Chapter 27

The girls were chatting with their fans, when Paige came over to them. "Just had a call from Brian, he wanted to remind you that the Press Conference is in just under 30 minutes."

Whilst Linda had briefly met the press earlier in the day, Brian had suggested they held a more formal press conference, allowing them to not only describe what had happened last night, but more importantly to reassure their fans that the tour was still continuing, albeit with a few minor tweaks.

----

Ben, Andre, Paige and Carol walked into the meeting room in the hotel, where the press conference would soon be happening.

"Hi everyone! I'm Paige, this is Ben - CJDL's assistant manager - and Andre - Northern Girls manager - and Carol, who is, of course, a member of CJDL. We thought we'd run things today in 3 sections: the first will be a simple statement by Ben, summarising what's happened in the last 24 hours, plus how this affects the tour, which will probably what the main channels need. For the second bit, we thought you'd probably like to hear from both Dianne and Linda, who were involved in the accident yesterday, and Carol has offered to be the interviewer - so from your perspective, a neutral person. The final bit will be for the local press and TV to do short interviews for the local news tonight. In terms of questions for Carol to ask... clearly she'll try and cover most aspects, but if you have anything specific to ask, then just write them on one of the pads, and pass them to me. After the main bit of the interview, we can add in any extra questions that come up. How does that sound to you all?"

There were a few 'housekeeping' questions, including one about access to Dianne's pictures, but between them, they answered them, and a couple of the reporters had a short word with Carol.

"Well, if you're all ready, let's bring everyone in!" said Paige. Ben had already gone out, to get the others. First in was Linda, pushed in her wheelchair by Ziggy, followed by all the others, who sat in the chairs around her.

"Good afternoon everyone!" started Ben. "As has been reported in the news already, as Dianne and Linda were on their way back here from a visit to Aberdeen town centre, they were involved in a substantial accident, when a large van crashed into the side of their taxi. Dianne was able to quickly call the emergency services, who were all onsite fairly quickly. Both Dianne and the taxi driver were, in principle, unhurt, but Linda has suffered a fractured lower leg."

He paused for a moment.

"Whilst Dianne was able to join us back here for last night's slightly delayed performance, the girls had to play without Linda, who was being treated at the hospital... although she did manage to return in the last minutes of the show, and sing 'Friends' with the girls - much to the joy of the fans. To be honest, the idea of cancelling last night's show hardly entered our heads, and I am very happy to announce that the tour will continue as planned, although there will be a few changes made to the show to accommodate Linda's clear lack of mobility."

Another short pause.

"The girls are all looking forward to entertaining their fans again tonight, here in Aberdeen!"

Another tiny pause. "Any questions?" There were a few questions, which Ben was able to answer. "Thank you all, I'll hand over to Paige and Carol now..."

Paige went to the front. "So, 'Eight Girls with Braces' are currently in the middle of their 'Orthodontics Tour', and currently we are here in Aberdeen. The tour will continue with performances in Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool, before we cross the Irish Sea for performances in Dublin and Belfast. After that, the tour will move to France, and will cover much of Europe. 'Eight Girls with Braces' is made up from two bands who have joined together for this tour: CJDL and Northern Girls... so let's meet them..."

Linda started: "Hi, I'm Linda, I'm the one with my leg in plaster!" The other seven introduced themselves too.

"So, I'm now going to hand over to Carol: she's going to chat with Dianne and Linda about what happened."

The various reporters had written down a load of fairly obvious questions, which Carol had expected, but there were a couple she'd not thought of.

"So, Dianne, what had you two been doing in town yesterday?" she started. Over the next few minutes, Dianne explained that they had been in town shopping, chatted with some fans, then got some dinner, then went on to explain a few of the details of the accident itself.

"Now, Linda, Dianne said you were in pain...."

"Yes, a LOT of pain, and I really do need to thank Dianne for staying with me: just having her there next to me helped so much!"

"No problem!" interrupted Dianne, "That's what friends are for!"

Linda continued explaining about what had happened to her, and how she was given the 'happy gas' and so on.

"Of course, back here at the arena, it was past 7pm, and we were wondering where Linda and Dianne were... after all, we were due to start at 7:30! Jenny, you called Linda..."

"Yes, I did, and was a bit surprised to answered by a police lady, who used words like 'accident' and 'ambulance', but then passed me to Dianne, who explained to everyone what had happened. After that it was 'all hands to the pumps' to work out how we could perform without Linda... and big thanks to Kate, from Northern Girls, who was promoted to be an honary member of CJDL for the evening!"

"I should add," said Taylor, "that I think I heard the phrase 'cancel the show' only once, and then very briefly, before it was quickly dismissed."

Dianne explained how she had spoken to the waiting fans moments after getting back to the arena. "In the end, we started a bit over half an hour late."

"So, the show went on, sadly without Linda. Our tech team came up with an amazing start for the show - Linda is the one who normally starts the show. Plus we had to leave out a couple of songs that needed Linda. But just before the end, we got a lovely surprise..."

"Didn't we just? The stage crew had rigged up a trolley with a chair for Linda - who had just got back from the hospital - and pushed her onstage! Suddenly a not-so-good evening got one hundred times better!" explained Dianne.

"Tell you what," said Linda, "it felt so good hearing all our fans cheering for me!"

"So, you're in a wheelchair - crutches not good enough for you then?" asked Carol, smiling.

"Oh, I have crutches, but have you seen how big this hotel and the Arena next door are? I'd like to get to the stage before the end of the evening! And we now have a new member of the team... this is Ziggy, she's here to help me by pushing me around in this wheelchair, and with other stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Yeah, it's kinda hard to just 'get up and grab a coffee' in this chair. Plus she's here to help with more important things, like... like getting to bed and things."

"How does your leg feel now? Are you in any pain?"

"It's as annoying as hell having my leg out straight like this, unable to bend my knee, but I guess my leg needs to be immobilised to let it heal... apparently, I'm in this for six weeks! Arghhh! I need to keep it up like this... or at least not put any weight on it... for a week or two, then I've this sort of boot thing I can use to hobble around on. Ummm... You asked about pain: I guess having it in plaster... although it's not actually plaster, it's more like fibreglass... but I think it helps the pain. But I'm also on a load of drugs - legal painkillers I should add - that seem to be keeping the pain away. Just no booze for a while!"

"Ok, so the tour goes on. Linda, how do you plan on opening the show: normally you're the first one on stage?"

"We have an amazing team of dancers, so tonight, the plan is that Ziggy will wheel me on in this wheelchair, then our dancers will 'pluck' me from it, and lift me up and support me. Then throughout the show, they will help me get around, and help me into my sofa."

"Sofa?"

"Yeah, a sofa... but if they want to know more, they'll have to come along to the show and see for themselves!"

"So what about your costumes? I mean, you can't wear them with your leg like that..."

"Our two wardrobe ladies have been working very hard, cutting off legs, and making them so I can get into them. In fact, I believe they have had to use so much velcro on my costumes that they have officially declared a velcro shortage here in Aberdeen!"

"So, we've talked about what has just happened, but let's spend a few minutes asking how the tour came about in the first place..." Carol had decided to include this specifically to get the four Northern Girls involved.

Finally, Carol paused. "Any more question for me to ask, Paige?"

"Yup, got three... take them in order, but no looking ahead... I want to see you reaction to the last one!" she passed Carol the three pieces of paper. The first two questions were fairly simple and straightforward, but when she got to the third one, she smiled, then smiled a lot more, then started to laugh quite loudly.

"You know, I'm surprised we didn't have this one earlier!" Carol turned to the other seven girls: "So, one last question for you all: 'What IS it with the braces?'"

The girls also laughed, and before answering the question, they gathered around Linda, and all gave the cameras big smiles, showing off their shiny metal braces and multi-coloured ligatures.

After the girls answered the last question, Paige came forward again. "I suspect you've all got some editing to do, but was that good for you all?" She saw many thumbs-ups. "Ok, so whilst the 'big boys' pack up, why doesn't the local press come and chat, then when things are quiet again, you guys from the local TV can have a chat too."

---

A guy from a local newspaper want over to the girls, and introduced himself. "You know, I can't believe how relaxed you guys are about us. Most performers just want to get away!"

"I guess we appreciate you guys, without you and our fans, what would we do?" said Linda.

"So I saw your show last night: initially people were starting to get annoyed about the delay, but when you came out Dianne, and showed those pictures, well, everyone was on your side! How did it feel not having Linda there with you?" He asked a few more relevant questions.

"Did you actually enjoy the show then?" Jenny asked him.

He smiled. "I did, actually, although I had been hoping to see you do 'Gimme Chocolate'."

"Yes, that's fun for us all, so it's sad to have to drop it!" said Taylor.

"Don't worry," said Linda, "it's something I'm hoping we can work on in the next couple of days!"


With the room finally quieter, they all did a short TV interview, that the local news would show that evening in the local news program.

"Well, that all went well." said Ben. "Thanks Carol for doing the interviewing again: it sounded good to me! And thank you ALL for your time: I'm sure it was very worthwhile."


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Chapter 29

Ziggy was helping Linda to shower and get ready for bed. Yes, Linda's leg was well wrapped in plastic bags to keep it dry.

"Um, this bus we'll be on tomorrow, to go down to Glasgow..." said Ziggy.

"Yeah, the tour bus, what about it?" replied Linda.

"What happens if you need to go to the loo?"

"Well, there's a loo on the bus....". Linda paused a moment. "Ah, right, yeah, I'm with you... no, I'm gonna have big problems if I need to use it, aren't I?... I guess I'd just need to get the bus to stop..."

"Well, there is another option, and I'm not quite sure if you'll like it, but...."

"But?"

"Well I could get you some diapers, or probably easier, 'pull-ups'...."

Linda stopped in her tracks. Diapers, or nappies as they are often called, was a thing worn by babies... and old people... and she was neither of those. But as she thought a bit more, it kinda made sense. Yes, it was an obvious solution. Just please don't let the press find out about it, they would have a field day!

"Umm, yeah... you say YOU could get me some? I mean, it's not something I'd like to be made public..."

"Don't worry, there's a chemist near me that sells them, I'll pick some up for you, I can probably put them in my bag. As you probably worked out by now, I've helped people with them many times, you can just put them on in the loo, just before we leave."

The more she got to know Ziggy, the more she liked her: not only did she seem to fit in well, she wasn't stupid. "OK, I'm probably about the same size as you, so get what you think is best. Let me know how much, and I'll pay you back..."

With Linda all showered, dried, and in bed, Ziggy turned to leave to get Paige, who would be staying with Linda again. "Hey, Ziggy... thanks... for everything... you've been really good to me today!"

Ziggy smiled: it wasn't that often that her 'clients' were so pleasant and thankful. "That's ok... You know, I think I'm gonna enjoy working with you guys!".

After a rather long, but not over-tiring, day, Ziggy was finally able to go home: tomorrow morning she'd need to get packed to join the bands for the next couple of weeks.

----

As they weren't performing the following evening, they weren't in a major rush to get to Glasgow, so they left after lunch.

A couple of the stage crew had worked with the coach driver, and had removed a couple of the seats, to give Linda some leg-room, letting her sit quite comfortably for the journey down to Glasgow, which took around three and a half hours.

They actually used 2 coaches, one primarily for the girls and people like Ben and Paige, and their various assistants, whilst most of the crew used the second one... which often left at a different time, as they would have been taking down the lights and PA. But they had decided that sometimes, if the times worked out, they would invite some of the stage crew to travel with them. However, that wasn't the case today: the crew had left early this morning, as they were hoping to get the stage rigged in Glasgow a bit earlir than normal, to give Linda and the dancers as much stage time as possible to work out how to change the performance of 'Give me Cereals': the crew liked that song as much as the bands and their fans.

The journey was over 3 hours, and needless to say, there was occasional singing and playing of guitars, plus they got Ziggy to play them a bit of her type of music: a bit rockier than what Northern Girls played, but not quite as heavy as Darkest Knights!

"Hey, Ziggy, know any Bowie songs?" Linda asked.

"A few. Got something in mind?"

"Yes, I do actually..." and she told her which one. (The details of the song are being withheld from you readers, to make the story a bit more fun in a couple of chapters time!)

"Well, yes, of COURSE I know THAT one!". Linda got the words up on her tablet, and sang along as Ziggy played.

"So, Ziggy, fancy earning yourself some 'bonus cash'?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when anyone plays on stage with us - things like the Crew Karaoke - we pay them a bonus. Now, I know we have the Solo Spots for Glasgow all lined up, but how would you like to play that song with me in Manchester?"

It took a moment for the realisation of what Linda had just suggested to sink in: She would be PLAYING... ONSTAGE.... at their concert. Then she remembered that the concert wasn't at a normal arena, but at the Old Trafford football stadium, which she was sure they said would be a very large crowd.... forty thousand wasn't it?

"You messing with me, Linda. I mean, that place is huge! The biggest I ever played was something like 300 or 400!"

"Yeah, it's gonna be a bit daunting for us too, but Taylor reckons that size doesn't really matter that much. Hey, go and have a think about it, but I think it could be fun..."

----

They were getting closer to Glasgow, when Ben went and called the 8 girls together, along with Liam, their lead dancer and choreographer.

"Just had a call from our stage crew, in Glasgow: stage teardown went really well last night, and they finished loading early... so today they went to Glasgow early. The good news is that they are well ahead on putting the stage up: the audio side is almost done, they are now working on the lighting. So, they have a suggestion: if we go straight to the arena, they'll pause the rigging to let you do your soundcheck TODAY. They can finish the rigging while you go back to the hotel and have dinner... after which you could all return and spend some time this evening working on your new dance routines. Plus they'll make sure there's enough crew as well through tomorrow, so you can have plenty of stage time for whatever you need to do."

"Oh, that's amazing!" said Linda.

"Yeah, we chatted last night, and they said they were willing to do whatever they could to give you the time you needed. I think the fact that you even went on stage after getting back from the hospital impressed them, plus the fact you did a pretty much full set last night!" said Ben. "Liam, you ok with doing a bit extra tonight and tomorrow?"

"Sure... if we can do a few hours tonight, I think we'll have worked out what we can do for 'Give me Cereals'. Then a nights sleep should make us ready to do a few runs through tomorrow, as well as working on a few other bits, like your 'advert'."

"Ladies, you up for it?"

"I'll be honest, we've not done very much today, so a good workout on stage would feel good!" replied Jenny.

Taylor looked around at her band members: their job would be far less physical. "Fine by us! It'll be good to get 'Give me Cereals' back into the set list, we like playing it, and I think the fans enjoy it too. We also need to tweak the Big Red Button, and get that back in again!"




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and the next step is hopefully to let Ziggy sing 
I think her Voice might be even better than her guitar skills 

I'll let the choice by you.. Crew Karaoke is a good opportunity to impress all members i think it should be a difficult one which is not so easy to sing for a untalented.. should chosen from the karaoke computer by coincidence not to be unfair

Chapter 32


In Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool, they had managed to get Linda a disabled room, with not only a wetroom for the bathroom, but there was also an adjoining room, where Ziggy stayed, giving her privacy, but close enough to help Linda if she needed to go to the loo in the middle of the night. Linda had discovered that Ziggy's previous work in care homes gave her the skills to help Linda in the ways she needed, but in a nice and gentle way. Clearly, they spent quite a bit of time together, and seemed to get on well.

----

They were backstage on their second night in Liverpool.

"Hey, Ziggy, can you bring Linda and come with me a moment?" asked Bryan.

"Sure...". Ziggy followed Brian into the room next door, where Lisa, Ben and Paige were all standing. "Errr, what's going on?" she asked.

"Well," explained Brian, "we initially asked you to work with Linda up until the end of the UK bit of the tour, and that's only a week away. Now, we've all had a chat, and I know the girls are enjoying you being around... so, if we were to ask you to stay with us for the next bit of the tour... well, until Linda gets her cast off at least... would you be interested? I guess we're talking roughly another 4 weeks."

Ziggy was smiling widely, showing off her silver smile. Ziggy has been very much enjoying the job: the girls were fun to be with, plus they were both encouraging her to play with them, as well as giving her hints and tips. Not only that, the crew respected her too, making the whole job so good.

"Oh, yeah, definitely!"

"Yay!" shouted Linda.

"In that case, you'll want to go back home... can you work with Paige to organise you flights from Belfast back to Aberdeen, then from there back down to London?"

Ziggy knew the tour itinery: there was a few days break after the last concert in Belfast, before they caught the ferry to France, so she'd have a couple of days back home before heading south, time to try and 'sort her life out' a bit. Luckily, she lived in a shared house, so unlike the CJDL girls, she wasn't worried about her house being empty. Her housemates had been happy when she had told them what she was doing, and were even more excited when she told them she was staying with the tour a bit longer.

----

So, over to the first day in Dublin. Northern Girls had done their soundchecks, and they were now having a bit of a jam session.

"Come on, Ziggy, grab a guitar and join us!". Ziggy got the spare mic and in-ears from Callum, came on stage, and pointed at Carol's guitar.

"Yeah, sure, go ahead!" said Carol from over the side. Ziggy picked it up, and started to strum it, and adjusted the settings of a couple of the pedals: in fact, the reason she had chosen Carol's guitar was because it went through the pedals. Finally, she got roughly the sound she wanted, then started to play the opening riffs of a song... something quite rocky. In fact something distinctly heavy.

"No way... oh yeah!!" shouted Erin, who had recognised the song after the first bar, and joined in on the drums. It took Kate, Meg and Taylor a moment longer to recognise it, and they too joined in. Linda sat side stage: she would have run onto the stage and joined in, as this was one of her favourite bass riffs, but one she'd not played on the tour, feeling it was maybe not their fans sort of thing. Sadly, she was in her wheelchair, and her crutches were down in their 'green room'. It took them a few more bars to 'sync-up', then it took the girl on the PA a moment to set the balance (it had just been set up for just Northern Girls, and she needed to add in Carol's guitar. Same for the guy on the monitor mix).

"Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind... People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time" sang Ziggy in quite a rough voice that matched the lyrics. At the end, there was a round of applause from everyone who was standing around.

"Sorry, couple of bum notes there, not played it for a while...but that was AMAZING!" said Ziggy with an absolutely massive smile on her face, "How come you guys know it?"

"Oh, come on, any self-respecting rock-musician knows THAT one!" said Erin.

"Ok, know any Kaiser Chiefs?"

"What you thinking?"

"Never miss a beat?"

It goes without saying that Ziggy had a great time that afternoon, jamming with the four Northern Girls.




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So, as part of writing the CJDL story, I need to have some vague understanding of what's in the charts.

Currently, Sabrina Carpenter is #1 with 'Taste'... it's a song about 2 girls who are dating the same man. Then I watched the video, which starts with a "Parental advisory & viewer warning"... ".. depicts graphic violence...". Such a sweet song with such a gory video! Had me laughing though!

Please heed the advisory if you are 'of a weak constitution' or a 'snowflake'!

Chapter 35


"Can I ask a question about writing your music?" asked Jules. "I was wondering a couple of things... when you start to write a song, do you sort-of get the song in one go, or does it take days or weeks to happen? And what sort of things give you inspiration. Oh, and is it words first then music, or music first?"

"Nice question, Jules" replied Linda, "and I'm gonna let Dianne and Carol answer first, 'coz they've been doing it longer than me!"

"Ok, so before Linda joined us, Jenny wrote pretty much all the music, but left the words to us two!" said Dianne. "She just doesn't do words! Maybe three-quarters the time, she'd write something, and tell us 'it's about a boy who fancies this girl' sort of thing, so usually one of us would work on the words, and typically, after having something rough, we'd all then work on it. The other quarter of the time, one of us would come up with the lyrics, maybe with an idea of how the tune should go, then work with Jenny on it. I've written the music for a couple of our songs, so has Carol... but again, we'd all work on it together to make it work." She took a breath. "How long does it take? Well, I know that when Jenny gets a new tune in her head, she just has to work on it, she generally hates to leave it. So, sometimes it's just hours, sometimes a few days. I guess it's the same for the lyrics too, depends how inspired we are. Then there's usually several days where we play it, make tiny tweaks, maybe adjust the pace of it. Carol - anything to add?"

"Agreeing with you so far. Mind you, some songs just 'develop'... I'm thinking of 'Braces Buddies' - that started off as someone just strumming the guitar and saying 'braces buddies...'. Linda did a load of the words, but it wasn't until we got back home - we'd been over in Korea - that it became the final song...so several weeks for that one. Jules, you also asked what inspires us? Well, usually it's just stuff around us, or things that happen to us - I'm sure Linda will tell you all about how she wrote 'Friends' in a moment. I sometimes get inspired by something I've seen on TV or online. Maybe we can see if we can get inspired by today's ferry trip? But first, I think you need to hear Linda's stories..."

"So, whilst Carol, Dianne and Jenny started to play together as a group back in college, I never really settled into a group. When I finished, I became a session musician: luckily I got an amazing agent who got me some really good work, and I quickly got a pretty good reputation. I'm lucky that I can sight-read, so playing other people's music was quite easy for me. Wilst I enjoyed the recording sessions - we did music for adverts, TV, all sorts - but the bit I liked was being in the backing band for an artist who was on tour... that's how I met Fiona Lewis."

"But I wasn't in a position where I needed to, or even really wanted to write, I was happy playing any sort of guitar, or doing backing vocals." Linda paused a moment to think. "It wasn't until I started working for CJD that I got to see music being created from nothing. I helped them effectively produce their previous album, helping them tweak things. Jenny pushed me hard to try writing something by myself: it wasn't great at first, but I quickly worked out what to do... and unlike the others, I seem to be able to write both music and lyrics. Often I'll have an idea, and work with the others on it, but a couple of times I've pretty much worked it out by myself, like with 'Friends'". Linda went on to explain the story about how 'Friends got written.

"So, yes, why don't we have a bit of a 'brainstorm' for ideas now. Can someone pass me my bag so I can get my notebook and recorder out. So the idea is simple: we'll start the ball rolling, then if you have an idea - so a word, a short phrase - then shout it out. The recorder is just for us, I can promise that what you say will never be made public! Now, don't worry if it sounds a bit silly, sometimes those are the best ideas! Ok, so let me start with a few... 'on the ferry', 'on the coach', going back home', '..back to London', umm.. 'it's fairly sunny'....". She paused th let others come up with ideas."

"Seeing my boyfriend again" suggested Carol. "Back in my own bed".

"Oh yes, looking forward to THAT!" said Dianne. "No milk in the fridge though!". Several of the 'guests' laughed. "Oh, don't forget 'drinking too much coffee'!"

"'Queuing in the car for the ferry'" suggested Mel. "'Kids getting bored'. Hey, how about 'are we nearly there yet?'". A few giggles.

"'Seagulls'..." said Chloe, "'following the ship'?"

"'Splashing waves!'" added Tyler.

"All good stuff!" said Linda, "Keep them coming!"

"You might have a copyright problem with it, but what about '2-4-6-8 Motorway'" suggested dad Jimmy.

"Don't worry about the copyright, I like that idea!" replied Linda. "And just for Dianne, I'm gonna write down 'taking off my headgear'".

"In that case, 'biscuits stuck in my braces'!" retorted Dianne.

Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, Linda filled several pages in her notebook with ideas. She had circled the '2-4-6-8 Motorway' - she needed to check its words, but the idea of the song's chorus suddenly popping up in the middle of their song appealed to her.

"So, we gonna write the song now?" asked Sammy quite innocently.

"That would be nice, but I think we need to let our brains think about everything first.  Tell you what though, Jimmy, I'm already having ideas about that '2-4-6-8 Motorway' punching in in the middle of the song!"

"How about we grab the guitars and sing something?" suggested Carol a few minutes later. She passed one of the guitars to Linda, while Dianne got her tambourine and shakers out of her bag.

Linda started strumming. "Hey, Paige, get your tablet out and look up the words for '2-4-6-8 Motorway' will you? Actually, search for 'chords' will you? I know there's probably only 3 or 4, but it would be good to see how they go. And if the rest of you get the words up on your phones, you can join in!"

Paige got her tablet out, and quickly found a site with the words and chords on it. "That what you're looking for?" she asked.

"Spot on!" Linda replied, and started to strum. "Ok, Dianne, Carol, how about we do the verses, and everyone else join in for the choruses? Ok, one two three four.... 'Drive my truck midway to the motorway station'...."

"All together now.... 'And it's 2-4-6-8, ain't never too late....'"

By the end of the song, several others in the ship's cafe had joined in too, and gave them a big round of applause at the end.

"Sure breaks the boredom, doesn't it?" said Dianne. "So, how about we sing a few of OUR songs, but we'll be expecting you all to join in too.... Any requests?"

"Can you do 'Friends'?" asked Chloe.

"Braces buddies too!" added Jules, smiling.

"Absolutely!" replied Carol. "Tell you what though," she said after they sang those two songs, "it doesn't half feel odd singing without Jenny!"

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it! Shame there's no internet, or we could call her." said Dianne.

"Call me weird, but I'm actually enjoying there being no internet!" said Linda. "No calls, no emails, no X, no insta, it's strangely nice!"

By the time they finished singing, quite a crowd had gathered: clearly word had got around about what was happening. After the singing, they did a load of selfies with lots of people: they didn't mind, as there wasn't really much else they could do.

"Ok, let's record a vid, we can upload it once we're back online!" suggested Carol.


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