Day 118. Can you hear the drums? (27/4/19)

Bear In mind much of what follows was suggested by my lovely wife. If you don't like it, blame J.

Her initial idea was that I simply type the word 'blog' and post it, thereby fulfilling my daily obligation.

It's been a long day. A long, cold, rainy, day. Storm Hannah, which made its (her?) presence clear during last night's game has kicked in big style. Howling winds, torrential rain, temperatures in the single figures.

I had a couple of things I wanted to talk about. Both being about me. As my mate, the lovely Thomas Galashan, pointed out to me on Thursday night (while, in fairness, I was praising him on his excellent performance in Mikee Dickinson's Not The Horse), my favourite subject is Ian Salmon.

There's a reason for this. And it may make me sound egocentric. But it's my page and the very act of having a page like this is pretty bloody egocentric.

Not The Horse. Excellent production. Best version yet. And there was a musical number in it. A version of Horse With No Name. Which needed two guitars, a 6 string and a 12 string.

Mike texted our mate Reid, "have you got a 12 string?"

He just happened to do this while I was sat next to Reid, talking about guitars. So I replied. From my phone, obviously. Because I love the idea of confusion.

I leant the production, and specifically Michael Hawkins, who would be playing it, the 12 string Fender acoustic I rarely play (as I have a much more impressive 12 string Rickenbacker, I may have mentioned this).

And when the time came for the number, one character, played by Nick Sheedy pulled out the two guitars and Mr Hawkins' character asked the question:

"Is that Ian Salmon's 12 string guitar?"

It's the greatest, most gratifying, line I have ever heard in a theatre.

That enough in the audience knew me to make the laugh audible was a moment of absolute wonder. Made me feel marvellously self important.

Yes, that's ego. Took me years to develop an ego, I'm now letting it out at every opportunity.

Anyway. I was nearly going out tonight. Nearly going to see the very excellent Vinny Peculiar play live over in Thornton Hough. A good night guaranteed but 45 minutes away.

And the day had run away with me. The writing day was lasting until at least 8pm. And that's without this. So travel anywhere was unlikely and unwieldy.

The day has been spent in working on two musicals. One, Silver Meadows, from the marvellous Vinny Peculiar album of the same name, which we'll be performing in February of next year, the other, we'll talk about later.

So, when its hit 8 and I realised that Mama Mia 2 had just started on Sky and that J had already been moved to tears by the end of it earlier in the day, I felt the need to watch it.

For practical reasons only. On a personal level I don't likeAbba with the exception of exactly four songs (Name Of The Game, Winner Takes It All, Knowing Me Knowing You, Take A Chance On Me).

This needed writing though. So J suggested that I "get the MacBook, write it on the couch" which hasn't been my working method for a long time.

And here I am. Studying Mama Mia Here We Go Again.

Got it within ten minutes. A snippet of a song, a full song, instrumental backing version of something you already know transmuted into a new form, another full song. And repeat.

So you're never more than a minute from the music.

Got it. Useful lesson that. see? You can learn from the oddest places.

(Soundtrack: lots of people singing the Abba songs that weren't famous enough to go into the first film. We started with When I Kissed the teacher. Which is almost irredeemably awful. But, hey, these guys could only work with what they were given. And they weren't given much.)