Members Blogs
Maria Tarrant's ICC Weblog
Maria is a 10 year member of the Senators Drum and Bugle Corps, she is 25 years old and plays Baritone in the Corps.
Sunday 12th December 2004
3.00pm We were asked to meet at the Nightingale Centre, Eastleigh with everything we would need for the trip, when we arrived Matt Daly handed out the music for “We shall not be moved” and after a quick rehearsal we all boarded the minibus for the journey to Birmingham.
7.00pm Arrived safe and well at the Apollo Hotel in Birmingham, after dropping our bags off in the rooms we headed, in true Senators fashion back down to the bar, to wait for the rest of the “Mini Band” to arrive
11.59pm After a couple of night caps and a curry, we finally decided it was best to head off to bed as we had a big day in the morning, we have to be up at 7.00am for breakfast !! I don’t even get up this early for work, the things I do for band………………
Monday 13th December 2004
7.05am Bleary eyed but I made it for breakfast, and I wasn’t the first down either!! But I managed a quick round of toast.
8.35am We are at the ICC in Birmingham after a few detours and waiting for our final members from Phoenix Coventry to arrive, we have been escorted to the “Artist’s lounge” which is basically a room with some chairs and a few jugs of water, I suppose a mirror with lights round it was a but optimistic.
11.00am We have just finished rehearsals which seemed to go on for hours – (which they did!!) Basically we start off on the stage in a straight line behind a large black curtain. The drums start us off and the curtains lift up and we play the main tune 5 times whilst the Gospel Choir gets into place, we stop whilst they sing the chorus and we join back in to a large crescendo when 2 cannons full of confetti go off. We haven’t seen the confetti but the cannons are LOUD!!!!
12.50pm First performance finished!!! This was for Moben Kitchens it wasn’t the cleanest we have done it as we had some technical problems – we had rehearsed behind the black curtain with some blue lights on, when we did the performance they had turned the lights off so we were in the pitch black, which was very weird and did put us off. Blonde moment (even though I’m not) I hadn’t noticed this although the other 20 people around me had. Cannons were very loud, confetti got everywhere……….no matter how much you prepare yourself for the bang it always catches you off guard, I hope the audience can’t lip read.
4.00pm After we had finished at the ICC we had free time, so after dropping stuff back at the hotel the hungry soldiers went in search of food. We got taxis into Birmingham centre and spent sometime wandering around to find a place to eat; this was turning out to be disastrous as everywhere was full. After going to three different Pizza Huts we made a group decision to find an “All you can eat Chinese restaurant” everyone was enthusiastic for this apart from Kev Dearlove who wanted “Bangers and Mash” – there’s always one isn’t there !. We spent the next 2 hours walking round Birmingham looking for the said Chinese restaurant passing some very dodgy looking ones on our travel but with no joy, in that time we had ended up in some very undesirable areas of Birmingham and one shop in particular which we have all agreed never to mention again! After giving up with the search for Chinese we found a bar that did Bangers and Mash (Kev was happy) and to be honest we were all that hungry we didn’t mind either!!!
11.00pm We have just got back to the hotel after an interesting night out, we had met in the bar for drinks and then proceeded to go for an “All you can eat Chinese” – we were not to be denied!. After a brisk 10 minutes walk we had found Johnny Wongs Cantonese Restaurant, David Fletcher took charge of proceedings with his right hand man John McNamara as we were given the dilemma – “You can order what you like on the menu – you leave anything – You pay for it!!” So military precision was taken in ordering the correct dishes and making sure nothing was left over, the water and belt idea worked a treat and I would just like to thank those who “took one” for the team. Upon leaving Stella the manager gave us all free tickets for “Spearmint Rhino” a nice club in Birmingham, I luckily found out it was another undesirable establishment before we decided to enter the premises.
Tuesday 14th December 2004
7.00am We are all packed and ready to leave the hotel for the final time; we have rehearsals again this morning and 2 performances.
12.45pm We have just finished the first performance for Sharps bedrooms, it was much better and everything went to plan. When we arrived this morning we had to go to more rehearsals as they had changed the format slightly, this took us about an hour and then we had free time in the Artists lounge which was nice and we had a laugh just being chilled out. We are all getting more confident performing the routine and we had a fantastic response from the audience, when the cannons go off it is so loud and we get covered in confetti.
1.25pm We have just been brought down for some food, they have laid us on some sandwiches and chips and we have another performance at 2.30pm.
3.45pm That’s it! We have just left Birmingham in the minibus which must be breaking the law we are packed in here like sardines and we are on the way home. The last performance was fantastic everyone was cheering when the cannons went off and we got drenched in confetti, we all came off the arena really happy that it was a job well done; we took some photos outside as the “Senators Mini Band” performed for the last time.
To sum up
It has been a fantastic few days, totally not what I expected – everyone got on great and we had a fun time performing the piece although I do not want to hear that tune for a long long time!! If anyone gets the chance to do something like this again I would really recommend it.
I can now look forward to Xmas and to starting my final year with the Senators in the New Year – 2005 is going to be very special!!!
Maria Tarrant
