Mother Dearest and the Bear incident.

So we played The Big Untidy at The Rising Sun Arts Centre in Reading. It’s a very appreciative intimate crowd there. They sit and listen intently to the music which is quite refreshing in some ways. I’m not quite used to the … “I’m not going to applaud until the last note drowns from human hearing” vibe but as stated it’s nice that those carefully worded gems you have pondered over for months are finally appreciated by the people sitting in front of you…… then there is Mother Dearest!

She sat herself in the front row, in the middle, so all the solo acoustic performers that play to a sound of a pin drop could witness the full Mother Dearest experience. Whilst melodic masterpieces were twinkling out into the room all you could hear was the crunching off walkers finest crisps coming from MD’s hamster pouched mouth sounding like a regiment of guards in the trooping of the colour!!! All we needed was a bugle (more about that later) to top it off!!! I mean it was so quiet, you could even hear the sound of her unscrewing her mini bottles of wine….all 10 of them!!!

There was a very talented solo acoustic performer that came all the way from deepest darkest Northamptonshire called Lew Bear. He sang a song named after a horse called “Merry Tom Lane” hmmm very good song but really?  a horse called “Lane”!!!! He also sang a song called “Ripples” which was definitely Ripples and not nipples as my lovely 9 year old daughter whispered to us…… So if you are reading this Lew Bear, please except my apology for my Mother and Daughter

So Lew is building up to starting a song his fingers caressing his acoustic guitar all eyes were on this musician who had connected with his audience who were mesmerised by the magical sound he was making….then it happened just as Lew was about to sing Mother Dearest let out a blood curdling burp!!!!! Lew steadied himself from falling backwards of his stool, the whole room looked to the centre where MD sat there and said …”Excuse me!” like a pro Lew carried on his song trying to hold the laughter in , no doubt now knowing that Mother Dearest was definitely on the white wine just from the smell of burp wafting across the floor. Well I thought Ann-Mari was going to have a seizure!!! The rest of us were holding our heads wishing the floor would open up and swallow ….her!

My son Aaron witnessed this event up close…he actually told me that as she lifted her glass to her mouth the renegade burp just slipped out, it actually made her wine bubble!!!

 Aaron also said we did get bugles from MD to complete my trooping of the colour analogy but thankfully that was masked by some more enthusiastic strumming by Lew as a slight botty puff released it’s way to the now outraged audience behind her and rendering them fit to only stare into the distance. as Lew Bear sang a song entitled "Mad old girl" Very apt I thought.!