Gorleston – the land of the strange games

On the tail end of the the activities week in Hawkwell we were setting up again on the saturday, this time for an alternative halloween gig in Gorleston. The local youth group had invited us down …(or up to be more geographically correct) and had named the evening Treat with Taste. Much to annoyance of Laura and I as people always seem to forget about Diversion! The set up was joined by the set up of the youth group who began to black out the room with black material around the walls. This added a huge amount to the aesthetics of the room, however really frustrated me because it just got in my way when i was trying to set up! This did make it quite a stressful set up because i couldnt do things the way i wanted to in the order i wanted to, especially because the youth group borrowed our only ladder… oh dear. This gig was musically one of my favourites because there was a stage where the drums and decks were set up for Keel and Lar Roche, and the rest of us were on the floor which looked awesome. But the best bit about this set up was that my amp was behind my head on the stage, next to Keel. So not only could i hear myself better than i had ever done before in a gig because my ears were being blasted by my guitar, but i had the opertunity to improvise a little too because i could hear what i was doing properly The reason i cant normally hear myself as well as this is because i dont have a moniter that is specifically mine. Andy, Becca and Keel all have In Ear moniters, La Roche and Jack both have speaker moniters that face them on the floor. Which leaves me normally with just my amp and a bit of Jacks moniter because i stand near him. Laura and I performed our sketch Gnome, which i will describe in another blog post, which was marked by the fact that i correctly said “this is how we bid” rather than “this is how we vote” which is the mistake that i had always previously made! A readsim as my A level drama teacher would say This sketch is a short one, so Laura and I hosted the gig really and did all the crowd warming up and stuff, which is always really fun. We also hosted the games that were played, our “messy” one (proved very clean after some of the games that the youth group played) which is a race that basically involves a couple volunteers sticking an after 8 on thier forehead and then trying to get it in thier mouth without using thier hands. This gig we also played the conveyor belt game which involved the winner of the previous game staying up and having to remember 15 items modelled by the members of the band. This was funny to play, and Laura emerged afterwards with a choice of two prizes, a choclate box shaped prize wrapped up, or a splodge of a prize wrapped up badly with paper… the kid could then decide which one she wanted. The chocolate box one was empty and the contents were in the badly wrapped prize… the audience cottoned on to the fact that we were trying to trick her and so she went with the splodge of a prize. Just a little way of making the point of looks arnt everything. Bit of a silly game though! The Youth Group wanted to split our concert up with some of thier own games, that were traditionally messy and just a bit crazy… so i thought it would be rediculas to write an acount of what we did without mentioning these games. The kids there were split into 6 teams at the start of the night, and these teams were against each other in all the games. The first game involved one member from each team having peanut butter spread all over thier face and then the rest of the members of the team throwing marshmellows at thier faces to see if they would stick… the team with most marshmellows then won… I was like, ok… fair enough. in my innocence thinking that would be it… nope. pretty much took a turn for the worse after that with a game that involved spitting a peice of bannana across the room. Then spreading a plastic sheet out on the floor, covering it with mince sauce, tomato ketchup, mustard and other sauces and getting one team member to race another across it on thier bellies pushing a dead fish with thier noses… Im gonna let that one sink in abit… Do you see how it was messy?! Haha it smelled nasty and was very entertaining to watch The last game they played however really pushed the boat out. it even pushed the limits of basic human rights im sure. It was called Vomit Spit. Would you like me to go on? … ok. basically they had filled a paddling pool up with porridge and water and various bits and pieces to create a sick looking like mixture. and it did look exactly like that. At this point both becca and i had decided that games like this would never happen in the respectable Shires of the south!! The game was for one member of each team to dunk thier face in the mixture and collect as much as they could in thier mouth and then transfer it to a bucket by thier team by spitting it out again… the team with the most “vomit” in thier bucket at the end of the game won… oh boy. anyway. we were fed very well so was a good night out. Scotland next! Much love

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~ by benjaminjamesread on November 8, 2009.