Birmingham, Alexandra Theatre

Sorry for delay bit busy this time of year, and been mega ill.

Here we are in the dressing room, most of them were being painted so there was a whiff of paint in the air... nice! It was cold as you see from Chris' get up. Fredi had the sandwich toaster on as extra heating, Patrick didn't know and touched it by mistake, he was not a happy bunny.

Went for walk in town, so Christmassy, some sort of German market going on!

Patricks last show for a while as he is soon to be a new dad, hopefully he will be back he will be missed a great deal, especially Jeff!

During the show we saw Gary and Anna in the crowd, they had been delayed because of sat nav problems, but we spotted them in the crowd when they arrived! They bought me and Fredi flowers and a lovely card made for us by the daughter....Lots of time and effort had gone into it, and we very much appreciated that!!

More pics to come.

Need more followers

I have been encouraged by the amount of hits the blog has been getting yet we don't seem to have many followers? If you check in regularly maybe you could become a follower to show your support. It would make me happy to see this..

O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, Friday 19th November

After all the places we've travelled, London seemed really close by!! We got there with plenty of time so Fredi went shopping in Westfield shopping centre which was literally down the road.

Here we are on the listings outside of building.

We saw Jason again, it's been so long! He came to do our lights, Paul G came too so it was nice to see familiar faces who've been on this journey with us at some point.

Jeff in sound check

So many lights the drum kit has disappeared into a puff of smoke!

Jason getting to grips with their lighting board.

Stage looks small from here! It wasn't huge but wasn't tiny either..

Fredi and two blokes, Ben and something that rhymes with Ben? Len? that doesn't seem right, i'll consult Fredi. ( In fact it was 'Ken' - thanks for the comment putting me straight! )

It's a proper old theatre with the ghosts of stars past at every turn, the walls back stage are covered in posters of people who've played there, I liked the Alanis Morrisette one especially as I grew up listening to her.

Not a fancy backstage at all, i've heard that all west end theatres are pretty grotty backstage.

Our dressing room was up 3 flights of stairs! what's that all about?

The crowd was fantastic, true floyd fans, they cheered at the first notes of most songs! I got the triple applause for great gig, ie applause in between the three sections. One guy in crowd looked like he was having an out of body experience, as if he were a teenage girl and we were the Beatles! Hilarious!

Packing screen away after the show

The super view from the stage, and the screen in pieces.

Cambridge Corn Exchange, Sunday 14th November 2010

Our second visit to the Corn Exchange and it was great! Cambridge is all very posh looking as you drive through the streets, you can just tell there a fancy University there! We were chuckling at the amount of push bikes, and scarves there were. It's SOOOOOO English!

A lovely surprise today was from Lynne and Geoff, they came to see the show in Southport only last week, Lynne said Geoff hadn't stopped talking about it since and as they were on a little jaunt to Leicester for the weekend they had decided to travel to Cambridge especially to watch us. They happened to meet Steve out by the vans while we were setting up so we invited them inside, took their picture for good measure, the chap on the right was helping the sound guy Mike tonight.

Lynne and Geoff are the centre 2

Here's the venue from the stage, loved the swirly lights!

During sound check, think the funniest moment for me was when Patch tried to do a scissor kick in his socks and came down a bit heavy, and then hurt his back a bit!! Maybe this is why he is sitting down in this pic?

Ross in sound check

Probably our best gig ever, everyone was on form! The crowd were fantastic and it just had a great vibe, seeing as a lot of the Floyd are from Cambridge or studied there, it was just special you know?

Jenny Spires who was Syd Barretts girlfriend came up to us all the end, she was lovely, a gorgeous woman! She was really impressed which meant a lot!

Fredi made the mistake of saying she thinks Roger Waters is a hot older man! The offers she was getting after that! Yes they did just say that!!

Travelled home next day saw this poor car... reminder to drive carefully out there everyone!

And so ends my blog, Cambridge you were ACE!!

The Regent, Ipswich, Sat 13th Nov 2010

The first picture is not from a recent gig or anything but it's funny so i'm putting it on here. When we stayed at my sisters she did a photo shoot of us all, heres is one of the group pics! The pink frame used to be a part of my nieces wardrobe, the colour pink is appropriate though!

Back to Ipswich gig news!

A fairly long drive, and I was a bit late to the meeting point oops!

A nice big venue, the last time we played there we had a choir, it only came back to me when we got there and I spotted the place we had rehearsed with the local kids.

Today was an interesting one as having found wifi backstage I had video chat with my pal in New York, she then also watched the sound check via skype, and she also watched a couple of songs from off stage during the show in evening too. Modern technology hey!

We had a good crowd there, chatted to Kat who worked at the theatre. She had to look after the Jedward boys when they were there, she said they were a nightmare and that you wanted to stand on them to stop them jumping about. I can imagine wanting to do a lot than that to those pesky man boys!! We had a picture with her after the show... Hi Kat!!

We met these ladies after the show, Hello Karen, Clare and Sarah. Mum and daughters!

We stayed in a lovely hotel, and ate a feast for breakfast. Keep it a secret but there was much stashing of small pastry things, mini nutella and mini cheeses in Fredi's handbag! Here we are by the xmas tree in hotel lobby before we left for Cambridge!

Southport Theatre Wednesday 10th November 2010

Southport, was a lovely town, right up above Liverpool. I have never been there in my life before so it was quite interesting. Seeing signs for Bolton and stuff made me think of Peter Kay. Yet again Patrick was asleep in the back and no-one told me! It took a long long time as there was some huge traffic jam on the M6, we saw a big articulated truck that had smashed into the back of another one taking up two lanes, luckily on the other side of the road. Don't know if we'd have even got to the gig otherwise as the tail back was ridiculous on the other side! But as soon as we'd been past this accident the traffic started moving at a speedy rate! So was the jam on our carriage way because of people slowing to look at the accident?? I will look into the possibility of this.

These are pics from the bridge that took us to the pound stretcher to buy new mugs for everyone. We left our tea making stuff in bristol and have been able to make do with venue stuff since, but alas no facilities at this place.

Loads of Swans

Freds and Mrs Loar on said bridge..

Fredi in B & W during sound check..

The venue

During Sound check I took some pics

We had Pete on lights, he did them for us last time at Mansfield too. He's done lighting for other Floyd tribute bands before so he did a bang on job!!

Patrick was feeling camera shy..

Fredi shaking her tambourine in sound check - brick part 2,

and a sneaky shot of Ross who had popped on stage.

After the show, I heard 'POLLY!!!!' And there was Tommy and Sue again, good to see their friendly faces, this time I got a nice clear pic of them. the guy behind had a unusual nickname that i may now get wrong, Gegsy was it? (pronounced Jegsy in my mind though)

It was hard hat area on stage during the get out. Patrick posed for this pic in corridor and then when he looked at it said 'what the hell am I doing there?'

Dunno who took this cos I sent Patrick out with the camera, Village People me thinks....

They are such children!!

After we'd packed down it was about 12am and some were hungry. Went to Macdonalds 24hr drive thru (why do they spell it wrong??) We tried to order at the drive thru window on foot as we didn't think the vans would go under their height restriction barrier, they said they couldn't serve us on foot, that they would lose their job and cruelly turned us away. Undeterred we ended up getting the vans to the drive thru window but not by conventional means!!

Got to Travelodge Warrington by 2am, Fredi was so cold she slept in this whole outfit the whole night, I kid you not, the hat and everything.... this is her drinking tea the next morning that I very kindly made her.

Patrick sent us this pic along with the message, 'Chris promised a bed each!'

Phew this blog took ages...., i've also had an update of the blog design, hope it looks a bit more interesting now.. Found a new 'counter' thing and there's loads more views than I thought with repeat viewings, so come back as often as you like, I like to see the counter going up for a change!! Spurs me onwards to think of new things for the blog!

Byeee

Polly

Jeffs Illness and The Palace, Mansfield Sunday 7th November 2010

Firstly before I commence my blog about Mansfield, I shall be filling you in on Jeff's illness that some of you may have read about on our news feed.

From what i've been told. Jeff was told to go straight from the doctors to the hospital and ambulance came for him and everything. When Jeff was in the hospital he emailed us all.

'I really thought I was going to be fine. Went to bed early to try and sleep it off but woke up really bad this morning. Actually really quite scared me, I'm used to having a tight chest but this was a whole new level. They're actually keeping me in overnight. (editor: which turned out to be 2 nights in fact!) Not happy about that. Blood oxygen level is very very low! So here I am in a ward with 3 old men, having just eaten a meal that made mcdonalds look like masterchef'. And there are no hot nurses!!!

Just a fat booth version of Jeff for funsies!

Patrick being Jeffs best pal of many many years went to see him in the Hospital and took the following pics. Patrick is used to all of this stuff as he's an ambulance driver in his spare time!!! If you don't like needles then don't scroll down but don't worry it's not a close up!!

Jeff said the nurse (or should I say Murse - male nurse!) was a trainee and it took many many attempts to take blood, he said he very nearly threw up on him. I have a 'thing' about blood being taken already and I will refuse to have a trainee after this story!!! In fact I feel a bit squeamish even writing this now!

This was the pic when he was feeling better!

He said that they have given him a different inhaler now, mentioned something about 'steroids?' and since he has not needed to use his puffer anywhere near as much. Lets hope he stays super healthy from now on!

ON TO MANSFIELD GIG

This one is a bit delayed, sorry folks, I need more encouragement from people who read it at gigs!! Mansfield was a long drive, they all seem to be long drives lately... It wasn't till we were about 3 hours into the journey I realised that Patrick was asleep on the back seat, I had no idea and had been talking away at the top of my voice to Fredi. He woke up and moaned about how loud we had been, oops he should have let me know he was there. He had done a night shift the night before and was having a 'few' hours sleep!!! There is no way I would be able to do all he did that day on only 3 hours of sleep. He's todays hero! When he was awake he gave us a some iphone tricks /tips, one of which was this handy trick of photographing whatever is on your screen at the time. We had no sat nav and were blindly following the other van (I refer to Steves blog! - sat nav from joke shop) so I was using my iphone as a navigational tool and updating everyone with the distance left to go in hours and minutes. I'm quite sad like that! Anyway here's a fairly useless picture of what was on my phone when we weren't far away!!

I didn't take many pictures today, but there was a great green room just off the stage and the staff were very friendly. I talked to a lovely young lady who worked there and she said it was like a big family at the Theatre, her dad worked there and there were even three generations in one case. The show went well, a good crowd. After the show we did our usual chatting to people I spoke to Suzanne about 'Great gig', I was telling her how I had learnt it, she was also having a go at it and was getting stuck in some sections.

Here's me and Suzanne and her friend Paul

I also had a quick blast with the video camera function on my phone. This is only posted on here because I did such a rubbish job of taking photos and this entry was looking a bit bare. The quality isn't great but it's of the merchandise selling at the end of the show, you can hear my annoying voice asking if you can zoom out on the phone and at the end you can see Steve talking to his granddaughter Olivia, Patch selling some t shirts, and some of our audience. It's on 18 secs long but it gives you flavour!

Journal Tyne Theatre, Newcastle, Fri 22nd Oct 2010

Steves blog went down a treat, he did a great job! His next one will be along soon enough.

Well back to Newcastle, this was a really really long way to go for one show. It took about 8 hours to get there, we saw the Angel of the North on the way, like a dufuss I forgot to put my memory card back into my camera, so had camera but no means of using it! Therefore will rely on google images to help me out today.. and the others iphones!

Angel of North... impressive!

It was a thoroughly grey day. Many of us had brought hats and scarves, reminding me yet again that winter and all things Christmassy is upon us!

A really quaint old theatre, the Journal Tyne.....

Heres is some info on the place.

This outstanding building (Grade I Listed) opened in 1867 and was designed by William B Parnell. It remains, substantially, today much as it was when it first opened.

The theatre later became the Stoll Picture Theatre in 1919 (window in stained glass bearing new name still intact) and showed films exclusively from a projection box constructed in the 2nd (of 3) balconies until closure in 1974.

When the screen was removed it was discovered that the final theatre set was still largely in place!

It was restored as a live theatre but suffered a disasterous fire in 1985 when the stage was burned out (auditorium largely undamaged).

The early Victorian stage machinery was painstakingly reconstructed and the theatre reopened.

One of the most beautiful auditoriums in the country, the Opera House is well worth a visit if you are in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Fredi instantly said, this place must be haunted when we walked in and it did have a feel about it.

We didn't have long to set up, so even I carried some boxes! Not our regular soundman Paul today so Patrick and Jeff between them were operating the sound effects and samples from the stage. It made for more nervous tension, before the off, and apparently the mini disc player which the sound effects were on, decided to stop working before the show until Chris very firmly 'told it' to work and quote from him 'I s*** you not', it started working straight away! Ross also said he was convinced while watching side stage that there was someone standing next to him, so spooky goings on?

Great enthusiastic crowd! I chatted to a couple of people afterwards, Alison or Amanda Simpson (sorry, I didn't write it down!) and her neighbour Jim Slater who were locals and had enjoyed the show from what I gathered.

After being on the go for 18 hours, I got the guys some food after the show and while they were eating they were told to get a move on loading out the gear by the staff. Oh for the days when we have roadies and we can just jump in a coach and go to the Hotel! It was a particularly hard slog today but spirits were very high on stage and we really enjoyed the show.

Not too far from the hotel, and we just crashed out straight away. Ross flew home early Saturday morning and we all met for breakfast (first time in forever we've sat around and had brekkie together!) Then the horrible horrible drive home in which we were stuck in tail backs so many times. Here is a pic Patch took of a awful looking crash, not even sure how appropriate it is to put on here, but I did see some kids and dad standing with the ambulance looking quite smiley so hopefully whoever was in it got out before it caught fire!!

Here's the funny message Jeff wrote on back on the other Van, it is referring to the two drivers.

Sunny Croquet & Ricardo Chubbs

We then caught the stop starty wave effect on way back through Bristol Jeffers was getting really irate.

Think it took well over 8 hours to get home, I am now writing this blog and my body still feels like i'm at sea!

Oh and at the Venue, we signed a book that all performers have been asked to sign, and Fredi was impressed with Russell Brands!