The owner of the King’s Arms Hotel in Kirkby Stephen was not keen on discos. More precisely he wasn’t keen on weekend events of any kind in his function room, because the upshot was almost always blocked or cracked urinals in the gents’ toilets. Local lads, he argued, always became boisterous; and damage inevitably ensued.
It was a pity. It’s a lovely 300-year old coaching inn which still has its courtyard; and the hotel’s function room was the best dance hall in the village. The Masonic Hall, the only comparable space for events, was where my new mobile disco Blame It On The Boogie! made its debut in 1999, at a fancy dress ball raising funds to buy Crosby Garrett Village Hall from the county council.
I once supported a local ska band in the King’s Arms; but most live music in Kirkby Stephen took place in a shop on the high street. Rattan and Rush began life as a furniture store, then diversified into eco products and gifts. Eventually, thanks to the enthusiasm of its owners Penny and Paul, it became a remarkable fixture on the folk music circuit.
Once a month they cleared out as much of the stock as they could so that they could accommodate about thirty paying guests. By knocking through into a neighbouring room, they could find room for another thirty or so with restricted view of the tiny stage, just large enough for an acoustic duo or a soloist. Penny and Paul included a meal in the price of the ticket so that they could raise a little more money to pay the musicians’ fees. But it was very much a labour of love and much appreciated by its audiences in an area of the country otherwise bypassed by tours of any kind.
In time Penny and Paul decamped to the Masonic Hall, where facilities for a meal were better and the capacity bordered on the profitable. If a little of the magic of those cramped evenings in the shop was lost, the larger audiences (and toilets) made the folk nights better for everyone. Blame It On The Boogie! went wherever the bookings were, and on a few occasions that was to another fine old coaching inn, the George in Penrith.
Penrith is a proper market town, and a centre for what we used to call the local green welly brigade, the well-heeled country folk of East Cumbria. The George was quite grand and still offered afternoon teas in the nooks and crannies of its oak-timbered lobby, served (I’m pretty sure) by waitresses in black with white aprons.
Its ballroom was upstairs. My first booking at the George was for a Valentine’s Day dance and I was not allowed to bring my equipment in through the lobby and up the grand staircase. That would have lowered the tone. Instead I had to use a narrow service stair which reached the back of the hall from a side lane. The stair was barely wide enough for my PA system, with corners which challenged my bulky light boxes.
I got set up and began to play a few tracks to the empty room to get myself in the mood, when a stern housekeeper strode across the dance floor toward me. In my unreliable memory she wore a tweed suit, and in a future movie of the occasion she will certainly have a hairy wart on her chin. But actually she was simply a smartly turned-out middle-aged member of middle management. “Young man,” she began. (I was 42.)
In those days I dressed for gigs in jeans and a T-shirt with the disco’s logo on it, which I imagined were appropriate work clothes for someone playing pop and rock, and indeed for someone who had just sweated buckets lugging his gear up an awkward flight of steps. But, “Young man,” said the housekeeper, “if you want to work in this hotel again you will dress appropriately.” “But I AM dressed for work,” I protested. “Jacket and tie, young man, if you want to work again.”
I very much wanted to work at the George again; but I was twenty miles from home and five minutes away from the arrival of the Valentine’s Day lovers of Penrith. In a panic I rang my wife, who was looking forward to a quiet evening in without me, and begged her to drive over with the required dress code. Mercifully the early part of the George’s program was a romantic meal. Until my jacket and tie arrived I could stay out of sight so as not to shame the institution, and I was finally ready for work at 8.30pm. “That’s better,” almost-smiled the housekeeper, appearing suddenly at my side like a familiar.
She was right of course, however much I resented it. Most of my gigs were formal occasions and I always wore a jacket and collared shirt after that, although rarely a tie. In spite of that I only worked once more at the George over the next five years. So if you’re listening, my tweedy housekeeping Valentine, this one’s for you: the clean-cut, smart young men of Haircut 100, and their crisp, impeccably tight debut single Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl). (But if that horn section ever wants to work at the George ...)
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