Fairfield Halls

These days my time is filled with record producing and composing rather than singing but occasionally I do dust off a long dress not to mention a pair of ageing and rusty, but still serviceable, vocal chords.  They were put to use at Fairfield Halls last week for a Last Night of the Proms concert. For those of you who have not been to the venue before, BEWARE.  Strange forces are at work. Last time I did a concert there, a good few years back, the zip on my dress went just before I went on stage and I had to ask the stage manager to help. James also had a bad experience there when he left the music for 2 of the pieces in his dressing room and had to guess how they started, how many beats in the bar there were, and guess when the pieces were about to end, lest he was left waving at a silent orchestra like a fool.

Well, last week my zip broke AGAIN. Please excuse the excessive use of capitals, but you couldn’t make it up. Luckily the conductor had asked me to bring 2 dresses, one for each half. Just before I went on stage I felt my dress go ‘loose’. It was one of those strapless evening dresses where a good tight, zipped up bodice is vital for security. Retelling the story now, I am so intensely relieved it happened before I went on stage. I was stuck with the dress on but with my entire back exposed and not able to move the zip back down again. I managed to hoick the back of the dress around so the zip was at the front, thinking that would give me better leverage to get it down. Big mistake. It still wouldn’t move but now the long hole under the broken zip was in an altogether less acceptable place. Eventually I had to rip the zip off the material with 30 seconds to shove on the second dress.

As I said, there are evil spirits at work at the Fairfield Halls.