Night Run on the Kennet by Will Rees

A few years back when I was still the skipper of the Magic Roundabout, Robbie arranged to come out with me for a quiet August bank holiday weekend moving the boat from Newbury to Reading. 

We left Newbury about 3 in the Friday and made good progress drinking and driving our way down the canal to arrive in Thatcham just in time for a pub dinner and a few more pints while Robbie helped himself to the pub electrics to charge his phone.   The pub closed, we returned to the boat to carry on drinking.

Midnight, Robbie’s phone rings, Edwin. 

“Where are you?”

“Thatcham.”

Hold on, we’ll be right over…”

Forty minutes later, we were joined by Stuart Reeves, Edwin Stone and his latest girlfriend.  It quickly becomes apparent that no thought has gone on into what will happen when they arrived. Faced with the prospect of a bored Edwin, Stuart and Robbie (a hazardous combination), a plan is hatched.  We shall drive the boat overnight to Reading and break in to the festival.  It’s a long way, but the boat’s equipped for night running and insured, so why not. 

The drinks cabinet replenished, we set off and made good progress, the mile or so to the next lock.

It becomes apparent, that in the hurry to make ‘close of kitchen’ at the Thatcham pub, I didn’t pack my only windless (lock handle) away and it is still by the mooring in Thatcham.  A retrieval party is dispatched along the towpath armed with a torch and a bottle of wine.  While we lightened the bar.

About 2:15, reunited with the windless we set off again, thundering into the night. Passing hire boats until then unaware that the canals are operable 24hrs a day. At locks we had a system, one person winds one side then throw the windlass over so another person could wind the other side, and open the gates.  It worked for about three locks.

3:30 Middle of night. In the middle of nowhere. The windless wasn’t thrown hard enough and ended up at the bottom of the lock.  Shit.   Robbie disappears down below, and reappeared in his shorts holding my pen light.  We had been drinking solidly for 12 hrs.  I gave him a look of ‘don’t’ but he had that glint in his eye, and I knew I wasn’t going to stop him.

Penlight between his teeth, he dived into the murky lock.  First dive recovered a stick, and I’m thinking “this is crazy.”  He lofted it like Excalibur on his second attempt.  Robbie, hero of the hour disappeared down below for a shower.

We set off again, a bunch of rowdy hooligans, our mere passing waking every boat, though we did try to be quiet. The next lock, one before Aldermaston, we entered OK but we were over compensating with throwing the windlass, so that on the downstream gates, someone who will remain nameless overthrew the windless and  the weld snapped where it hit concrete.  Deflation all-round. 

We carried on to Aldermaston lock but couldn’t go through without the key.  So we sat there till 8am when the chandlery opened and I bought 3 windlasses (not getting caught like that again). And set off again.

We paired up with a boat called Maris Piper, as traffic increased and the day brightened, Robbie sat on the roof of the boat wearing my red velvet dressing gown as if it were an Edwardian smoking jacket. He was happy bantering with all and sundry while we wound him up about Weil’s disease.

We reached my favourite illegal Reading mooring by about 3pm and decided we were too knackered to break into Reading festival, so we caught the train to Basingstoke and had a barbeque round Stuart Reeves’. 

Robbie and the Language Barrier

I think he was secretly a lot better at French than he'd have us believe but it was more fun to be stupid.  He had plenty of other things to be a smug, over-confident, irritating smart-arse about.  Charlie's Mushrooms went to France many times to play.  The coastal bars of Le Havre, St Valery en Caux and Biarritz, the in-land towns of Lilles, Lery-Poses and probably some others I've forgotten all got a taste of our chaotic, funky jazz and at each one, Christophe negotiated free food and beer for the band.

Whatever Robbie's shortcomings with the French language, his mastery of the phrase "Encore bieres pour le group" (tr: more beer for the band) was undisputed.  We drank so much at gigs that whoever was road manager for us would have to spend the gig monitoring our beers and making sure that more were brought to us while we played.  If you're reminded of that scene in the Blues Brothers where they drank twice their fee in beer then you should consider that we made those guys look like lightweights.

If you've ever driven in France you'll be aware that the motorways there have toll booths every so often called "Péage".  One of the first times we were approaching one of these, only one of us spoke French well enough to communicate with the attendant.  Jizfanny - yes, that was his nickname.  Also Jizza.  His real name was Graham Baines but if you know Robbie at all, you'll know his nicknaming convention was to choose something the person would hate and make it stick if he could.

Jizfanny was our drummer.  We'd had a lot of drummers but Jizza was the one we considered everybody else was depping for.  And he spoke French.  We join the story with Jizza in his usual pitch, lunched out in a sleeping bag in the footwell of the rear row of seats in the van cab.  Our tour bus, such as it was, was a 20 year old Ford Transit the previous owner had put a second row of seats in before I bought it from him.

Robbie was in the front passenger seat by the window, which meant that he would be the one who had to speak to the peage attendant.  We drew up level and this guy wasn't taking any prisoners.  He was not prepared to speak more slowly because you were a guest in his country.  For the previous five minutes we'd been kicking Jizfanny and shouting at him to wake up cuz we needed his language skills.  Jizfanny had a policy of doing things in his own time, which usually meant the very last minute.  He had the same approach to drumming.  But once he was on the stool, he was awesome.  You just had to make sure he stayed there.

The attendant started jabbering numbers at Robbie, who said "Woah! Woah!  Parlez avec il.  Il parle francais."  Robbie thought he was saying "Woah Woah!  Speak with him.  He speaks French."

Jizfanny by this point had surfaced and as he pushed his head past Robbie to be able to see the attendant, with the smooth, dry sarcasm of any traffic policeman he said 'Well done, Robbie, that's "he used to speak French"' and instantaneously switched languages to speak to the attendant.

Later on, Christophe - the French guy whose idea it was for us to gig around France in the first place - had told Robbie he had to say some things at the end of the gig just to obey a bit of protocol.  It didn't sit particularly well with any of us but free beer and more money next time are pretty fair persuaders.  So Robbie learnt his words, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure to play for you this evening.  If you'd like a buy a cassette, please speak to our manager."

This is what actually came out of his mouth 5 hours and 20 beers later.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is pleasure playing you.  If you want to buy cassettes, speak to the birdcage.  I eat the swimming pool!  Thank you!  Goodnight!"

Robbie and the Kebab - by Emily Blackledge

When we were on tour with Sativa we had a night out in Weymouth, which was a fairly drunken affair ending with a trip to a kebab house. On the way back to the tour bus with his kebab in one hand, Robbie picked a hyacinth flower that was growing in one of the flower beds. He regarded the flower for a while, then he studied his kebab. He then threw away what was left of his kebab and proceeded to eat the hyacinth as he decided that it looked much more appetising. It made him quite sick, I seem to remember.

Anti-Tank - by Richie

This isn’t the most exciting anecdote in the world, nothing really happens, but it’s just so typical of the kind of conversations we used to have and that day was such a good laugh that it has just always stuck in my mind and I’d like to share it with you.

It was around 2006 and myself, Robbie, Neil Mac and Bongo Pete went out for the day to play golf somewhere near Farnborough. I had just got back from an operational tour of Afghanistan and Robbie was always inquisitive about my job - mostly because he wanted to know “What I’m getting for my tax money”

The conversation got on to mines (Afghanistan is a very heavily mined country) and as faithfully as I can reproduce it, it went like this:

Richie “Well, you get two different types of mines”

Robbie “What are they then?”

Richie “There’s anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines”

Robbie “What exactly is the difference?”

Richie “Well, an anti-personnel mine is designed to injure you so all your mates are taken out of the battle to look after you and it only takes 3 Kg of direct pressure to set them off. An anti-tank mine is designed to rip through 6 inches of armour plate and destroy everything inside a tank and it takes 100 Kg of direct pressure to set them off. Just out of interest, how much do you weigh Robbie?”

Robbie (looking smug) ” I’ll be alright, I’m only 96 Kg”

Richie (looking even more smug) “In the Army your rifle weighs 4.5 Kg Robbie”

Robbie (looking pleased as punch) “So what you’re saying is, you’re too puny to set off anti-tank mines…”

It's not the winning or losing...

…but losing was never really an option for Robbie ;)

This was Paul’s Stag Do and about 15 of us went down to Camberly for Go-Karting. Out of those who went there were 3 guys who really fancied themselves to win, Paul, myself and, of course, Robbie.

We three had never raced against each other before, so the race was preceded by a good-humoured, very blokey discussion about who was going to win and why. Robbie had form in the kart having famously won from near the back the last time Basingstokians went karting, I had only ever lost in a kart before by disqualification, Paul was an unknown quantity who assured and reassured us all that his victory was in the bag. It was on.

The qualifying races showed that we three were indeed to top dogs on the track with Paul starting the final race in pole position, me second and Robbie third. Both Paul and I had outpaced Robbie so I wasn’t sure at this point why he was grinning at us so confidently on the start grid… The race began…

Paul made a good start, but it only took me a lap to catch him and ram him out of my way at a hairpin bend. I was in the lead, but the best thing was the carnage I had left behind me on the track! Both Paul and Robbie were a long way back and stuck behind other karts on a narrow track without any real overtaking opportunities. I *knew* I was the fastest guy there, all I had to do was sit back, set a few lap records and rehearse my victory speech. Then with a lap to go…

…I got a massive shunt in the back of my kart! It was Robbie! I can only imagine the chaos he must have caused and the speed he must have been going at to get past all those other karts. He smiled and waved at me, then it was really on. I held on to that lead for dear life, at times Robbie’s kart was pushing my kart around the track and he managed to get the nose of his kart inside mine on one of the corners, but I just held on for the line. Victory was mine!

or so I thought!

After we crossed the line Robbie rather unpolitely rammed me into the pits, carried on and did another lap in the knowledge that with the extra lap the print out at the end of the race would show his name, not mine, at the top of the leaderboard!

After the race Robbie produced the print out, claimed to have won the race, and said “Here’s my evidence, where’s yours?” To which of course I had no answer…

Floyd On The Jukebox - by Ginge

I went round Robbie’s house to discuss something or other.

I think it was around the time he was organising a Tubular Bells/Dark Side of the Moon/Rumours tribute tour. The whole thing kinda flopped after a few shows, but he’d organised a proper tour bus for the first weekend so we all felt like rock stars for a bit. Nice one fella.

Anyway, we said what we had to say and decided go for a pint at the New Inn. I’d left my sax at his, so I picked it up and off we went.

After several pints and a few games of pool we sat down for a chat, at which point something from the upcoming shows came on the jukebox – maybe a Pink Floyd tune with a sax solo. So, feeling suitably spurred on by lager, I decided to have a play along.

I put my sax case on the table in front of me and opened the lid.

The smell hit me like a ton of old prawns as I realised - I’d been fishpranked.

The stench of rotten fish came forth from my saxophone like the scene at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, except with twisted satanic scary kippers instead of ghosts.

You could actually see the foul emanation radiating outwards through the pub, as one by one, people’s expressions went from mild pub contentment to utter disgust.

Robbie was grinning.

Robbie was laughing.

Robbie was totally pissing himself, the bastard..

As I shut the fishy Ark of the Covenant, I realised I’d left my horn at his house for a whole week. It had been next to a radiator when I’d picked it up. He confirmed that yes, the offending mackerel had been on a slow warm rot setting for about six days.

I suppose you could call it revenge. As his best man (by short straw, not request or choice) I’d put a couple of herrings into the car in which he and Libby were driving to their honeymoon. He rang me before they’d even left town with the question “Ginge. Where’s the fish?”

You have to be of a certain mindset for this sort of thing. A sort of Robbie Fraser mindset. If he’d have placed those fish in my car, he’d have put them somewhere to lie undetected until the end of the honeymoon when they’d be really stinking.

So there it is – the harshest of lessons I learned from that beautiful, filthy, depraved individual known as Robbie “total bastard” Fraser is this.

Never blag a blagger. Never prank a prankster. And never EVER fish prank a fish pranker. Especially when that esteemed fish pranker is Robbie Fraser: Slayer of Saxophones, Prince of the Pollack, Soveriegn of the Sardine. Master of the Mackerel.

The Van (camper VW that is) - by Dark Menace

Fairly early on in “Mushroom History”, having recently met “Our Robbie” and all the boys and girls who are the faithful, and having been taken on as “manager” a title, which I never was comfortable with, so played my role as a “Butler”.

Robbie says “OK lets get over to my Mum & Dads and take a look at my van we’ll need to get it going” so off we go, we get pretty close and pull up the small hill and then right down what appears to me to be a fairly salubrious area; we park up and walk a little way down the lane and as we turn the corner a very lovely and beautiful home and well tended garden is revealed, clearly from Robbie’s familiarity, this is home.

As I fully turn the corner there parked tightly up against the significantly tall hedge row is the “The Van” a white and orange VW camper Van, well, it used to be white and orange.

One could not help but notice that green moss and lichen had taken up residence on much of it’s coach work, and what is more the hedge and “The Van” had become one, whether Robbie could discern some disbelief and doubt on my face I don’t know for sure, but turned and grinned that grin and said “Alright in it” in ever optimistic fashion, I believe what I said was “Rob it’s covered in moss and cobwebs, and it’s got a tree growing round it” again the grin and response “it’s ok we’ll tow it out and give it a wipe down”

I think it was at this point I noticed the tyres, on further inspection of the tyres you couldn’t help but notice they were very flat, and not in “road worthy” condition I voiced my concerns that towing may prove difficult, my doubt was brushed aside with “OK have you got a pump we’ll put some air in” I just had to tell him straight “Rob they’re not just flat, they’re square….what are going to do with it any way?”

“We are going to tour France in it!!” says Robbie, like if that was obvious, “but Robbie, I don’t think it’ll make it” “It’ll be fine, it managed “The Fat Ballerina tour” I tried various forms dissuasion and defence.

Before my sentence was finished Robbie was attaching a tow rope to “The Van” threw the other end to me, and I like a lamb I complied helplessly.

We towed it out, some fiddling about was done and we towed come bump started it, it got back to “The Stoke” I can’t recall if we took it then or it happened a bit later, the fact is that “The Van” was spruced up, it did get an MOT, it did go to France, and went on to a have a life of it’s own, and will appear in many stories to come I am sure; all because “Our Robbie” believed it could be done and made it happen.