Solved

The answer to Saturday's puzzle is 'Chesterfield'.

New pictures of the Warwick wedding (last year).

While at Coombe Bissett, we were given a selection of pictures from the wedding we played up in Warwick - very good they are too.

Ian setting up - a very useful pic to print off and keep to help non-drummers given the job of assembling the kit!

I'm sure we had more people dancing than this picture would suggest - or have we strayed into a photo shoot for the Boden catalogue?

Lovely arty pic, taken from the stage, of the happy couple.

Now, John. About that shirt......

Grooooovy headlining..............bad acid, man........

And finally:

Dancing the night away......thanks to the Thomas Lord Old Gits!

The Coombe Bissett wedding

Once again, the TLOGS bravely ventured out of the SO24 postcode, out of the parish - why, even out of the County, and set off for South Wiltshire. Thank goodness we had had someone who can pack a trailer safely for the long drive.

It was a fairly early start (for some of us), and most of the world and his wife seemed to be heading the same way, so Salisbury proved to be a good spot to catch up on a bit of sleep, do some office work, and knock off those last few hundred pages of Lord of the Rings. One day someone will suggest a by-pass. Hold on a  minute....

Once we got there, we found a lovely warm marquee, which turned out to be not for us, and a faily cool and aged barn, complete with stage. There had a been a wonderful Spinal Tap moment - Tod's requested stage dimensions had got lost in Hampshire/Wiltshire translation, and a slightly more compact version of what we had hoped for had been assembled for us.

But we are the TLOGS. We have played Bramdean Village Hall, on a stage 20 foot by about four - so we are the masters of squeezing into small spaces. Ooo er missus.

By late lunchtime, we were set up, and headed back for a snooze. It's an age thing.

We reassembled at about seven thirty, planning an eight thirty start, but, as is usual, that's not how it turned out. Things got delayed. The guests were having a lovely relaxed evening, so our start time drifted...and drifted.... luckily we had Dave's tales of Different Place's - sorry, Mark Vennis' Different Place's trip to Cannes to keep us entertained. An outbreak of namedropping that would humble even Capt Kidneystones.

After one final burst of confusion ("What do you mean you're waiting for us to start? We're waiting for you to tell us when to start...."), we kicked off after the happy couple had had their first dance.

How did it go? Well, the barn stayed pretty empty for the first half, so we were effectively playing background music for the marquee, but by the second half, we had a respectable crowd dancing on the fairly unforgiving concrete floor.

And how did we play? Once again, we were tight. Jack was superb: despite only having run through the whole setlist perhaps three times, he nailed the vast majority of the songs perfectly, and what wasn't perfect was still fantastic. Some of the off-beat sophisticated/syncopated fills had us amateurs in a panic at losing the beat, followed by broad smiles all round as everything matched up again at the end of the bar. Why, we even forgave him being a veggie (which he sheepishly announced as the burgers were being handed out at half time). And it takes a lot for farmers to accept veggies. Well done, Jack.

Other highlights included a panic inspection of the fusebox in the corner, only to find that the caterers  had set up the barbeque just the other side of the wall, and the sizzling sounds and burning smell were not down to us after all. Another scary moment was when Roland the electric piano decided to have a senior moment and refused to stop playing all the recently depressed keys. Luckily, it was just after Fix You, so the ensuing din wasn't noticed - niether was the complete lack of keyboards as it was turned off and allowed to fire up again. I feel a hot credit card trip to Nevada Music coming on.

We were done by 00:30, and the traditional packing up hour was swift'n'easy. Some of the other halves were more useful (i.e., vertical) than others. The bride and groom asked the huge pianist for his autograph - he wasn't sure if they were taking the piss, but he was so smitten by the bride he would have done anything.

A fabulous drive back over the chalk downlands in the full moon brought us back to Shed 3C, where the trailer was tucked away for the night, and following the traditional Crunchy Nut Cornflake frenzy, bed was reached by 02:30.

Another top TLOGS gig.

Another milestone for the blog.

20,000 visits to our humble little blog!

873 of those have come from China. Nope, I can't work out why, either.

Me? A Tory?

Regular readers might be aware that the TLOGS' huge pianist is not a great fan of David Cameron and his 'Conservative' party. Words like 'scum', 'Europhile' and 'git-faced traitor' have been known to emerge at Cameron's name. Further outrageous and no doubt totally false slurs can be found  here .

Anyway, following this fairly public nailing of colours to the mast, you can image the surpise when this letter arrived.

I think that the fact it was sent by Google, the world's most powerful gatherer of information, makes it particularly ironic.

Legendary doomed expeditions

1. In 1845, Capatin Sir John Franklin set off on a voyage of artic exploration. After becoming ice-bound in the Canadian arctic, he and the entire compliment of 128 men were lost, despite resorting to cannibalism.

2. In 1925, Percy Fawcett, artillery officer and South American explorer, set off into the Brazilian jungle in search of a legendary lost city. The last communcations were from him and his team at the end of May. They all vanished.

3. In May 2013, a charm offensive in the form of two TLOGS and Capt Kidneystones set forth to enquire at a local pub if we were required to play at their beer festival - as we have done so enjoyably for the last couple of years. We were given an enigmatic "Oooh, we like to ring the changes..." We had another pint or two while waiting for the courtesy of a definite 'yes' or 'no', and then realising that we were not to be afforded such a thing, decided to leave. Ho hum.

Update

It has been a quiet few weeks for the TLOGS - hence the lack of posts. Plenty of diligent rehearsing for the wedding, getting Jack fully confident with the setlist. There was a legendary Dave the Dog night in West Meon - complete with dozens of people and a barbeque. Fantastic. Apart from that, it has been the calm before the storm....

Last pic from the Mindy Mash

Many, many people have been asking "When, oh when will we see the picture of the huge pianist with pink fairy wings coming out of his head?" Well, who am I to stand in the way of such a wave of popular demand?

Picture credit: Nosestud Pictures Inc (aka www.aliwarnerphotography.com )

Seen (and heard) on national media....

A half hour Radio 4 show featuring our very own vocalmeister can be heard here. Listen out for the key moment when the presenter of the BBC's premier flagship farming programme has to ask what crop she's standing in. Worth the license fee on its own.

At last - pictures from the Mindy Mash!!

It has taken several weeks of negotiations between TLOGS lawyers and lawyers representing Talk Like a Teenager Pictures Ltd (aka www.aliwarnerphotography.com ) , but it has been worth the effort, for we now have permission to use her pictures of the Mindy Mash.

Here's Dave, looking as cooooool as ever.

John, harmonising as hard as ever.

Ian looking somewhat nonchalant, methinks.

Here's a rarity - a pic of Dan by Ali that doesn't exclusively feature his front upper trouser region.

Here's another one. Maybe not that much of a rarity, then.

Mindy and Tod concentrating frightfully hard.

And in a cellar bar somewhere in Paris (which for some reason has a fairy castle in it.....)

Lovely pics.