Another weekend passes

As they do.
We did the gig. Due to an unaccountable confusion over bookings*, we had a new caller. Callers are all so different! Our very first gig was at the very first Yattendon Jugglers Ball. (Barney ran the jugglers club and I played fiddle in an informal 'lets learn some folk music' gathering, made up mostly of beginner musicians. We were a rather large barn dance band (12 people I think for that first gig) and we had our very own caller - one of the musicians.
Over the next few years, the band settled down to 6 members and a tight, unusual formula involving eastern European, Irish, Scottish, English and French tunes. And some very weird and wonderful dances invented or discovered by the caller.**

We didn't realise how good we had it until he gave up calling and we had to find new callers.
There was one lady we remember fondly, who we booked for a dance held in a tiny room in Reading for a very 'alternative' group of people. We didn't start playing till about 10.30 and by then, being acutely anxious about calling for strangers and slightly alarmed by the free and easy nature of the venue, she had drunk most of a bottle of wine. However, most of the dancers had also imbibed a good deal of whatever turned them on so really no one except us noticed how very random the dances were!
Then there was the man who couldn't understand why none of the dancers knew how to do it. And didn't seem to be able to explain how either.
And another who wanted us to play only the tunes he normally had for each dance and could only do the dances that went with the few tunes we had in common. That one didn't get asked again either.
And now we have lovely Fran (this is not the lovely Frangelita btw but another Fran) who now calls for us regularly and is completely at ease with us and all kinds of groups of people.
Occasionally if Fran isn't free, we have to find new callers which can be stressful. We never know what sort of music they'll want and how they'll communicate with us.
Anyway, Doug, last night, was competent, funny, cheerful, good at explaining and good at communicating both the kind of tune and the kind of speed he wanted. Mind it was still quite difficult as the hall was packed out crowded and the noise was immense. (It's a big hall where we get booked every year for the Christian Aid people in Newbury and the sound booms away up into the roof and comes back as a big echoing muddle). The only problem was Doug liked very slow tunes and quite complicated and interesting dances. Since we have a repertoire of fairly fast tunes this was quite hard and involved lots of deep concentration.*** And occasionally playing slightly slower tunes at double speed which involves lots of flashy fingers and a good deal of sweat! Afterwards he said we were much faster than most bands! Phew!

The last time we played at this venue for the Christian Aid people, there was an eclipse of the moon and half the evening was spent outside watching it :)

*we seem to be getting a lot of those at the moment such that we're getting more and more paranoid about whether any gigs are actually booked or not and if there aren't any in the book, we start wondering if there's someone out there who thinks they've booked us
**'wringing out the dishrag' A wonderful dance in which Geoff enjoyed turning a set of four people inside out and back again - damaged arms and shoulders optional :)
***You'd think playing slower would be easier but it seems to take forever to get from note to note and it's really hard to remember how many times we've played each section, like -can we really still be playing this the first time round?