Foxwood Steel and East Steel at Otley Carnival aka The Wrong Van

Well Debs, I'd say it was tempting fate when Karen turned up with paper decorations! Did it rain, then? No, Debs it hailed! On June 15th, it hailed.

First off, me and Rick [okay, Rick and I] park the vans end to end, then Bex and me [okay, Bex and I] load pans from one to another [or back into my front room of course]; eventually Tim hoves into views dragging a ton of ironware that is our second drum-kit.

Setting up the float, we found that we had only left behind the second hanging tom on this occasion, a great improvement on forgetting the snare. However, life was about to take a strange turn for the worse!

First we unloaded the van, then Rick moved it to the organisers' designated area; I asked Wanda to start putting the empty cases back in the van; Wanda asked someone which was our van; someone pointed to a white van; Wanda pointed the key fob to said van, went over, it was open, put the cases in. Then Tim realised that the clutch of the hi-hat was still in his cymbal case, and the cymbal case was now back in the van, and someone went back to the van, but the van that the cases had been put in had gone. So, the wrong van. Hmmm. We tied the hi-hat cymbals together, and advised Tim against fretting.




Debs, all this excitement and we hadn't even set off. Anyway they've levelled the road surface at the turn out of the cattle market, so that bit where your stomach lurches was all in the anticipation and not in the reality.

At first the rain just sparkled a bit, threatened, then withdraw. Next minute, Debs, it was all hail let loose, and heaven help me, Amy, Anne, Lynn and Cathy and all of us on the windward side, Otley High Street.

We were me, Lizzie, Gig, Natalie, Bex, Varshika, Daisy, Vicky, Tim, Amy for Foxwood Steel and Anne, Wendy, Lynn, Becky, Peter, Wanda, Wendy, Kirsty, Jeanette, Ruth, Karen, Alli and Joyce for East Steel.