Creeping Bentgrass, Golden Wedding Party in Garstang

Last night found us driving out to Garstang to play for a Golden Wedding party for two lovely people who have booked the band in the past, several years ago and remembered us from then.

The format of the party roughly followed the format of the wedding, 50 years ago, with speeches by the Best Man and Groom. There was an Irish Raffle. We hadn't heard of this before but basically prizes chosen had to remain on your table in front of you and more tickets were drawn than there were prizes. Once the stock of prizes ran out, winners were allowed to pinch a prize from someone else, which made for a lot of fun and a much-travelled bottle of champagne! The tin of beans didn't move about anywhere near as much...!

Barry and Marlene, it was a pleasure to play for you again, I just hope we have that sort of energy when another ten years goes by to Miss Franny and my own 50th Anniversary! Heck... I wish I had that much now!

And just to bring past gigs up to date, here's a couple I missed over the Christmas and New Year period...

The 29th December saw us out at Darwen, playing at the house party of some long-standing friends. Very informal and lots of fun. We were pipped at the post this year and missed out on a hat-trick of winning Brian's quiz...

New Year's Eve saw us playing at the Thurlby Club in Preston, where we had played earlier in the year. A game of Bingo was held to raise funds for necessary repairs to the roof. David won and donated the prize back with a wish that they did the bit over the stage first...! A really good night with a load of laughs!

Club Night in Preston for Creeping Bentgrass

On Saturday night we were playing at the Thurlby Club in Lea, Preston. A tiny stage forced me to re-think our usual layout and I placed the keyboard at an angle to give myself enough room to stand. It worked very well as I felt there was less of a barrier between me and the audience.

Usually I stand with the keyboard in front of me, the mic stand in front of that and then usually some floor-standing swivelling lights in front of that again. We were expecting a few games of Bingo, but in the event they played a Spanish game that they called "Cassie-Cassie" (Sp?) This had each player with a sheet of nine playing cards having three rows of three cards and the caller turned over a card from a second full deck. Like Bingo they played four corners, then a T shape with the cross bar either at the top or the bottom, two vertical rows and a full house. It was quite good fun and didn't take as long as Bingo with 90 balls to choose from.

We played two sets mainly from our 60s song-list to an enthusiastic crowd of around 50-60 people and were told later that in the audience was a guitarist who used to play with The Ivy League who had apparently said "These lads are bloody good!". Thank you kind sir! Our first playing of the Elvis song Can't Help Falling In Love With You.