6:12 p.m. - 2024-03-03
A Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time moment

I didn't get home from our first show of the the year with the main band until 3 am this morning. Last night wasn't a great night for revellers as it rained hard in Stirling Town the whole evening. The actual bar was quite busy and the two groupies I was approached by the other week while out for lunch with James were smiling and waving from their usual table, but thankfully that was as close as they came to me or the rest of the band.

I played very well with only one or two fluffs but I couldn't say the same for my band mates. J our singer missed several cues and did extra verses where he shouldn't have. He also broke a guitar string. "I bought new strings last year he said, but just haven't had the time to change them." I mean, whatever. We are being paid to play a show. I was annoyed. Mike, our soon to be departing drummer just basically forgot several of the tunes. I'm actually beginning to wonder if his leaving is maybe due to something health-wise. He has shown signs of forgetfulness on occasion and repeating himself often. He was also exhausted by the second set. S, our guitarist was just in a strange place. He has been for a few weeks now. It's as if he really doesn't care sometimes. His speaker was far too loud, his guitar had somehow detuned itself almost a semitone for the first few songs which he blamed on the room being too warm. It sounded terrible.

I was stood there trying to hold everything together with the bass while chaos happened all around me. The weird thing is, we had more people come up to us and tell us what a great show we had played than in recent memory. People were dancing all night to the music. There were two lovely couples who were sitting just in front of the stage came up to us and told us we had made their weekend for them, and played almost all of their favourites. Lots of hand shaking and hugging followed. It was welcome, but strange as we have played better so many times before and that has never happened.

I also got a fair bit of attention from other players in the audience interested to know what the big red shiny thing was that I was using last night. My Mark King 500 always gets attention, it's quite rare, sounds awesome, and looks the part. For all the good things that came out of last night, there is a sense that the best of times with this band are drawing to a natural close. My buddy S definetly doesn't have his heart in this band as he once did. Mike is leaving, and J our singer has started doing his solo gigs again and it shows that he too hasn't been putting in the work for this band. I'll keep going regardless and putting in the time and effort needed to keep my playing up to standard.

The new secret band project has its first outing next Sunday and depending on how that goes I might decide to leave one of the bands. I'm not sure which one yet. If the new band works well, I may also hand in my notice to the main band as Mike has done. I don't see the main band carrying on without Mike. Sometimes in life, you just have to accept that the good times are coming to a close and move on.

On a more cheery note, I had lunch with M on Saturday afternoon before last nights show. We met up in a small family run hotel/restaurant/bistro in Stirling Town which she had booked. I dressed smart and she seemed very pleased to not see me in jeans, a hoodie and sneakers. She also complimented me on making the supreme effort to be smart by actually having worn matching socks. I do try sometimes to lift the tone up a notch or two style wise.

The food and service were excellent and at one point, a waiter who was basically a hipster dude with the hipster beard and tats asked if everything was ok with the meal. I enthused about the truffle infused mayo that came with the main meal and he looked at me and said yes, "Mayonnaise is good for you". It was a Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time moment and I almost burst out laughing. M didn't understand what was so funny and neither did the hipster waiter. ROSMT is from a different era so it was understandable that neither were aware of it.

We talked about many things including her wedding stuff and a two hour lunch booking ended up taking four and a half hours. It was like old times with M when we first became unlikely friends and used to meet regularly for lunch and do coffee shop meet ups together. I miss those times and I miss that closeness we shared back then. But life moves on, and although we know where our paths are heading in our separate lives, I was re-assured that we still have a strong bond of friendship, no matter what the future holds for both of us. That it matters to us makes all the difference, and as long as that is the case it will endure.