After a disgracefully long break, filled with occasional rehearsals of variable quality, the Mudansha Tour kicked off again in the stunning surroundings of Houghton Lodge, where we were honoured to be asked to provide the music to round off Rosie and Ed's wedding day.
The omens were not brilliant - the request for a huge stage had gone missing, and we were on a tiny corner of an otherwise fantastically engineered tent. The roof of the fantastically engineered tent had a ventilating flap that was less-than-fantastically engineered, and let the rain in onto our kit and the dance floor, and shutting the flaps involved Dave and Charlie doing a routine from the Chinese People's Army Gymnastics Team. You had to see it to believe it. How no-one got injured is a mystery.
Dave was in the middle of a long weekend charity walk, and looked somewhat the worse for wear - ditto Ian (just back from a long mid-afternoon gig in Arundel) and Charlie (just back from long gig in combine harvester). Tod and Ian looked completely refreshed, though.
After some brilliant speeches and cake cutting, the whole throng gathered for the romantic first dance. Once again, there had been a tiny misunderstanding, and as the bride and groom prepared to do the routine they had rehearsed to Fleetwood Mac's cheesy pop classic 'Ooooh, you make loving fun', the Old Gits launched into Fleetwood Mac's gritty blues classic from the mid-Sixties, 'Need your love so bad'.
Confusion reigned for several bars, as the bride and broom looked at the band in disbelief, and the band all looked at each other wondering what had gone wrong (apart from Charlie starting in the wrong key). There was then a collective 'Oh Well' (geddit?), a mass shrugging of shoulders, and everyone just got on and danced.
For a band woefully short of competitive performance, we did very well. There was the odd outbreak of cramp, the odd outbreak of crap, but when the rigorously enforced stop time came, we think everyone had had a good time. We certainly had, and that's (almost) what counts.
We then ate too much wedding cake and cheddar. Nom nom nom.
