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Jo Teverton’s weblog – “Batteries Not Included!”
Toynbee School & CGN Finals Weekend
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Saturday 25 March 2006
Woke up at 6.00am so I could be down for breakfast before we left, it was one of those continental breakfasts so I had a bit of everything which set me up for the day pretty much. The Staff had organised Senators t-shirts for everyone to wear as well as our new Senators jackets. It looked really neat seeing everyone wearing them, made us all feel a bit more united too! We got into the mini buses again and set off for an extremely long day ahead. We were going on Prelims at 1.45pm so we had a few hours to rehearse before that. We set up under a shelter near the sports centre, it was home to the local Football Club and they were really helpful and allowed us to use their electric for our electronics.
People kept coming over and watching us, I recognised a few faces from Beatrix who had obviously come to support their colour guard who were also competing, it was a good rehearsal and everyone was ready for Prelims.
1.38pm Backstage just about to go on for Prelims…I’m pretty excited but very nervous at the same time because I’m not sure how long we have to put everything out and it could be a bit of stress. It’s a new surrounding for us and it’s great having a crowd who are unbiased about us for a change. We’ve had a lot of good luck messages from the Corps back home which made me feel really good to know that the rest of the family are behind us, I wish they were all here too :o)
2.06pm Prelims went ok. It was not one of our best performances, getting the Pit stuff on was big time stress which put a downer on it from the start. Shannon and I nearly fell over an electric cable in the Pit which had been set up wrong! It wasn’t a really bad show but there wasn’t any great feelings flying around.
We got changed and waited for the news of the scores. John called us over and he told us that we were in third place which meant we had made the finals in the evening. We had received a 9.2 penalty because we had used battery powered equipment, the torch for the diamond and the siren at the end of the show, we also had 6 members who stepped over the front line at the start of the show. Our prelims score was 79.90 so add on the penalties and that’s a pretty high score.
We were happy about that, but Craig and John were pretty annoyed with themselves for us getting the penalties, they are normally very thorough and this came out of the blue to them. We were all just pleased that we had another chance to perform and put everything right on the night, “batteries not included” became a very used phrase for the rest of our trip.
We had half an hour to get some food and drink before going to rehearse. it was good just having the chance to sit down, it felt like we’d been on our feet all day. I had a really manky hot dog, not quite sure what was inside, I’m hoping it wasn’t real dog!! I took the sausage out and just had the bun!! A lot of people, mainly from our friends, Beatrix came over to speak to us, it was really nice. We were getting comments from everyone saying, ‘Good luck for finals, we hope you win’ and ‘make sure you kick some a**e this time Senators’. It felt really good to get positive comments from people, especially those who had never seen us before, it really gave us all a boost to get the show done and put to bed.
We went back to the car park again, the main aim of this rehearsal was to get the Battery Percussion involved in helping bring the Pit equipment on before we start the show. We unpacked the truck (for about the 8 millionth time) and allocated an instrument to every member and then practised putting everything on, thankfully it was so much quicker, we did it twice just to make sure, that was one stress out the way.
The other aims were to sort out the snare break that went slightly out during prelims and also to get Michelle to play the break-drum 8 counts early in place of the siren. We did both of these no problem, we were definitely ready to tear up the stands and have the show of our lives!!
7.28pm Back stage just about to go on before CGN Finals!, everyone is happy and confident and everyone is stood by their instruments ready to go on. We’ve had our prep talks and we’re ready…
We set up and it was a breeze everyone did what they had to do. We’re ready to go…I have a really good feeling about this one, it’s going to be good. The audience is waiting, and the announcer is finished…..Amanda hits the timps….”The Eindhoven Museum, Jack Siou, world famous jewel thief………..” …HERE WE GO!!!!!!!!
7.40pm WOW!!!! All I can say is, I have not felt that good after a performance in a long, long time! Everyone came off buzzing and we couldn’t help but whoop and yell! We all hugged each other and couldn’t contain our happiness! It was the show of our lives. Everything was perfect, parts that don’t usually go well were amazing! We were on fire. All we could do was smile. We didn’t care where we came now, we finally had a performance we were proud of and nothing else mattered. Thank you so much everyone, without each and every one of you, it wouldn’t have been the same. I love you all!
Now all we had to do was wait for retreat. We lined up for retreat in height order, with Ian and Shannon at the front. We put on the Corps tunics so we were in full uniform which felt really good. There were so many guards around us getting excited and the noise was crazy. They called us in one by one and as we entered the arena we got a good cheer from the crowd. After waiting through many announcements in Dutch, we finally came to the Marching Class results. The announcer said these in English as there were two English units in the class which I thought was really good of him.
The results:
4th - Vintage 79.0 (0.2 penalty)
3rd - Busy Fingers 81.0
2nd - Rhythm Stars 81.8 (0.1 penalty)
1st - Senators 89.6 (no penalties!!!!!)
YES! We had won!!! All the hard work over the last three months had paid off, not only did we have the performance of our lives but we had won the CGN Marching Class Championship, Senators first European title.
We packed the truck and headed back to the hotel were we took over the Bar area, put the CGN Championship flag over the television in the bar and had a really good party to celebrate the fantastic achievement
I won’t bore you with the journey home, suffice to say we all slept most of the way home :-) We arrived back in Eastleigh at 4.30pm safe and sound the end of a perfect weekend.
To everyone involved over the last few months, thank you so much for the hard work and effort every single person has put in. I am so proud to be part of such a great bunch of people whom I can call my family. From the bottom of my heart, I love you all, without you, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. May the success continue into the 2006 Summer show “Queen”.
Jo Treverton xxx
Forever a Senator
