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 Last Friday 20th September 2019, and the Big Mac gig at Merthyr Labour Club. We arrived early in the main hall and were the first of the earlycomers, about which, by the way, I know that the word does not exist but I’ve been reading Mike’s poems and a little of his inventiveness with words has rubbed off on me. Sitting there and looking around, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance, not between Mike and Wogan but between the main hall and the ballroom of a cruise liner, despite the absence of portholes and the view through the windows being not of the sea but of Merthyr town centre. But still, we did have a ball as the evening progressed.

It’s interesting when you sit there and await an exciting event, as if the anticipation somehow reaches out to the event itself: a bit like waiting on the Titanic for a different kind of show. And there they were, the band, and it all changed, as if we’d been rescued, and we surged onto the dance floor in wave after wave of noise and excitement, as if our captive selves had been fretting at the bit. And then, the icing on the cake and the ice on the deck, the tidal wave finale of the last few numbers when the band really let rip.

Mike reminds me not of Terry Wogan, except at a distance of about five nautical miles, but of the band leader on the Titanic and their final gig when they hardly missed a beat as the deck slid away from them. Some say that they were playing “ Nearer my God to Thee”, which doesn’t sound great to dance to, but with Big Mac it would have to be “Mustang Sally”, and we’d still be dancing as we slid along and out and down.

When your whole body is convulsed by the beat of the band, and the sheer joy of it, that stern captain on the bridge of your brain is not entirely in command; and the glory of it is not that you believe yourself to be unsinkable, as if it could never happen to you, but that the letting go sets you free. It would bring this voyage to a perfect end, with Mike and the band at full crescendo in the mad moon light, and Mustang Sally galloping towards the rails, and the funnels crashing down, and the ship upending, and all hands reaching above the waterline, not drowning but waving at the stars.

23Peter Gainey, Mike McNamara and 21 others

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• Mike McNamara

  

  Not only elegant but eloquent too, Lawrence!

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  • Laurence Peddle

    Author

    Thanks Mike. I'm learning from you, or trying to, to let the words fly, and to be freer on the wing --and a prayer.

    

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• Ceri Brookes

  We all loved the whole performance last Friday night and now really looking forward to you playing at our wedding in October 2020  

  Matthew Gavin Brooke's

  

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