The Rest of the Best on tour March 2012

Now then Debs, Here's a different Leeds outfit. I have just played my favourite ever week of my professional calendar with the Rest of the Best. This year we rehearsed at the Rehearsal Room, West Park on Monday

morning, and played at Green Meadows in the afternoon. In the old days, the first concert was more like an extension of the rehearsal, and Diane was panicking that we wouldn't be up to it. As if!

The point of the Rest of the Best is Truly Inclusion. We meet up, exchange tunes, play with people from different instrument areas, get to know each other, visit new to us schools, especially Special Schools; we bond, but I had a really special bonding exercise this year.

This was called the van under the porch moment: Look above,

And also above is the Rest of the Best getting out of the back of the van where the combined weightof such a big band managed to lower the height of the van so that I could drive out from under porch without any further damage to the van roof or the porch lights.

After that our tour was a piece of cake. Here's some pictures of us at Green Meadows, Pennyfield, Brudenell, City of Leeds, John Jamieson and Broomfield. We were myself and Diane as director and producer, with me on steel pan and vocals, and Diane on keyboards and accordion. The orchestral section was Fiona on violin, viola and guitar, Hilary on all things woodwind including cow's horn and x; Janet played flute and recorder; Mary and Joanna were on clarinet, saxaphone and recorder, Cathy and Chrissie played saxes; Guitarists were Krishna, Alex, Dan, Michael and Al; steel pans were me, Melvin, Xanthe and Bex; drum-kit was John the Main Man plus Joe and Melvin; percussion was Bart, vocals, Sophie, me and Bart,