I remember you-oooooo

So, on Saturday we got up an hour too early and drove to Birmingham International to get our plane to Glasgow for my nephew’s wedding do. The first couple of times I flew (US and Sri Lanka) I went in a jumbo, and last time when we went to Italy it was a rather smaller plane, but still quite sizeable – one aisle and 5 seats wide. This time we had the sort of plane that needs to be pushed to the big elastic band at the end of the runway in order to get enough speed to get airborne (Embraer 145 if anyone’s interested). Two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other, and not enough headroom for Ned to stand up straight. Still, it got us there, and my brother met us at the railway station. The afternoon was spent at his house with family then we went to the hotel to have a sleep to keep us going till the evening. The do went well – the show was stolen, as expected, by my niece’s twin daughters, who at 15 months old are walking like zombies with their arms held out on front, and have grown even more similar than they were last time I saw them, and are stunningly beautiful. We didn’t drink a lot – not at the prices the bar was charging (“A pint of beer and a glass of wine? Let me relieve you of six of your Sassenach squids, sir.”)

After a very hot night in a ground-floor hotel room with only patio doors and no window, which found me in the wee small hours sat butt nekkid playing at punka-wallah and fanning the outside door back and forth to get some air, my brother gave us a lift back to the airport. After a minor squabble about who was going to sit by the window we watched the other passengers boarding. “Ooh, doesn’t that bloke look like Stu?” we said to each other. (Regular readers may experience a touch of deja vu here.) “Scuse me, are you Chris Leslie?" asked Ned. And it was! Then Simon Nicol and Ric Sanders appeared. The only Fairport member missing was Dave Pegg. We asked them how the American tour had gone, and there was a horrid silence. “The first eight hours were fine” said Simon “then we broke the bassist. Bass players are rubbish. They only play two notes and manage to get those in the wrong order …” It sounds as though there had been a major falling-out. Oh dear. Anyway, we chatted about having our Cropredy tickets, and seeing them at Cox’s Yard. “We’re playing there again on Thursday”, Chris said. We expressed interest, and then Simon said “Give us your names and you can be our guests. It’ll only cost you a pint … of tequila.” So guess where we’ll be on Thursday night?