Mini Adventures

Follow Graham on his exciting adventures on the way to 45s gigs!!

Graham when he still wore L-plates

Graham has been to several 45s gigs. Below are some brief accounts of his first 3 45s related journies.

The first of these was in Folkestone on the Shed Seven Tour. The journey was reasonably uneventful, as far as I can remember! (Carmela: If you can call nearly coming off the motorway while Nicola and Sue have a domestic in the front of the car uneventful!)

His second taste of 45s related journeys was on the way to Southend for the Clearlake tour. After spending AGES stuck behind buses in country lanes whilst trying to avoid some roadworks, we eventually made it across the water to Essex... Then we got lost! Instead of heading right, we went straight on and came within 10 miles of Central London before realising. We made an eventful u-turn at some interesting traffic lights on a dual carriageway, and headed off in the correct direction. We were then left with the task of actually finding the right bit of Southend. After nearly being hit by being in the wrong lane on several roundabouts, and asking someone for some (unhelpful) directions... we made it.

This brings us to the third of Graham's trips... Tunbridge Wells. We got all the way down there without any problems at all. When we got down there, we took one wrong turn, and did one lap of the one-way system. We thought that this was it, and that it had been an uneventful journey... we spoke too soon. As we approached the roundabout at the bottom of the hill opposite the Tunbridge Wells Forum, it was apparent that there was a bus in the way. As we got closer, the bus, without warning, decided it was going to pull out. The bus being big and scary, and Graham only being ickle, I got a bit scared and started squealing things along the lines of "Argh! We're gonna get squashed by a bus!" To avoid the bus, I pulled over slightly to my right, towards a traffic island where some people were standing. I looked up at these people, only to see Matt Hales.(Carmela: actually, you only noticed it was Matt when H screamed "Argh! It's Matt!!") We hoped we might escape without being noticed... no such luck. Matt VB realised it was us! Oops!

The 45s and driving

This is a warning to all those of you who drive. You may have looked at Graham's adventures above, and thought that Nicola is just a classic new driver in a tin can of a car (sorry Graham!! ;-)) The truth is that, it is not Nic's driving, but the music that she is playing while driving that is the problem. There's something about the energy and enthusiasm present in the 45s, even on record, that can convert even a normally calm and safe driver into an emergency-stopping, last-minute-lane-changing, speeding, 'let's-just-swerve-around-this- bus-and-nearly-runover-the-band-we're-here-to-see' hazard! However, at the same time we are not trying to recommend that you don't listen to the 45s whilst driving - just that you drive knowing the risks involved ;-)

Generally: excellent driving music, but not for the faint-hearted!