All Right There?

Just had a fantastic three weeks at home, back in Bristol, where the sun shines and the drinks are slightly cheaper than they are in Singapore.

So, what stood out as my finest moment of being home? Well, there were so many. Learning to play poker, for one. Two of my friends, Andy and Chewie, have been playing online poker for a while. They live in the same house and sometimes sit at the same virtual poker table whilst being separated in the physical world by two flights of stairs. I managed to prise them away from their screens and introduced them to a deck of cards and some copper coins and I cleaned up on a number of occasions. Their tried and tested online poker faces were no good at a real table.

Also enjoyed a couple of Funky Onion nights. Funky Onion is a "legendary club brand" if you believe the press releases they write about themselves - Dave and Joe Onion are "renowned for their all encompassing music policy", apparently. Basically, they do a spot of djing at weekends. Anyway, I've not been to a club for a year, so I thoroughly enjoyed getting down to exactly the same records they were playing when I left a year ago.

Of course, seeing family and friends was fantastic after so long and staying with my brother and his family was sweet, although I got in trouble a couple of times for teaching my 18 month old niece street slang. Well, you know, you've got to connect on their level...

The Ashton Court festival was as good as ever, with the sun shining all weekend as I sat with friends within earshot of three different stages all at the same time, just like I do every year. It's a bit like listening to a badly tuned radio, but it must be good because I keep on doing it.

I'll probably think of some more highlights later, too, but the one that really stands out for me is actually all about me. Of course.

At the Ashton Court post-festival party, there was a bit of an open mic thing going on. After watching several bands play, it was suggested that Beyonce Knowle reform.

I suppose I should explain about Beyonce Knowle. A couple of years ago, we were sitting in a pub and we started coming up with names for Bristol based tribute bands. Knowle is a particularly salubrious area in Bristol, a magnet for teenage mums and white shellsuited boys in baseball caps and renowned for drive-bys and armed robberies.

It's not that bad really. I just wanted to avoid using the word chav.

Anyway, we decided that it was time for a Destiny's Child/Beyonce Knowles tribute band featuring vocalists with Bristolian accents, hence Beyonce Knowle. We certainly had some very talented musicians amongst us at the pub as we discussed this idea. But who could we persuade to dress up in drag and front the band? Joe took some persuading, but I volunteered with slightly alarming haste.

We did one gig and it was probably my finest ever fifteen minutes. There was something incredibly liberating about shaking my "booty", as it were, in my mini skirt and tennis shoes and explaining to the audience that I didn't think they were "ready for my jelly". I've played lots of "serious" gigs over the years and have never had such a frenzied reaction.

The review of the gig in the local magazine, "Venue", said that "Beyonce Knowle are an act that will forever stain the memory". Praise indeed.

That was all two years ago. Fast forward to last week at the open mic night and the talk of Beyonce Knowle reforming. The original band line-up was present. The stage was set. It was perfect. We would do our version of Crazy in Love, which we set to the music of Led Zep's Whole Lotta Love.

Of course, I'd forgotten all the words and most of the tune, but that hadn't mattered first time around, so I stepped up to the mic with some confidence and belted out the first verse. The audience looked a little bemused. I suddenly started to feel as if this wasn't quite such a good idea. Why wasn't it working this time around? Joe was supposed to be singing the chorus, but he seemed to be hiding behind his guitar, so I started to belt that out too. The look of bemusement in the crowd seemed to be turning into a look bordering on mass hatred. It might have been more appropriate to have been playing "I Predict A Riot" or "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" or something.

As I fumbled my way to the end of the chorus, I realised the major flaw in the plan. I wasn't dressed in drag. I wasn't subtly revealing my tasteful monkey posing pouch every time I bent my knees. It's that little twist, that little turnabout between a clever idea and a stupid one.

The music to the second verse started. A guy from the audience approached the stage. I backed away a little as he was holding a pint glass. However, he meant me no harm. He simply looked at me, shook his head as if in pity, picked up the mic and started singing Whole Lotta Love. Properly.

I was left standing onstage in something of a quandary.

Should I wrestle the mic back from him? Not massively dignified, but would've been very entertaining. Although I think he probably would've had the rest of the pub on his side. I'd have been like Paul Ince after Eric Cantona karate kicked that Palace fan - Ince apparently shouted to the entire crowd, "Come on then, we'll take the lot of you!"

Should I stand there and continue to behave as if I was still fronting the band? Rock posturing, thigh slapping and miming my way through the rest of the number? No. That would be rather sad.

Or should I stand there gazing with my jaw open in shock for most of the rest of the song before sloping disconsolately offstage shaking my head in disbelief?

By the time I'd weighed up these options, I realised that the song had finished and I'd been standing there gazing with my jaw open in shock, so I sloped disconsolately offstage shaking my head in disbelief.

As a lover of the film "Spinal Tap", I realised that this was actually a brilliant thing to have happened to me once the initially overwhelming feelings of rejection and bitterness had worn off. It actually calls to mind another musical gaffe from a few years ago.

Joe (him again... he must jinx me or something) was playing guitar in a drum and bass band and apparently needed a "guitar tech". I got the job. It involved sitting by the side of the stage and handing him the guitar he needed for different "tracks" as well as restringing his guitar if he broke a string.

Needless to say, he broke a string in the middle of a "flava", so I raced onstage with a spare guitar and took the other one off him and set about my job. I tried to tune it up at the side of the stage, but couldn't get a reading because of the hi-octane, high decibel banging "choon" the band were playing. So I wandered out the back through a door and tuned the guitar up.

It was a fire door.

I couldn't get back in again.

So, I had to proceed out through the emergency exit and emerged in the middle of St Pauls, made famous by the riots in the 1980s, carrying a Fender Stratocaster and a guitar tuner. I legged it round the block to the front entrance. I then had to explain to the bouncer who I was and what had happened (and he took some convincing - he found the idea of a local drum and bass outfit needing a guitar tech a little far fetched and suggested that perhaps the guitarist may be taking himself a bit too seriously), beat my way through the crowd before arriving triumphantly just as the band finished playing their set.

Those were the days...