainly gave it a good go. The new abbreviated ending seemed to work pretty well and we finally got the whole show done in under an hour. PHEW! There were a couple of bits where there were ERRORS - i ALWAYS seem to go wrong with We'll Be Such Friends and there's ALWAYS confusion around the final verse of Let's Have A Go - but we got through at a CRACKING pace and seem to be getting quite confident at it now. It's GOOD to be doing these early gigs in busy Actual Pubs where people may not have come to see us on purpose, as it's TRAINING US UP to keep going and DO it - nobody was being DIFFICULT in any way shape or form, but it did feel like we had to put some EFFORT in to keep everyone on side, and I think we managed it.

It was GOOD, and once again I was reassured to find that there are MORE LARFS than in Dinosaur Planet and also DELIGHTED to find that Everyone Likes Tiddy. I sense a spin-off sitcom in the offing!

We had another VERY MUCH needed beer, chatted to Mr T Eveleigh and Miss J Lockyer, and then headed off for the train and home. TERRIFYINGLY this now puts us over half way through our preperations for Edinburgh - I reckon we're going to be FINE, but CRUMBS, it isn't half heading our way FAST!

posted 13/7/2011 by MJ Hibbett

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