Seriosuly, Tescos?!; or, The arse-ache of parking!
- nancydulake1967
- Jan 28, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 3, 2024
Car journeys to and from gigs are quite often rather pleasant. You enjoy the scenery of an unknown town, listen to one or two Alan Bennett monologues and generally plan the next two years of your future. Aaah, life on the road- it's a joy! But when you’re 20 mins from the venue, it soon becomes a cunt! The speed and volume at which you talk, doubles.
“You just missed that free parking space!”
“No! I said left!”
“4th exit. 4TH EXIT!!!”
Pleasantries and polite conversation have long gone out the window and it’s now screechy high pitched vocals (not a bad way to warm up actually), swearing at Google maps, ready for a stressful load in. The extra delightful dilemma of having nowhere to load in from - where are all the fucking parking spaces these days?! We had a gig at a venue in London last year (won’t say the name to avoid embarrassment and we want another gig there some day...when we can afford a driver!), and parking was virtually impossible. I asked one of the staff for some advice regarding load in and she replied with a nonchalant shrug “oh yeah, bands tend to park at Tescos.” What, the Tesco about 5 minutes away? They lug all their amps and a drum kit from that superstore way over there? Fuck off!
And this is a venue that regularly puts bands on. After a bit of smiley passive aggressive ‘banter’, she eventually pulled the Drum Rod out her arse and suggested we be super-duper quick and unload behind the venue - 2 minutes from the venue rather than 2 miles! Experiencing the same buzz of getting let into a club when you’re under age, we quickly and cheerfully hurled our gear into the venue before triumphantly moving the car.
Fuck Tescos!
Out of the 35 dates we played, probably only 5 of the gigs wasn’t a massive ballache when it came to parking and unloading. This is being a musician in the UK right now- totally picked the wrong instrument for this game in hindsight. P’raps in the future, we’ll make life easier for ourselves by downsizing to an accordion and bongo. No, not even that- melodica and triangle! I’ll do the tooting, Dave can do the clanging. Bit of reverb for the additional ambience. They’ll not only fit in my handbag amongst the lipgloss and mint imperials, but it’ll save a few quid in petrol. We'll jump on a bus instead- maybe do a singalong with the passengers.
We’ll keep swapping instruments, of course - fucking love a triangle!
Fiona Nancy Dulake x
𝑨 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒈, 𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑩𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒏𝒆𝒘𝒔. 𝑾𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒔𝒑𝒂𝒎 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 - 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆 𝒙
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