The band I’m in has three gigs across the weekend – two in Kent, one in the West Country. At this time of year we tend to arrive at venues after dark, which can be disorienting. Later, while trying to establish a rapport with the audience, I’m reluctant to admit that all I’ve seen of their town is a pay and display car park, or to complain that poor mobile reception left me unable to look up interesting facts about the area.
Overall I try to avoid saying too much, but there comes an inevitable moment early in the first set when I have to talk while a guitar change is effected. In order to make these moments seem spontaneous and unrehearsed, we tend to rehearse them not very well. I once forced an audience to pretend to be from Salisbury so I could reuse an anecdote from the previous evening.
After the second show, in Kemsing near Sevenoaks, I drive home. When I arrive my wife is still up, sitting in the kitchen with a visiting friend.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says when I come in.
“I barely am,” I say. “I have to be up and out tomorrow.”
“How was the gig?” the friend asks.
“Fine,” I say. “I got flustered because my banjo wouldn’t stay in tune, and said stupid things.”
“Shut up about your band,” my wife says.
The next afternoon I arrive at South Petherton in the dark, after a three-hour drive. Once again I have no idea where I am, except in relation to the A303. After the sound check we have a brief discussion about who is going to speak and when, but nothing is settled.
“Is this Somerset?” I say. “Are we in Somerset?”
The hall fills. At the appointed hour we take the stage. Between the second and third songs, my inevitable moment arrives. I step up to the microphone, my mind a perfect blank.
“It’s great to be here in South Petherton tonight,” I say. “It brings us one step closer to our dream of playing in North Petherton.”
There is a collective intake of breath, followed by a long, rumbling boo and some hissing.
“I guess that means there actually is a North Petherton,” I say. The boos become louder and more sustained.
“Any North Pethertonians in tonight?” I say. “Maybe don’t raise your hands.”
I mention North Petherton several more times during the first set, each time eliciting catcalls and general derision. I feel I have united the audience in a single purpose, but I also get the sense I’m playing with fire.
During the interval, a local resident tries to explain.
“There’s a sort of ongoing antagonism,” he says. “It’s weird, because North Petherton is 20 miles away.”
“You mean they had to move it?” I say.
“I don’t know,” he says.
My confusion only deepens. It’s not as if the two villages are fighting over a playing field, or the rights to a shared aquifer. I get the impression few of these people have ever met a North Pethertonian in the flesh – it’s at least a 45-minute drive. It seems to me a wholly irrational hatred, based on ignorance, fear and misdirected post.
But the people of South Petherton know how to have a good time. Afterwards they come up to thank us, and to buy our promotional tea towels. They shake our hands as they file out, begging us to return soon.
“This was a good gig,” I say to the guitar player.
“A great gig,” he says.
A man in a dark coat touches my elbow and leans toward my ear. “Seriously,” he says. “North Petherton’s a shithole.”
