Upstaged!

Last weekend Shani and I played at Rougham Air Field at the Suffolk Kite Festival. It was an incredibly windy weekend (good) but rainy too (not so good). There were kites like a crab, Tweetie Pie (pictured), an octopus, a giant teddy, as well as the fantastic stunt kites. But we didn't get to see much of them.

Shani and I were in the tea/bar tent, playing in the afternoon to the visitors to the show. We played both Saturday and Sunday for about three and a quarter hours over a four hour period - mostly because we were having such fun.

But - on Sunday - we were upstaged! Oh yes, upstaged by a guest performer. You see - I always ask the audience (when there is one - sometimes there weren't that many people in there, but we always had the bar staff!) what they'd like us to sing. 99% of the time of course we don't know what they want, but one young lady asked me for a song I knew!

"Horsey, horsey, don't you stop, just let your feet go clippety clop, your... mmmmm.... and your wheels go round, giddy up we're homeward bound". OK, I've probably not sung that since my own kids were about four, but I remembered all of it but one line. I asked the little girl if she knew the line and she did. I asked her if she'd like to sing it, and she said she would.

With a smile of consent from her mother, the cutie clambered onto the stage and I put the mike down to her level. With a loud and confident voice she sang the song with us accompanying, and 'tail goes swish' was the missing line. The audience of course applauded hugely. Her little eyes went round as saucers and I could see she loved it. Another soul lost to the lure of the stage! Even if it was in a tea tent in a field at a kite festival.

Two days of solid playing our fingers were sore but we had a grand time. John, the guy who runs all the events, was not happy with the layout of the event and there weren't really enough people there to make him completely happy, but even so he seemed happy with the music and it was, for us, a good time. They run some superb events at Rougham (and some of my earlier and more bizarre gigs have in fact occurred there too), so worth a visit: http://www.roughamairfield.org/