I have no idea who Half-Shaft and zero recollection of what music they were playing. The Bumble Bee was (and still is) a pub in the town of Flitwick, which itself is in Bedfordshire – kind of north of Luton, east of Milton Keynes and south of Bedford. It was also the hometown of my best mate of the time, Michael, and we’d headed back there for the weekend to see his friends and family.

Michael and I had originally met several years earlier when he started a student publishign company called Network X and he, and some friends from Flitwick, created a miniature skirmish game called ‘Dark Winter’. They recruited me to write the background for the game and Michael and I become really close friends and spent a lot of time clubbing and gigging together – with Michael eventually getting a job at Leisure Games – unfortunately shortly before I left earlier in the summer of ’95.

We’d been out drinking in one of the near by villages earlier during the day but made our way through the fields, and across the motorway that dissected the local countryside, back to Flitwick and a pub called The Bumble Bee which was having a live band on that evening. Thus catching ‘Half-Shaft’. Even though I can’t remember anything about the band, it was a great weekend away.