After a very pleasant lunch at Highgrove, we had something very different planned for the evening. One of my friend's colleagues plays guitar in a band, and that night just two of them were entertaining at a pub called the Cross Hands on the outskirts of Bristol. It was Johnny on guitar and Steve on vocals, set up at one end of a bar. They were playing punk and ska with a bit of Elvis thrown in.
I wasn't much of a fan of punk in the 70s - as far as I was concerned it was music for people who couldn't sing - so I was surprised to find that I actually knew a lot of the songs they played, such as songs by Madness (Johnny had a fez with 'Madness' written on the front of it, and a tassle that kept dangling in his face). And I was singing along loudly to Tainted Love - it was the favourite song of one of my housemates at college, so I learned all the words by osmosis because they played it all the time.
It was a real ale pub, the sort with pump clips hung up all round the bar, and I was pleased to find Uley Bitter there. It was also a real locals pub - in the afternoon they'd held a colouring in competition for the local kids, with prizes of selection boxes, and there were still a few boxes hanging around. One or two of them even had some chocolate still in them - one of my friends bagged a finger of Fudge, and I got a Wispa bar!
Steve's (adult) step-daughter was there, pretending to play a toy saxophone, and very enthusiastically encouraging people to get up and dance - which we did, though there wasn't a lot of room.
It was a really fun evening, and it was nice to meet Johnny, as we'd heard so much about him from the friend who works with him.
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