Well, the gals and myself had a sublime time at The Guardian Hay Festival last weekend. As anyone in the UK will know, the weather was just gorgeous. We were wonderfully looked after and both the show on friday night, 29th May and the TV broadcast on Sat. 30th all went without a hitch. The only slight misdemeanor was that I somehow managed to get locked in a portaloo 5 minutes before we were due on stage on the friday night!
There was a funny catch on the outside door of this loo - a bit like a child lock - and when it swung shut in the evening Hay breeze, I found myself locked in. It was one of those situations where at first you laugh to yourself thinking, this is funny, no one would believe this...and then you start to panic. Luckily Cath heard my plaintive cries for help and came running over to let me out just in time.
I have to say I was very unimpressed by Hot Leg, the reincarnation of The Darkness who were sitting by an open door of a marquee (do marquees have doors?)RIGHT NEXT TO the portacabin loos. They must have heard my pathetic cries for help... and completely ignored me...nice.
Anyway, after being somewhat out of breath and not a little disorienated for the first few songs, we had a splendid time playing to an incredibly polite and rather lovely Hay Festival audience. We were each given a rose at the end of the set - now you don't get that at The Borderline - and lots of folk came up to say hello afterwards.
We packed up the gear and it still felt warm! Those of you in sunnier climes may not appreciate that to have a balmy evening in England where the air smells sweet after a hot day is a rare occurrence indeed and one that merits comment! We headed back to the hotel, Naomi taking the lead with her sat nav and Cath and myself following close behind. My cynicism over the use of such contraptions dissolved last weekend as the technology earned its place in my estimation in its helping us out of a few unplanned detours between Norfolk and Hay...
So, we were all tucked up before midnight as we had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for our TV debut the next morning as you know what they say about cameras never lying etc etc
We arrived at the Hay green room the next morning as arranged at 10.30am. The green room was an oasis of calm and we were soon escorted by floor manager Leo to the Sky Arts studio for rehearsal. We didn't have an awful lot of time but the efficiency and professionalism of the sound crew put us instantly at our ease and we were soon done and ready for make up.
The line up for this penultimate Hay-on-Sky show, introduced by Mariella Frostrup, was really interesting: burlesque artist, Immodesty Blaize, novelist, Sarah Waters and man behind the tv series The Wire, David Simon. We were on just before David Simon.
I was a bit concerned over the tuning of my guitar as the different temperatures were doing odd things to it but it was fine and I think I can say that all three of us really enjoyed the performance. We played 'A Place in The Sun', second track on the album and, as it happened, very appropriately titled for our very sunny and very wonderful weekend at The Guardian Hay Festival and Sky Arts. If you missed the show, you will be able to catch it again on the Hay-on-Sky, Sky Arts websiste.
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