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Oct. 7th, 2007 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiffel_71Up first thing in the morning to head for London for Kirsty Day.
Thanks to engineering works on the Waterloo line I had to board a Victoria train. That wouldn't have mattered...until we were brought to an abrupt halt at Three Bridges. Some inconsiderate twazzuck had topped himself throwing himself in front of a train at the junction at Purley Oaks, meaning all the trains to London were buggered up and everybody going any further than Gatwick Airport was stranded on Three Bridges station indefinitely. None of the station staff had a clue when trains would be moving again - "could be an hour, could be even longer". There isn't an awful lot to do on Three Bridges station either. For an hour and a half I paced the place through the stranded hordes, looking for signs of action and, just twice, asking a staff member if there was any news yet, in between taking cover in a waiting room, contemplating the grim prospect of missing yet another Kirstyfest, visions of spending the whole day cooped up in that God-forsaken place (there were no trains back to Portsmouth moving either). Phoned Katherine, Ann and Rob just to hear friendly voices: all obliged me with brief chats - Rob asked if there were any eating facilities on the station, I replied "Not meals, just a kiosk dispensing little cakes and biscuits for £1.79"; Rob reckoned its proprietor must be rubbing his hands with glee - and all signed off with wishes that the trains would get moving soon.
Finally, at about 11.45 a train began moving towards London.
It was 12.50 when I reached Soho so I'd missed the Soho Square meet-up. I went anyway, to pay my respects at the bench and just in case there was anyone there who knew which pub we were meeting in this year. There was a family of Kirsty fans taking photos of each other on the bench, but they weren't going to the pub because they had little kids. I walked up to the Wheatsheaf, the pub we used in 2003 and 2004, but it was locked up. Found an internet cafe in a side street, surfed onto the official Kirsty website and found details of our new watering hole - The Spice of Life - and walked there.
Got to the pub at 1.30. There was no sign of Kirsty activity in the main bar, but I soon found the staircase to the downstairs bar where everyone was gathered, and a selection of the divine Miss MacColl's tunes was playing on a CD player. Eunice and Claire jumped up to greet me. After exchanging hello hugs and kisses with them I said my hellos to John M and all the others on their table before heading upstairs to order lunch. Bought a Bulmers then went back down to rejoin the gang and await delivery of my food (which was first class).
I saw a guy wearing a Bath City FC T-shirt and just had to go over and say hello. I grinned "This might be a bad time to say this, but I'm a Havant & Waterlooville fan." "Aargh!" He pretended to be annoyed, then smiled "We've made a cracking start to the season, we'll let you have that one." On the same table were a King's Lynn fan and a Horsham fan. Kirsty Fan Non-League Massive in the house!
Dave announced a quiz. John M christened our team "Queens of the High Teas". There were six rounds: we had to identify 12 Kirsty record sleeve pictures, answer 2 rounds of general-knowledge questions, do anagrams of song titles and identify songs from brief clips, songs played backwards and pairs of songs played simultaneously. We felt we were doing pretty well, then after round five compere Dave announced that there were four teams with a chance of winning, each separated by one point, and we were one of them. That set things up for the last round.
Each team in turn was told a line of a Kirsty song, and had to sing the next line, with bonus points for quality and gusto of performance. Our spirited rendition of 'Dancing In Limbo' earned us full marks - we even sang a couple of next lines that other teams passed on, but despite Eunice's protests Dave wouldn't give us bonus points for that. Nevertheless, WE WON!!
Jean MacColl was called to the front to present us with the cup. Eunice insisted that New John, as a Kirstyfest first-timer, be the one to collect the trophy. As Dave announced our name, Queens of the High Teas, one of the guys quipped "Five Queens and a Princess" - the other 4 guys on the team were all gay, and the Princess was Eunice, but sorry, fellas, I'm only a straight boy so make that 4 Queens, a Princess and a serf :) All us team members received a Justice for Kirsty T-shirt, a JFK badge and a Dutch St Nicholas chocolate letter - fittingly for Kirsty, mine was a K.
Claire had a running thing going with the guy next to her about her being a matchmaker, as a gay guy on another table had apparently asked her to introduce him to her neighbour. Eventually she did lead him over to meet the other fellow, but I don't know how they got on... Mixed in with all that I caught snippets of Claire alluding to the lack of a ring on her finger, and lamenting that one or two guys she found really good-looking were gay. Alas, I was never close enough to her at the time to make an ice-breaking enquiry "Terminally single, Claire? Me too," give her a smile and hint at rectifying both our situations at a stroke...
Sitting with Jean and Kirsty's son Jamie was Spider Stacy from The Pogues. I got to say hello, shake his hand and say I hoped to be seeing them at Brixton at Christmas.
Dave and Claire had announced that the winning team had to think of a new event for next year's Kirstyfest, so I came up with 'The KM Factor'. Anyone who fancies it can tickle their tonsils and sing a Kirsty song for our panel of judges, who'll then choose a top 3. The top 3 will then have a sing-off, and everybody will vote for the winner. I ran the idea by Eunice, who loved it. New John said "Bags I be Simon Cowell." Then I ran it by Claire, who liked it too, and accepted my invitation that she be a judge.
Dave then announced some big news : Jean has written a book about Kirsty's life, her death and the family's fight for justice, which is coming out next April. We were given flyers advertising it, and Dave said "So what are we doing next April? We're all buying Jean's book."
Next, the lovely girls of Halvsostra, from Norway, took to the stage. They play cover versions of Kirsty songs in Norwegian, in their own distinctive style, on guitar, mandolin, fiddle, mouth organ and autoharp. They were wonderful! Their renditions of The One And Only, Angel and Celestine blew me away. Two of them, Bente and Hege, both admired my Kirsty T-shirt and asked where they could get one, so I wrote down the website address for them. I later had a chat with Hege about Kirsty's music and their interpretations of it - she was very interested to learn that The One And Only was one of my very favourites and delighted that I loved their version.
After Halvsostra left the stage to a standing ovation, it was time for John M to pick up the guitar and lead us all in the traditional sing-along. Terry's absence this year meant the singing session was much shorter, as we were down to the 12 songs John can play easily, but it was no less enjoyable for all that. John began by asking for requests; the first person to call out said 'Caroline' and so he opened with that, followed by A New England. After our spirited rendition of He's On The Beach I felt sorry for John when nobody knew the lyrics to Can't Stop Killing You. At that point a girl called Tiffany took the chair and played Bad and They Don't Know, we all gave those two numbers maximum gusto, and to finish Dave joined forces with Halvsostra for a show-stopping rendering of In These Shoes?
After that the CDs went back on. One young lady remarked to me that she was getting itchy for Fairytale, but Dave said the CDs were a continuous mix so he wouldn't be able to locate it. Sadly, neither the girl nor Eunice accepted my invitation to sing Fairytale with her unaccompanied. Eunice protested "I can't sing." I pointed out "Neither can I" and assured her that everyone would drown us out, but to no avail.
Bumped into the Bath City fan. "I've just been kissed by three Norwegian women," he announced proudly. I went emerald green, but after he'd been generous about yesterday's game I reckoned I could reciprocate, so I smiled "I'll give you that result" and we had a chat about Kirsty and footie.
Returned to the bar for a last Bulmers. Shortly after I sat down with that the party began to break up, and at 6 pm Claire left. Having given her a fond goodbye hug and kiss, I downed my Bulmers and said my goodbyes to everyone in time to make Waterloo for the 6.54 train.
Home to discover that W4 are out of The X Factor ;( Simon picked the gimmick, Hope, over the better singers, W4. What respect I had left for Simon Cowell has evaporated. Worse, I heard one of Hope has been kicked out because it transpires she has a criminal record. Speaking entirely impartially, quite apart from the disruption to a group's chemistry, a group on The X Factor is a single entity, so if one member is ineligible the whole group should be hooked and replaced with one of the other groups. Well, I'm spared the expenditure of voting...
Thanks to engineering works on the Waterloo line I had to board a Victoria train. That wouldn't have mattered...until we were brought to an abrupt halt at Three Bridges. Some inconsiderate twazzuck had topped himself throwing himself in front of a train at the junction at Purley Oaks, meaning all the trains to London were buggered up and everybody going any further than Gatwick Airport was stranded on Three Bridges station indefinitely. None of the station staff had a clue when trains would be moving again - "could be an hour, could be even longer". There isn't an awful lot to do on Three Bridges station either. For an hour and a half I paced the place through the stranded hordes, looking for signs of action and, just twice, asking a staff member if there was any news yet, in between taking cover in a waiting room, contemplating the grim prospect of missing yet another Kirstyfest, visions of spending the whole day cooped up in that God-forsaken place (there were no trains back to Portsmouth moving either). Phoned Katherine, Ann and Rob just to hear friendly voices: all obliged me with brief chats - Rob asked if there were any eating facilities on the station, I replied "Not meals, just a kiosk dispensing little cakes and biscuits for £1.79"; Rob reckoned its proprietor must be rubbing his hands with glee - and all signed off with wishes that the trains would get moving soon.
Finally, at about 11.45 a train began moving towards London.
It was 12.50 when I reached Soho so I'd missed the Soho Square meet-up. I went anyway, to pay my respects at the bench and just in case there was anyone there who knew which pub we were meeting in this year. There was a family of Kirsty fans taking photos of each other on the bench, but they weren't going to the pub because they had little kids. I walked up to the Wheatsheaf, the pub we used in 2003 and 2004, but it was locked up. Found an internet cafe in a side street, surfed onto the official Kirsty website and found details of our new watering hole - The Spice of Life - and walked there.
Got to the pub at 1.30. There was no sign of Kirsty activity in the main bar, but I soon found the staircase to the downstairs bar where everyone was gathered, and a selection of the divine Miss MacColl's tunes was playing on a CD player. Eunice and Claire jumped up to greet me. After exchanging hello hugs and kisses with them I said my hellos to John M and all the others on their table before heading upstairs to order lunch. Bought a Bulmers then went back down to rejoin the gang and await delivery of my food (which was first class).
I saw a guy wearing a Bath City FC T-shirt and just had to go over and say hello. I grinned "This might be a bad time to say this, but I'm a Havant & Waterlooville fan." "Aargh!" He pretended to be annoyed, then smiled "We've made a cracking start to the season, we'll let you have that one." On the same table were a King's Lynn fan and a Horsham fan. Kirsty Fan Non-League Massive in the house!
Dave announced a quiz. John M christened our team "Queens of the High Teas". There were six rounds: we had to identify 12 Kirsty record sleeve pictures, answer 2 rounds of general-knowledge questions, do anagrams of song titles and identify songs from brief clips, songs played backwards and pairs of songs played simultaneously. We felt we were doing pretty well, then after round five compere Dave announced that there were four teams with a chance of winning, each separated by one point, and we were one of them. That set things up for the last round.
Each team in turn was told a line of a Kirsty song, and had to sing the next line, with bonus points for quality and gusto of performance. Our spirited rendition of 'Dancing In Limbo' earned us full marks - we even sang a couple of next lines that other teams passed on, but despite Eunice's protests Dave wouldn't give us bonus points for that. Nevertheless, WE WON!!
Jean MacColl was called to the front to present us with the cup. Eunice insisted that New John, as a Kirstyfest first-timer, be the one to collect the trophy. As Dave announced our name, Queens of the High Teas, one of the guys quipped "Five Queens and a Princess" - the other 4 guys on the team were all gay, and the Princess was Eunice, but sorry, fellas, I'm only a straight boy so make that 4 Queens, a Princess and a serf :) All us team members received a Justice for Kirsty T-shirt, a JFK badge and a Dutch St Nicholas chocolate letter - fittingly for Kirsty, mine was a K.
Claire had a running thing going with the guy next to her about her being a matchmaker, as a gay guy on another table had apparently asked her to introduce him to her neighbour. Eventually she did lead him over to meet the other fellow, but I don't know how they got on... Mixed in with all that I caught snippets of Claire alluding to the lack of a ring on her finger, and lamenting that one or two guys she found really good-looking were gay. Alas, I was never close enough to her at the time to make an ice-breaking enquiry "Terminally single, Claire? Me too," give her a smile and hint at rectifying both our situations at a stroke...
Sitting with Jean and Kirsty's son Jamie was Spider Stacy from The Pogues. I got to say hello, shake his hand and say I hoped to be seeing them at Brixton at Christmas.
Dave and Claire had announced that the winning team had to think of a new event for next year's Kirstyfest, so I came up with 'The KM Factor'. Anyone who fancies it can tickle their tonsils and sing a Kirsty song for our panel of judges, who'll then choose a top 3. The top 3 will then have a sing-off, and everybody will vote for the winner. I ran the idea by Eunice, who loved it. New John said "Bags I be Simon Cowell." Then I ran it by Claire, who liked it too, and accepted my invitation that she be a judge.
Dave then announced some big news : Jean has written a book about Kirsty's life, her death and the family's fight for justice, which is coming out next April. We were given flyers advertising it, and Dave said "So what are we doing next April? We're all buying Jean's book."
Next, the lovely girls of Halvsostra, from Norway, took to the stage. They play cover versions of Kirsty songs in Norwegian, in their own distinctive style, on guitar, mandolin, fiddle, mouth organ and autoharp. They were wonderful! Their renditions of The One And Only, Angel and Celestine blew me away. Two of them, Bente and Hege, both admired my Kirsty T-shirt and asked where they could get one, so I wrote down the website address for them. I later had a chat with Hege about Kirsty's music and their interpretations of it - she was very interested to learn that The One And Only was one of my very favourites and delighted that I loved their version.
After Halvsostra left the stage to a standing ovation, it was time for John M to pick up the guitar and lead us all in the traditional sing-along. Terry's absence this year meant the singing session was much shorter, as we were down to the 12 songs John can play easily, but it was no less enjoyable for all that. John began by asking for requests; the first person to call out said 'Caroline' and so he opened with that, followed by A New England. After our spirited rendition of He's On The Beach I felt sorry for John when nobody knew the lyrics to Can't Stop Killing You. At that point a girl called Tiffany took the chair and played Bad and They Don't Know, we all gave those two numbers maximum gusto, and to finish Dave joined forces with Halvsostra for a show-stopping rendering of In These Shoes?
After that the CDs went back on. One young lady remarked to me that she was getting itchy for Fairytale, but Dave said the CDs were a continuous mix so he wouldn't be able to locate it. Sadly, neither the girl nor Eunice accepted my invitation to sing Fairytale with her unaccompanied. Eunice protested "I can't sing." I pointed out "Neither can I" and assured her that everyone would drown us out, but to no avail.
Bumped into the Bath City fan. "I've just been kissed by three Norwegian women," he announced proudly. I went emerald green, but after he'd been generous about yesterday's game I reckoned I could reciprocate, so I smiled "I'll give you that result" and we had a chat about Kirsty and footie.
Returned to the bar for a last Bulmers. Shortly after I sat down with that the party began to break up, and at 6 pm Claire left. Having given her a fond goodbye hug and kiss, I downed my Bulmers and said my goodbyes to everyone in time to make Waterloo for the 6.54 train.
Home to discover that W4 are out of The X Factor ;( Simon picked the gimmick, Hope, over the better singers, W4. What respect I had left for Simon Cowell has evaporated. Worse, I heard one of Hope has been kicked out because it transpires she has a criminal record. Speaking entirely impartially, quite apart from the disruption to a group's chemistry, a group on The X Factor is a single entity, so if one member is ineligible the whole group should be hooked and replaced with one of the other groups. Well, I'm spared the expenditure of voting...
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Date: 2007-10-08 06:11 am (UTC)