Massive bloomer

The title makes it sound like I’m talking about underwear but I’m not…more making a bloomer…no that sounds like sowing or baking!…anyway. Last night Moirai played Bracknell Folk Club which isn’t in Bracknell but Windelsham. It is possibly the smallest folk club I have ever been in or played in. The organiser, Steve, did describe it as being like a large front room and he wasn’t wrong. Apparently they still had one guest where they insisted on using P.A despite the fact that that took up a third of the room. The room itself had an extraordinary acoustic to the point where I thought we sounded really loud..god knows what having a PA would have done. The walls were reflective enough.

For those of you who don’t know Moirai it’s myself, Sarah Matthews on violin, viola and vocals and Mel Biggs on diatonic accordeon, flute and vocals. One of the sets of tunes we play is ‘Half Maid/Italian Mix’. Despite the fact I wrote them they are not easy to play. I think I’ve mentioned before that when I play I don’t think in keys but in finger patterns but occasionally that goes wrong or my brain decides to go somewhere completely different. Well that happened last night. There’s a lovely low note that adds to the drama of the piece and it’s not a ‘shy’ note in that you have to hit it and it rings forth. Well I hit the wrong one, nice, low one, but completely wrong and sticking out like a fog horn in a string recital. So wrong I burst out laughing and could barely continue. The audience completely went with me on the laughter and Mel and Sarah joined in whilst carrying on playing. I do think that if you’re at ease with your mistakes then the audience are comfortable too but as I said to the audience if your going to make a mistake you might as well make it a big one and rather like voting for the best goal in a football season if there was a vote for best cock up I would have won it last night. Despite that we have literally just received an email from the organiser thanking us for a splendid evening. He said he’d felt really tired on arrival but by the end he wished there were one or two more hours so I guess the mistake didn’t matter.

The folk club had a nice range of floor spots including the mellow turns of Hector Gilchrist who I sat and chatted to before our bit in each half. He is another lymphoma patient although his is mantel cell and mine is follicular . So we talked about bloods and energy levels amongst other things. Meanwhile Sarah was talking to relatives that had turned up and Mel was having a melodeon moment with a lady who’d bought a hohner C/F in a flea market that she”d paid £35…….£35 blimey and it was all functioning although no doubt could have done with a little over haul but at that price who cares!

Then one of the floor singers got up and sang ‘The Nutting Girl’. This is one of those folk songs that I have never actually learnt but somehow knew and still know all the words too. I was instantly bounced, memory wise, into a Whitby folk festival ceilidh. They used to do these themed Ceilidhs which were a huge amount of fun and usually involved people raiding each other’s wardrobes and picking up missing bits of kit from the charity shops around the town.

I decided to go as a punk rocker. Someone lent me some leather trousers, I had a black leather jacket I sprayed my hair up into an impersonation of a Mohican and covered my face in makeup that was relevant for the time. I added safety clips to various parts of my face and ears in order to look like multiple piercings.

On arrival at the dance people looked, shall we say.., nonplused…as if to say ‘well we know what we are but what have you come dressed as? At which point I started doing the motions of a Glaswegian kiss and said, ‘ why the nutting girl of course!’. Well I thought it was funny anyway.

So the Moirai mini tour goes on. I had a fantastic wander around the outside of a national trust property, Polesden Lacey, and I have had Chicken ham and leak pie in the ‘Stepping Stone’ pub near Dorking. I’m on the coffee now as food makes you feel a little drowsy and we still have the gig to do.

A short blog this week. Thanks for reading, commenting and sharing and I had a personal email this week thanking me for the blogs and telling me to continue. I shall and as I always say if you wat to know stuff, hear thoughts about stuff etc – just ask.