Barry came over to rehearse last Saturday, bringing the remnants of a cold with him. On Sunday, I had a scratchy throat and by Monday, it was a confirmed cold. Will had a bit of one, but I came off worse. So the week was spent taking it easy, and drinking lots of hot honey lemon drinks. I mentioned this to Mauricette when she passed by, and she asked if we still had honey. They both came by a few hours later with a pot from Lucien’s bees, so I’ve been enjoying that. They stayed and chatted for a bit, and it was good to catch up with them.
Tuesday was the first day without rain, and I took advantage by mowing the front lawn, which was long overdue. We had rehearsal on Wed, and it went mostly well. There is some video footage of that, but only a few of our songs. My voice wasn’t quite well enough to hit the high notes, but otherwise, we all sounded pretty good.
Not much happened until Friday, when I spent the day cooking for the event. All the food was provided by members of the group, and my contribution was devilled eggs and Curried Chicken Salad, my mom’s recipe. Although we get reimbursed, I didn’t consider the cost when selecting the dish, and it came to €40! In the end, I only used half the chicken, so it won’t be quite so much. I chose the dish since I wanted to do something with curry. It also has mango, apple, red onion and cashews, hence the price tag.
In the morning, a couple came over with their laptop because the wifi stopped working. Sue, the curry lady, had recommended us to them and we agreed to have a look if they came to us. The problem was that wifi was turned off, so it was very easy for Will to fix. We had egg salad for lunch, made from the rejected devilled eggs. It was curry night, and Will went to collect in the afternoon. We just had Manu and Mathilde, sans enfants, which was pleasant. We took it easy, and they left around midnight.
The day of the gig, we were up early enough to be at the venue before 10. The guys with the equipment showed up just after, and it took them the rest of the morning to get it all wired up. This meant there wasn’t much for the rest of to do, so there was a lot of standing around. Josienne treated us to pizza for lunch, which of course required a bread and wine accompaniment. We finally started the sound check sometime after two, and it took a while to get things set. On one of our tracks, it sounded corrupted, and we thought something must have happened to it. It wasn’t until the same thing happened to the Abba backing tracks that I figured there was a problem.
We finished up around 5 and headed home, showered, changed and headed back around 6:30. Will finally convinced the sound people that the problem wasn’t with our ipod, and they fixed the problem. Since this was the first year, we weren’t sure how many people to expect, and figured around 50 – 60. The place started filling up around 7:30, and shortly after, we started needing to put out more tables. In the end, there were more like 90 people, including a reporter from the Sud-Ouest, a regional paper in which we will be featuring. It was mostly local French people, probably 80% or more.
The food came out, and the hordes descended. It was served at a buffet, with little plates. The food was a mix of English and French, including pork pies and pasties that Barry had catered, like last year. There were also sausage rolls, quiche and paté. I had rave reviews on the chicken salad, and thankfully, I made loads. Although served on sliced baguette as “toast”, it was one of the few dishes without pastry. Within an hour, nearly everything was gone, except for one small platter.
This was all happening while the first group played. It was Barry and his wife Carol, his sister Terry, and our neighbour Carol. They made a few small errors, but overall, sounded good and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. We started directly after them, around 9. The buffet had changed over to dessert, so people were going for it. With this too, there was just enough to go around, with one small plate of stuff left. The alcohol also held out, although they thought there wasn’t going to be enough red.
We had adjusted all the sound levels earlier in the day, but with the other group in front of us, things were off a bit. This made the first song a bit difficult, but we muddled through. After that, they made some adjustments, and that helped, but the bass was still very loud. Apart from that, we didn’t make many mistakes, but I was finding it hard to sing in places. We did a few encores, and ended sometime after 10. By then, plenty of people had cleared out, but at least half stuck around till the end of our set.
In general, the night turned out to be a big success. I’m not sure about the financials, but I’m guessing we’ll be on the plus side. After we played, we tucked into a few cans of cider that I’d stashed earlier, and a few people bought us drinks too. Also, we were asked to play another gig for a school fundraiser. One of the attendees teaches English in Nontron, and they’re raising money for a trip to England. We would just need to sort out the equipment, since ours wouldn’t do, and they may have some at the school. No idea when it will be, so we’ll let you know.
We got home around 11:30 and were still pretty wired, so had a drink and finished Game of Thrones Season 4. Yesterday, I woke up with a chesty cough, the last of the cold, since it is mostly better today. We had a lazy day, just watched some films, ate and rested. Today it was back to work for both of us. Will is in the process of sorting out video, but we may not have all songs until the weekend. Barry’s brother in law did the filming, and it was on a small camera, very close to the stage, so the sound isn’t great. We’re invited to Barry and Carol’s 40th anniversary dinner, so we’ll see him then and get the rest of the videos.
I haven’t covered the weather, which has been grey, wet and cool, with temps in the low tens. It’s meant to improve later this week. So far, we’ve had no leaking in the mezzanine, so it appears Andrew’s handy work has paid off. Many thanks.