THE PREVIOUS distance record for The Fraudsters was 186 miles to Ingram in Northumberland..... we absolutely SMASHED that with this wedding in Maidstone – 247 miles and one inch from the Fraudcave to The Turkey Mills wedding venue.

Because we'd been bummed by The Hippies and failed to get a luxorious tourbus, this would be the most uncomfortable as well as the longest journey ever – for three of our band at least. For X and for Obi-Wan they were invited to the wedding, being mates of the happy couple. Not so Bunky, Metz and Dave who had to suffer every one of those 15,649,921 inches in a rather uncomfortable Transit hire van. Before setting off, Driver Bunky asked Metz to check the tyres for him. The reply came back "Yep. There's four of 'em"

It's been wedding after wedding after wedding this summer – so much so they all merged into one and we can't remember much about any of them except they were all top top parties and at least one of them involved us packing up and leaving as it was getting daylight the following morning……
Anyway. Autumn is here, the weddings have stopped, and people are having 40th birthday parties again (Christmas passion 1971). And so Sandbach Cricket Club was our destination for Zoe's party.

When we arrived to set up (well, when TWO OF US arrived to set up…..) there was all manner of cricket related tomfoolery going on – white clad cricketers smoking cigars, drinking brandy and dragging their captain out onto the pitch, debagging him and pouring a bucket of ice into his cricket box…… And here's me thinking it was only rugby players who got up to that sort of thing. "Oh no" said our rhythm guitarist Squire who plays cricket of the over-50's variety…. sorry 50-overs variety: "At my cricket club we're always getting naked and rubbing ice cubes on each others' bodies…..

THIS TIME LAST YEAR we had "Four Weddings and Hopefully No Funerals"

2012's Summer Blockbuster Sequel is…… "Eight Weddings and One Funeral" Clever eh?

The summer months are popular for people getting hitched, so June, July and August saw The Fraudsters rocking up at various venues around Lancashire & Cheshire to play various mate's mates' milkman's weddings…..

And so onto the Jubilee Weekend. The Fraudsters were booked to play the Hope Street Hotel in Liverpool’s trendy Hope Street district. Ozzy Osborne is doing that many gigs standing in for Squire at the moment, so we decided to initiate him fully into the “gang”. No this does not entail a debagging, or drinking blood, or being tarred & feathered…. it’s worse than that… IT WAS HIS TURN TO DRIVE THE VAN!!

So at 4pm Ozb turned up at Fraud HQ with a right rustbucket of an MoT failure and we loaded up the gear and hit the M62 to Scouseland. I am perhaps being unfair slagging off the van – it did have an anti-spill matt on the table….. which Xan used to mop up a spillage….

26th May 2012 and it’s an away day for The Fraudsters, travelling to the beautiful Beamish Valley in Northumbria to play the Ingram Village Festival, a fundraising gig for some friends of Burkey’s who moved up there a year or so ago (we played their dusty housewarming party, remember?)

Once again we were Squire-less so “Gun For Hire” Osborn joined us, as did Critchy who’s efforts as Soundman at the last gig earned him some repeat business. We picked up The Critch from outside his normal job of work where he had failed to complete all his invoicing so was probably gonna get sacked on Monday… but Rock & Roll always comes first.