A dance gig in Yorkshire in winter - the band was based in the North West, across the Pennines. The day before the gig, North West England was swept with blizzards. The following day the situation was:

A & J are snowbound in a Welsh farm, together with some of the PA. They were able to walk out (with instruments but no PA), get to J's house by public transport and drive from there.

G & J are already in a different part of Yorkshire, with more of the PA, but no van, which has terminally broken down.

K's wife was 9 months pregnant, so he is going on the understanding that he might have to race off at any moment.

I set off with M, the female drummer (must be a song there) and the rest of the PA, not knowing whether the roads were passable, whether the all or any of others would get there (this was before mobile phones), or what we'd do for PA.

Amazingly, we all arrived on time. G had bought a new van. A had managed to hire the missing parts of the PA. Yorkshire was snow-free and no-one could believe the epic we'd had getting everyone there.

The local morris side, who were hosting the dance, insisted on practicing their set during our sound check.

The gig itself went well, although K kept disappearing to phone home. However the caller, a well-known musician who we'd not worked with before, exhausted our usually adequate range of tunes and we had to fall back on session favourites, mostly culled from his own album. He turned and gave us a Look when we started on the first of these.

When we came out afterwards, we found Yorkshire was enveloped in thick fog. We drove very slowly through the dark and fog, following the cats-eyes. When we eventually stopped at the motorway services on the M62 to meet up for a brew, K discovered his fan-belt was broken.

We left him trying to fix it, and struggled on through the fog. M and I eventually reached her place at about 5 am. I didn't even attempt to go any further, and stopped there, finally getting home mid-morning the following day.

Our fee was entirely swallowed up by the additional travelling expenses and the cost of hiring additional PA.

But we got a good story out of it.