author: Kevin Whittingham

Boscombe Band continued their journey south towards our final destination of Oslo, arriving in the city of Drammen in terrible weather. Constant rain fell throughout the day (the weather must be preparing for the start of Wimbledon back home next week!) and the cancellation of our planned march & open air ensued.

This allowed all of us to finally stop for a few hours, kick back at the Army hall with biscuits and chocolates, or wander around by the river if brave enough to suffer the cats and dogs falling from the sky. The city itself is celebrating its 200^th birthday this weekend with a massive parade featuring the local corps and their social outreach team. We wish them all the best for their representation of the Salvation Army in this area.

After the relaxing afternoon we were treated to several Pizzas, while Garry continued his role as Quizmaster to assist in passing the time before our concert. Our Bandmaster also had to make an emergency visit to the Shoe Repair shop due to his toecaps starting to fall to pieces. We have concluded that this is due to his uncontrollable desire to dance during pieces like Chassidic Dance, Teach me to Dance & Dance before the Lord. This reminded us of a particular concert back home where he attempted to impress an audience with his interpretation of Riverdance!! Sorry Howard for bringing that memory back .

We arrived at the concert venue, a modern building called Filadelfia, which reminded us of an Army hall rather than the various types of churches we’ve been lucky to visit this past seven days. Maybe the weather had something to do with it, but the unloading & loading of the van has never been as efficient as this evening! A very one sided, but fun competition has been raging all week between the timp 1 team of Mark Forsyth & Kevin Whittingham, and the timp 2 team consisting of Niall Marshallsay & Adrian Whittingham. Of course the timp 1 team has always been removed or loaded first, apart from one rare slip up in Lillehammer! Tonight saw all four bandsmen leaving the platform with much haste to pack instruments away, running back to the stage to carry the percussion to the van. We were so quick that the two timps sat out in the rain for 10 minutes before the van even arrived to load . The aim for the last concert tomorrow night is to take the timps from the platform during the benediction to break our record!

Despite the apparent monsoon raging outside, a healthy sized audience filled the auditorium. This allowed our CD sales team headed by the esteemed Tom Hinchliffe to work their magic sales pitch. He is like Boscombe’s own version of Auntie Wainwright not letting people leave without buying a CD (or multiple discs)! A listener during our tour bought seven CD in one transaction, so hats off to Tom and his team for the sterling work they have put in this past week.

The Band were at the top of their game again with only slight changes to the programme. William Himes' To the Chief Musician rounded out the opening half, which had included Barney playing His Eye is on the Sparrow with some stylish cheeky note bending. Starsky was also on class form in Bravura & the additional percussionists in the congregational song Never Fades the Name of Jesus got up to mischief adding unwritten chimes, cymbal rolls & vibraslap interludes! The small band excelled in Lightwalk, with a smooth cheeky flugel solo from Kev and some jazzy cornet playing from George Lawrence.

The first half had included keeping eyes on the sparrow, but the second half saw Band & audience alike keeping their eyes on the budgie!! The poor bird found itself inside the concert hall foyer (Tom tried to sell it a CD!), and despite attempts to remove it during the interval it reappeared during All Glorious. Flying from lighting rig, to members of the audience during the playing of Ascalon it finally landed plumb on the trombone slide of Wayne Nock! He is used to getting the bird (!) in his role as a police officer but it drew much hilarity that this particular bird had chosen his slide as its choice of perch! Maybe the Band had encouraged its appearance with our trill(s)?! It was left to Howard, with his history of budgie smuggling, to remove the bird safely from the dangerous position of being near to hearing Wayne play his trombone!! I guess in 125 years of banding there have many things witnessed by Boscombe bandsmen, but this low flying visit must be a first.

It was another successful concert on all fronts as we now move onto the capital Oslo. We hope we are doing the Army, SA Banding, God & our Corps proud with what we are attempting to achieve whilst in Scandinavia.