West Cliff Theatre Clacton,Sunday Nov 25th

The big danger today, as we’ve found before on the day after a REALLY stonking gig, is that it can sometimes be a case of “after the Lord Mayor’s show “. The adrenaline rush and euphoria of the night before have evaporated, and you’re maybe faced with the prospect of a long drive, or simply a theatre you know is hard to work in. For the band, they might be going from having hundreds of baying fans going bananas to a handful of folks who’ve never seen them before, and THAT’S hard to deal with too.Getting your spirits and enthusiasm back up under those circumstances isn’t always easy, and there’s a definite element of this today. We’re travelling around 140 miles to the show today, and to be honest we’re all getting so tired that it’s the drive back afterwards that’s bothering us more. Still, at least the sun’s shining, which makes a VERY pleasant change after the last few days, and as we’re going to be at the seaside we just know that there’ll be fish and chips on the menu tonight. There’s nothing like a good old infusion of lard to brighten up your evening ! We’ve never been to Clacton before, so we really don’t know what to expect. Sometimes these out – of – season seaside resorts can be as dead as a priest’s sex life, as we found in Hunstanton what feels like a hundred years ago, but other times they can be brilliant, like the Bridlington show when half the crowd turned up in Sixties gear and we had a total ball. Sales for tonight had been slow but they’ve picked up this week, so we’re cautiously optimistic. This is what I call the “ grunt work “ of touring…..you’re going into a new area, you don’t really know how the show’s going to do, and you’ve no idea what sort of response you’re going to get, but you have to do these gigs and put the hard yards in if you’re going to develop and grow to the point where you can pick and choose where you’d like to play in the future. As it happens the drive down is OK, and pretty uneventful apart from our shock at seeing whole vistas of water where big chunks of the Cambridgeshire and Suffolk countryside used to be. We had a bijou diversionette ourselves this morning caused by a flood, but nothing to write home about, and we actually pull up outside the gig fifteen minutes early. Nick’s already there, of course ( we’re convinced he drives everywhere the night before and sleeps in the van ) and it has to be said that first impressions of the venue aren’t too good……it’s a typical little old seaside theatre, with it’s best days probably left behind back when music hall was at it’s height. When we get inside, this quaintness is even more marked, and the curving roof makes it look a little like playing inside an upturning rowing boat. It’s also as cold as Jack Frost’s deep freeze, but the crew ( all six of them !!! ) are really helpful and welcoming, and soon it all starts to take shape again. I was expecting today to be a real slog, with everything taking ages, but we actually get set up in pretty short order which, of course, means more time for hunting out the best fish and chips !!! There’s only one “moving bar” in the theatre, so the projectors have to hang on this, and it turns out that the bar comes up and down on a hand - winch system, which is incredibly slow. As the bar is being brought in, the stagehand on the winch does the proper health and safety thing and calls out “ Heads up onstage…bar coming in “, and we all look up, but see nothing. Eventually we spot the bar inching it’s way earthwards, and being the mickey-taking old Hectors that we are, we immediately drop into “ Chariots Of Fire” slo – mo mode, and pretend to be trying to escape the gradually descending bar. I’m sure the house crew have seen and heard it all before, but they have the good grace to laugh at our antics, and it kind of sets the tone for the atmosphere of the day. They’re lovely folks here…all but one of them volunteers…and nothing’s too much trouble for them. They even make us tea and coffee !! That’s TWO shows on this tour now !!! We’re still not sure what the show itself will bring, though, and despite the fact that the theatre looks small from the outside, it’s actually a fair old size when you get in there, so a small crowd is going to be a bit lost. Here’s hoping……Nick gets the nod to be the forager for the night, and heads out into the dark to hunt for fish and chips. A lot of the band have gone for this option as well, so we’re getting in more than we normally order, and the local fishy-shop dude tells Nick that our order has just about tripled his turnover for the day, as it’s so quiet in town. This doesn’t really bode well for selling more tickets on the door tonight….I’ve got another problem as showtime approaches. As the doors open and we take our positions to prepare for the gig, the combination of a full tum and the fatigue of the past few days really starts to get a grip, and it’s all I can do to stay awake. I have probably the least stressful of the technical jobs on the show, but it does require a lot of concentration, and the computer screen and set list are starting to swim before my eyes. What I really need is be to hooked up to an intravenous Red Bull supply, but as we don’t have one I have to make do with several grammes of cocaine, a dozen amphetamine sulphate pills, two bottles of Jack Daniels, a box of Benzedrine and a fistful of Ecstasy tablets. Seems to do the job, and I perk up a wee bit. The first pleasant surprise of the night is that there are actually more bodies in than we’d anticipated, and not only that, they’re enthusiastic, responsive and knowledgeable; the first time we ask them to join in is only the third number, Hippy Hippy Shake, but they’re right in there with us, and they don’t let go all night. After a slightly slow start the band pick up on the vibe from the crowd, and you can see by their faces that this is turning out to be a really good gig. The audience are going for it on the “ party “ section to such an extent that we’re sure Den will call a rocker as the encore, but they bellow along to Daydream Believer so lustily that he makes exactly the right choice with Walk Alone. This is the justification of what I was saying at the beginning about “ grunt work “…..we’ve come along and rocked the socks off these good people, and now another door in another corner of Britain is open to us next time we go out on tour. The fact that the folks in the theatre itself have made it such a pleasant stay for us is an added bonus, and it’s all turned out to be a bit of a corker one way and another. Just the drive home to negotiate now, so everyone scatters to the four winds. Pug, Tomps and I climb into my car, and I mentally cross my fingers. I’m sure that when VW designed the Passat they didn’t envisage it having the arse hoofed out of it up and down the UK’s roads by a bunch of hairy road pigs, especially with a boot full of bags, food, gear, domestic fowls, tools, empty CD cases and several flagons of cider, but my game old bird has done just that for 230,000 miles now, However, just like her owner, she’s starting to show every one of those miles, and has recently needed regular top-ups of water as well as making the occasional noise that sounds like one of the Transformers having vigorous sex with a lathe. For some reason the nearside headlight also has a habit of switching itself off for no apparent reason, and as the other light’s not that great to start with, it makes driving in the dark quite interesting. I’m used to it, but I don’t think Pug’s that comfortable because I can see that one arm is braced against the door, the other has got my leg in a vice – like death grip, he’s smoking six cigarettes at once and he’s got both eyes closed. SUCH a girl……….