We woke. We packed up. We departed Berian’s. We struggled to find the bus station. We made our bus with just a few minutes to spare. And just to make us feel like we’d wasted the last hour, the bus drove us along a route out of Edinburgh that literally took us directly past Berian’s place again.
7 hours later, we got off the bus in Leeds, and enjoyed an evening of the Spooky Men’s Chorale. For those of you who don’t know who/what The Spooky Men are, look at www.spookymen.com.au and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooky_men
At 5:30pm there was a “Sing Like A Bloke” workshop (for blokes of all genders), run by the Spooky Men. This simply involved getting all the participants arranged into an impromptu choir and teaching us a few basic singing techniques and learning a few of their songs. It was in a smallish church, and with the acoustics being as you would expect in a church, it only took a good choice of simple songs and a bunch of people doing a reasonable job of singing to make us sound rather fantastic.
Following the workshop, Owen went and introduced himself to the “leader” of the Spooky Men (often referred to as the “Spook-miester”), and was greeted with great enthusiasm once it was known that Owen was “the guy who did the Lego video clip” (rather than explain this background story to those of you who don’t know it, I will again point you to a website:http://spookymen.com/competition/index.php where you should watch videos #5 and #12, noting that #5 won a consolation prize)
So “the Lego guy” was much loved, and we scored equally much free stuff! First, we were taken to the merchandise stall they had set up for their gig this evening and Owen was given his prize for the video competition. The prize consisted of one of each piece of merchandise they had at the stall – a shirt, a bag, some badges and 3 CDs. We then got told that we “don’t have to pay” for tonight – neither the workshop nor the performance. Finally, we were told we could come along to their gig in Oxford tomorrow night – for free, and despite the fact that it is sold out... the people on the door know us now, and said they’d just let us in.
After dinner at Nandos(!), we went back for the Spooky performance and were thoroughly entertained for two hours. Except for the inclusion of all their new songs, the show hasn’t changed much in the four years or so since I saw them last (i.e. the on-stage banter, jokes, visual gags and such) – but then, why mess with something that works?
Checking into our Hotel in Leeds was also mildly entertaining. We were served by their most recent “employee of the month”, who, among the masses of talking he did to us, came out with 2 standout bits of amusement. The first was to ask us if we wanted a double-bed or two singles – which, we ended up realising is not an entirely unreasonable question to be asked of anyone these days (but we had booked the room online yesterday and selected a twin room rather than a double...). The second was to tell us that the reason our check-in form for international visitors was asking for our “next destination” was “probably just because they’re nosey”, before launching into a tirade of questions for his own interest about our holiday, including... “So, where are you off to after this?”
Highly good times. Tomorrow we can look forward to a long-ish bus trip during the day followed by a potential Spooky Men’s Chorale concert in the evening... hmmm, that sounds strangely familiar...
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