Me and Dave know a top lad called Dean. Dean’s sister is the lead singer in a band. The band were playing a gig at The Wheatsheaf, the closest pub to my house but one that I don’t visit often enough as none of my friends live near it. So this gig had to be done.

Dave came to mine for a bit and we left the house and stepped into the rain. Oh the rain. It was like God had thought “here you are everyone, have some rain. And while we’re at it, have some more rain on top”.

It took about 10 minutes to get to the pub although a good 2 of these were spent waiting for a car to decide if it wanted to turn into the road we were trying to cross. I shouted “today please George”, he got the message and turned. I’m usually quite patient but not when it is the back of my neck rather than my throat that’s getting wet.

We made the pub and there was a decent turn out which was good to see. Dave found out that his coat wasn’t as waterproof as he thought it was. If they had been holding a wet t-shirt contest in there he would have been straight onto the final ballot without the need of support from 100 Tory MP’s. My beanie hat was 4 times heavier than when I put it on. I should have weighed myself before and after removing it and taken pictures of the scales. Lavish me with Slimmer Of The Week awards.

The band are called Vibrant Ducks, they impressed at a recent open mic night in the pub and were booked to play a full gig off the back of that. They were playing Red Hot Chili Peppers as we arrived, this gave way to a marvellous rendition of The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry which was followed up by a bit of 2 Door Cinema Club (I think). The male guitarist instructed folks to go up the bar, buy drinks, get drunk then come up the front to dance. I can cope with these kind of instructions.

The Wheatsheaf is a real ale pub and I alternated between the Wye Valley H P A and the AJ’s Ales S P A. It was a shame they didn’t have Fuller’s E S B on as then I could have had a game of Countdown with my beers.

The music continued and it was great to hear female vocals performing songs like Ed Sheeran’s Castle On The Hill, and Sam Fender’s Hypersonic Missiles. Even a dog turned up in time for the latter.

The band took a break and I noticed that the settee by the fire was vacant. Knackered following a busy week at work I lured Dave over to it. After a short while Dave said “the band are starting up again”. “I’m staying here for a bit longer. I can still hear them so that’ll do” I replied. The band were clearly having none of this and launched into A Certain Romance by Artic Monkeys. Well there was no way I was sitting down for that. It’s such a great song. Is it my favourite of theirs? Hard to say. Being asked what your favourite Arctic Monkeys song is, is like being asked what’s your favourite bacon? Anyway the song went down an absolute storm and rightly got the loudest cheers of the night.

Other highlights were Naive by The Kooks and Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis. The latter going down so well it was repeated as the final song after the audience were invited to nominate what they wanted to hear again. A few shouts of Sex On Fire were ignored.

This was a superb night, totally my kind of music all evening. It was like listening to Absolute Radio’s playlist with a female vocalist. If you want to see Vibrant Ducks they are next on stage at The Station in Cannock on October 30th in a gig raising money for Prostrate cancer.

Right, as I’ve still got A Certain Romance in my head I’m gonna make a cup of tea and then blast that out. And the good news is that my beanie hat is nearly dry.