Back from a day in picturesque Cumbria, DJ-ing with Miss Red at the wedding of the very lovely Allan and Polly Crow. The couple were visitors to the Beautiful & Damned club night. They enjoyed it so much, they employed us to provide the soundtrack to their nuptials. We’ve been booked for months.

We catch a ride up there on Saturday morning – Red with a full suitcase of vinyl, me with one overnight bag for my laptop and a dozen CDs. I meet the car outside Highgate tube station at 6.30 Saturday morning. Worried about oversleeping the night before, I find myself unable to settle in my own bed, and the anxiety stops me from sleeping at all.

The lift is courtesy of two kind friends of the couple, Ms ‘Ferret’ and Mr ‘Scoey’. Who don’t seem to mind a strange-haired stranger in a white suit falling asleep on their back seat too much. Or if they do, they don’t mention it.

When I next blink myself awake, the rainy flatness and motorways have been replaced by sunshine, dry stone walls with ancient red postboxes embedded in them, narrow lanes, sleeping ponies on the verge, towering hills and gentle valleys, wild bluebells, caravans, cobbled streets in villages, and more sheep than you can shake a sheep-shaped stick at. To me such hills are more like mountains: Highgate Hill is my idea of a ‘hill’. Though Cumbria is usually associated with the Lake District, this area is in the Yorkshire Dales; it just isn’t in Yorkshire.

Mr S the kind driver works for Warner Home Video, so naturally I ask him to hurry up and get ‘O Lucky Man’ out on DVD. Actually, sitting in my white suit and being driven up the full spine of England, I can’t help thinking of Malcolm McDowell driving around the 70s counties in his gold lame ensemble.

Myself and Miss Red have been invited to the marriage ceremony and dinner, but we politely ask if it’s okay to sleep it out quietly in our hotel rooms, so we’re sober and well-rested for our set later on. We’re here to work, after all, and want to do a good job.

Our rooms turn out to be a two-bedroom cottage in Sedburgh, owned by the Dalesman Inn. A whole cottage to ourselves. The guest book tells of ghostly sightings in my room, but if there are such ghosts, they give me a miss. I’m too tired to notice.

Fully refreshed by the evening, we’re collected by Roger, a local cabbie with long grey hair, spectacles and a beard, who likes to sing Willie Nelson numbers. In fact, he keeps a karaoke backing CD in his car stereo, and gives us a concert for most of the eight miles to the venue, Dent village hall. It’s like the opening of a film: pan down across green peaks and valleys to a lone car driving along tiny country lanes. The opening bars of Wille Nelson’s “Take This Job And Shove It” fade up, and we realise the singer is the driver of the car. Not singing over the original track, but against a tailored backing arrangement. Roger’s stage is his cab, his audience the sheep of the Dales.

Red and I arrive in the cobbled streets of Dent, spot the only building with tipsy people in gowns and morning suits smoking outside, and catch the speeches. All of which are utterly touching and life-enhancing. We do our DJ bit, a mixture of B&D favourites and anything else we think they’ll enjoy, and it all seems to go down well. Roger turns up towards the end, for whatever fare he’s been assigned, and insists on singing “Take This Job And Shove It”. We let him.

The next morning, a lady cabbie takes us all the way up the side of the hills to Dent Station, a tiny Toy Town-ish platform with a sign boasting its position as the highest rail station in England. The journey back to London involves changing at Leeds and Sheffield, eventually getting us into the plastic-sheeted St Pancras – currently undergoing its reconstruction as a new Eurostar terminus – at about 5.30pm. Funny how travel can be draining, even though you’re just sitting down for most of it.

Red manages to get some sleep on the various trains, and I wonder if her training as a musical actress helps. All that dancing must makes one’s limbs more flexible, more foldable, more conducive to finding a successful sleeping posture in even the most rigid and cramped of environments. You just pack yourself away.