David’s Daily Digital Dollop: Dollop 279 – Music For Airports

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I am pleased to report that today I received my first ever Dollop-based heckle. The first question at our Chance To Meet Young’uns event was, “How long have you been without eyes?” Ideally the entire hour would have been taken up with dollop-based questions, and the other two would just have to stand there awkwardly, while I answered question after question about the Dollops, take requests for the French Potato Potarto song, and answer people’s queries like, “was the water feature man genuinely real or a very talented actor playing an incredibly written character?” But on this occasion, it was just the one dollop-based question; still, it’s a start.

Yesterday I was chatting to a fellow accordionist, who told me that he had also booked a seat for his instrument. When I was at the airport and doing the bit where you have to go through security and get your carry-on luggage checked, they seemed very interested in and uncertain about my Accordion, and they spent a good few minutes scanning it, with more and more staff joining in the inspection. But eventually it got OKayed. However, the person I was talking to yesterday said that they were interrogated for quite awhile about what it was, and then made him play it to prove that it was a musical instrument. So he stood in a busy airport, and played his accordion in front of

an assemblage of serious-looking security staff. Fortunately his performance passed muster and he was cleared to go through with his accordion.

I appreciate that nowadays airport security has to be extra vigilant, but it seems very unlikely that a terrorist would go for an accordion as their weapon of choice. But I might be wrong, and maybe there have been a number of occasions where terrorists posing as accordionists have been thwarted by being asked to play the instrument. Not being a terrorist, I have no idea how effective an accordion would be for housing explosives, but it may be that the accordion can be turned into the perfect weapon of destruction, and airport security are starting to cotton onto this, hence the reason for them getting accordionists to play, to prove their musical credentials and thus prove themselves to not have terroristic motives.

Of course, it’s only a matter of time before a terrorist organisation pays for one of their members to have accordion lessons. With a bit of luck though this plan will backfire, and the terrorist will enjoy learning the accordion so much that he begins to find himself becoming more and more disenfranchised with the terrorist group, as he discovers a new sense of purpose and makes new friends in the folk world. However, the terrorist group have paid for the accordion and the lessons, and they are starting to ask questions about how his lessons are going and when he will be ready. Meanwhile, the terrorist has started playing the accordion for a local morris dance group and is now well and truly a part of the folk community. He is now completely uninterested in bringing death to the western world, having completely transitioned from Islamic extremist to prominent figure in his local folk community. All he wants to do is play folk music and drink real ale at his local folk club and various festivals and village fates. But he doesn’t have the courage to tell the terrorist organisation, who are mounting pressure on him to exercise their strategy. Then one night, he gets very drunk and in desperation, confides to his Morris team, who then take it upon themselves to try and come up with a plan to get him out of his predicament.

I think this scenario would make for a great film, all about what happens when a group of local Morris dancers and folk singers take on a bunch of Islamic extremists, and try and thwart a terrorist plot. It’ll have everything, this film: an action packed dark comic drama including lots of violence, guns, explosions, espionage, dramatic car chases … and morris dancing. What’s not to like?

David’s Daily Digital Dollop: Dollop 278 – Featuring Some Drunken Hens And A Sweaty Pig

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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.