20th Century Music Group

Billets and a Late Brunch

One of the advantages of holding the 25^th Anniversary Gig in Sheffield was that Tony Simons had a large network of friends, attached to Christ Church, Fulwood, who either remembered the band, or had been in Cambridge, or were just curious to know who these crazy rocking fortysomethings were. Over a short time, about six households offered their spare bedrooms for anything from one person to a whole family, including the kids. If you're one of those households, may we say a big "Thank you" again for your kindness!

Well, on the morning of the 27th November, 2004, carloads of people started turning up outside the venue, and Tony Simons was there to shuttle folk between his house and the church complex. Dave and Bee Hobson turned up first with two of their four children, Andrew and Claire; but Claire and her boyfriend had to leave that afternoon to catch a train to Wakefield! Mark Allchorn turned up shortly afterwards. Thereafter, it was a bit of a rush. Graham and Fiona Gill came with their children Emma and Tom; while Simon Matthews brought all three of his children: Nick, Jamie and Izzy. At some point, John Roe and Michael Stone made it to the venue and started setting up. Tony introduced everyone to Penny, and their children Charlotte and Jeremy.

The idea had been to feed people on a rotating basis, as they came in, for which a kind of brunch had been foreseen; but folk had arrived so early that the main crew went off to the church complex to set up and start practising before lunch. At around 1pm, we knocked off for soup and rolls. Penny had laid on a delicious combination of spicy lentil soup and a celery and stilton soup, with warm crusty bread (see above - the bowls are all empty). Early conversations over the meal focused on: "Well, you don't look that old, really" and suchlike. Tom Gill got stuck into Jeremy Simons' train-sets upstairs in his bedroom.

Buffet and Time for Family

The next occasion, when the 20th Century family could get together, was over supper. For this, Penny had prepared cold meats, cheese, salad and more delicous warm breads. There were some calls for the soups to come back to the table, too! Here, it was nice to see the families getting down and talking about old times and what we were doing now. John's wife Lianne had stayed up in Edinburgh with their kids; likewise Mark's wife Amanda was looking after the young Allchorns back home.

The kids all got together for a round of UNO, the card game, and soon bonded very well. The older ones were looking forward to participating in the main concert event. While Nick Matthews, Simon's eldest, was already into sound desks and lighting, so hung about with the bigger kids (Michael and John) and their gear, Andrew Hobson and Charlotte Simons were going to videotape the whole event on hand-held camcorders. At a given moment, Bee Hobson rushed off to the station, to give Claire and boyfriend a lift, to catch their train.

After the gig had finished, we all returned for drinks and, if anyone was still hungry, more food from the buffet. We found out that Graham had been involved in the MultiMap project, digitizing maps at multiple scales. John had moved from Cambridge to Oxford, and thence to a chair of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania State. Mark continued to educate and entertain schoolchildren in King's Langley as a history teacher. Michael had moved from the BBC to a research position in the Psychology department at Cambridge, working on digital hearing aids, amongst other things. Simon had acquired his family's art business, EasyArt, in London and had taken things forward into the digital age, as well as supplying original canvases and prints. Tony had moved into speech research from schoolteaching and then became a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield. Dave had increased responsibilities as a GP in Worthing.

Sunday Dinner in the Peak District

Eventually, tired and happy people found their way to the various hosts' homes and retired for the night. The following morning, it was good to see the families represented at the morning service at Christ Church. We thanked Martin Bell, who managed the whole complex, for allowing us to use the church buildings. He had actually sneaked in to the concert, towards the end, to see how things were going. He was pleased with the way everything had been properly taken down and the church restored to its proper function.

For lunch, the whole crew set off for a delightful spot in the Peak District. There is a lovely walk from Grindleford station towards Hathersage, where, if you turn left, you can find the Plough Inn, a pub which serves hearty restaurant-quality food and always has a wide selection of dishes, including venison and wild boar. We had booked a large table and managed to have a sit-down meal for the whole of the crew, plus one or two of the hosts. At this event, Dave Hobson proposed a toast to 20th Century and the organisers of the event, Tony and Penny Simons. The gang had decided to treat the Simons family to this meal, which was a nice surprise.

By the mid-afternoon, everyone was well-fed, feeling rather dreamily exhausted and starting to think about getting back to the different parts of the world, where we had come from. Mark was first to head off, and the others gradually departed. The following week, Penny received the biggest bunch of flowers ever, from Simon Matthews (old romantic at heart, that he is!) And the following week, some rave reviews of the 25th Anniversary Gig appeared on the website of the Computer Science Society, at the University of Sheffield. The students had clearly thought it was really good! So, we old fortysomethings could still rock it with the rest of 'em.