Saturday 12th Feb, 2011 Tunbridge Wells.

The venue at Tunbridge Wells

The drive to Tunbridge wells took about 3 hours from spalding, we stopped in little chef in the end, we had been driving for ages and not seen a road side snack van so it was a necessity.

Tunbridge is a lovely looking town, Royal Tunbridge wells in fact, a spa town like Bath, Wells, Royal Leamington Spa. There are only 2 with the Royal before them... It had beaitiful houses above the shops in town. Lots of expensive looking shops too with nice house type things... I spent a lot of money on food in Marks and Spencer! but it was worth it to not eat the same old things..

Harriet was with us on Saxophones, here she is with her mum in the kitcheny type room

and here she is with Fredi on stage

during the show well there was a lot of wolf whistling when she was on stage. Come on Mr Whistler I know there are some lovely ladies in the band but wolf whisling really??? Once he even whistled about 3 times in a row.

Good show again, Crowd loved it as usual. Comfortably numb really has an amazing guitar solo and Paul does a great job on the sound, I love the bit of the solo just after the mirror ball has been lit, it almost has this out of this world quality sound wise, i have to remember that it is acutally us creating it, it is quite magical. Pete was on lights tonight, a really nice chap who really works hard to enhance the special moments. He also keeps hurting himself - he head butted the mirror ball tonight before it was lifted into position.

We drove home over night, I don't know how the boys do it, but was worth it to be home on the sunday, as I had the best day sunday!

Friday 11th Feb 2011, Embassy Theatre Skegness

We stayed over night in Heathrow travelodge and started the trip to skegness at 9.30. Found a roadside snack bar, I had a egg in nice crusty baguette. Journey to skeggy was about 3-4 hours, on the way there were some of the longest straightest roads i've seen in this country. They seemed quite new! There were fields upon fields of cabbages, brussels sprouts and other green leafed vegetables, this must be the area for such produce. We also spotted a field of white sheep nibbling away on a load of cabbages, we think they were rogue sheep, they had a guilty look about them... It would have made a great picture but didn't get my camera out in time...

I felt tired today and a bit grouchy, you just never seem to get enough sleep to feel refreshed and then have a really long day ahead of you with the travelling, setting up followed by a 3 hour show...Good job the music lifts you when you go on stage!
Skegness didn't dissapoint it was a sea side town and a half! The theatre 'the Embassy' was on the parade by the seafront, with roller coasters and big wheels next to it, and a sign for the pleasure beach! It all seemed shut down, I bet in summer it is buzzing with lights and noises, but theres something quite nice in seeing it out of season. I went and got some fish a chips from the only one that was open in a long line of them...I also bought some Skegness rock and a fridge magnet for my mum who collects them from where i've been.

Here is our dressing room / tea making station!

Here is Steve going through the lighting cues with the in house Tech

Tonight was a night for some good quotes off our punters.

To Steve (our lead guitarist) - Great Sax playing!
To Jeff (our drummer) - Great guitar work!
To Ross (our sax player) - Who taught you to play sax?, Dave Gilmour!

There was also a much re enacted moment, i shall write it as a script for you to read..

Man - Do you sell any Cd's?
Chris - No sir, we only have T shirts and stickers at the moment
Man - Oh.... So how much are the Cd's?
Chris - We don't have any Cd's, just the t shirts and stickers (gesturing to table)
Man - How much would the cd's be?
Chris - Um.... £10?

This man clearly wanted a cd..

We met a lady with a lovely long plait...
A man called John who was good fun and had white trainers that i saw even when he was sitting in the crowd...hasn't he got a cute grin!

A lady called Cath whose husband was struggling to take a pic with my camera, also in this pic is Ross and Chris and Fredi from the band.

After the show while the pack down was going on, I went to the 24 hour macdonalds that was just next door... I bet girls aloud don't go to Macdonalds after shows, thats why they are so skinny!

Bye to Skegness, it was an hour drive to Spalding (where they make tennis balls etc. i'm told) for our over night stay, got into bed at 1.30am

here's a little video of sound check, I doubt it was at skegness, but it was one of these shows!

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Thurs 10th Feb 2011, The Beck, Hayes

This was near where my mum started her life in Hillingdon, random fact for you there... It was a nice brown building just set back off thew road. We found it quite easily as not far off the M4. A long long row of shops near by where we later brought a curry. The crowd (forgive me for saying this crowd) were a bit slow to warm up, but by the second half they were fantastic, really really good in fact... maybe they'd had a few drinks in the interval or were more familiar with the 2nd set songs? This brings me to the fact that I have discovered over the time of touring that it only needs one or two noisy, enthusiastic people to be having a good time and the crowd relaxes into it sooner! Sometimes our audiences are terribly 'English' for the first set, so come on if you're in our next audience just go for it, the more you smile and enjoy it then we can see that and you can't help but feed off it. I must point out for any new readers to my blog and if you haven't seen our show that there hasn't been a show yet where the hasn't been a standing ovation at the end...

Which leads me to our top 3 crowds so far...(criteria includes: enthusiasm throughout the show)
For me the ones that stand out are:.....drum roll please...

Dunstable (which we are playing again soon woo hoo) - Both times we have played there, these guys cheer loudly as the lights go down at the start.

London - Shepherd's Bush Empire - This crowd really knew howe to have a good time.

I shall ask the band to give me their feedback for a third...

Fredi did great gig tonight and did a fab job, got a great reaction from the crowd. We are taking it in turns, and the way you know who will be singing it when you come to watch a show is who is standing the furthest in to the centre (ie nearest the drums) ....If she is blonde then it is Fredi and if she is a brunette then is is me (Polly).
Emotions were running high during wish you were here and comfortably numb, I saw a lad not that old sitting maybe three rows back in a red tshirt, wiping away what I can only assume were tears, theres just something about the screen images that makes you think, I'm glad i'm not out front as i'd be a mess!

Kudos to the guy in a black /skull motif? t shirt quite far back, I could see him getting into big time all the way through!

An amusing momnent was Jeff threw on patchs wig for roll call, made me chuckle.

Lovely people and lovely comments after the show, t'was a pleasure.


Photos to follow.. sorry bout this photo nonsense. there is a reason.

Victoria Halls, Stoke on Trent, Sat 5th Feb 2011

Didn't take us long to get to stoke as we stayed quite near by, it was rather pleasant to not have a 4+ hour drive. We found a big Tesco extra which meant breakfast!

Think Fredi was cold.

It was huge, you could have lived in there quite happily, it had everything you could imagine except maybe beds, so perhaps living there wouldn't be so good after all. It was 5 minutes til 11.30 when they stopped serving breakfasts and there was a huge queue behind us and they started to run out of stuff and said 'thats all of the tomatoes', and too me and Fredi, sorry we don;t have anymore Veggie sausages! Turns out they can't make any more if it's getting close to the cut off point, bit annoying really! So in the end I had beans, hash browns and eggs, and that was about it, meant to be a six piece breakfast. Fredi was on the rampage when the guy at till said she had to pay for each individual item (which came to more than the price on menu) and the lady had given her two of something to make up for the lack of varied items. She got her way, but boy don't try and diddle Fredi!

Great Green room, had a sixth form common room feel about it, there was much iphone action, sharing of you tube clips which made us chuckle.

Paul had his nails painted in bright Pink, Chris Loar did it, then Fredi had to touch it up!

This will be last mention of toasties, as think you get the jist that there is a lot of toasty making!

Our dressing room, Fredi thought it had a prison cell feel about it..

I had some guests at tonights show, Denise, sister and hubby to a good friend of mine, they tell me they saw me sing Karaoke years ago at a local pub while dressed as something unusual, Oooh I can't what remember now! (that was them dressed up not me!) They thoroughly enjoyed the show which was splendid.

A young couple who were chatting to Chris, he was a drummer.

iphone entry.....hence bad punctuation / capitals situation...!
the show is finished, the get out is happening as I type. They kicked us out of our dressing rooms extremely early this evening! The man did say that we sounded fantastic but still, kicked us out! Would they kick out a big celebrity? The show went really well, a good crowd, a few people who were VERY into it! Shaking their heads around, I would have been dizzy!

R. I. P Llangollen thurs 4th feb 2011

Well hello peeps! I'm writing while we are travelling up to Llangollen - north Wales. Just passed Bristol and chris is at the helm, minibus which I'm told is named Betsy 3 is cruising along quite nicely. Weather- grey! Eta to venue is about 3 hours. We have already been here before a beautiful Welsh town, and I remember a nice bridge near by! Currently in the back of van is Paul-sound man, Pete- bass, Fredi-vocals, and jeff- drums. The last two are glued to the DVD player watching keanu reeves in some film about demons. We have discussed the reeves' lack of acting ability but jeff assured us he doesn't have to act much in the film.

I'm currently wondering if anyone will read my pre show blog today from Llangollen And also if we will stop for a coffee somewhere as I have a cadburys twirl giving me the eye!

Here are some pics from the bus of the last few minutes before getting to venue

Over the lovely bridge, that water looks fierce!

A lovely 'hillock', this is my word of the week, I have used it twice in 2 days!!!

Sign for Llangollen

Venue from the outside

The backstage area reminds me of a leisure centre with the cubicles for changing.

Fredi on Toasties

Last time we were here we had Chris and Leigh providing the sound equipment and they were here today also. We played Geek power last time (top trumps in other words with pics of geeks on each one) I can't believe that was so long ago!

Venue from side stage

I liked this big piece of Art in the foyer!

Post show blog: show went well, saw Gary and Anna and their daughters. Also Geoff and Lynne from Liverpool! So nice to see familiar faces. Down to our last 2 pig style t shirts and they are double xl! Am trying to write while driving to our night stop in Crewe, but man it's tricky on an iPhone! Also it's very windy, seen 2 trees across the roads already! Onto Stoke now....

Oh falling asleep was heaven in our travelodge.