History, they say, is written by the winners… and Concert Band Tour Reports it seems are written by committee members wishing to protect the Society's image. There are however at least two sides to every story and the official line is, in my opinion, normally lacking in excess energy and general over-enthusiasm and tends quite often to over gloss over bits and pieces best thought forgotten… but where's the fun in that?

So here it is, the unauthorised, unofficial version of the age old 'what I did on my holidays' essay. How much it reflects what actually happened on the tour is open to debate, but I've never been one to spoil a good story with accuracy… Oh and by the way, the names will not be changed to protect the innocent.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin…

It was nearing the end of term (a fact which could be concluded from the height of the nice neat stack of untouched examples papers on my desk) but, whilst returning home to plentiful food and sleep was obviously the only sensible course of action, signing up for the Concert Band tour had seemed like a good idea at the time. The evening of the term's concert was merely a distant memory for most (and a fairly drunken one for many) but before term finally concluded and the tour could begin there was the small matter of the annual dinner.

Now I'm sure that anyone who knows anything about annual dinners is aware that any half decent Arts student could write up a report on that evening that would make even the Marquis de Sade blush, but that's someone else's tale to tell. I'll just recall one relevant point and leave the rest to your sordid imaginations…

At some point during the evening, after the drunkenness had begun but before the pyromaniac had had his candles confiscated (and unfairly so may I add!), Madam Chairperson took a brief time out from the theses she was scrawling across each and every menu in the room to announce the departure time of the coach on Friday morning. It was declared that we would all be in Silver Street to meet the coach at nine thirty am, at which point all those present going on tour laughed. The laughter was short lived however as it soon became clear that Kate was not laughing with us… it was at this point that everyone present not going on the tour laughed.

I will if I may just to a point before we go on. Nine thirty in the morning does not exist during term time, so quite why it should do so outside it I'm not quite sure. Nine thirty is about five hours before Arts students wake up and about five minutes after Science students have managed to get comfortable enough in their lecture theatre or laboratory to go back to sleep… but not on this morning. There were notably few other people on the streets, which was hardly a surprise… there were also notably few Concert Band members on the street, which was hardly a surprise either.

Just to go off on another tangent (I was serious when I asked if you were sitting comfortably…), there would appear to be an inverse square law relating the proximity of a band member's college to Silver Street and the time which it takes them to get there. As a result of this law Karen and Diana were the first on the scene whilst the pair from Catz (and I won't name Carrie and Naomi because that would just be cruel) were all but last to arrive.

Anyway, we had all finally assembled by a quarter to ten (not bad by student standards... and down right fantastic by Concert Band standards) and with the UCCB banner stretched across the back window we were ready to set off... Fun and frolics abounded around the back end of the bus, though being doped up on painkillers for a back injury (weights sessions are not good for you no matter what your crew say) I promptly found a comfortable seat at the front of the bus and went to sleep.

Just as a point of note, any strange behaviour (which may be termed as eccentric if certain members of the flute section wish it to be so… though I must point out that I alas fall somewhat short of the financial requirement of eccentricity) which I may have exhibited whilst on tour cannot be attributed to the painkillers. Singing extracts from the Sound of Music whilst walking down the middle of the road late at night is just something that I do from time to time…

The tour had been billed as going to the North East of England for cheap drink and friendly audiences which, being an out of term resident of the aforementioned part of Britain, I could well recommend. However, I'm sorry to say that, in my opinion, for what it's worth (which isn't normally much…), we never actually got to the North East of England. The closest we ever got to the village that I so dearly call home would have required an hour and a half's drive due north to see me safely back, and home's a good hour and a half south of the Scottish border. From this I conclude that the place where I live must be the bit marked on Southerners' maps as "Not quite Scotland… but very close to it" just East of "here be Dragons" no doubt…

I woke up just in time to experience the joys of Lincoln's one way road system and became suitably involved in the directions argument (not that I've ever actually been to Lincoln, but it would have been a shame to let a good argument go begging...). We eventually got parked up in the bus station and then proceeded to troop out of the bus in search of a pub (surprise, surprise). The MD however had suitably different ideas to the Band and promptly banned alcohol so, for the first but by no means the last time on the tour, food became the order of the day.

Having eaten far too much to contemplate playing any music for several hours we were then frog-marched back to the bus to collect instruments to go and play an open air preview of the evening concert in front of the war memorial in the city centre. This was to be our first gig of the weekend, woohoo!

Before I go on there I feel that I must share with you the two points of note about Lincoln's March weather; these being the temperature and the wind. Being sensible musicians wind had been anticipated (or at least it had been by whoever put the clothes pegs in the percussion coffin) we all clothes pegged our music to our stands… which in the event turned out not to be a good move as not only did the music blow onto the ground but it also took the stand with it. As far as temperature is concerned, it would be unfair to call Lincoln cold during March... it is BLOODY FREEZING (if you'll excuse the vernacular). Just to quantify how perishingly cold it was a number of fingers in the sax and brass sections turned blue (and we're not talking the mild shade of purple that makes Lady Margaret boaties' knees clash with their red lycra during the Lent Bumps, we're talking BLUE)...

By this point most of the stands had fallen over at least a dozen times and the brass section were all but frozen to their instruments, however Kate had yet to finish handing out flier. After a little less than gentle persuasion however we finally managed to convince her that it might be more useful to thaw the band out before the evening concert than it would be to hand a few more bits of paper out.

Lincoln's aforementioned one way system now came into its own at this point and whilst the trip to the Youth Hostel took about half an hour the return trip took all of five minutes… who ever said that town and country planning wasn't a worthwhile use of your university years, eh?

The evening's concert was a joint venture with the Saxilby Youth Band and a portion of the takings was donated to Comic Relief. Playing with another band is always fun and my mate Joe of the Saxilby tenor sax section (who must have been about eight and therefore five years my senior mentally) spent most the evening chattering away nineteen to the dozen whilst hiding this fact from whoever was conducting. I must also mention that the red nose worn by the trombone (instrument, not musician) pretty much stole the show in my opinion.

After the concert it was back off to the Youth Hostel whereupon most of the band headed off to find a pub, whilst a couple of us remained behind to be around to tell Tom where the others had headed off to once he returned from disposing of the coach driver at a B&B somewhere nearby. However he got lost on the way back and so the three of us never made it to the pub… (suitable pause for sympathetic noises to be made by reader)… Once the others returned Jon, Jimbo and Kate introduced the rest of us to the idea of Scrabble as a spectator sport (don't expect to see at the Olympics in the near future) and various others introduced us to a concept which was quickly dubbed 'chainsaw snoring'. Eventually we all decided that sleep was possibly a good idea with the prospect of a nine am breakfast to follow it. (All these early mornings constitute a pretty half-hearted attempt at keeping the good student name soiled if you ask me…)

My threat to eat the food of anyone failing to appear for breakfast unfortunately seemed to do the trick as everyone was up and about by nine the following morning and eating their breakfast themselves. There was a brief worry (voiced by a certain committee member who really should have known better (and shall remain nameless for the good of my health rather than her anonymity)) as to whether the bus driver should have been eating with us, though she was eventually convinced that there was an outside chance that (not that there's a clue in the name or anything) the Bed & Breakfast he'd been staying in might have fed him…

A quick game of "foot'n'mouthball" on the field opposite the Youth Hostel killed the time until all the female (and male… if you're going to be like that) members of the band were finally ready to go. Then it was back on the coach and off to Harrogate. During the journey the driver put on his wonderful Celine Dion tape resulting in most of the band hiding in the back of the coach, which worked well as it meant that only he and I were aware of the fact that, having accidentally, intentionally missed a turning, we ended up taking the scenic route.

On arrival at Harrogate we wandered around the shops for a while before heading off to the Pinnochio's restaurant (very suitably Disneyfied) for another food stop. This was the point in the weekend when something happened which the rest of the band would frown upon until we got back to Cambridge on Monday. By pure coincidence (honest!) the coach driver and I happened to end up sitting next to each other at the table and we hit it off really well. We laughed and joked for a while before our conversation eventually culminated in a debate over whether or not it was possible to fire olives down the length of a table seating 22 (with a 90 degree bend in it just for added humour value) with sufficient accuracy to hit the members of the band executive sitting at the other end. Of course there was only one sensible and mature way to settle this argument and so after shouting at each other for several minutes we starting firing olives across the room to prove out point, then hid behind our menu to avoid detection… which on reflection probably wasn't the most sensible of plans, as the first suspects when you're looking for a guilty party are obviously going to be the two hiding behind their menus...

It should be noted that before we leaving the restaurant a number of olives were pocketed and will return later in this story.

After food it was back to the church to rehearse for the concert and then with a few hours to kill before the concert the general opinion of the band was for a pub, which was of course most unsuspected. Having found a wedding reception in the nearest pub we ventured back into the centre of Harrogate to find a nice Irish pub. This resulted in the purchase of much Guinness (shh, don't tell the MD…) which resulted in many Guinness hats (part of some St Patrick's Day promotion) which resulted in some of the tours more amusing photos. James (sadly without his bus driver friend) conducted an experiment regarding the aerodynamics of sugar sticks (I must say in my defence that this was only because people kept knocking my constructions made from them down...) which resulted in a game played down the length of a sixteen foot table whereby I would fire a sugar stick into the air and Ed (sitting about halfway down the table) would attempt to catch it in an empty pint glass before in hit Matt (sat at the foot/head of the table, depending on your viewpoint). If we're being brutally honest the catching part of this game could probably have happened a little more often… well, that was Matt's opinion anyway…

After that it was back to the church for the concert. The first half was performed by the church choir, which featured a large number of children, including some of the sweetest little kids you have ever seen. The littlest couldn't have been more than about four... aw, cute! There was another one of about eight who was singing her little heart out despite the fact that it was all in Latin and she obviously had no idea what was going on, but still she put here heart and soul into it admirably. We then played the second half of the concert, during which the olives reappeared. The bus driver (I will have used, do use and will continue to use the terms bus and coach to mean exactly the same thing throughout this report...), an ex-military musician, had adopted the crash cymbals for our final piece (the Muppet Show Theme) for both prior concerts and during this concert and used the cymbals to launch the olives across the band in an attempt to get them into the bell of the tuba... Unfortunately he wasn't a very good shot, which, sitting next to the tuba player, was a fact of which I was very painfully aware!

After the concert we all piled into the coach again and headed off to York to find the Youth Hostel there... Then it was down the nearest takeaway for more (you guessed it) food. Then back to the Youth Hostel to play with their giant toys including giant draughts, giant chess, giant Connect 4 and most importantly giant Jenga! The Giant Jenga blocks were about eighteen inches long and the tower was four and a half foot high before we started playing... now that's a proper sized tower to collapse. After several sensible games (during which three flute players were almost flattened; better luck next time is all I'll say…) it started to get a little bit silly as Jon and I (both aspiring engineers) started adding turrets, flying buttresses and towers featuring double helixes to the game (using my foot as an additional building block as and where required so long as no-one else was watching). After a few more games like this everyone else left us to it at which point we decided to build a tower up to the ten-foot high ceiling... This done we had some spare blocks left and so gave the tower arms and a smiley face before going to bed.

We left the tower up at this point as we decided that its collapse would probably wake most of York let alone the occupants of the hostel... To the flute sections credit (and I'm rarely nice about flautists) they did manage to talk us out of taking down the hostel's interior wall (which the fact that our tower was supporting the ceiling in it's place was blatantly not load bearing and could easily have been removed…). This was the point where we were sent to bed...

Breakfast the next morning was at half eight (this *so* wasn't a student holiday…) and after that we went for a wander around York city centre, then it was off to ten pin bowl, then more food in a restaurant near the bowling alley... and boy did they serve *huge* portions. The coach driver and I ended up sitting next to each other again (oops, how did that happen...) and proceeded to construct a catapult out of knives, forks, salt cellars and the like, though in the end that was abandoned in preference of the simple fork catapult. We then fished various bits of lemon and lime out of peoples' drinks and proceeded to fire them down the length of the restaurant at the other end of our table. Unfortunately the roof was too low and our shots (which were aimed perfectly with sufficient height and accuracy to land right between Rosie and Kate) kept hitting the ceiling just above Tom and landing on his head. After this occurred three times in a row we admitted partial defeat, though our shots with flicked bits of chip later in the meal was better... until one managed to land right in someone's drink and Kate ordered all materials of fireable qualities to be removed from our end of the table... Humph!

Then it was back to the church to play a joint concert with a couple of local school choirs and then off the Youth Hotel (much, much less upmarket than the youth hostel of the previous nights). The bus had been put in a car park in the centre of the city overnight so much carrying of heavy drum kit and bags kept us entertained for most of the evening. Then it was off to another pub and whilst most of the band went looking for food a tired few of us headed back to the youth hotel (not actually giving them credit for being able to find anywhere open at that time on a Sunday night prepared to serve that many people). Alas, having not been part of this frivolity, I am unable to pass comment on it, but I think the quotes section of this site says more than enough…

Up at ten the next morning (not really a late enough start but better than the previous three days) and then it was back to Cambridge via a little sightseeing in the centre of York including a trip around York dungeon and a walk through a park during which it was decided that I get on with pigeons better than people... it must be nice to be appreciated…

Back in Cambridge, light of a few band members (who had returned home from more convenient points on the tour trip…nothing more sinister than that honest!) we all dumped stuff back in rooms before going out for a meal together (and yes I'm well aware that ordering a steak in a curry house is not the done thing, but yah boo sucks to the lot of yas!). The evening ended in the County Arms with game of darts made all the more interesting by the alcohol consumption (we never did work out how many points were scored for missing the board and surrounding padding and hitting the scoring blackboard) and Jessica the beer mat catching dog (though we only have a somewhat… how can I put this tactfully… 'merry' Diana's word that that is the dog's name).

There are various other comments I could make about blocks of wood (which will make sense to about half the people on tour and no more…) and the such and I could endlessly disssect (with as many sssses as I please to put in it) obscure aspects of the tour 'til the sun goes down, but I won't bore you with that (and there's no need to cheer like that!).

Anyway it just remains for me to thanks the Band Executive for all their hard work (which made the tour the success that it was), my mate Paul the bus driver for being my partner in crime (oh, and for driving the coach) and lastly, but by no means leastly, to Matt for (hopefully) sanctioning this as material appropriate for publication on the website.

What else is there to say but 'roll on next tour'!?!

James Morton (Tenor Sax), May 2001