The Group had travelled to Indonesia on 27th December without me as I had been stranded in Abingdon by snow, and actually travelled out on my own two days later. We were staying and performing at The Hilton Hotel in Jakarta and before I arrived the others had to perform the show in front of Indonesian censors to make sure our show was in good taste. It passed OK but when I arrived we had to do it all over again in case I added anything of dubious taste to the show. We did our first performance at The Hilton Hotel on New Years Eve. I was terribly homesick, and found it difficult being away from Lynne and Wayne, who was only three months old. We were supposed to perform a few shows that paid for the expenses and travelling and then a couple of shows where we would get paid. These never happened and I was furious with Ludo Veuten as we ended up with a paid holiday that I did not want. Ludo and myself never really got on that well, I think you could say we tolerated each other.

In march we decided to rent appartments in Holland rather than stay in hotels and we found just what we were looking for in Vinkeveen, which is a picturesque village on a lake, around 14km south of Amsterdam. We rented three two story open planned chalets, one for Julie and Dominic, one for Rosie and one for myself. We got into the routine of flying over and staying for a few days when we had work. If we were there for any length of time I would take Lynne and Wayne and drive over on the ferry from Harwich. One good thing about working in Holland that the maximum journey time was around two hours. We would work all over Holland and down as far as Brussels in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium.

Because we only ever performed 30 minute shows with backing tracks we often used to perform two shows each night at different venues, and once we performed four shows in one day. We started in the North of Holland at around two o'clock, travelled down to Amsterdam for a show at 5 o'clock another in Rotterdam at 8.o'clock and finished at Brussels around midnight completely knackered.

Towards the end of 1982 we signed a two year deal with Technics the Hi Fi firm, to advertise their products. Part of the deal was that they would supply us with video cameras and recorders, and we had to perform a number of shows for them and also take part in TV advertising.

Click on Photo to enlarge.

1982 Indonesia to Technics