Sunday, 1 November 2015	INDEX
Sweetchunks
Saw Sweetchunks at the Barge, Gillingham, and felt deeply privileged. They are a sort of Bonzo Dog Do Dah band for the 21st century. Some compared them to the Mothers, and you could see where they were coming from. Completely insane (no-one should do that with their voices) but somehow friendlier and more house trained than the Bonzos. You know they won't set fire to the stage whatever they say!
	It was a night which had started with a constant procession of kids knocking on the door. Trick or treat is big in Chatham, Medway. Dangerous, I thought, as most street activities in Chatham are! No doubt their parents were hovering somewhere in the background, but it reminded me of when I was 11 or 12 years old and a scout. At the time they did Bob A Job, a thing which has long passed into history.
Even then, we were encouraged to go out in pairs, but I'm not quite sure what a couple of 11-year-olds could do locked in with a monster! Fortunately, I never met any monsters though I do remember we had to work hard for our bob. I seem to recall a lot of shoe polishing, probably because when asked what sort of job we could do for a bob, that was the suggestion we made. Bloody hard work it was. A bob is now 5p, what may soon be the smallest unit of currency if Britain follows Ireland in abolishing the 1 and 2 unit coin. And of course two people had to earn that bob! There was no minimum wage in those days.
Posted by Jonathan Brind.
INDEX	Sunday, 1 November 2015