Dulverton goes Wicker Man

It’s all gone a bit Wicker Man in town this weekend.  I was sitting quietly in The Bridge, minding my own business, when I glanced up and saw a man staring across the bar with glowing red eyes.  No, really – they were glowing, glowing and red.  ‘Oh my God,’ said the people sitting at the next table. ‘He’s seriously scary.  What the hell is he?’ 
‘I don’t know but he looks fabulous,’ I said and jumped up and went and said hello.
‘Great look. Love the eyes.’
‘Thanks. Can’t see a bloody thing though. Hope I’ve got the right beer.’

Nice chap.  See, appearances are often deceptive. So I popped into the Ladies and found two girls adjusting their bindis and rearranging their boobs in jangly bras. 

Children with shaved heads and dinky DMs were running in feral little gangs.  You couldn’t move for guitars and fiddles and drums and bits of ribbon and, for some inexplicable reason, a lot of boxers (my favourite dog). Oh, and a traction engine, belching smoke.

It’s the Dulverton Folk Festival and TheBridge is having a beer festival to coincide so, as you can imagine, Adrian is as happy as the proverbial pig in shit.  Not the folk so much (he was more into punk and rock before hardcore classical stole his ears) – but he had a good deal to do with the beer selection.  James wasn’t so keen.
‘I’m scared of Morris men,’ he said, shuddering. ‘I think I have a phobia.’

Well, I get there is something a little unsettling about blacked up faces with staring red eyes; about masks and long pointy noses.  It’s all very raw and primitive.

‘They’re rude, they are,’ said a chap outside the church. ‘Downright rude.’
I frowned.  ‘But the ones I spoke to were lovely, really friendly.’ 
‘Oh no,’ he replied.  ‘They’re nice enough. I mean rude as in, well…’ He lowered his voice… ‘….sexual.  Honestly, it’s the wrong time of year.’
Eh?  Sex has seasons, like pheasant or salmon?  Who knew?  ‘Oh, I dunno,’ I said with a grin.  ‘Any time of year works for me.’  He looked a bit startled but grinned back.  ‘I guess you’re right.’

So, we wandered from pub to pub, catching a bit of music here, a bit of dancing there.  Listening in on folk wars and stifling grins.  ‘Is that a banjo you’ve got there?’ asked one woman innocently in the cafe, pointing at a case.  Eyebrows raised, eyes bulged and two fingers flashed across one another in a warding gesture. ‘Banjo? BANJO? It’s a mandolin.’ 

The only sour note came from a severe case of I’m Very Importantitis.  Last night a party of four bustled to the table next to us. ‘We’re the committee,’ said a large florid  chap in a bright sweatshirt with COMMITTEE or CHAIRMAN or summat of that ilk written across it.  Well, there's a surprise.  And, frankly, why on earth does being on a committee mean you get to be unpleasant and unfriendly?    ‘It’s very tiring organising this, you know,' he blustered, when we didn't genuflect with suitable awe.  'We need our food. We need our table.’  And who precisely was stopping him from having his food and table?  Ah, *sigh*. Whatever.

graphic by Sarah Diggle - perfect image!

Then, this morning, I pitched up, a trifle late, for my kettlebell class by the river and saw our little group facing off – yup - Mr Bumptious again, this time with two henchmen.  Turned out he was objecting to us doing our class on “their” festival weekend.  Apparently we would ‘steal customers’ from the festival and we were ‘taking advantage’ of “their” weekend for publicity. WTF?  Six local women slinging kettlebells around off under the trees at 10.30am on a Sunday morning?  Ye gods, the festival goers were still sleeping off the excesses of the night before.  It was raining.  Nobody was even performing or dancing.  Who the hell did they think we were going to steal?   

He spluttered and pontificated and clearly wanted to intimidate Trish into cancelling the class.  Honestly, why is it that some people feel the need to throw their perceived weight around?  Is it that classic case of big fish, small pond – a very shaky ego that needs bolstering?  But really, it was bullying and it pissed me off so I threw my toys out the pram a bit and, given I couldn’t lob a kettlebell at the pillock, I unpinned my Folk Festival badge and thrust it into his hand, stifling a laugh at myself for such a totally pathetic gesture. 

Anyhow.  Forget him.  I love  anything really that brings people into Dulverton.  I just hate petty-mindedness and small thinking.  If you’re around the area tomorrow, there is still beer left at The Bridge and there will be music wherever you go (yes, we have four pubs in town - greedy eh?).  And there will be more dancing and mayhem and misrule. 

I reckon we’re just missing one thing…  A good burning to round off the festivities! 

(tell me you've seen The Wicker Man? One of my all-time favourite films).

Hell - Part One

So you wanna know about hell?  You wanna know about demons? Honestly, you lot…  As you may know, I’m writing a series of YA novels about a girl who falls in love with someone who is…what?  Demon? Angel? Something inbetween?  Anyhow, without giving too much away, when Book Two opens my main character is in metaphorical hell while her ex is sojourning in the actual destination: Hell with a capital H.  So, I had figured I’d go to the capital L (tell me you got that?) to get in the mood, so to speak.  And to meet a few demons.

Where do you find demons in London?  At a gathering of Chaos magicians in a backstreet occult bookshop surely?  It looked promising as I arrived.  There was a lot of black leather; plenty of facial hardware; tattoos and piercings; white faces and bloodshot eyes.  I wandered in and sniffed.  Sulphur?  Hmm, more like mandarin and floor polish really.  I browsed the bookshelves.  Necronomicon and Nocturnicon. Technomages and Pacts with the Devil. Low Magick and high risks. Getting closer.

A small woman with gimlet-bright eyes peered up at me and started to dance.  ‘Do you dance?’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I replied with a smile, following her in a bit of a cumbia. 

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘One should always dance.’  Quite so.  She danced me down the stairs to where two tall men with long black hair were serving wine and proffering hummus and carrot sticks. 

The lecture, I have to say, was a huge disappointment.  The speaker was a PhD student who had perfected the art of obfuscation, made even more unintelligible by muttering in a transatlantic drawl.  I caught the odd word: exoskeleton, sigil, lobotomy, shame, subjugation, DNA, chimera, pack, pact, anomalous.  I started drawing sigils in my notebook and sketching faces.  I had kinda hoped to talk to people afterwards but they melted into the night…apart from an elderly woman with a face the colour and texture of a prune who thrust a small glass jar into my hand as I left. 

HEKATE of the cross-roads, keeper of the keys of the universe.  Storax, frankincense, myrrh, willow, aconite.
Hmm. 
Add 3 drops of blood to portion used in ritual, thus aligning self with intent.
Hmm

She smiled, shrugged and vanished.  In a puff of smoke?  Oh, how I wish…  But honesty impels me:  it was more like a fading away to grey... 

To be continued…in the meantime, some music...

http://youtu.be/e97isb0e5nQ

And a rather beautiful little film

http://youtu.be/2ePWK0qfisE

Bootcamp - in which I discover I love hardcore exercise

It was one of those weird coincidences – you know, the ones I love so much.


An editor I used to work for had sent a round robin email to announce she was going freelance. Soon after I got a call from someone else on the list - an ex-editor now turned PR.

‘Long time no speak,' she said.  'I saw you on the email list and wondered if you might fancy going on a bootcamp in Buckinghamshire?’ she asked. ‘It’s run by this amazing woman called Julie Brealy.’

‘Hang on a flipping minute,’ said I. ‘I know Julie Brealy.’ When I’d damaged a tendon, she’d given me sports massage on it for weeks – down here on Exmoor. She was fab. She was also pretty hardcore. My Achilles got better out of sheer fear. But, hey, small world. It was obviously A Sign so I signed up. And promptly forgot all about it.

Then realised, in a mild state of panic, that March was whizzing along and I had a hot and fast approaching date with eight hours’ exercise a day. Stumbled onto the train with a case full of trainers and my bodyweight in painkillers. Arrived at Latimer Place and was hurled straight into a circuit class followed by – oh yes – Zumba.

I don’t think I’ve talked about Zumba on the blog. About my mad love affair with the wildest, sweatiest, dirtiest dance going. But you can read about it on my Lady blog here. There was lots of Zumba on this weekend – four hours of it. Oh yes.

Anyhow. The weekend was a total blast. Just wonderful. There were twelve of us – all women but all ages, sizes and shapes. Some revoltingly fit, some not so. You work at your own pace, encouraged rather than pushed. No noses in the mud; no screaming and yelling. Best thing was trying out new classes and workouts. So it was thumbs up to kettlebells – yeah the Russian dead weight thingy you swing between your legs (very fetching). Thumbs down to bellydancing (I tried but I just can’t shimmy my boobs in the opposite direction to my hips). Actually, nor could anyone else – we all looked desperately stiff and Anglo-Saxon (even the French and Swedes in the group). Thumbs up to gym sticks (a deep and brilliant stretch) and, surprisingly, thumbs up to Jazzercise (bit of a blast). You know, I can’t remember everything we did but there was a lot of it. There was also tons of food. You think you have to live on a couple of carrot sticks and the odd oatcake? Wrong. I seriously couldn’t keep up.

At the end of the day we piled into the pool and swam and then jostled for room in the jacuzzi. Then crammed into the steam room and sauna. And laughed and laughed.

But, best of all – bliss upon bliss – I was working so hard that there was no room At All for the usual nonsense that flies through my head. I was in ‘no thought’ for such vast periods of time that the world transformed into a very pleasant place. So coming back home felt weird. What is this thing called ‘sitting on a chair at a PC?’ My muscles twitched; wanted to move. And my mind winced as the old crap came rushing back in as I unravelled over 100 emails and a slew of voicemails.

So I went to the gym. And talked to Trish who introduced me to Julie in the first place. ‘Did you like it?’ she asked, as I beat hell out of the exercise bike.
‘I loved it!’ I said.  'Just the dog's bollocks.'
‘Hmm,’ she replied. ‘Better do a week the next time.’

You know what?  I'm severely tempted. 


Brealy Bootcamps - give 'em a go!