Friday, 19th May
Decide to ring Egham Band's ringleader Gareth Green to ask if I can watch or play in the rehearsal. He doesn't sound thrilled but I realise thats just his nature later on! Will kindly drives me down to the station, and I eventually find the purposebuilt house from HM the Queen (1975). No greeting, I just sit down and start playing from the red Salvation Army march book (memories of HMK's little books!)
The repertoire isn't too taxing, but crucially fun and at least I'm PLAYING, not COUNTING - 
!! Repertoire includes 'Born Free' by John Barry, which has a Dances with Wolves, open frontier mood at times. Also, 'The A-Team' is a great laugh, he makes some valid points about 'being metrically correct' and 'sustaining the volume of the note until it ends' as oppossed to trailing off.
Afterwards the 1st Tbist buys me a drink from the members bar upstairs (!), then I chat to Gareth, who is overweight, has SILLY long hair, makes little eye contact and is quite full of himself, but in a charming kind of way! 
He asks about my instrument, seems to know a fair deal, and even says 'By default I know more about the instruments in here than most of the players' !! He speaks of the necessity to learn EVERY alternate valve position for Bass Tb.ists, then mentions that there is apparently a book by some Israeli player which covers it best. When I mention the exact name of the book and author he is somewhat taken aback!!
He is RHUL alumni, as are various other of the bandsmen, and remembers Jim Dack and Erik Levi!
Says I can return to play 2nd as well if necessary, so watch this space...