Synergy represented by:
L-R: Micaela Haslam, Caroline Jaya-Ratnam
“My journey to Bristol took much of the morning as I was coming from Yorkshire. Sadly, my virtual mother-in-law (mother of my boyfriend of 10 years) had passed away the previous week, and 10th May had been chosen as the day for us to say our official farewells. Evelyn was a wonderful woman and we miss her very much. She was huge fun, even down to her funeral at which she had insisted we play “The Blue Danube”, which of course we did.
Anyway, off I headed to Bristol, via Sheffield. I had a little while to wait for a connection in Sheffield, so I popped out to admire this rather marvellous fountain just outside the main door of the station.
Fountain at Sheffield station
Colston Hall is an interesting venue. The main hall and dressing rooms could do with a refurb, if I’m completely honest, but the main entrance and bar is quite smart. The auditorium is one big reflective surface, which can be a bit of a nightmare for Drumming when all the mallet strikes “slap back” from the walls.
Fortunately, we had a couple of hours between rehearsal and concert. I say fortunately because I’d forgotten to bring a blue top for Caroline. I’d kept mine after the QEH concert, and for some reason had it in mind that she’d also kept hers – wrong! So off we headed into Bristol to buy yet more Synergy tops. I seem to have a loft full of them now. Anyway, we managed to find some red drapey jacketty things that we thought would do the job nicely, courtesy of Primark, at the princely sum of £15 each.
When the drummers started the concert, the sound did indeed bounce around all over the place but, actually I thought it sounded great. In fact I think this Drumming gig was the best one we’ve done so far – pretty noisy, but full of energy and enthusiasm.
Taxis had been booked after the concert to take us to Bristol Parkway in good time for our train back to London. We had all come in to Bristol Temple Meads that afternoon, so didn’t realise that Parkway was in the a*** end of nowhere and that there wouldn’t be a single bar or shop open, or even a beer vending machine – misery! So we twiddled our thumbs for half an hour in the very empty station, leapt on the train and headed straight for the buffet. All’s well that ends well!”
Micaela