Buxton Opera House Sun April 3rd

Although Buxton is a lovely little town nestling in the Derbyshire Dales, it’s a bit of a bastard to get to, especially in a heavily laden van with coolant problems, but we manage to arrive safely, and even thirty minutes early. To our surprise no-one’s about, but then Tomps makes an appearance. He’s looked fresher, truth be told, and the reason for his somewhat less than chipper demeanour today is down to a combination of a VERY rough drive up in the bus and the hourly pealing of the bells from a church about four and half feet away from where the bus is parked. It would have been uncomfortable enough travelling up these little roads with their twists, turns, dips and hills in a double decker bus under any circumstances, but when you’re trying to sleep on the pitching, rolling upper floor it must have been horrible. When they finally arrived our weary travellers thought a few hours of stationary rest awaited them, but at seven am the bells of the adjacent church suddenly started pealing…..and pealing….and pealing. They weren’t just sounding the hour, of course, it’s Sunday morning, so they’re calling people to services…AND it’s Mother’s Day, so there are special services too. Nightmare. This is potentially bad news…the last thing we want on the final show is for the band and crew to be tired and below par. One by one they get up ( yes, even Jamie….) and either shower or head into town, and to our relief it seems to do the trick….by soundcheck everyone looks almost human and firing on all cylinders. There’s none of the “ end of tour “ blues about today, either, which is VERY odd….normally at the end of a jaunt like this you’re already starting to look to life beyond the twelve people you’ve spent the last few weeks with and wondering how you’ll cope without Nick to take the piss out of., or Rodders to buy crisps and chocolate for you, or Tomps and Junior to have a laugh with during the show each night, but everyone seems very philosophical and matter of fact about things, to the extent that I wonder if it’s only me who feels like this ! There are certainly no weird end – of – tour high jinks to distract the band from their playing….though the Shadows moment tonight is perhaps our best yet, with Junior, Tomps, Nick and myself hurtling across the stage behind the backdrop to take up station at the opposite side to where we normally stand, and where the band normally see us, each night., so that as they do the choreographed turn there’s a confused moment of “ hang on….they should be over THERE…have I turned the wrong way ? “ Possibly the very best part of tonight is the presence of forty – odd eleven year old kids from a local school. No, hang on, I haven’t gone all Gary Glitter on you….we learn that they are studying The Sixties as part of a history project, and as they knew we played all the music and showed all the images from the decade, their teachers thought this would be a good show for them to see. Big hand for the forward thinking of those staff ( mind you, they clearly had a ball themselves, so it wasn’t COMPLETELY altruistic !) but the kids seemed to love it…they dutifully screamed at the end of each song, giving it a nice “ Beatlemania “ feel, and it was just great to see them bopping about. We had a good crowd in tonight too, as Buxton is one of the venues where we road – tested this show a few years back, and they know how to promote us here. In fact, it’s a perfect choice for the last show…great theatre, great crowd, great crew, great place altogether. I’m totally fine for almost the whole set, then for some reason Whiter Shade Of Pale takes on an almost unbearable poignancy and I feel the tears prick my eyes…it suddenly crashes in on me that this really IS the last show, and the adventure’s over until next time. I’ve got a huge amount of personal unpleasantness to deal with when I get back, and the tour has cushioned me from the real world, but now it’s knocking on the door again and I’ve got to deal with it. I have to shake this melancholy, though, because it’s not fair on everyone else, and anyway, we’ve got an end of tour party scheduled for later on, with cakes and jelly and pop and everything. We’ve still got a show to finish, though, so I swallow my unhappiness and the three of us at stage right bellow along with the last two numbers. Again, we’d toyed with the idea of doing Spirit In The Sky but we’re really just reserving that for flat-out mental nights; this has been a huge success but there aren’t people hanging from the rafters or anything, so it’s curtain down, gear off, and into the de-rig. Before we start tearing down the kit I have a brief chat with a couple of regular fans who tell me, in one of the most touching testimonials that I’ll ever hear, that the show “ puts them on a high for days afterwards “. If we can reach people in that way then that’s good enough for me. I see Marilyn and Debbie even more briefly ( Marilyn tonight having ditched her normal jeans and Bootleg’s tour t-shirt combo for a nifty little 60’s number with kinky boots ! ) but then I really DO have to get to work. The crew here are brutally efficient, and whilst they’re standing outside with all our gear going “ What’s next to go in the van ? “ we’re still onstage trying to coil cables into the right piles, as the kit’s all going to different places tomorrow. We manage to catch up with them and avoid any dramas like leaving a key flight case behind, and then it’s a handshake goodbye and we pile on to the bus. Arthur’s done us proud….there’s champers, beer, wine, nibbles and even party bags, and the twelve of us squeeze into the back lounge of the bus and just have a couple of hours of what our Irish brethren call “ the craic “. I’m suddenly aware that this is exactly why we opted for the bus in the first place….there are no outsiders, no relatives, no family, no guests….it’s just the twelve of us, the people who did all this. Living on the bus has made us closer as a unit, and stronger too, and I’m more convinced than ever tonight that with the nucleus of this group there’s no limit to where we can take this show. Even Sunderland. I finally creep off to bed at about half past two, knowing that I’ll probably not see anyone in the morning before I leave with Arthur to take the kit back to Northamptonshire, but unlike last year at Croydon where everyone just melted off into the night after a forty – date tour, we’ve drawn a proper line under this one tonight. Now all we have to do is get back, add the figures up and see if it’s good news, bad news, or a hosepipe up the exhaust in the garage …………….