Now that's what I call music!

Tam O'Shanter's Ride. It's a piece of music written by Denis Wright about a chap called Tam who goes out and gets pissed, happens by an old church where there's a bunch of witches and warlocks dancing to the devil's piping, gets chased away but ends up safely at home, only to be nagged by his wife. It's quite a nice piece of music, though why anyone would want to listen to it 17 times in an afternoon is beyond me. However, this is what has been happening in Stevenage this afternoon.

I've had my first taste of proper brass band contesting today, playing with Hitchin band in the Londen and Southern Counties region 3rd section, and I have to say I quite enjoyed it. The thought of spending 4 hours a week (plus much private practice, of course) working on the same 13 minute-long piece of music for 2 and a half months for the privilege of having one person judge you against 16 other bands of a single performance is quite incomprehensible to most people, but this is what brass bands are all about. To quote somebody at work, "So, it's like Brassed Off then?". Quite. Except that the national finals of the championship section are in the Albert Hall, whereas the national finals of the lower sections are in Harrogate. From our section, in our region, 3 bands qualify for the national finals.

We played off the 13th draw and thought we made a pretty good job of the piece. An hour and a half later, all of the bands gathered together to hear the results. When the adjudicator said that 4 bands stood out from the rest, we were convinced we'd end up 4th and miss the qualification. We hadn't produced a winning performance, but we thought we'd played well. So when 4th and 3rd were announced as Potters Bar and St Sebastians (Wokingham), we assumed we'd come further down - probably still in the top half, but a disappointment anyway. You'll have guessed what's coming next - I'm not a good storyteller. "2nd place goes to the band who played 13th". Yay! The excitement of the moment was infectious, and although we didn't win on the day, 2nd of out 17, along with qualification to the nationals in September, and promotion to the 2nd section due to consistently good results over the last 3 years, I'm dead chuffed.

Now all I need is for England to win the rugby. Where's my pint?