As inferred in the previous post, I am back from the Marillion Weekend in Ouddorp in the Netherlands.
I left Grantham for Birmingham International Airport early on Thursday. It was hard. In fact, it was harder than I thought it would be - and I thought it would be fucking hard. As I said before, K___ and I haven't been apart for five days since... Christ knows when. Not even in the early days of our relationship can there have been many days when we didn't see each other at least twice a week.
I felt guilty for going, despite having permission. This came not least from knowing that I would have a great time with few responsibilities whilst K____ was having to cope with Olivia without me. I know her family were on hand, but it wasn't about whether they could cope with changing a nappy or feeding her a bottle. It would have been much easier if the weekend had been something that K___ wouldn't have enjoyed so much herself.
Before I left, I told K___ that if she needed me back all she had to do was ask and I would find a way to get back, no questions asked, but she was adamant that she wouldn't need to do it.
It wasn't a bad journey to Birmingham, and I soon hooked up with the rest of the Web UK, the Marillion fan club, for a lot of hanging about in the airport - never great fun. After a slightly delayed flight, there was further frustration due to fog in the Netherlands when we had to do a lot of stacking over Amsterdam's Schipol airport. Once we finally got down onto the tarmac, I sent K___ a text to let her know we had got to the Netherlands unscathed. After a quick booze stop in a supermarket in the airport, we bundled onto a minibus. Our driver seemed nice enough but he was tailgating the car in front which, given the speed we were travelling at and the foggy conditions, makes me suspect he must have a strong belief in the afterlife.
After a miraculous failure to die on a Dutch motorway, we got into the venue at about 10.00-ish. We dropped our bags into our remarkably well-appointed chalets (including saunas, no less (not that we ever had time to use them!)) and headed back to the reception to assist with the preparations for the arrival of the punters the next morning. After a couple of beers in the early morning, it was time for bed, and I certainly slept well.
The next morning, after a quick shower, I checked my phone to discover the following text:
I texted back to say not to worry, and I was sure everything would (literally) work itself out.
Friday was quite an easy day, all things considered. The Web UK formed 'Team B' on the merchandise stall. Initially, I manned a table stacked high with end-of-line t-shirts in various designs and sizes, three for £20. As the venue, a Centre Parcs, is in the arse-end of fuck all, an awful lot of the punters were coming in by coaches from Schipol or Rotterdam. This was quite good as it broke up the people coming into the merch hall into easily dealt-with numbers. I've seen Marillion fans trying to get at the new merch before, and they can be like Great White Sharks at a synchronised swimming competition*, so having them separated into smaller groups was good for us!
Although no one was formally counting, we decided to draw gates on a cardboard box to track our sales, and it wasn't long before we cleared a couple of grand. Given we weren't even manning the tables selling new stuff, it was a good sign. Mind you, we stopped keeping a tally after that.
After our shift was up, we got a sneak peak at the stage, located in a "semi-permanent erection" (aka a large tent). It certainly looked good; nice and high with lots of lighting up in the gantries, and Porcupine Tree's Arriving Somewhere but Not Here coming out of the PA suggested the front of house sound was going to be pretty good. After that, I ended up helping move a flight case from the backstage area to a nearby chalet. It contained the artifacts for the Marillion Museum. I never got to see what was put out this year in the end, but reports are that it was well received.
I'd stuffed a load of blank A4 into my pocket as G_____, the Merch Queen, had mentioned during our morning shift that she could really use some. As I headed over to merch, I got a call on my mobile saying merch was swamped and could we help. The steady trickle of punters was replaced by a mob they were having trouble subduing. We decided that with most of the three-for-£20 quid t-shirts gone, we could turn our side of the room into a cash-only point of sale and were soon adding fistfuls of 'Toytown Dollars' into the cash box.
As we waited for a meal in 'Sharkey's Restaurant' that evening, I got my second text message of the day:
Hello Daddy,
I did a poo.
Love Olivia X
It made me laugh so much, that I forced everyone else to read it too! I texted Olivia back - she was using K___'s phone - to ask if it was a runny one, and to enquire whether she had wiped it everywhere for Mummy, but I was informed it was nice and neat and anyway Grandma had dealt with it.
er... Moving on. We don't need anymore poo-related incidents on this blog.
The first show was a preview of five of the tracks from the new album Somewhere Else (released 9th April) followed by a run through their 1997 album This Strange Engine. The title track is, rather appropriately for this blog, a song about fatherhood. Specifically, it reads as an autobiography of lead singer Steve Hogarth's life and his realisation in light of the births of his own children of his father's sacrifices on his son's behalf. It's long been one of my favourites in a catalogue of gems and the performance that evening was sublime. Guitarist Steve Rothery performed the second, achingly poignant guitar solo so perfectly that the band was forced to vamp over a couple of chords as the crowd gave a five minute ovation in mid song. It was 'a moment'; and you could see people looking at each other and giving slight nods of the head to acknowledge this was something that didn't happen often.
My words cannot hope to capture how special it felt to be a tiny part of this act of communion between band and audience. Perhaps the DVD - the shows were filmed - will do the job, but I suspect that it won't be the same. I remember feeling the lack of K___ particularly keenly at that point.
She would have loved it and I missed her.
* whatever that's like...
I left Grantham for Birmingham International Airport early on Thursday. It was hard. In fact, it was harder than I thought it would be - and I thought it would be fucking hard. As I said before, K___ and I haven't been apart for five days since... Christ knows when. Not even in the early days of our relationship can there have been many days when we didn't see each other at least twice a week.
I felt guilty for going, despite having permission. This came not least from knowing that I would have a great time with few responsibilities whilst K____ was having to cope with Olivia without me. I know her family were on hand, but it wasn't about whether they could cope with changing a nappy or feeding her a bottle. It would have been much easier if the weekend had been something that K___ wouldn't have enjoyed so much herself.
Before I left, I told K___ that if she needed me back all she had to do was ask and I would find a way to get back, no questions asked, but she was adamant that she wouldn't need to do it.
It wasn't a bad journey to Birmingham, and I soon hooked up with the rest of the Web UK, the Marillion fan club, for a lot of hanging about in the airport - never great fun. After a slightly delayed flight, there was further frustration due to fog in the Netherlands when we had to do a lot of stacking over Amsterdam's Schipol airport. Once we finally got down onto the tarmac, I sent K___ a text to let her know we had got to the Netherlands unscathed. After a quick booze stop in a supermarket in the airport, we bundled onto a minibus. Our driver seemed nice enough but he was tailgating the car in front which, given the speed we were travelling at and the foggy conditions, makes me suspect he must have a strong belief in the afterlife.
After a miraculous failure to die on a Dutch motorway, we got into the venue at about 10.00-ish. We dropped our bags into our remarkably well-appointed chalets (including saunas, no less (not that we ever had time to use them!)) and headed back to the reception to assist with the preparations for the arrival of the punters the next morning. After a couple of beers in the early morning, it was time for bed, and I certainly slept well.
The next morning, after a quick shower, I checked my phone to discover the following text:
She was up at two and
four. Thought she might
have poo nappy so changed
her and she did a wee on
everything. No poo at all
yesterday.
four. Thought she might
have poo nappy so changed
her and she did a wee on
everything. No poo at all
yesterday.
I texted back to say not to worry, and I was sure everything would (literally) work itself out.
Friday was quite an easy day, all things considered. The Web UK formed 'Team B' on the merchandise stall. Initially, I manned a table stacked high with end-of-line t-shirts in various designs and sizes, three for £20. As the venue, a Centre Parcs, is in the arse-end of fuck all, an awful lot of the punters were coming in by coaches from Schipol or Rotterdam. This was quite good as it broke up the people coming into the merch hall into easily dealt-with numbers. I've seen Marillion fans trying to get at the new merch before, and they can be like Great White Sharks at a synchronised swimming competition*, so having them separated into smaller groups was good for us!
Although no one was formally counting, we decided to draw gates on a cardboard box to track our sales, and it wasn't long before we cleared a couple of grand. Given we weren't even manning the tables selling new stuff, it was a good sign. Mind you, we stopped keeping a tally after that.
After our shift was up, we got a sneak peak at the stage, located in a "semi-permanent erection" (aka a large tent). It certainly looked good; nice and high with lots of lighting up in the gantries, and Porcupine Tree's Arriving Somewhere but Not Here coming out of the PA suggested the front of house sound was going to be pretty good. After that, I ended up helping move a flight case from the backstage area to a nearby chalet. It contained the artifacts for the Marillion Museum. I never got to see what was put out this year in the end, but reports are that it was well received.
I'd stuffed a load of blank A4 into my pocket as G_____, the Merch Queen, had mentioned during our morning shift that she could really use some. As I headed over to merch, I got a call on my mobile saying merch was swamped and could we help. The steady trickle of punters was replaced by a mob they were having trouble subduing. We decided that with most of the three-for-£20 quid t-shirts gone, we could turn our side of the room into a cash-only point of sale and were soon adding fistfuls of 'Toytown Dollars' into the cash box.
As we waited for a meal in 'Sharkey's Restaurant' that evening, I got my second text message of the day:
Hello Daddy,
I did a poo.
Love Olivia X
It made me laugh so much, that I forced everyone else to read it too! I texted Olivia back - she was using K___'s phone - to ask if it was a runny one, and to enquire whether she had wiped it everywhere for Mummy, but I was informed it was nice and neat and anyway Grandma had dealt with it.
er... Moving on. We don't need anymore poo-related incidents on this blog.
The first show was a preview of five of the tracks from the new album Somewhere Else (released 9th April) followed by a run through their 1997 album This Strange Engine. The title track is, rather appropriately for this blog, a song about fatherhood. Specifically, it reads as an autobiography of lead singer Steve Hogarth's life and his realisation in light of the births of his own children of his father's sacrifices on his son's behalf. It's long been one of my favourites in a catalogue of gems and the performance that evening was sublime. Guitarist Steve Rothery performed the second, achingly poignant guitar solo so perfectly that the band was forced to vamp over a couple of chords as the crowd gave a five minute ovation in mid song. It was 'a moment'; and you could see people looking at each other and giving slight nods of the head to acknowledge this was something that didn't happen often.
My words cannot hope to capture how special it felt to be a tiny part of this act of communion between band and audience. Perhaps the DVD - the shows were filmed - will do the job, but I suspect that it won't be the same. I remember feeling the lack of K___ particularly keenly at that point.
She would have loved it and I missed her.
* whatever that's like...
No comments:
Post a Comment