London Massed Bugle Band practice (25th March 2007)

After an Enfield Battalion Church Parade at Totteridge Road Baptist Church, home of the 11th Enfield in the morning (which included the Battalion Band playing!) there was a quick rush to get to the London Massed Bugle Band practice in the afternoon, which of course is more band work! This particular occasion was held at Uxbridge College, and was a specially organised practice due to a proposed event in which the Band would be playing at St. James’ Palace in June. While only a three hour practice, the reason for it was that the Band could only be a certain size, so they had to select people that would be in the band. Instructors for each section of the Band were entrusted with the task of selecting a specific amount of people from their section. As some people didn’t want to or couldn’t do the event anyway, luckily not many people had to be told they didn’t make it. There were also a few practices of bringing the Band together, and at the end of the day the people that did make it were of course happy (myself included) and we could now look forward to the event itself…

…or so you’d think - a matter of days later, it was announced that building work would be taking place at the Palace in June and so they’d decided it would be unsafe to hold anything there during that time, so our performance was cancelled! It had literally rendered the practice worthless, but what can you do…

Written by Tom Boorman