Summary: .We have had some bad storms here but nowhere near as bad as the States.....I was once in Florida during one of the annual hurricanes and they were appealing for the public to donate money to help those in the south who had lost their homes etc.....I brought this up the next day by the swimming pool and enquired as to why they are asking the public for donations when they are spending millions 100 miles up the coast sending rockets into space....some of which don't leave the ground....could the Kennedy Space Centre not solve the problem instantly?....well...I nearly cause an international incident.....they didn't see i that way....as they told me with a John Wayne stance....which to me summed up the USA mentality. 2.This Brexit nonsense just goes to prove what a nation of followers we are....we have voted out and now we are getting cold feet because we'll have to go it alone....SO WHAT!!....the majority of us obviously need someone to tell us what we can and can't do....get with it folks....if you accept plonkers like Ambrose Mogg and Jeremy Corbyn etc telling us what we can do there is no hope whatsoever.....they should teach kids in school the art of independence and belief in yourself.....personally I have never automatically accepted newspaper headlines or ANYTHING politicians say.....and all we get is "Oh it was different in your day"....no it wasn't...like the rest of us I got £4 a week and turfed up half of that at home but I went for it from the start....and if I can do it anyone can. 3.What a lot of folk seem to lack is imagination....take the music business for example....like a lot of guys my age I left school and formed a beat group....but there were so many at the time that it wasn't easy getting decent gigs so I looked for a gap in the market and that was strict tempo....no-one except the old dance bands were doing it and they were past their sellby date....so I learnt all the standard quicksteps and waltzes etc and combined it with sixties ..thus we could entertain across the board and as a 4 piece we were cheaper than a dance band 7 piece...and as we played anything that was required...we were in demand....and when the sixties era came to an end we just carried on........................the point being we were not BETTER than everyone else we were different because we filled a gap.............that is what you have to do to survive....it's called imagination. 4.There have been many band anecdotes over the years ... most of which are unrepeatable...but one which stands out and explains the mentality of the audience you are playing to happened at a Masonic function we were doing....some bloke came up to me in the break and asked if we played Hotel California....to which I explained wasn't part of our repertoire....so then comes the "Can't you have a go?".....so realising his limited knowledge of music I changed the subject and informed him that I had seen The Eagles live in Huddersfield.....then he comes out with "I was there.........bit suspect though aren't the?".....I had to know so I said "Why's that?"....wait for it....."Because they had a row of different guitars on the stage...which means they can't play in different keys"....I said to my bass player "NOW I have heard everything"..........The Eagles are up there playing the finest top of the range instruments to get the required sounds assuming the audience will be well impressed.....but what they are ACTUALLY thinking is they can't play in different keys......priceless. 5.And talking about finding the gap in the market....I used to write songs for my Welsh mate Paul Damian who was a professional cabaret artist......we used to meet up on a Monday and discuss our weekend gigs over a cup of coffee.....he asked me if I could write a novelty song for him.....I casually said we could teach the world to say that long village name in Anglesey....I then stopped sipping my coffee and realised what I had said.....I made him recite the word over and over again....kissed him on top of his head and said "THAT'S IT!!!....GENIUS"...within a week I had written and recorded the song with Paul teaching the world....sent a copy to Lady Di at the Palace to help her with her Welsh which made headlines in The Daily Star....got it on local radio which led it to be played on the World Service....it even got a Radio 1 play....I then organised an outlet in the village to sell it to the tourists which took off....it is now on YouTube approaching 2 million hits.....like I say ... it's all about imagination...and here it is.
