"This one time, at band camp..."

Now, I’m only bringing this up because I’ve been reminded recently of much of the bad behaviour we got up to when we were younger. And after a particularly embarrassing experience at my first ever work do last night (a charity quiz won by the people playing on behalf of the Cornwall Monkey Sanctuary, where the entire room ended up laughing at me when I proved to be the only person other than the quiz master to know the name of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, which hasn’t even been WRITTEN yet), I was reminded of various other embarrassing experiences in my life.

When I was at school it was assumed that the kids playing sport were the cool ones, who messed around and generally got up to the worst behaviour. People who were in band and orchestras however, were seen as freaks, straight-laced, and dull.

Not so.

I remember discussing the various goings on at a band concert with one of the sport team once and leaving him flabbergasted that, contrary to what he thought, band tours and rehearsals weren’t serene paradises of good behaviour. I consumed mammoth amounts alcohol and drugs during my time in the County Youth Orchestra, and indeed, I hold it entirely responsible for creating this well-balanced, pleasant, smiling individual you see before you today.

So anyway, this one time, at orchestra…

We were playing a concert in lovely Lytham St Annes (scene of the hideous “Vom River” incident). Now being a trombonist generally means you’re a bit of a slacker. As a comparison, we played Brahm’s fourth symphony once. The string part consisted of around 120 pages of music, double sided. The trombone part consisted of a single double-sided page (this was actually a bit of a downer when you were going out with one of the violinists, meaning every spare moment together was spent frantically trying to find quiet corners that you could disappear into to do stuff to each other).

Generally however, ladies aside, this meant we had a lot of spare time, which was normally spent at the nearest pub to the venue. In this particular case, we played in the first item in the concert, and then weren’t due to play until right at the end. We estimated the gap would be about an hour, including interval. So, the trombones, the percussionist and the tuba player buggered off for a quick bit of liquid refreshment.

Given the paucity of public houses in Lytham, we improvised as best we could. Cans of McEwen’s export quaffed at great speed in the small cloakroom where the instrument cases were. After about 20 minutes, there was a frantic hammering on the door to the room. Panicking, (given that we were all ostensibly well-behaved, god-fearing children, and our conductor made George W Bush look a picture of tolerance), we hid our beer in the only available place (Big Ian’s tuba case) and opened the door, waiting for the inevitable bollocking.

Instead we were confronted with a red-faced timpanist.

“There’s no fucking interval you daft fuckers!”

Cue mad scrambling over one another to make ourselves presentable and to not be the last person on stage. Happily, after kicking the first trombonist in the hamstrings, I wasn’t the last one back on stage. Scrambling back in under the watchful and glowering eyes of the conductor, we were relieved to find that the harpist was still negotiating into position, so we had a little time to warm up.

We all reached for our trombones, which we always left on our marvellous trombone stands.

Always, except this once.

Queue me looking confused, seeing the others warming up, and uttering…

“I’ve lost me trombone.”

I legged it back off stage to discover that it was neatly packed away in my case, where I’d put it so I could do a little warm up before playing again (yeah, right). Running back on with my trombone in various pieces, and being tripped up mercilessly by Big Ian, who was literally crying with laughter, I settled myself back into place and started rebuilding my trombone. While the conductor continued to stare at me. Like he was carefully weighing up exactly how many bones he could get away with breaking without preventing me from carrying on playing.

Still I had my revenge on Big Ian for laughing. You remember that beer we hid in his Tuba Case? He didn’t…