It’s been pretty manic over the past week and a lot less sleep than usual with many meetings and events .
Started last Thursday when I was “subbing” at another BNI chapter. I haven’t mentioned on this blog previously that I’m a BNI member and thus attend an early morning breakfast meeting every Wednesday morning @BNI Walpole in Ealing. But on Thursday a guy I know at the BNI Hogarth chapter in Chiswick was unable to make it to his regular meeting so I substituted for him at 6.30am which is an unheard of time of day for most DJs! The meeting finished at 9am and I then attended a workshop on improving business communications which was also in Chiswick. This took me to mid-day and then after a quick runaround to the bank and attending to some other bits and pieces I was driving over to Essex for a wedding at Stock Brook Manor golf club for the wedding of Sara & Darryl. This remarkably was the first wedding in 4 where they had a first dance; the song being Take That-A Million Love Songs.
Before playing the first dance track I always have a chat with the bride and/or groom and as I was chatting with the groom, Darryl- he seemed quite nervous, which was a little unusual at this stage of the proceedings as most grooms that are nervous during the actual ceremony or speeches have usually relaxed by the evening as there isn’t much they have to do as such, although some grooms do get quite nervous about the actual dance aspect of the first dance. His nerves really became apparent when I joked with him about the first dance being Motorhead and he replied OK! I often joke with the bride or groom that they still want Motorhead as their first dance track and they usually laugh and then reply with the actual track they’re having, but Darryl just said OK and clearly hadn’t realised I was joking. So I then said to him “are you really sure that you want Motorhead as your first dance?” and he said that whatever Sara had asked for was fine with him! and that he’d had no input into the request list whatsoever!
Most of the music on that request list was very commercial and the dancing continued through to midnight. Then managed 4 hours sleep before another early rise for the BNI annual members day at The Metropole Hotel in central London which was an all day event with some superb inspirational speakers including Dr Ivan Misner, Rob Brown, Dinah Liversidge, Phil Berg and Iain Whyte. It was a great day of networking also and lined up many meetings over the next few weeks.
No time for sitting around, after the end of the BNI event then it was back over to Essex for another event at Stock Brook, this time a dinner dance for the Dr’s, nurses and staff of the Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford. They were all very much up for it and a busy dancefloor this time through to 2am.
The following day there was a bit of a lie-in before heading over to Stoke Newington for a 50th birthday party for Lucy at The West Reservoir Sailing Centre which was basically an old boiler room with a very high ceiling. I’d been asked to setup some uplighting around the room to give some warmth to what otherwise has a very sterile atmosphere.
An excellent night with a pretty varied request list ranging from the 40′s the latest hits and genres such as Jazz, Salsa, Samba, Dance, Reggae, Pop, Soul and Rock.
The events were starting to merge into one and the next was a 40th birthday for Nick at The HAC in central London, but the event couldn’t really have been easier as the meal didn’t finish until 10.45 and the event had to finish at 12.15 so music for 90 minutes, and no extra time!
