Thursday 28 July 2016

We enjoy a beer with Martin before tonight’s show at the yacht club….

AFTER breakfast at the yacht club we go back to the room and get some work done…no show ’til tonight. My last show in Parnu.

Our pal Martin’s staying on a  yacht moored at the club’s marina. I meet him and we take a walk into town to the supermarket and get some supplies while Margaret gets some other bits and bobs done in the room.

The main stage music at the yacht club kicks off at 5pm – but they only just start rigging the PA at 4pm, so I rather doubt anything will start on time.

After last night;s food fiasco Martin and I booked a table for the three of us for 6pm. They say service is still an hour-and-a-half so we worked back from our ‘would like to to eat at’ time of 7.30pm.

We get our table, have a beer and we’re served our food by 6.30pm….oh, and the band that was meant to start at 5pm has only just started. The usual Parnu chaos.

My stage time’s 9pm – with just one and after me, my pal Al’s new band Cathouse Radio. Meantime, we go back to Martin’s yacht and enjoy a beer in the cooling breeze.

When we get back across to the yacht club, Al’s there so we have a beer and catch up…and wonder when we’ll actually take the stage. Margaret asks one of the organisers who shrugs her concern off, saying they can have live music ’til midnight and there’s probably half hour leeway after that.

Despite everything running late, some of the bands have already overplayed they’re originally allocated time…absolutely no stage management or organisation whatsoever.

As the band before me concludes their over-run set, I ask the sound engineer – and one of the main organisers’ sons – if they need me to cut my hour-long set. He asks if I can cut it to 40 minutes – that’s OK by me…but weird I have to go to them to initiate the proposal!

There’s a lot of folks we know here tonight and many are getting a bit annoyed at how long things are over-running…my 9pm stage time is now looking more like 10.45pm and they’ve been waiting for a long time. A lot of them have brought us gifts too!

I kick of my amended set…and I’m just 30-minutes in when the other main ‘organiser’ comes to the stage and tells me my current song is the last one! No warning. That’s fucking out of order…not only would I have completely re-organsied my chosen songs, but I don’t even get the chance to say thank you to the audience over the mic…I just come to a stop. I’m furious. I’d have been prepared to cut my set by another ten minutes to 30 minutes if I’d known…

The anger is diluted by so many folks coming to shake hands and stopping me for photos, but still….

The piece-de-resistance comes when Margaret goes to get a drink but comes back two minutes later covered in blood and with a handful of teeth. She’s tripped over a cut stump of pipe sticking out the ground and landed smack on her face. I immediately take her indoors where the yacht club staff call an ambulance and help us deal with the situation.

Luckily Martin is still with us – a fluent English speaker he’s an invaluable translator when the ambulance folk come in, Luckily I’d grabbed our European health cards when i rushed some gear back to the room while we were waiting for the ambulance. Off we go to emergency at the local hospital which seems to be totally empty.

Margaret manages to stay calm and uncomplaining through the whole thing and gets a couple of stitches in the hole where her tooth came through her top lip and told to take some paracetamol. There’s no dental people at the hospital and we’re instructed to go to the city’s main dental place first thing in the morning…it opens at 8am.

Luckily Martin is driving us to Tartu tomorrow  (Friday) and is happy to leave at 7am to get to the dental place early….

It’s after 1am when we get back to the yacht club and poor Margaret’s still not complained about her accident….but that’s gonna hurt (even more) in the morning 🙁

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