“Oh bloody Nora,” George moaned out loud to himself.

Then in the privacy of his own thoughts, ‘Surely this only happens in movies where you have a massive row with some douche on the train while going to an interview, and then you get to the interview and it’s the same twat sitting behind the desk?’ He wondered if there was any point even going in. As he sat there, bemoaning his bad luck, a man wearing a navy-blue blazer and what looked like cricket trousers came out of studio six, leapt into the BMW, and attempted to reverse out, past the van. It seems the driver did not recognise George’s van quite so readily as he had recognised the car. Odd really. How many beaten up, clapped out, red LDV convoys were there in the arse-end of beyond? Of course, George told himself, it’s not as though BMW drivers think about anything but themselves, so it makes sense.

George watched in ever growing fascination, and then actual horror as the driver managed to do everything wrong that you could do wrong. All he needed to do was reverse and steer left to curve around the van until he was parallel on the other side of it and facing the other way, then he could drive straight out. ‘My mum could do this,’ George mused. In fact, I reckon ‘Nanna’ could do this and she’s blind… and dead!’

The BMW was now hard pressed against trees behind it and inches from the van’s bumper in front. George could see there was about three inches of wiggle room either way. It was going to take about 15 manoeuvres to extricate the car from here. He turned the ignition key, flicked the steering hard over to the right, moved forward as far as he could and glanced back. The other driver now had a clear run to get out. He did so, spinning gravel everywhere and then wound down the window and gave a two-fingered salute to George.

“You’re fucking welcome you utter tosser!” he yelled at the, already departed, utter tosser.

“Who’s a tosser?” a human had emerged from somewhere. George had to assume it was a human because it had bipedal locomotion and was communicating using human language. It also resembled a number of other things in trivial ways. A compost heap, for example, since a smoky haze lingered about it. Also a … George visualised a Hungarian Puli although what he thought was… ‘one of them rastafarian dogs’… in that it had a mop of black, densely curled hair which more or less completely obscured the face.

“Oh, just some tosser.” Since further explanation seemed to be needed, he added,  “An ungrateful prick in a BMW.”

“Oh!” Behind the black curls a face of sorts appeared to smile. “King Midas!” and the face laughed as the curls were tossed back. “Are you George then?”

“Yeah. Umm.. Steve?”

A hand removed a roll-up cigarette from amongst the black curls as another swirl of smoke arose from the mound, and George wondered how the hair was not on fire. The other hand was thrust out to shake.

“Yeah man, come in, let’s get your gear unloaded. Did you bring a P.A? I’ve got the backline set up in here but it’s not that great.”

George entered through the heavy padded door into a vast rehearsal room that was big enough to accommodate a small orchestra.

“I got this room because it’s nice and big, so we don’t deafen ourselves with the volume up full blast.”

George scanned the room; a pair of mismatched sofas occupied one corner, a drum-kit, with associated drummer, who nodded a wordless greeting, occupied one wall. Panning to what George had to assume was the bass player, since he was standing beside a six-foot-square expanse of reflex cabs. A Yamaha keyboard was next.

The keyboard player grinned and said, “Alright?”

“What do you think?” Steve asked. “Use the backline or bring your P.A. in?”

George looked at the speakers in the room. Peavey twelve inchers, not going to have much bottom end, but they wouldn’t be putting the drums through it. “Should be alright with this.” George said, contemplating the prospect of lugging his fifteens and twin twelves in, plus the time taken rigging up the amps and mixing desk.

* * * * *

Half an hour later after they had warmed up with a quick run through of ‘I’m Back’ during which George could not hear himself over the blast of the Gibson-through-twin-Marshall-stacks and the rib-crushing punch of an eight-by-twelve over four-by-fifteen bass combo, he decided to lug the P.A. in after all. Beers were handed round and the fizz of cans opening could be heard over the sound of grunting and swearing.

“King Midas?” George said to Steve, dredging up an earlier passing comment.

“Eh?”

“That tosser in the bee-em, you called him King Midas.”

“Oh, him. Yeah, he’s an … Im-Press-Aah-Rioh,” he said, putting on a plummy voice for that one word. “He has a production company; puts on musicals in the West End; owns shares in a couple of big theatres round here; that sort of thing.”

“Surely that’s not his actual name though?”

“Nah, but he’s never had a flop. He did that musical, ‘You’ll Like This’, about Paul Daniels?”

“Oh yeah, what was that song?” George sang a bit, “Get ‘em in the bunco, get ‘em in the bunco, bunco bunco boo-oo-ooth.”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Steve confirmed.

“Fuck me that was shit!” George said, thinking guiltily about the copy of the original cast recording that his mum played until the laser had practically burned a groove in the CD.

“Well as shit as it was, he made a fortune from it, and he hasn’t looked back since. He lives a couple of miles from here in a massive mansion, but he still uses this place because it’s close by and studio six is set up just for him.”

“There’s no bleeding justice in this world,” George grumbled.

* * * * *

Finally rigged up ready to go with a few thousand extra watts of amplification they tried again.

After a few bars it was evident they would need to mic up the drum-kit as well. The door was wedged open while Steve stood outside in a blue haze smoking another roll-up. This one was larger than normal, and the aroma was subtly different too. Birds twittered in the trees. George came outside for some air while John fiddled around with drum mics.

“What d’you think they’re singing about?” he mused.

“Who?”

“The birds.”

“What, Eight Miles High, or Turn, Turn, Turn?”

“Not The Byrds, I’m talking about them feathery buggers in the trees.”

“Oh! Well, they’re singing about the same thing nearly everyone sings about.”

“What’s that then?”

“Come on love, gizza-shag!” He laughed loudly and took a lengthy drag on the cigarette.

“Yeah, I s’pose that’s pretty much it.” George wasn’t too confident discussing the band as he was meant to be auditioning. He did wonder if the other members were really any good. Steve was clearly a top-notch guitarist, and he had the look of Jerry Morcock down to a tee. But the rest of them didn’t really seem to be all that steeped in ‘Suns’ lore or have the feel and sound of the original band. Not that they weren’t good. Just they weren’t really right. He kept quiet. He would wait to see if he would be allowed to join.

“You finished mic’ing up them drums yet?” Steve called into the studio.

A loud reverberating thwack of a bass drum coming from the speakers was answer enough, and Steve followed George back in. It took a few minutes to get the levels right and then they tried again.

The volume in the room was ear-splitting as they ran though Wild About Love, and got three quarters of the way through Crumpet before having to stop and discuss the stops and starts.

“Did you want to take a shot at playing Sol Invictus?” George wondered.

“Nah, I wasn’t planning to include it in the set.” Steve didn’t sound as if he was joking either.

“Seriously? I think people would expect it.” George countered. He also made a mental note of the choice of tense. ‘wasn’t planning to’ rather than ‘we don’t’. As though this was a completely new band forming, rather than the established gigging band he had been led to expect. ‘Paid gigs waiting’ the advert had said. He half heard Steve’s reply.

“Everyone plays it, which is why we’re gonna steer clear of it and stick to mostly the first two albums. Supernova and Second Sun.”

“But, Sol Invictus is their best album. Everyone agrees on that.”

“I don’t.” And with that, Steve played the opening chords to Sleeper Blues and the rest of the band just instinctively joined in.