The Last Waltz

Ok - so the last band tour.  I'm sure I've skipt a whole bunch of angst that I should have covered off in great detail - but let's just say that I'll return to it.

Holidays before I was fourteen were, of course, family affairs.  The Lake District, Scotland, Wales, The Norfolk Broads.  None of them were terrible and, indeed, I have many fond memories from many of them.  Bizarrely, one particular memory pertains to spending the majority of the week in the back seat of the car, reading the novelisation of the TV Series "V".  It was brilliant.  Another one  is about my brother being very sick from a stomach flu, half way up a mountain.  And another is ENTIRELY about my brother hitting me very hard in the face because I splashed him with water when we were out in a rowing boat.  There was something in me that felt his reaction was somewhat disproportionate.

My brother and I always bought my Mum and Dad a present to say thank you for a lovely holiday....

And then it was all about school trips.  The first one was bizarre - run by the biology teacher, the deputy head and a few others - basically because they fancied a trip to the south of france.  I have some good memories of that trip but it was a very eclectic mix of students - including, thankfully, the few friends that I'd accumulated by that point.  The pictures are....spotty.

And then there were band trips.  And they were ALL about drinking.  The 'gigs' ranged from the side of a municipal swimming pool, through to a local music festival.  From a local church that made us, acoustically, sound AMAZING, through to legoland (OK - we didn't play there - but we went there).

There's a TV series, I can't remember which, that warns parents that 'the band kids' are the randiest of the lot.  In many respects this was true.   But the drinking.....

A wonderful memory of the born again Christian horn player playing drunked peekaboo behind a curtain in the hotel's bowling alley.  Disappearing down the back alley to a bar where they had no hesitation of serving us, out of sight of the teachers.  Holding hands with E.  Falling out with E when the trumpet player professed his attraction to her and she didn't want to desert me (I was fine).  He turned out to be a stalker of the highest order.  A professing her attraction to me and E not forgiving her for the duration of the Summer.  G, we've now discovered, coming out to Mr K, in the dead of night, sitting on bench, looking out at the lake.  Me and G taking it in turns to jerk off in our shared bathroom - very drunkenly.  Me and G secretly having a crush on the little trumpet player, L (not the stalker).  Carrying my musical instrument along the side of a boat whilst under the influence - I still have flashbacks (inaccurate) of it falling in.  The terrible terrible food.   Becoming friends with the music teacher's younger son (bit of a crush there too - turned into a great friendship).

And the last trip.  It was all over.  The music teacher let a few non-musical friends come along too.  One as a singer (she is, in fact, a great singer - but hers and my rendition of 'it's a quiet thing' on the boat on the way home was catastrophic).  One as a roadie (hahaha) who lived up to roady-isms of boozing and shagging.  And it was carnage.  Final flings were had.  The beach was strewn with bottles and weeping, drunken teenagers.  The concerts were inconsequential.  The boat journey home saw us staying up pretty much all night, savouring the last night of nights.  It was awesome.

And then the coach had pulled up on the school playing fields which were parched from a long, hot summer.  We unloaded our bags and instruments and said our goodbyes.  I really wanted to say something grateful and meaningful to the music teacher.  But I fluffed it - something about her having taught me so much more than music.

I like to think that she didn't say much because she was choked.  She might have just thought I was an idiot.

I think, on reflection, that it was the former.