11th May 2002 - Grand Shield
Adjudicator: Nicholas and Robert Childs
Test Piece: Checkmate, Bliss arr Eric Balll
Venue: Winter Gardens, Blackpool
The weekend started off on the Friday night, when we learned that the hotel we had planned to rehearse in was closed due to a stomach bug. We had already made the decision not to stay over in Blackpool, but to make the trip early on the Saturday morning to save money. We also 'lost’ one of our front row cornets for the Friday night rehearsal, when he got stuck in traffic. Not good omens really…
Early Saturday morning we loaded the bus up to leave and, after picking up various players on route, arrived in Blackpool for about 9am. Soon after getting to the town, some of the players who had opted to go by car phoned us with warnings about the practice room. The hotel that was closed had rearranged the room for us, but neglected to tell the new hotel why we wanted it. The room was therefore assumed to be somewhere for us to 'mill about in’ whilst we were not playing, and so had no chairs, and was very small.
When we arrived at the hotel Andy Riley, band manager extraordinaire, took over sorting the room out, and within half an hour we had been through various options, including another room at the same hotel, playing stood up or playing on the beach (ok, so I made the last one up). We finally ended up going back to the hotel where our principal cornet player was staying, and invading their bar. It was a bit of a squash, and an extremely dull acoustic, but it served its purpose.
The draw came through as we were practising, from a very apologetic contest secretary, to say that we had drawn number one. We ran through the National Anthem, got changed, and then went straight to the Winter Gardens. After dumping our instrument cases we then moved directly to register, and then went onto the stage to set up the percussion equipment. As I see it, the only advantage of playing number one is for percussionists – there is much less pressure to set the stage up.
We set the stage up, played the National Anthem, and then played the test piece. Apart from a minor blip in the flugel part, it was a good performance, and we were certainly happy with it. Everything seemed to go in as planned, and the bell was even together with the band in the middle movement.
We then got back on the coach, got changed back out of our uniform, cleared up the practice room and then went our separate ways to wait for the results.
The final results were:
1. Cwmaman 2. Besses o’ th’ Barn 3. Flowers 4. Aveley & Newham 5. Ransome 6. Fishburn 7. Sellers International 8. Kibworth 9. J.A.G. Mount Charles 10. ntl Skelmanthorpe 11. BT 12. Seindorf Beaumaris 13. Bodmin 14. Newtongrange 15. Rothwell Temperance 16. Ashton-under-Lyne 16. Peter Hawke Garages Lindley 18. WingatesWe were disappointed to come this low down, and we are not sure how we managed it. It is interesting to note that most of the bands that played early come in the bottom half of the results, so perhaps there is benefit to be gained from playing later in the afternoon.
The band were very philosophical about the result, and impressed onlookers with their attitude. We put this disappointment behind us and now look forward to the All England Masters contest in two weeks time, and to a more, er, 'interesting’ piece of music, at least from a percussion perspective.
Big thanks to:
- Anna, for stepping in and playing flugel when our regular flugel player had to go off to work abroad.
- Lucy, for coming in at the last minute to play timps, and doing a sterling job on very little rehearsal.
- Gibbo and Desert Head, for coming in and helping out again.
Tim Sawyer
Percussion
12th May 2002
