stuck in the mud

Summertime, and the livin' is...muddy.  Forget Wimbledon, Pimms on the lawn, unslightly red burn lines and all that.  'Tis the season of the Outdoor Firework Prom - or, 'muddy field date'.

In Madrid I learnt that this is something of a British phenomenon, so for a little piece of England, this is roughly what happens.

6am.  Morning of Firework Classic Spectacular Extravanganza.  Load car in a manner befitting a proud member of the Royal Philharmonic Symphony Chamber Pops Orchestra.  Car groans under the weight of your black thermals, sunblock, sunglasses, sunhat, huge bonkbuster novel, food, water, umbrella, clothes pegs and fourth best harp.  Drive for four hours in pissing rain deep into the English countryside.  After you have circled Little Ineedthecash for the sixth time, perceive through the mist a tent half-way up a mountain above a winding footpath, cattle grid and fast-flowing ravine.  Crawl through Ineedthecash village centre, passing six olde tea shoppes, one souvenir stall selling tea towels embossed with poems on being a "senior citizen", and Mushroom World selling quaint fungus ornaments.  Arrive outside tent entrance.  With brightest, blondest smile, offer cash and sexual favours to be allowed to drive right up to the stage.  Agree you will, of course, move your car back to the carpark 60miles away once you have unloaded the harp.  Drive through swamp, running over six senior citizens and the central power cable.   Hide car round back of single portaloo provided for the orchestra, choir, soloists and 650 000 classical music lovers.  Unload harp, in the dark.  Grovel to wrathful techies, who have spent all morning setting up the power supply.  Mollify techies sufficiently to have them winch harp 75 feet onto precarious sloping stage.  Tune harp several octaves sharper than normal.  Oboeist arrives.  Harp has gone flat in the howling gale.  Receive pad of music to sightread through, mostly on loose photocopies.  Conductor arrives and shouts:  "for the Gold and Silver Waltz, the repeats are yes no yes yes no no yes DC yes no no and cut to letter 69 yes no yes.  OK? We don't need to run that."  Rehearse all bits harp is not in.  Pay 7.99 for madcow burger and warm coke.  Don crumpled selection of black clothes appropriate to the boiling/freezing weather.  File onto stage.  Hear orchestral union rep objecting that the popular opera star's fee means the orchestra cannot afford enough players for the 1812.  Play concert.  Conductor cocks up National Anthem.  Start packing up before realising haven't yet done 94th encore.  Finally leave stage.  Car blocked in by portaloo queue.   Overhear what singer is being paid. 

Comments

[Richard]

Love it! As a fellow string player (classical guitar) I can attest to altered tunings in outside gigs, as well as flyaway sheet music and rigged power supply (the 100-foot cord was run through a barn, "You don't want to go in there!") 10 minutes before a wedding the M-O-B decides we need to move to the opposite side of the platform. The keyboardist's Kurzweill got stuck on the Sawtooth setting and made for an interesting version of Bach's Arioso. Fortunately the wine was flowing and no madcows were in sight.