Today we finally collected our new car after several false starts during which Hyundai proved that they were incapable of mounting an efficient delivery operation. There was a tedious hand over process that had to be sat through before we could finally get the keys though.
When we arrived we handed over the keys to our existing car, which was been offered in part exchange. The salesman went off and collected the keys for our new car and on returning opened his desk draw and put them in there. No doubt this was for safe keeping and to stop us running off with them and driving the vehicle that we had paid for before all the boring paperwork was completed. Whatever the reason Helen and I found it a bit odd that he couldn’t just leave them on the desk. We’re clearly not trustworthy looking!
As the salesperson was reading down the delivery sheet he realised that the car mats hadn’t been included. These weren’t any car mats, oh no, these were luxury mats for which we had paid an additional £60 (everytime I say that sentence, and I say it a lot, it always amazes me that the garage can be so miserly over a set of mats when you are spending tens of thousands on a car). Anyway, off he went to get a set. He appeared a few minutes later empty handed. He then made his way to the i30 show car from which he took the mats and walked out past us to our car waiting outside where he fitted them! Neither we nor he mentioned it! Our excuse was that by this point we just wanted to escape. It’s not clear what his excuse was.
Finally we were allowed to leave and drive away. Our first proper journey was down the lovely A33 to Basingstoke where we were going to be seeing Chris Difford & Boo Hewerdine, the former of Squeeze and the latter The Bible.
The duo were appearing at the Anvil not in the main auditorium, that was packed out with Jasper Carrot devotees, but in the Forge. The Forge is the musical equivalent to Harry Potter’s home at the Dursleys in that it is literally the space under the stairs. It is tiny, or “intimate” as Difford regularly referred to it, holding just under 100 people. The last gig we saw at the Forge was James Grant and it seems to suit this kind of music particularly well.
Hewerdine came on first, there is no backstage at the Forge so artists have to come in through the same door as the audience, and played a handful of songs. Hewerdine is a terrific songwriter and has a lovely dry self deprecating wit which he uses to great effect between beautiful acoustic renditions of his songs. In a way he very much reminds me of James Grant, both were in bands that were minor hits in the 80’s (The Bible and Love and Money) before going off to forge solo careers writing songs that tell a real story and are powerful emotionally.
After half a dozen songs Hewerdine was off and there was a short intermission before he was back to introduce Difford. However, rather than launching straight into a run through his extensive back catalogue they first off started with a Q&A between themselves. I got the feeling that this was more to warm up Difford, who seemed a little uneasy, than to provide value to the audience. One reason for Difford’s unease might have been that his brother was in the audience which may have been off putting.
When Difford came on he was armed with an iPad which he snapped into a stand in front of him. He never again touched it all evening but was clearly looking at it so either he was watching the telly or it was prompting him for words and stories. In some ways this was a bit odd as the structure of the evening was autobiographical and I’d imagine that he does the same stories every night. Whatever it was great to hear them and hear some classic Squeeze tracks played acoustically and hear his rock ‘n roll life.
That’s three members of Squeeze we have seen live now, I’m thinking that we should go and see Jools Holland so that we can tick off a couple more!