C, F and G by the Sea

I was met at Bridlington station and escorted to my first group meeting by Ted and Bill.

I'd seen their online presence and was impressed. They had a Facebook page that had a proper logo and everything. I just hoped they weren't a cult. I said cult.

Once in the clubhouse, or Ted's living room as it's better known, I saw they meant business. Ted's impressive ukulele collection was spread out like in a museum and I was allowed to play with them, unlike in a museum.

Other group members arrived and I was full of hope that this was going to be better than the group I'd played with in York.

I soon realised that tea or wine-drinking – whatever your poison was – and chat were the main staples and that when we eventually started to play it was a C, F, G fest due to the varying abilities, or inabilities, of those present.

The group was quite an odd collection of people who would never get together under normal circumstances. The youngest was a 14-year-old who was in his own world most of the time and the oldest was a man who ran a cafe, couldn't really play and just liked to watch, like some kind of ukulele voyeur. Creepy.

It was apparent that Ted, Bill and I were the only ones who could play reasonably decently and the suggestions of Leonard Cohen and Donovan songs by one woman was enough to drive us to despair, although suggestions of Buzzcocks and Undertones numbers by another were most welcome.

We ploughed on all the same.

Every week the group would turn up with sometimes more and sometimes fewer people having clearly not taken instruments out of cases in seven days and we would rattle through some boring songs before the three of us would attempt some more challenging stuff after the others went home or lost interest.

Ultimately the group became just me and Bill and Ted. Excellent. We could then really press on with some great songs. We could, but instead we learned to play Herb Alpert's Spanish Flea. Joking aside, it was the best playing I'd ever been involved in.

A ukulele festival was on the horizon and we decided we'd perform at it.

Practice, practice, practice.

We grew sick of the songs we could now play in our sleep. Bill especially so as he decided to quit the group, although that may have been so he could concentrate on his acting career which mostly consisted of dressing up as a bookcase on stage in a theatre about 12 people ever went to.

Ted and I had half an hour of material we had over-rehearsed and were thoroughly sick of. We were ready.

Stay tuned, uke hunters.

You can follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ukehunts

and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ukehunts/