St Georges Square

The alarm was set quite early as we had to be at the other end of town to form up (corner of Elizabeth and John St) and be 'dressed' by 8:45am (a good 20 minute walk from where we were staying. Thankfully, Garry took the instruments up again in the car. I had the usual problem of working out what I absolutely needed to carry in my little black bag that was strung over my shoulder under my jacket. It was also chilly so we kept our jackets on until the very last minute - our uniforms consisted of a black long sleeved shirt.

The inspection over (checking uniform, ranks, straightness of lines, sharpness of attending to commands and a pile of other things), we had to then report to the diagonally opposite corner of the park to form up and step off. Step off time was scheduled for 9:18, but of course ended up being later than that. Many bands opted to do a fancy turn where we had to turn right, but we were happy that we all ended up back in our ranks after going round into the next street. Funnily enough, although we were supposed to go back and do the repeat, we all seemed to forget, which was a good thing. John (drummer) started us back off again.

After we had finished, we made our way back to Garry's car, stopping here and there to talk to other people we bumped into along the way, as well as watch and clap the bands still in the parade. We took our instruments back to the car and picked up our jackets before heading back down to the mall, again stopping in various places to watch the other bands. Rae was getting in serious need for a coffee, so eventually made our way back to the Mall and to Coffee Republic which was thankfully open today! Told Jill where we were and were joined by them. When we got there lots of tables were empty, and by the time they had arrived, there wasn't a seat to be found. We chatted again to them while they ordered a coffee, and made our way up the mall to reach the others.

This time we had a lovely sandwich a couple of doors up from Banjos and sat chatting for a while. we made our way back to Penny Royal eventually, Rae deciding we had time to do some laundry before our rehearsal at 3pm

Everyone seemed to have settle a little in this rehearsal, so we were hoping for great things in the morning! Wandered over to the King's Bridge for a couple of drinks with Ken, then Jill suggested we eat at a place called Levee - a 20 minute walk along the waterfront. Nice food and good pizzas as wellRead more