Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
Fortunately the unpunctual, chatty taxi driver got to the station in time for me to catch the 911 train to Manchester Airport. What a cliffhanger that was. I hope the anticipation didn’t keep you awake all last night.
I am writing today’s Dollop from a hotel bedroom in Portugal, where we are playing a festival. Obviously I mean the festival is in Portugal, rather than taking place in a hotel bedroom, just in case you were confused and misunderstood that sentence. Having a festival in a hotel bedroom would be a ridiculously impractical idea. I’m sorry, it’s far too hot to be funny. I’m sweating like a pig, although I’ve never actually observed a pig sweating, which I want to make very clear, because I know there was that rumour going around, but it was never proven in court, so just remember that, OK? Anyway, I digress, the basic point that I was trying to make was that we are in Portugal playing a folk festival.
Tomorrow we are doing a Meet The Artists events, where people get to ask us questions. I wonder if anyone asks me how long I’ve been without eyes. The programmers have, for some reason, dropped the ‘the’ from our name, so rather than the event being called “A Chance To Meet The Young’uns,” it’s advertised as “a chance to meet Young’uns.” Hopefully this hasn’t led to any confusion and no one turns up expecting a paedophiles’ convention, only to end up having to try and think of a question about folk music, in a desperate bid to blend in and not be found out.
On a similar point, a few days ago I was surprised to see in my website stats that someone had clicked onto our website because they had searched for “Young’uns sex.” I wonder what they were hoping to find. Were they after child pornography? Or were they hoping to find images or videos of me, Michael and Sean having sex with each other? If it was the latter, then they wouldn’t have any luck Googling that. No, they’d need to access the dark web to find our sex tape. Or maybe they were wanting a sex video from the other Young’uns, the wedding covers band from Canada.
To avoid a situation like our flight back from Canada, where my accordion got a massive crack in it, the organisers of the festival were kind enough to book seats for our instruments. Their kindness however didn’t stretch to them booking seats for us as well, so we had to sit in the hold while our instruments lived it up in business class. OK, well maybe I was wrong about the effects of the heat on my comic abilities, given that I’ve managed to pull out such a top quality joke there, and it’s 30 degrees Celsius; check me out.
The seats for our instruments weren’t next to where we were sitting. So we had to explain to bemused passengers that they would have a musical instrument sitting next to them, Which caused much amusement amongst everyone, many of whom were very drunk, despite the fact that it was only midday. Michael’s guitar was sharing an isle with some golfers, and my accordion had been given a seat on a row completely occupied by a hen party. So there were a load of drunken girls, with an accordion in between them. They thought this was hilarious, and spent the entire journey making jokes about the accordion, which they laughed at uproariously.
“Eh, shall we get a drink for the accordion?”
“The accordion wants to come out on the town with us tonight.”
“We’ll have to get the Accordion to the wedding.” This was met with shrieks of laughter from the girls. They seemed to very much enjoy the novelty of sharing their isle with a musical instrument. I think we did someone a favour by seating our instruments on the plane, as it meant that no one had to share an isle with a load of very loud and drunk girls.
The golfers also enjoyed joining in with the hen party’s jokes, saying things like, “I wonder what the guitar’s handicap is?” The girls found this hilarious and it wasn’t long before the two groups began flirting. So our musical instruments may be responsible for causing a relationship to occur between one of the hen party girls and one of the golfers.
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I think there were probably more jokes because it was an accordion. They’re not really cool instruments like electric guitars are they? This from someone who dabbles with various instruments, including a 72 bass accordion and an English concertina, which I really should play with more so I can take it out in public and play something. I did play my accordion in church one Christmas though. Oh and cool is massively overrated I think. I love accordions