Baby shower

An open-air concert I was due to give in Ciudad Jardín in June - June! - became a doubtful proposition when the weather forecast predicted heavy rain on that day, and that day only, following endless weeks of cloudless, blue skies. Still, ever the optimist, I slung my guitar over my shoulder, hopped on the bus and headed over to the venue.

The stage had been set up, but it was beginning to spit with rain. The sound engineer circled his mixing desk protectively, gazing up at the skies, presumably in an attempt to gauge what was coming, though it may have been a plea for divine intervention, probably not helped by the Black Sabbath T-shirt he was sporting.

A few hardy souls clutching umbrellas had turned up by this point and I told the organisers I was game to go ahead if they were, much to the chagrin of the sound engineer whose face, by now, was dripping wet with rain. Or maybe tears.

Anyway, no sooner had we decided to forge ahead than a fork of lightning struck the ground about thirty yards away from the very elevated and very metal stage. Astonished looks were exchanged, heads were shaken and the small team who had assembled the rig set about dismantling it sharpish, wearing rubber gloves and looking very nervous indeed. I apologised profusely to the people who had turned up and headed home, defeated.

By the time I got back to the city centre about twenty minutes later, the skies had completely cleared and we were in balmy summer evening mode once again.

It was such an odd sequence of events: fifteen minutes of a thunderstorm that departed as quickly as it had arrived, at the exact time that we didn't need it to be, in what was, usually, one of the driest months of the year.

I felt bad about it at the time but the good news is we're doing it all again this year (although without the precipitation factor one would hope).

One of the two concerts I'm playing will be in the same place in Ciudad Jardín (the other is in Puerto de la Torre. Please check this paper's What's On section for full details).

With any luck things will go ahead without a hitch this time. Mind you, if it's the same sound engineer and he hasn't forgiven me yet for wanting to plough on with scant regard for the welfare of his mixing gear, anyone present may well be treated to a rather lovely Kermit the Frog-sounding vocal.