business as usual

You know it was a good weekend when you have to pause to try and remember what you got up to Friday evening. Turns out it was just the usual date night with Lottie, which was just me and my girl this week as our son Ben and his fiancé Hannah had told us they were planning to drop in, so Nik stayed home to wait for them.

They were still there when we got home from dog training. They're both teachers at a school down in Bristol, so we only ever get to see them at half-term which, apparently, was last week. It was lovely to see them again however. Jack was particularly pleased.

Saturday morning was the usual session at karate; I briefly entertained the idea of heading down to the lake to race the Laser Saturday afternoon, but with a gig planned for the evening in the end opted to stay home, cook me and my youngest son, Sam, some lunch and string a guitar.

The gig was a mad, crazy affair. One of our favourite regular venues, The Railway Tavern in Fishponds, Bristol; when we arrived to set up at 1930 the bar was deserted. We mused that it might turn into a quiet night. Warm, sunny days can be like that, as people tend to end up peaking early so don't necessarily stay out. 

We couldn't have been more wrong. Within an hour, they started to filter in from the street and pub garden, and by the time we started, just on the back of 2130, the place was heaving.

So we had a good gig. Well, most of us. My brother Jamie, our bassist, did not. Early in the first set one of the tuning peg holding his bottom E string snapped, so he had to manage the rest of the night on just three strings, transposing almost everything on the fly.

The crowd didn't care, except for the one or two at the front that were seriously impressed that he made an almost flawless job of it. But self flagellation is his speciality, and he was quite mortified by his own assessment of his performance. 

It's just one of those things. I break strings all the time, so have spare strings ever to hand and if one goes I can generally have it replaced before the end of the song without interruption. I even have a spare guitar near to hand, if it comes to that.

That's not how the bass guitar works though, and in more than thirty years, Jay's not broken a string on stage, let alone the tuning machine peg holding the string in place. I felt for him, but he did good, held himself together and got on with the show. And the crowd loved it.

I was home and finally in bed by about 0400 Sunday morning, so when the alarm went off at 0830, it felt particularly brutal. The evening before, I'd toyed with the idea of taking Calstar out with Dad; a spring tide with low water around 1400, if we'd locked out at 1030, we could've made it down channel, around the Holms and back up. 

The forecast was in the high teens, which in itself was not a problem, but the wind direction was from the north east where, annoyingly, it has sat for quite a while now. Rounding the Holms on Sunday would've meant running down to Flat Holm with the wind and tide, and then turning to beat back home again against a fresh north easterly set over a flooding spring tide. 

So Sunday morning I left Dad in peace to recover from the night before (I actually can't remember the last time he missed a gig) and set off to South Cerney to race my Laser on the lake. A gusty, shifty day with bright, warm sunshine, the racing both morning and afternoon was fun and challenging, if occasionally frustrating.

Three races, two in the morning back to back, followed by a ninety minute pursuit in the afternoon. I didn't win any of them, but managed a second place in the afternoon, beaten by Ali and Cat in their Merlin Rocket in the last fifteen minutes. I snapped the primary line on the Laser's cunningham early in the race, which made the beats tricky and inefficient and cost me a dry capsize. But I can't blame my kit, the Rocket sailed a good, fast race, so would've caught me anyway.

In any case, a day out on the water playing with the Laser was a perfect finish to a good weekend.