Freefall: Lydney Yacht Club

Saturday night's gig was one of the good ones.

Earlier in the year, an old friend from Lydney Yacht Club got hold of me and explained (in what he later described as his "steroid induced frenzy") that once he'd finished the roller-coaster of chemotherapy he was at that point riding, he wanted to throw a party, a "survivors ball" and he wanted our band to play for it. He was pretty sure he could persuade Sarah, LYC's commodore, into letting him have it at the club.

We picked a suitable date out of the few remaining Saturdays in the band's diary, one well enough clear of the end of his treatment to be sure he's be back on his feet and well enough to enjoy it. The date also turned out to the the date of a 70th birthday for Barney, another LYC member and a friend and the club's bar manager to boot.

photo: adie cooke

Bean, our drummer, stood us up at the last minute, and parachuted in a dep called George. In fairness to Bean, had George not been available, he'd have foregone his ticket to the cricket world cup that he was standing us up for and turned up to play anyway. Instead, he promised us George was very good and went off to get mashed in a field somewhere. I can't think of any other reason to watch cricket, personally. Didn't even realise they had a world cup.

Turns out George was very good and did a cracking job of covering for the AWOL Bean. Lydney were up on their feet and dancing from the first song, and danced through the setting sun and long into the warm night.