July-August 2001

2001: BTB Year in Review Part IV - The Second Section Strikes Back

July-August:

July, traditionally a hectic month for the band, with various greasy student-types emerging from the woodwork and the Summer programme getting fully underway, saw the band packed onto the postage-stamp-sized bandstand at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-On-Sea. This was to be one of the last performances there before the building of the new bandstand (for news of which, see December!)

This was followed up towards the end of the month by a blisteringly hot "charity fun day" at Herstmonceux Castle, which turned out not to be much fun for us as several players struggled to arrive on time, and it all culminated in a wrist-slap for our poor beleaguered Secretary following a mix-up over playing times! Oops...On the other hand, it wasn't all our fault. For example, if you'd booked a brass band to play at your fête, would you not perhaps expect them to need chairs?

August brought the (better-organised!) Catsfield fête and its attendant merrymaking (including a rare solo outing for Herbie in The Lazy Trumpeter), as well as a well-subscribed social trip up to London to see Les Miserables (I refer to the musical, not our bass section...).

In place of our usual Bank Holiday Weekend trip to Hever Castle, we this year performed on Alexandra Park bandstand in Hastings. Needless to say it poured with rain for most of the day. Many of the band were also nursing sore heads from a most successful band social trip to Battle Proms the previous night (incidentally, does anyone have any tips for removing red wine stains from white tuxedos months after the offence?), where we had successfully conned the conductor into publicising our concert in front of the 7000 people present. Admittedly, somewhat less than 7000 turned up the next day to see us, raining as hard as it was, but perhaps if it had been sunny... Nonetheless, just before three o'clock the clouds closed up and we managed to shower-dodge our way through the programme before it started tipping down again. The damp (and surprisingly numerous) crowd must have been entertained, as we gave them the choice of a long or short encore and they went for the long one. Presumably the minibus back to the asylum wasn't due for another half hour.

Following this puzzling phenomenon the band was once again welcomed to the Willard household for the annual ritual of Band BBQ. This year we were down on bathroom redecoration and people running into closed patio doors (by 100%!), whilst being up on tiramisu (thanks Janet) and beer consumption (a complete 70-pint barrel of Forge Bitter between about ten drinkers), and roughly unchanged on gullible newcomers trying Chris' Chilli Sauces...