www.betika.co.uk
So many things to write about, so little cohesion in my head! I guess Penzance is a good place to start...
Seven fully functional Betikans, one slightly broken Imogen and a magnificently bearded Nic the Paper Cinematographist clambered aboard a cavernous minibus at stupid o'clock on Good Friday and headed west. Bank holiday traffic! So many roadworks! So many caravans! So many "comfort breaks"! Got chatting to a roadside cafe proprietor called Phil, got some good showbiz catering stories out of him, ended up talking about Johnny Dankworth's frankly bonkers Schoenberg-influenced 12-tone big-band music and hearing tales of late nights in Ronnie Scott's. Made pretty good time past wind-farms and abandoned tin mines, arrived in Penzance mid-afternoon and immedeately sought out a chemists so I could get some painkillers for my horrendous toothache. We decided to find ourselves a nice pub garden to sit in - cue several orbits of Penzance's one-way system before we opted to take a trip out to the charmingly named nearby village of Mousehole (pronounced "Mowzel", I've since been told). It was here that we learned that 6' 6" wide roads + a 6' 6" wide minibus + oncoming traffic = one of those situations where everybody has to get out of their cars and have a conference about what is to be done. We also discovered that Rich Betika is highly skilled in manouvering large vehicles in tight spaces. I'm so glad it was him driving and not me! Eventually we found the perfect pub with a garden overlooking the sea, in a village called "Paul", an idyl so remote that when we piled out of the van the only sound we could hear were those made by birds and insects. It turned out that this was because the pub was shut. Gary said it was the most disappointed he'd been since some childhood FA cup final where whichever team he supported at the time had been beaten so badly it had caused him to lose all interest in the game to this day. Downcast, we piled back into the bus. We found ourselves a pub on the outskirts of Penzance, which turned out to be my favourite kind - a small one that only serves lovely dark brown beer, and spent an hour or so sat outside making Betika-related drawings for Nic to incorporate into the paper cinema. I drew a Sopwith Camel, a fox and a face with a disturbingly blank expression on it, Gary drew an interesting portrait of Kate Moss, I wish I could remember more - I know Martin drew something very elaborate, but I can't think what it was. If I can get the pictures back from Nic I'll scan them and post them here so the keen amateur psychologists amongst you can analyse them and work out which section of the mental health act applies best to us.
The gig in Penzance was fantastic and really strange for the same reasons - not only was the venue (the Acorn Arts Centre) packed, there was also a table of people in the middle of the audience shouting for songs from "Heads smashed in..." era onwards. Long-term Betika fans! If we could, we'd have played everything we were asked to, unfortunately we'd only succeeded in downloading a portion of the repertoire into Gary's already jam-packed head, so we couldn't really deviate from the set we had planned, which naturally included none of the songs that were being requested! We did manage to make one exception - the shouters seemed particularly keen to hear "I've been in an accident", so we retreated to our dressing room, worked out an ad-hoc arrangement and played it for the first time in over two years as an encore. Martin and Gary had never played it, but Gary did produce the recorded version so had a pretty good idea of when to do what, and it turned out pretty good, I think. It felt good, anyway. By the end of the song I was relaxed enough to attempt to sing a high B without breaking into falsetto, not something I'd normally consider behind closed doors, let alone in front of an audience of innocent music fans. But I was taken with the spontaneous urge, and somehow I managed to not only hit the note but hold it. For a couple of seconds it was like I could properly sing. Not something I'm about to do again in a hurry though!
We hung around at the Arts Centre for a few late night drinkies with the crew after the gig before attempting to sneak into our youth hostel without waking the German backpackers with whom we were sharing a dorm. I was wishing I hadn't bothered an hour or so later when, fatigue finally having overcome even chronic dental pain, my slumbers were disturbed by teutonic snoring of Wagnerian volume and resonance. ||: Eventually I got to then point where I was so tired that not even this could keep me awake. But then it was so loud that not even my tiredness could keep me asleep :|| (I have used a device from musical notation here to explain what happened for the rest of the night). The coming of daylight seemed to coincide with the last of my painkillers wearing off and toothache returning with vengance, so I got up and took myself off for a walk around the grounds of the hostel. I took a couple of ibuprofen but they seemed to do nothing so I found myself the softest breakfast the kitchens had to offer before going for a shower, only to find the cubicles occupied by, as it turned out, our German roommates! Did I mention that they both had ridiculously long and shiny hair? The kind sported by extreme melodic power-metal band Dragonforce? Obviously, hair like that needs a lot of washing, conditioning and so on, so my wait was not a short one.
Back in the van and back on the road we found ourselves with the best part of a day to make the journey up to Salisbury for the next gig, so we picked up some tourist information leaflets to see what kind of diversions we could take ourselves on. We settled on making a visit to Perranporth, which has an amazing big surfing beach and proved to be an ideal venue for a game of intra-band 4.5-a-side football. I am not one of nature's footballers, but amazingly not only did my team win 2-1, I also scored one of the goals - an acheivement I will always regard as one of my greatest.
And that's what we did in Cornwall. For what happened next, see the entry "Some very kind words" below.
