The Aftermath

Ah, sweet professionalism. If only Charlie and I had some. After the gig we put on at The Ship Inn, who wouldn’t want us to organise future events for them?...Other than anyone without a mental disorder, obviously; and to be fair, even most that do would have better common sense.

It all started with hope. We had spent the day before preparing and hoped that what we had done would be adequate. After borrowing the sound equipment and drum kit from the university, we discovered that there were no drum cymbals. Charlie then phoned around all of his music contacts looking for anyone willing to lend some and after a couple of hours, found someone... in the next city over, Blackpool. Off we popped and a few hours later we were back, complete with a set of shiny drum cymbals. That weren’t shiny. And looked older than I do. Covered with rust. Okay, it turned out that the guy had to fish them out of his damp, rickety garden shed, where they had been kept for the last few years and again, we really hoped they would be okay.

You can smell the tetanus

Once we got rolling on the day, all of the hoping paid off. Sat watching what I was beginning to assume was going to be a disaster, my grief was suddenly interrupted by a random guy asking if I was the organiser and if he could play. Once Charlie and I had finished high-fiving like the cool kids that we genuinely believe we are, we set him up with a set of a few songs, after which the night almost turned open-mike. A gig that, by all rights, should have been appalling ended up being pretty cool and we had more acts than we knew what to do with.

After hearing a recording of his own voice for the first time, Moke spent the night thinking he sounded terrible, but was probably the best singer there.

We wandered around the bar every now and then with our Hitch bucket, enlisting the help of new friend Alice Mack, whose name reminded me of a show I watched as a kid, “Alex Mack”, to help us with her feminine touch to charm more money out of people. We had raised £104.41 by the end of the night, £25 of which was donated by the Ship Inn probably out of sympathy for how worried we were throughout the night. £52.20 was the share I walked away with.

The Curiosity Shop only wanted to please the ladies

Marvellously, I have also received two online donations this week! £10 from the awesome Nicola Tyrell, who I really don’t see often enough; and another £10 from a wonderful friend that wishes to remain anonymous, who I recently learnt would have been the perfect Hitch partner if only I had told her before the registration deadline that I needed one. C'est la vie. This makes the total amount you’ve helped me raise £410.22. Still no news on the money raised all those weeks ago in the streets of Manchester as LCD HQ are far too busy right now for me to want to pester them and the Hitch Reps won’t reply to my emails. I’m starting to think I’ll never find out, but I’ve got a safety briefing with them tomorrow, so I’ll have to do the old rugby tackle and “stop hitting yourself” until they tell me (or I would if I wasn’t such a wuss).

Funnyman, Lewis Costello struggling to cope with the crap we kept leaving on stage. A cunning man would have faked a fall and sued us.

Anywho, thanks to all of the acts (Moke, The Curiosity Shop, The Pretty Thunder, Lewis Costello and random open mike people) that helped to make the night a lot of fun, with special thanks to The Ship Inn for putting up with us. It’s also worth mentioning that Charlie has just started an interesting blog documenting his quest to complete a list of truly stupid and crazy things over the next year, which you can check out by clicking here. If you are interested in staying up to date with my Hitch, please click here, and if you wish to help with the fundraising, please click here.