Revelling In My Time: Uke Jams and Steam Engines in the Night.

I raved on about Shoreham's Uke @ the Duke jam before so I won't need to elaborate again.

Shoreham's quite a trek for me and I have to wear a special wheeled big metal suit to get there.
Standing room only when I arrived
I always feel like a bit a cheap-skate at uke-jams because I don't have a printer and so I can't print out the song books to take along which means I have to 'rubber-neck' over other people's shoulders.
On a more positive note, it also means I have to socialise, this is no bad thing and one of the important aspects of uke-jamming for me.

Clubs and interest groups can be a bit of a social minefield.
Why?
Because one assumes, or at least I assume, that if one shares the same interest as someone so 'into' something they join a club to pursue whatever interests they have then they must be jolly wonderful people.
How can they not be wonderful people?
They enjoy basket weaving, I enjoy basket weaving, I'm a nice person, therefore they must be nice people, is the false assumption I'm trying to illustrate here.

Let me tell you, I've had to spend time in the company of complete bastards because I made this basic false assumption and, in my experience, running clubs have the highest proportion of bastards to people you might actually want to spend your hard-earned leisure time essentially running through the streets in your underwear with.

Phew, that took some typing.

Anyway, suffice to say that the uke scene doesn't seem to be like that.
Maybe bastards are allergic to ukuleles or perhaps ukuleles are somehow bastard resistant.
Who can say?

Any way, here's a short film about balsa wood:

I had to describe it as a short film about balsa wood because YouTube starts to ask all sorts of awkward questions about copy-write if I indicate it might contain a musical performance.

The observant will notice that virtually everybody in the pub was flailing away at a uke.

I think I heard there were around fifty ukers in total.

Some of them even had beards!

Uke jams just don't care.

I enjoyed myself.

Later, on the drive home, I pulled up at a set of traffic lights in Worthing.

Across the road, travelling in the opposite direction, was a monstrous steam engine breathing fire and smoke.

I leapt from the car, having first activated the hazard warning lights of course, and ran down the street after it prep-ing my camera.

After about 100 yards it was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to catch up with it so I stopped and got what footage I could:

Then I noticed something.

I'd really put in an immense effort to try and catch the engine, full on sprint, but I wasn't out of breath, not even slightly.

The last time I tried jogging, which I hate with a passion, I made it about half that distance before I was unable to breath.

Bless the NHS and their wonderful drugs!