Dancing on the Table

I have made a resolution that I must get out more. When we lived in London I was always out at some play or concert, exhibition or show. I was a wildly sociable soul. But country life sucks out the culture vulture. For starters there isn’t that much on – unless you like tribute bands of tribute bands or the local Am/Dram hamming (god help us) Lady Windermere’s Fan (again). Secondly what seemed like a good idea several weeks back when you booked the tickets, doesn’t look quite so appealing on a cold/wet/gloomy evening when faced with getting tarted up and heading off on a fuel-gulping trek across the moor. I have lost count of the number of tickets that have been left unused and, being a canny and careful Capricorn the waste is painful to the soul.
A few months back I purposefully went through the programme for the Brewhouse Theatre in Taunton; found a few possibles and tried to round up troops to accompany me. One such was a folk band called Waterson: Carthy .

So off I went, through the deluge, to meet my friend Carolyn. True to form, she wafted in, all colour-coordinated and oozing serenity and Miss Dior while I was sitting there with my hair like a haystack glugging a spritzer hoping it would take away the distinctly vinegary whiff of fish shop chips (that I’d nicked from James in lieu of supper)….

I was expecting a bunch of old hippies and young grungies but the audience was, to a man and woman, ancient and respectable. The place was packed and Carolyn said she’d read a good review.

Out they trooped onto the stage – mother, father, daughter and another bloke. All so at home with one another that they carried on nattering as if there were sitting at home in their kitchen.
As soon as they started playing I realised it was a mistake. This kind of back to its roots folk music is fabulous but really needs to be heard in a smaller space – in the crowded bar of a pub. I wanted to be sitting at a table with a bunch of mates, glugging back red wine or rough cider and tapping my foot or drumming my fingers on the wine glass. There is something about folk music (and jazz too) that doesn’t often translate that well onto a more formal setting. They were superb musicians and some of the arrangements were unusual and lovely, but I suppose I want more entertainment, more pizzazz if I’m sitting still with my knees up to my chin, penned in a neat row.

There was a lot of shuffling around the stage (from the mikes to a table with chairs where the ones who weren’t playing would sit and drink what I swear were cups of tea). They were so laid back with the whole performing malarkey that they actually came across as a bit bored. Oh gawd, here we go again: let’s bung out a few songs, have a few cuppas, sell a few CDs and bugger off out of here. For some reason they seemed to think it was hilarious that they were sucking throat lozenges, sticking out their tongues at each other. Yeeuch. I kept wanting to yell, oh get on with the music.

The woman next to me however absolutely loved all this shambolic nattering. She barked out the most peculiar laugh I’ve ever heard – this is where I wish I’d paid more attention to phonetics lectures and could reproduce it properly – and kept shouting ‘whoop whoop’ in my ear far more than was strictly necessary.

It made me think back to when I was at college in Manchester and we used to go to this tiny little Irish pub called The Ducie Arms. It was one of a terrace, though most of the street had been pulled own, and faced an area of bleak waste ground before the start of Moss Side. It was, at that time, one of the few places you could get good draught Guinness and we would go in, grab a few pints and sit down in the smoky fug. Inevitably someone would get out a fiddle and then a bodhran and maybe a guitar. A tune would rise up and weave in and out of the conversation. If you’d had a few too much of the dark stuff, it would be nigh-on impossible to stay seated and so up you’d get and jig around a bit (even, shame to tell, on the tables)…and someone would try to teach me Gaelic and be very impressed when I could repeat it nearly perfectly (I’ve got a good ear) not realising that I have an equally poor memory and would have forgotten it ten minutes (or a pint) later. So, IrishEyes, I’m a lost cause. Then someone else would try to get you to play the spoons and by heck that wasn’t ever going to happen.

Anyhow, that – to my mind – was how real folk music needs to be heard. So here comes another WWM (When We Move) resolution – to get out to see some of the small bands playing the pubs.


When I got back to Mum’s (we were staying overnight in Bampton as Adrian had been in London doing a tutored beer tasting for a bunch of loss adjusters) I found a lovely surprise. Adrian had bought me a copy of Loreena McKennitt’s new album, An Ancient Muse. I adore her music – a fusion of Celtic styles and Arabic music which is just totally delicious. I have played her other albums so much I can barely bear to hear them anymore so a new one was a total delight.

So now I’m sitting at my laptop (I’ve given up on the new desktop – the connection is hopeless) being soothed by the strains of Caravanserai. I wish I were clever like Cait (or her offspring) and could have it play at a click….but I’m not so you can’t. Jx

How we met (Fate blog)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how and why things happen. I’ve finished the first draft of my psychic’s memoir and, reading back the entire story from start to finish, am bowled over by her attitude to life. She had the most appallingly abusive (sexually, physically, emotionally) upbringing – and came close to death on numerous occasions. She saw things no child should see. Yet she doesn’t bear any animosity; she doesn’t hold any grudges. In fact, she considers herself hugely lucky and her life totally blessed.
I asked her if it was because she believes in karma and she said yes, in many ways. ‘Not just my own karma though. I was there to give people choices to work out their karma,’ she said. ‘They had the choice to do harm or not. Some chose to harm; others made the choice to walk away and do no harm.’
She firmly believes that, while we ultimately create our own reality by our thoughts and actions, some things are meant to be. Obviously the house comes to mind when I think about this. For us to be in the same situation as we were a year ago smacks rather strongly of Fate.
But it also got me thinking about Adrian and I and how we met. I remember, back on the CL site, Frances and a few other people asked how we got together and I promised to tell but never got around to it. Well, it was very much a tale of Fate: too many coincidences to be anything but.
I had just left my job at the Evening Standard and had gone freelance. Freedom from the office grind was bliss and I arranged with a friend to go to the gym one afternoon. So, sporting leggings, trainers and a top in a particularly vivid shade of puce (that clashed horribly with my hair) I headed off to Brixton.
Louise was standing outside a large pair of doors with a face like thunder. The gym was shut. ‘But it’s never shut,’ she wailed.
‘Never mind,’ said I, never that gutted by a missed exercise opportunity. Let’s have a coffee instead.’
The coffee place was shut.
‘This is getting weird.’
‘OK, so let’s go back to your flat and have one there.’
So we did. As I was sitting at the table, waiting for the kettle to boil, I found I couldn’t keep my eyes off her phone. I never ever checked my ansaphone (this was before mobiles) but for some reason I felt I had to. So I rang up and sure enough there was a message from my old editor. Was I free to go to a Paul McKenna launch at one of the Park Lane hotels? In about two hours?
It was hardly a glamorous assignment but I figured I couldn’t very well turn it down.
No time to go home to change so I found myself in gym gear and NO make-up walking into this smart hotel. Ah well, I figured, it wasn’t as if I were going to meet the love of my life or anything. I’d sit at the back and sneak out the second it was over. But, just at that moment, someone I hadn’t seen for years turned up and insisted I sit with him.
The presentation was a bit cringe-inducing – very stage hypnosis – and when it ended I was all set to run off.
‘Stay for a drink,’ said Andrew. ‘Oh, and have you met Adrian?’
I knew his name – he used to work on the NME and write for Blitz and City Limits. He also looked familiar – a bit like a slightly manic Nicholas Cage. We shook hands and wandered out the hall, chatting vaguely.
‘Well, nice to meet you but I must get going.’
‘No, have a drink. Just a quick one. Stay right there.’ And he ran off before I could say no. A few minutes later he returned, with four bottles of wine poking out the pockets of his crumpled Katharine Hamnett suit.
‘I wasn’t sure what you’d like.’ It set the tone for our whole relationship really. We sat and drank and ate sushi and really it was like talking to my twin. We liked the same things, we felt the same about everything (this, I hasten to add, was before he became a real ale bore and got into shooting).
When we were turfed out, I got on my bus and he jumped on too. At Kings Cross the bus turned a tight circle. Adrian leaned with it (thinking of his motorbike days I suppose) but then leaned too far and flopped neatly into the aisle. There he sat, unable to get up enough momentum to regain his seat while the whole bus dissolved into hysterics.
‘Er, don’t you need to get off here?’ I reminded him.
‘Oh God, yes!’ Jumping off the bus with a jaunty wave. I looked back and smiled and then he smacked his head with his hand and started sprinting after the bus.
‘I haven’t got your number! Give me your number!’
So I did, yelling out the numbers, painfully aware that the whole bus now knew we had only just met and that I was considering a return match with a mad man with wild eyes who evidently drank Far Too Much.

So that was how it all started and I can’t help but think that Fate had a helping hand in it – probably appalled at the lack of progress I was making when left to my own devices. But there’s an amusing epilogue too. Many years later I was in London in a bookshop in Cecil Court. As I placed my purchases on the counter, the woman serving looked up and stared at me.
‘I know you from somewhere,’ she said and we then proceeded to go through everything from junior school to foreign holidays, much to the irritation of the small queue building up behind.
‘I think I’ve just got one of those faces that are very familiar,’ I said in desperation.
‘No. I know you.’ Then she clapped her hand over her mouth and laughed. ‘I know! You were on the 73 bus, sitting next to that mad bloke who fell over as we went round Kings Cross. My friend and I were crying with laughter about that. God he was drunk. And totally bonkers. What a nut-case eh?’
I tried to stop her but she was in full flow, now telling the whole queue about it.
‘Hmm, wonder whatever happened to him? I reckon he was heading for a fall that one.’
‘Er. I married him.’