Jo Freya’s Musings

First of all an apology for not sticking to the Wednesday blog all the time. I have realised that trying to fit everything in is difficult and I do this, predominantly, for pleasure and to keep a certain side of my creative brain ticking along. Also I like to remember the stories.  It needs to feel like something I want to do rather than something that adds another bucket of water to an already over flowing pool. So, only a week or so late…we go back to Russia.

One of the the return trips to Moscow the accommodation we were provided with was in a flat. On most of these trips I tended to travel with a colleague, Mark. This flat had a living room diner kitchen all in one room and a bedroom. This was a family flat and considered to be a relative luxurious one because of the separate bedroom and because it had a small bathroom. Some of the family were meant to sleep in the living room part and the children , I assume, in the one bedroom. There were still old Russian tenements about at that time that had one shared bathroom on a landing. That bathroom would have been shared between four families with everyone having to work around each others works schedules and commitments. At least for us there was a little bit of privacy from . At least for us there was a little bit of privacy from each other. 

On this particular training day we were doing an exercise that practically caused a stand up row with one male participant. The exercise involved splitting people into pairs. Once in pairs one of the pair was blindfolded and the other was to lead them around the building. After a certain amount of time those roles were swopped. One of the most hilarious moments, on an observational basis, came because one of the participants was blind. As far as I can remember she had no sight at all but she did know the building. When she was being led round it didn’t effect her in anyway particularly and her partner was slightly baffled. When they swopped roles Svetlana led him around very fast and terrified the poor man. Once the exercise was over the discussions began.

What do you think the exercise was about? What did it bring up for you? etc etc. The exercise, as I am sure you know, had nothing at all to do with experiencing what it is like to be blind. That would be ridiculous and patronising to say the least…implying you could give someone a real taste of someones entire life as a blind person in 20 minutes. No. It was a communication exercise designed to get at the assumptions we make about other people and how we can better communicate to include others in our decision making and create a more equal feel in our organisations etc etc. It really is a brief description but hopefully you get the picture.

My role would be to some times pose questions e.g. “Did you ask your partner how they wanted to be lead round the building?” (or did you just grab their arm and head off). It’s that classic comedy sketch where some kind well meaning individual grabs an elderly persons arm near a road crossing and ‘helps’ them across only to be told that they hadn’t wanted to cross the road. Then you get into the real nitty gritty about what is helpful, what might be, why some things are helpful for some and not others and why if you simply ask you might prevent a whole lot of grief for the person you really want to help and frustration for yourself for having got it wrong. I think culturally too the Russians have some personality traits that can be quite similar to some British ones. That being, in order not to appear stupid you make a decision because asking the question might be perceived as a weakness. If you remember our participants were setting up new charities and we were trying to find memorable ways of helping them arrive at good communication channels that really consulted their participants.

Anyway, one man stood up ad said that he felt the exercise was about experiencing what it was like to be blind and how amazing that was. I very politely and gently pointed out that you couldn’t truly experience that through this exercise but he wasn’t having any of it. he insisted and indeed said ‘I was wrong’. Svetlana even piled in backing me up but he just wasn’t having it. I gave up in the end saying that we would have to agree to differ.

What’s lovely about these training exercises is they often have unexpected results and not always in the way you expect . Over the course of a couple of days there are usual a few, what we call, light bulb moments where someone suddenly has a greater understanding of how they might proceed as things fall into place in their head. Svetlana was one of those. You might have thought that she, of all people, would be keen to make sure her charity was consulting it’s participants. Not so. Originally she was quite resistant saying that consulting people was bound to cause problems and make life difficult and ‘we’ already knew how to help them. By the end of the course her light bulb had switched on and she had changed her mind. The obvious thing to say is that consulting people does cause problems but it can reap the best results for all and help build organisations that will last because the people it most wants to help have a vested interest in it’s development and services. It is also about not making assumptions about everyone’s needs and experiences even if we can empathise.

Svetlana’s partner in the exercise hadn’t felt she was particularly helpful towards him because he was too busy being terrified as he was led around the building twice as fast as everyone else. She’d tell him there were steps etc but not give him much time to adjust. Funny to be observing but not experiencing and we never interfered as that would have informed the later discussions .

I can never remember whether it was that trip or one that came soon after that involved us working alongside a young American who worked for the NGO’s. I remember he wore a ring on his thumb. I even started doing it for a short while . But also I remember in restaurants he liked to order and eat his desert first just to make sure he had room for it as that was the most important part of the meal as far as he was concerned. Caused quite a lot of hilarity. I also remember, coming back into Moscow after overnight train journeys and going to an American diner near by. A chrome caravan that did all the ‘eggs over easy’ ,’sunny side up’ up etc. It was’t bad either. Mostly Mark and I ate in Russian restaurants but, as we were usually there in winter there was little in the way of fresh vegetables. I remember being given some kind of black charcoal type tablets to eat as I soon became bloated and felt unwell on a heavy meat and dumpling diet and when I got back to the UK I over filled my basket with everything green..broccoli and spinach in particular. The vegetables that were on offer in Russia were pickled in jars. Not the same at all and there was Russian salad of course. I enjoyed the Blini and other things but it wasn’t a diet that suited me at all.

Next time I’ll talk about the other places we went to in Russia.

I was in conversation with a ‘besty’ the other day (as in a best friend) about Russia or specifically in that conversation the feistiness of the Russian woman she had been talking to. She really liked her but wouldn’t have wanted to get into an argument with her. It made me remember some of the women I met when I was working in Russia.

That fact I worked in Russia, at all , may be a surprise to you so I had best explain why I was working there. Through much of my working life I have been a professional musician but I have had a few little things up my sleeve to back up my income and keep my brain working in different ways which is something that’s important to me. I’ll gloss over my ‘Equal Opportunities’ days. We’ll have a chat about them another time but as a result of those days I developed a skill in something that was called ‘participative training’. This is less like a stereotypical classroom or lecture style training and more about interactive tasks and exercises. I first starting doing this with ‘Assertiveness Training’ and later around various Equal Opportunities issues.

Along the way I’d met a woman via Nottingham Women’s Centre who had gone on to work elsewhere and she was part of a team, at DeMontford University Leicester, specialising in ‘social action’ research and training. Just briefly , in terms of research, it meant that it was far ore qualitative than quantitative . I’ll give you an example of how it might work so you can better understand it.

For instance, If you go in to an area that has had an issue with youth crime etc you might go in with a quantitative survey asking the residents if they would like CCTV camera’s. You’d get a yes or no answer which you could add up accordingly and would probably come out highly in favour of the camera’s as a crime solving method. However, if you go in with a blank sheet of paper and ask people to talk about what they like and don’t like about their area, what they might think causes the problems they perceive and what the possible solutions might be…you end up with a lot more information and quite probably none of it suggesting a CCTV camera. was the answer It is in depth, takes time and is labour intensive so to do research this way takes effort and money but the end results are often more fully embraced by the locals whose suggestions are taken into account and who’s views are listened to, than companies coming in from outside with a vested interest. Hopefully this explains, to a certain extent, the philosophy behind the Centre for Social Action. It won’t be a surprise then that they also did interactive training and preferred these methods as a means of helping people arrive at solutions to problems in their workplaces, charities etc. Due to the connections and skills I had already developed I was asked if I would be interested in certain bits of work that they had coming up and one of them was a contract they had secured in Russia.

This was very soon after the iron curtain had come down and Russia was developing it’s charity and voluntary sector. This was a newly exploding ‘business’ in society, with charities popping up all over the place, and a group of them wanted help in how to develop  avoiding  victorian philanthropic styles that patronise participants but help them to learn how to become user orientated and informed and I was part of the team designing an interactive program. How amazing to go and do something like that in Russia.

I have various memories which I’ll share with you but probably not all today. There may be one or two Russia chronicles. We had a translator and she was called Tania and she’s one of the women I got to know and remember so well. She was a simultaneous translator meaning she was doing Russia to English and English to Russian as we did the exercise.s This was a very important role because the exercises would have made little sense without an accurate description and we couldn’t have worked with the results without an accurate translation of the comments and reasonings. Tania became passionate about the way we worked and get that she was the right translator for the job.  She was brilliant.

There were so many memories of that first visit. One was walking out our first evening. We were in a hotel near the centre of Moscow and so walked through to red square. It was like walking into a fairy tale I had never seen anything like it. The colours of the Zwiebel (onion) towers  seemed to me as if they were from Arabian nights and with the snow falling…well it was magical. I never got fed up of walking into that square.

The hotel was interesting. Whilst it was evident they were doing it up the room I was given was on the top floor and hadn’t been touched for years. It was very small and frayed on all the possible edges you could think off with a hip bath in the bathroom and a lot of plumbing that was attached but only just. It was relatively comfortable and clean.

I can’t remember where we ate that first night because the view of that square burned it’s brightness into my retina and it’s still there. I hope to see it again one day.

If you bear in mind that one of the points was to help our participants give value to their customers equally. That may help explain some of the exercises. To get to the nub of Russian attitudes towards male’s and females I did a work and careers exercise. Quite simply I got them to list as many jobs they could on one sheet of paper and then allocate them, as they saw fit, to men or women. This immediately, as you would expect in a communist or recently ex communist country, caused a conversation about the fact really anybody could do anything but then the real discussions began…and sure enough there were some standard stereotypes. Road workers generally should be male, nurses female etc etc. What really mad me laugh was when they got to ‘plumber’. in one group they could not allocate plumber to male or female.

When I asked for an explanation a woman said, as translated by Tania in her delightful Russian accent, “We all know that really it is a man’s job but really we feel that if you want the job done properly you get a woman to do it”. This proved to be the case for carpenters too! It made everyone in the room laugh loudly and nod sagely. But what it reflected in the animated and frank discussion which followed and indeed was the intention behind the exercise. was that stereotypes and attitudes did exist. On following this up with Tania later she said frankly, ‘yes communism was all very well and technically women could train and be engineers if they wanted to, but they were and are still expected to come home and cook, clean and look after the children etc. ‘. In terms of the overall sexism and females in a relationship she felt little had changed for the better.

The other thing I remember Tania saying was that for women like her things were even more difficult. This came out of a conversation in the training room too. Some how we’d got on to a discussion about unmarried women. One man said it was an abomination and another said an unmarried woman in her 40’s should go and live in a nunnery . I felt shocked by this incredibly intrenched attitude and also I was conscious that Tania was an unmarried Russian in her forties. I tried to use myself as an example as an unmarred woman in my 30’s at the time. For me they made excuses. They referred to me as a ‘professor’, even though I explained I wasn’t they insisted in their eyes I was and this, for some reason, seemed to allow me to be ‘different’ and I suspect that being a foreigner meant I wasn’t judged in the same way.

On the whole we weren’t there to judge but to open up conversation so issues could be dealt with. I have to say it was also during this time that I became aware of how many Russians seemed very very anti-semitic. That also surprised me as I hadn’t expected that…and I’m jewish by decent too. The point of several days of exercises was to bring the focus back to the people they were working with. Their charity users who needed to be understood, respected, consulted and listened to in order to grow an organisation that felt inclusive .

Do you know what else I remember about that first visit? Our taxi driver form the airport into the city pointed out Macdonalds as we went passed. The first one to ever be allowed in Russia and the one that famously made the news because people were prepared to queue for a very long time and spend a ridiculously high proportion of their income on this novelty! There are many all over Russia now of course.

That was my first visit and we went back…so more of the Rissuan chronicles to come.

Last Wednesday I went up to Sheffield to see a band called Tankus the Henge. A tight, cabaret style funk, new orleans jazz outfit that is great live band. It was a standing gig, which I know is some peoples idea of hell, but as I often stand up for two hours at a time at my own gigs it’s a doddle for me.

Fairly typically the tallest guy in the room did end up practically in front of me and at one point he stood on me too. That’s when you realise how invisible you are. I did give him a shove off my foot and he got a little bit lairy  as drink had been taken. But even he couldn’t ruin my night. I reasoned to myself that he couldn’t help being tall but he could help standing on me. It’s wiggle and dance music. I certainly can’t stand still and actually I often find sitting at gigs a little difficult even when it’s quite intense as I get fidgety …I know and I would probably hate it if someone was visibly fidgeting too much in front of me when singing a quiet song.

Actually, as this is a stream of thought, it’s taken me to the Moirai gig at the Grand Union Folk Club on Monday. Some guy slept nearly all the way through it. Whilst it wasn’t really loud snoring it was heavy breathing. We’re quite noisy too so he was either very tired or suffering from narcolepsy.

So going to the Tankus gig made me think of gigs I have gone too. Some were iconic. I saw Kate Bush on her ‘Kick Inside’ tour at Bristol Colston Hall, as it was then. I loved it. It was the first time anyone had matched up dancing, singing and screen images as as far as I was aware. I remember thinking how clever she was when on her more ‘erotic’ songs she chose to simply play them at the piano rather than writhing around on a bed or accompanying it with over obvious hip thrusts like some acts do. It was subtle and therefore more erotic. It makes me think about how semi clothed humans are so much more sexy than nude ones….leaves more to the imagination at least in my opinion. I’m talking images rather than partners or anything like that.

I also saw Dire Straights at Colston Hall (can’t remember how to spell their name so forgive me if it’s wrong}. Whilst I was impressed by Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing I found most of the songs quite formulaic and, of course, they all had the ubiquitous guitar solo. In truth I got a bit bored where as I definitely wasn’t with Kate Bush.

But one gig that really stuck out for me was Toyah Wilcox. Right in the punk era she was soft punk but I quite liked her image and her hit ‘It’s a mystery’ so I went see her at Rock City in Nottingham. I was dressed in black but not bin liners and whilst my ears were pierced nothing else was, honest! But, punk was in and so was pogoing. It was a packed gig and if one person pogoed everyone had to otherwise you would have been trampled to death. I was near enough to the stage to be spat on by Toyah….not deliberately, as was the fashion, but as a result of extra exuberant enunciation.

So, you were pogoing up and down in rhythm with everyone around you and, in order to not feel completely trapped, most people were pogoing with their arms in the air. I was having a lovely time until I suddenly felt hands on my body coming from behind. Someone was trying to slide their hands down the inside of the top of my shirt. I managed to wriggle free but who ever it was persisted and, not only that, they then undid my trousers with a view to presumably sticking their hands down there too. Not on your bloody life. So……………… I did the only thing I could think of….when the crowd breathed I quickly brought my arms down from above and thrust my elbows quickly backwards giving, who ever it was, a vicious thrust backwards presumably in the stomach. I felt rather smug have created the space behind me until the guy, as a result of my actions, immediately vomited on me. Well…it was punk gig after all and certainly not to be forgotten.

Here we are two days late with the blog this week. A certain birthday for someone close by got in the way as did, then, catching up on work having had a day off for celebrations.

Glasgow is a fun city. Everybody here seems to like to eat out and be out no matter what their income. There is always a restaurant, cafe or bar to suit.

It seems appropriate to use an image of a bridge as they are so symbolic when there and when not.

I feel very at home here and I always assume it’s because my father was from Kilsyth..just up the road. I know I have relatives still up the road although I haven’t seen them for many many years. I was telling people the other day that sometimes opening up a new can of ‘relatives’ feels rather daunting. So I haven’t.

After my mum and dad split up I never saw my father again. So effectively I never met him as I was 8 months when I was fostered. Throughout my early teens I became more curious about him but mum was reluctant to have any contact with him or his family. Her attitude was, if I wanted contact, she wouldn’t stand in my way but I’d have to sort it out myself. Also my fathers sister had made it very clear that she didn’t approve of her brothers marriage to mum and had apparently been quite horrible about it trying to sabotage subsequent correspondence from him to us over the years after they’s spilt. So I do understand her reluctance for re connecting.

At about 15 I felt ready to track my father for myself but the silly man must have heard and only went and died! We knew because he had married again and Mrs Fraser No2 got in touch with Mrs. Fraser No1 partly to spread the news but also she thought we girls might like a little memento of some kind. I can’t remember what we got in the end. My brain says a tankard and a jewellery box but I have no idea if that’s true. I remember being dreadfully upset at the news. He was only in his forties and died of a heart attack. Whether he had a congenital fault or high blood pressure, cholesterol etc I have no idea. I have, in later years, realised it is quite difficult in terms of your own health when you know nothing about one parents medical history.

My friends at school couldn’t understand why I was upset when I had never met him but that was the point. The opportunity had gone, irretrievably…poof ..vanished. It would never happen. Some years later I was given a cassette recording of him speaking somewhere. There had been a nurses award set up in his name and I think he was presenting it. Mrs Fraser No 2 had sent it through. I could never quite bring myself to listen to it although I hope I still have it somewhere. One day I’ll find it and listen…maybe!

I don’t think it was long after his death that I got a call at our tiny house in Cheltenham from my fathers sister Rae. To be quite honest her accent was so strong that at that time I was so entrenched in Cotswold drawl that there was no way any type of ‘babble fish’ or clarification suite was going to help my teenage brain. I do remember her saying, ‘I’m y’er Anty Rae……..’ the rest is a blur.

What was interesting after that was that the two Mrs Fraser’s got on quite well and carried on a correspondence. Probably about 8 years after that, maybe less, we got an invite to my half sister’s, Margaret’s, wedding. Very unexpected as, despite the two older women’s correspondence, we had never met. My sister, Fi, was off leading an independent life by then, pretty fiercely independent too. Her and mum had fought constantly before Fi left. So, basically, she wasn’t interested. I had left home by this time, been an aupair in France, gone to college in Nottingham and had a year in London. There’ll be more about those periods of my life another time but I can date this because my hair was short. I didn’t have my hair cut off until I was 21 and living in London. But for some reason I said I would like to go and mum thought she would too. I say, some reason, but I am a naturally curious person even when that curiosity is likely to turn my life upside down. I think it’s why I always feel a natural affinity with cats…you know the way they inch forward, twitching their noses towards something their unsure about and then jump two feet vertically in the air and, on landing, dash in a zig zag peculiar fashion  across the lawn, road or room..as if they have completely lost their marbles. Then they calm, look snootily over their shoulder and walk off showing their bums as if to say..’and…..what the hell are you looking at?’. Anyway, that’s me.

So mum and I went. I’ll have to try and find a photo somewhere. At that time I was wearing retro dresses and skirt suits with Doc Martin’s etc. Trendy in some walks of life but definitely not conventional. I was in an ancient green silk dress and I don’t think it suited me. When we arrived I felt like a fish out of water as everyone looked far more ‘normal’ than I did. Story of my life! Even mum managed to look relatively conventional by comparison. That’s not something she’s known for even now with her pink stetson etc.

It was lovely to be there just to see my little sister Margaret but I am not sure it was the right decision to go. Mrs. Fraser No 2 seemed lovely but one of the things that made me uncomfortable was that most of the family seemed quite deeply religious. Now, don’t get me wrong, my mother is a quaker and I am used to religion as part of my life but apart from a flirtation in my teens I soon realised, that whatever I felt about the beginnings of life and spirituality, it didn’t fit any model I could find. It was during those explorations of religion in my early teens that mum became a quaker as she’d accompanied me to various churches. She stayed and I moved on. Also, so many religions have such pernicious views around sexuality that I cannot sit in and hold my mouth shut…so I don’t go. If that makes sense. I saw way to many people during my year in London and in subsequent years, hurt by family rejection, judgements or supposedly ‘accepted’ by decrees about ‘toleration’…god what an abhorrent word..who wants to be tolerated!…and all in the name of God. I have to say that quakers seem to be open to all people and that is how it should be. Sadly we all know many of these pernicious views persist today and not just views but active persecution and execution in some parts of the world, all in the name of religion. I’ve never understood anyone making judgements about people who surely are made by the same god they believe in. It comes for their view that some how it’s a choice…anyway. I digress…

There were no judgements at the wedding. It was lovely. Margaret look so sweet and Colin seemed like a delightful young man. I was always going to feel like a fish out of water wasn’t I. I mean effectively I’d walked into someone else living room and sat down. I could never have expected to actually feel part of the family because, whilst there was a blood connection, I wasn’t. We were made to feel very welcome and everything was done to include us. The uncomfortable feelings were purely my own. We were even in some of the photo’s. I know because I have some somewhere. Margaret Senior had sent some on to us after the event. Unfortunately clothes wise and in hind sight the words, ‘whatever did I look like’, come to mind. I’ll find them one day and we can all have a good belly laugh about it….my poor half sister.

In the evening mum and I were sat at a table and a very imposing woman walked into the room. She may not be imposing but that was my impression of her. I don’t even know if I have remembered the image correctly as we all re-write so much of our own history but never the less…this woman, tall and slim, wearing what I described as a ten ton hat walked in and I knew instantly that it was my Aunt i.e. my father’s sister. I believe it was I who went up to her and said, ‘Hi, I’m your niece, your brothers youngest daughter by his first marriage’. She immediately said, ‘Och..blud is thicka than waterrr’. That is all I remember as it seemed ironic that over the years, despite a few letters and an occasional card, we have had no contact for a very long time. Blood wasn’t that thick then! That is equally my responsibility, of course, I know but I wasn’t the one who said the bit about ‘Blood being thicker than water’. However she is the one who is still on the outskirts of Glasgow somewhere and I have resolved that next time I am here with a car I will see if she will like a visit. I may be too late. I may not. Fate will decide.

As many of you know, via Facebook, Margaret junior , my half sister, and I happily reconnected and have shared many messages. Margaret and Colin came to a Christmas concert we did too and that meant that Fi and Margaret could meet for the first time. We live a long way apart but I like having a little sister and knowing she’s there. One day I hope I’ll meet my niece and nephew who are now adults.  So I ask Margaret’s forgiveness for my outfit at her wedding…all I can offer in my defence is…you should see what I was wearing at Fi’s wedding….shall I describe that for you. It may make you feel better..a mans grey suit with a high necked Victorian lace blouse and a bright red short string tie complete with a grey trilby …I’ll have to find those photo’s too. I insisted I was the best man……so Margaret. Things could have been worse. xxx

We were in Barnaby’s car on the way back to the tunnel from Brussels this Sunday when he apologised because he thought he would have to stop because his tum wasn’t feeling too good. In actual fact things settled down and he managed all the way to the tunnel through it and beyond. But those moments sparked a conversation about one of our excursions abroad and to Sicily in particular. So ingrained in my brain is this story that I feel sure I must have blogged it before but I’ve had a look through and can’t see it.

This by the way is not for the faint hearted so look away or don’t read when you’re eating.

Blowzabella have had amazing trips abroad and despite the fact we’re not getting any younger we still look forward to and enjoy our foreign excursions. When Sicily came up as an option it just had to be done.

The organisation, whoever they were, booked and paid for the flights in advance…result…but other than that and knowing we’d quoted a fee we didn’t have much other than an address of an office and that there should be someone to meet us at the airport. Well there wasn’t anyone to meet us. We waited a respectable amount of time and then the anxiety began to build partly because it was already 10pm at night. Paul tried ringing the one number he had and got nothing and no-one. It was before the days when everyone carried a mobile phone but in hind sight, even if the organisers had had them, I’m not sure they would have shared their numbers with us.

So we did the only thing we could, really, and went to the one address we had. The festival office. I think we hoped it would be on the festival site or something. We had no idea what this thing was that we’d agreed to come to. We arrived in a dark and dismal street with not much lighting and a significant dead rat laid out like a warning on the street infront of the office. Not many of us had credit cards then but Paul fortunately did and so we got the taxi to take us to a hotel and went to bed not really knowing what the next day would bring.

My memory was that it had all been a mistake and some guy came and paid for the hotel and got us transported to the festival hotel we were supposed to be in. Paul says he was never paid for the hotel so I must have remembered that differently. He probably told Paul he would repay him and then never did.

The Hotel we were transported to was much more opulent than the budget one we’d booked ourselves in. Massive and marble everywhere and quite old fashioned. it was buzzing with people of all nationalities and most of them musicians. Things were beginning to feel like a festival.

It was extremely hot and humid. Dry hot and you can cope but wet hot is just horrible. The sort of heat where when you have a shower it’s bliss, you come out, dry yourself and 2 minutes later you are wringing wet again.  The guys all had beds in one room and I, being the only woman, had a room to myself. That meant that I could at least lie on the marble floor stark naked in an attempt to cool down. I don’t think the guys were doing the same thing. At least I hope not! I’ve always had a love of marble from that day to this. So many uses!

Anyway we found out that the festival had two stages. One on one side of the island and one on the other. Instead of splitting the acts between the two and then changing that arrangement the following night they decided that all bands were going to be on both stages on sequential nights. That meant that there were 11 acts and we got 15 minutes. Yep…I’m not joking. 15 minutes and the same for the following night. So we had gone all that way to play for half a blinking’ hour. The first night went Ok and there was a crowd but it felt so bizarre and 15 minutes isn’t enough time for anyone to get going.

The second night involved a coach trip to the other side of the island through mountains  and on twisty roads in a coach. I suffer from motion sickness and was not surprised that by the time we got there I was green about the gills. What I hadn’t realised was it wasn’t just the coach journey making me feel ill. We did our set, we hung around and by the time everyone had finished all the public had gone and the cafés and bars were closed. That was bad news as at that point I started to feel very ill. Not having a toilet to rush to I moved to the side of the road to be sick in the gutter. As I retched and vomited by body decided to join in from my other end…I’m really sorry folks but I am not joking.

With everything being closed I knew I was going to have to get back on the coach, presumably stinking, and sit it out until we got back to the hotel.

Then came the announcement..’it’s time to relax everyone, we know you are all hungry and thirsty so we are going to a restaurant ‘….’oh noooooooo’ screamed my mind. I got on the coach. Managed to find a seat on my own and hope I wasn’t stinking the place out. In the restaurant I rushed to the toilets and tried to clean myself up as best I could. Not easy when the sinks are public and the toilets not. It involved a lot of waiting in a cubicle and occasionally running out to moisten some toilet tissue etc. I then had to sit for an hour and a half, feeling like death in stinking trousers, smiling and occasionally wrinkly my nose as if to say, ‘it does smell strange around here I wonder what that can be….obviously not me … ah ha ha Hmmmmn’.

But eventually the ordeal came to an end and back to the hotel we went and I rushed to the sanctuary of my room only to find……they’d turned the water off for the night. Shall I repeat that so that you can take it in fully. They’d turned the water off for the night. Not just the hot water, all tap water. So I had to put my poo encrusted body to bed unclean. I was so exhausted I fell asleep and washed my sheets out in the morning as if I’d just sweated too much in the night…at least that’s what I hoped it looked like and I knew I might need to lie down again so having them cleaned at least slightly wold help.

The next day I remember having a bit of a time to wander around Palermo. Yuck. In the bay there were turds bobbing. I kid you not and I certainly didn’t need the reminder of my ordeal and in the market place there was a massive severed head of a sword fish, presumably left by the morning market, stinking and covered in flys. I did not get a very good impression of that town.

The trip ended with a  night drive to the airport for an early morning flight. We shared that journey with a group of very jolly Yugoslavians and they sang the Yugoslavian national anthem regularly and with great enthusiasm and lots of bottle clinking. In fact they sang it so often we were all singing it by the time we got to the airport. You would never have guessed that that country was about to implode as they were definitely united on the bus.

There ends my story dear readers and I am sure you are not surprised that I have never forgotten this trip. We were never paid the fee they owed us and were told later that it had all been organised by the mafia and it was best to leave it well alone…so we did.

This is more a rambling muse than a specific story…and a day late too. I thought I’d just tell you a little about the workings of my life.

Unusually, at the weekend, I went off to a thing in Essex that was just a bunch of people who book into a residential place and then basically have a session all weekend. It was an invite only thing but my sister managed to blag me in. I was aware these weekends happen but normally I can’t go to them for two main reasons; either I have a gig in the middle of it or, if it’s a free weekend’ I want to be with my partner as we don’t actually live together, at the moment, there are large distances involved and time together is limited.

This particular weekend just ticked a lot of boxes. Firstly my sister said that she was going to drive to Essex, then drive back to Derbyshire before leaving again on the Sunday for our gig in Maidenhead. She couldn’t think how she would get home otherwise as she’s not very good at doing night drives. Well that seemed like a few hours in the wrong direction and mostly nuts. I do do that sort of thing from time to time but try to avoid it where possible. So that’s when I said , maybe I could come. The Narthen gig was on a Sunday night so that sort of knocked out a weekend with my partner but also they were off working in New York anyway. For a change everything fell into place. I could take Fi down for the weekend , play music too, drive us both to Maidenhead and then she could travel home with her hubby and Lester.

I throughly enjoyed it and, as I said on facebook, played a whole lot of stuff I never knew I knew. Excellent exercise for the grey matter along with the fingers and sax lips etc. I wasn’t the only brass/reed instrument there, there was a tuba too.

The setting was beautiful and it was good to get a walk into Saffron Waldon on the Saturday. Lovely veg stall there where I bought some of those little long thin aubergines you can cook whole, garlic as I was a running low…unforgivable in my house and some pure Rye bread as I don’t digest wheat well anymore.

After Sunday lunch Fi and I drove over to Maidenhead to a lovely little art centre complex called Norden Farm. An intimate concert there which was lovely with an enthusiastic audience then the Derbyshire contingent drove off and I set off for Notts on my own. I allowed myself a small lie in and breakfast in bed in the morning as I hadn’t got to bed until gone midnight and sometimes sleeping after a relatively long drive doesn’t come easy.

Then I got up, packed everything I needed for a couple of days and drove to Glasgow. From here the nicest bit is, once you’re off the A1,  getting on the A66 across the Pennines. Beautiful. The journey, with a break, takes 5 hours and almost exactly half way is Cross Lanes organic farm shop and cafe. So I stopped there and had a bite to eat etc and bought some organic lamb to provide a meal for the other weary traveller and myself. Got to Glasgow, unloaded the car and cooked a moroccan style lamb and aubergine dish with rice. Relaxed.

The next day it was full on admin…you have to take a remote office with you which means loads of files, a computer, note books…etc etc to cover every eventuality otherwise it’s frustrating if you have to wait until you’re back in the ‘other’ office again. I walked into the town to get some exercise in the afternoon. Cooked a Spanish, pepper, chorizo and egg dish for dinner, relaxed for the evening and slept…all be it not well either night.

Wednesday , one of my best pals, Mary Macmaster dropped by in the morning for a coffee and a chat and then I loaded up and drove back to Nottingham. I then needed to cook and do work.

I have this thing called a ‘Young Composers Project’ and due to the way the Arts Council funding came through all the deadlines are yesterday and it’s full on constantly. Inevitably that is in addition to any music prep I need to do, the continual admin for the agency, the mail orders that only ever arrive when you away etc etc…oh and the laundry to wash, iron and put away. No time for any cleaning last night.  I have applications from young composers and constant, necessary communication with my wonderful project administrator Sara. It’s a fab project but full on and will keep me very busy through to April.

This morning the builder appeared at 8.00am to look at a job that needs sorting so I was standing outside in the frost for half an hour. The good news is he thinks he can sort what needs doing.

It’s be an admin and packing day and frustratingly I don’t think i can afford the time to go for a swim because the 10 hour drives have eaten heavily into my week. I do go by train when I can, by the way, it’s just sometimes the flexibility of a car is useful, it takes the same amount of time and believe it or not it costs less in fuel…how nuts is that? Tonight Andy Cutting will pick me up and we’ll head to Kent, through the severe weather warning, to stay with lovely friends Kerry and Chris. Tomorrow morning most of Blowzabella will come by, minus Dave Shepherd who’s heading off by Eurostar and minus Greg who obviously lives in France so won’t be travelling with us but meeting us there, we’ll pile into one vehicle and head for Brussels. We need to be there Friday night because we have workshops starting at 10.am on the Saturday morning . We do a full day of workshops ..mine will be dance and then we play for a Bal in the evening. Wind down a bit go to bed and then return via the car in kent to the home on Sunday. So for one day of gigs Andy and I spend 3 nights away from home. We could go to kent on the Friday morning but it’s an hour from Andy’s to mine and then the best part of three hours to Kent. Too risky on the Friday morning and too tiring to do all the travelling in one day.

To prepare for that I have to pack as few things as possible as there won’t be much room. All my instruments and the Blowzabella merchandise. I have a lot of admin to do with the young composers, agency gigs to sort, contracts to sign, mail orders to pack and post and more. Gotta dash xx

I’ve just been for a walk across the fields. Well mostly on fields. Sadly the circular walk I like to do every now and then does involve bits of road and on a day like today some of that was treacherous . Black ice in the pockets where the sun hadn’t filtered through . Not only did I have to watch my step but I was concerned about any cars breaking and skidding on one particular corner . Easy to assume all the ice had melted on a sunny blue skied day like today but it was not so.

I exercise a minimum of three times a week to keep me ‘match fit’ for the gigs and a life style that can include lack of sleep, large amounts of time travelling and strange eating habits and also so that my immune system has help on it’s side when keeping my lymphoma at bay. So I view the walking or swimming etc as part of my working week and not something that can be swopped in or out. i.e. it’s essential.

Todays walk put me in mind of a little break, quite a few years ago now, which we took once in Glen Clova and in fact we stayed in the Glen Clova hotel. Quite a quirky hotel, if I recall , and we were kept awake one night by what sounded like a punch up going on downstairs. Never saw anything and we were perfectly safe but never the less….anyway I digress as always.

It is fantastic gorgeous walking country and we decided we would hike up the hill/mountain from the Glen.

The first part of the walk is forested, dappled by sunlight poking through the flora and fauna and peaceful in a way that only woodland can be. That was also helped by the fact that much of Scotland often appears undiscovered by the rest of the world and I am always amazed there aren’t more people there enjoying it’s natural beauty although I confess to selfishly enjoying that from time to time. I’m not far from the peak district here and whilst that is also beautiful it’s mobbed by comparison. Scotland , in certain parts, you can walk for hours and not see anyone

So there we were, decked out as you’d expect, walking boots, Ronhills for me on the legs, walking waterproofs etc and, as you start to climb you get hot and sweaty so you start tying your coat around your waist and looking all pink and flushed. We could see the tree line in the distance but it was still a way away and as we tuned a corner a man and a dog appeared…shock horror! As he approached he spoke, “Excuse me you haven’t seen a red dog lead have you?”. Unfortunately we hadn’t but his dog looked nice and friendly and well behaved and we said so but he wasn’t happy, “Unfortunately I seem to have dropped it and there are sheep grazing above and she’ll need to be on the lead”. Then totally out of the blue he furrowed his brow, looked at me and said , “Are you Jo Freya?” Forgive for pointing this out again but I was on a Scottish mountain, with a scot who hadn’t known me that long being recognised by another scot in the middle of nowhere. Anyone would have thought I’d paid someone to impress my companion. I hadn’t, of course, and I was so flabbergasted myself that my response was utterly ridiculous – “How do you know?” I said. ‘How do you know? what a totally ridiculous thing to say. He started stuttering and said he’d seen me play.  After hopefully redeeming myself through a little more chat about how amazing it was that we should bump into each other like that and he saying how much he liked my music etc. He then carried on down and we resumed our walk up. Regardless of the fact I didn’t pay for this to happen I am pleased to report that my companion was very impressed….she says preening her feathers!

My glory wasn’t to last long.

In hindsight it was a very fortunate thing that he’d lost the dog lead and  we hadn’t met him much further up. Half way up the side of the mountain where there wasn’t one iota of a tree or bush cover, or even large rocks for that matter. My stomach decided that it had been given something it really didn’t like very much and it wished to evacuate all said matter swiftly. To make matters worse, whilst Scotland often appears to have no tourists the entire lot of them had landed on that hillside in the open precisely at the point where I had to drop my trousers .

We retired, wounded as they say, from the hillside and the only saving grace was that in re-telling the story to ourselves and recounting the whole thing including the near miss that certain walkers nearly had in being treated to a not too pretty sight of my bared and active backside on a mountain, we were laughing all the way down and had to run the last bit as my companion nearly wet themselves.

The mention of the ‘pretty red and poisonous’ was because it was on this walk that I learnt the stereotypical red spotted toadstool that is common to fairy stories and the like, isn’t fictitious at all but exists…we saw it there in the woodland known commonly as ‘fly agaric’ or ‘Amanita muscaria’ and is also a muscimol mushroom and not a toadstool at all. Far more common than I knew and strange that I’d never seen one before. I like learning things.

To the walker who recognised me I apologise for not being more gracious and to the other walkers…I don’t apologise at all. You had a near miss so count yourselves lucky. Fortunately, on balance, my companion was still impressed by the encounter despite having to be a lookout to a gross action on a hillside! Phew I seemed to have got away with it.

 

I find, as I travel through life, that there are many coincidences or serendipitous things that happen when you’re not quite expecting them too.

Last weekend Token Women, formed 30 years ago and named to reflect the low profile of female instrumentalists on the folk scene, did our first gig of the celebration year and that gig was in Bath. In the week leading up to that gig I was also sorting out some publicity for a Blowzabella workshop day coming up at the end of March in Morecambe. One of the names that appeared whilst sorting out people to help with publicity was a woman called Fiona Frank. I knew I knew the name but it wasn’t until I found a picture of her that all sorts of memories flicked back into my frontal lobes. These were helped along by various communiques between us where we were reminiscing about Bath University, women’s Morris dancing, Morris dancing generally and my mum.

The Bath ceilidh last week was in a school hall on the edges of Bath but back in the day Bath University was a hot bed of folky danceness. I’m talking second half of the 1970’s into the 1980’s and they carried on beyond actually but less frequently for me.

Bath university Ceilidhs were fab and a monthly must on the Fraser Women’s calendar . When we first started going the vehicles my mum usually had were often purchased to allow my sister and I to sleep in the back on late nights. Vans with a mattress and bedding. We lived in Cheltenham and Bath was a good hours drive away. In addition dances at that time ran from 8pm to mid night. That was the case for a long time but now things in the UK have changed, possibly due to hall hire fees going up past midnight, and dances end between 11 and 11.30pm.

Another memory was the long skirt or dress. Laura Ashley used to sell material ends and many people had these skirts that were made up of patch work bits and pieces. I’d wear one of those if I wasn’t in one of my much loved pairs of brightly coloured loons…yep. Who remembers loons? Bell bottom trousers made of cotton and tight at the waist..sitting on the hips and quite often available in every colour under the sun. They weren’t expensive either. There was one tiny little boutique shop in Cheltenham that had them and I was a regular. The fact that I had a few pairs meant they were affordable as mum had little or no money to spare. How great to have  a fashion item that was affordable….and when they started to wear out you patched them with whatever multi-coloured material you could find..also deemed to be a fashionable thing to do. Most of the rest of our wardrobes came from second hand shops and Fi and I learnt quickly to choose our own. I do remember going through a black and bright red phase too. All because I’d picked up this tatty, black, velvetine coat with frayed cuffs, that I loved. Steered well clergies of the Afghan coats , they stank.

Those jackets in the photo were part of those times. Multi coloured quilts things and mum wore a black nurses cape. I think my sister looks gorgeous in the picture.

There was either the three of us in the car or four if Fran our nominally adopted sister travelled with us. We could pick her up in Painswick on the way through. I say nominal as this was someone that just became part of us and still is although that relationship isn’t formalised in any sense. More than a friend but not actually a sister…never the less..family. We knew that drive well. Up over the hill looking down at the twinkly lights of Cheltenham below and on the way to Painswick you’d go past Prinknash Abbey. Quite a few people had Prinknash pottery tankards as they were warmer and a bit nicer to drink out of than pewter ones and tankards were all the rage.

Then further up the hill you’d go through a tiny village called Paradise and just as you entered, there was the ‘Adam and Eve’ pub. Sadly it doesn’t exist anymore but I loved the fact it was there and the village name etc.

Once we’d picked up Fran it was back on the main road and past Painswick Church which reportedly has 99 Yew trees as historically they never managed to get the 100th to grow. I have no idea if it’s true or not and don’t wish to find out as the truth can sometimes get in the way of a good story. Then you still had to get passed Stroud and onto Bath. Up that huge hill to Bath University and entered a concrete monstrosity that took on a meaning of its own.

When you came through the door to the hall the dance floor was sunk down so you had to go down steps to get on it. If you walked round the edge you came in on, to the left and then round to your right, you ended up on what was used as the stage.

We had such fun. Some of my school friends used to go and we’d all get in a dance set together and wizz up and down. I had romantic liaisons too over one season …(otherwise known as a kiss and a fumble) with a particular young boy who’s name I can’t remember. Other times boyfriends came across with us or we travelled with them. It just reminded me that those evenings seemed endless. That perspective on time where everything feels slower when you’re younger. I only get anything approaching that feeling now if I have an actual holiday were I go away and refuse to look at emails etc and just have long warm days stretching out ahead. Bliss!.

But it wasn’t just the monthly dances. There were workshop days too. Often run by the legend that was Roy Dommit. Almost as round as he was high but very light on his feet and very knowledgable about the different traditions . I had a go at them all and I’m pretty sure that it was as a direct result of that and people like Tubby Reynolds that mum and others formed Women’s Morris teams. England’s Glory being one of the first reveal teams if not the first.

When I went to a funeral recently one of the people reading said how the woman that had died had gone to an inspirational workshop in Sidmouth run by an iconic women’s Morris side and because of that had gone away with others to form their own teams. Well that iconic team was Englands Glory set up by mum and other women in Cheltenham and no doubt running that workshop. I would have been there as part of it.

So Bath University has a special place in my heart for good times and expanding my knowledge of dance at an early age. Mostly the evenings were inclusive with nobody making too much fuss if you went wrong and plenty of people around to help you get it right. Rather different from one dance I went to in Gloucestershire, early on, with mum and Fi where one guy, who had the most ridiculous moustaches, told me off for going the wrong way in the Dorset Forehand Reel. I should have used them as a handle bar to do a wheely but I didn’t have that sort of confidence then. He nearly put me off for life but not quite. There were enough people around to encourage me to join in again and to tell me he was a stuck up prig…which he was. It’s one of the reasons these days why I won’t harangue people from the stage. I like to try and help people get the dance right but the main thing is it’s social dancing and meant to be fun.

Welcome back to the blog and apologies for taking a wee break . One Wednesday was Boxing Day , the other new year week.

Boxing day gets quite full on in our household. We have a quiet Christmas Day which is then followed by an additional four of the family arriving and….let catering begin.

Many of you who know me already know that I am a foody. What do I mean by that? Only that for me it is not just a means to sustaining my energy levels, vitamins etc but the eating and tasting of food is a pleasure in it’s own right. That’s why I often refer to myself as a woman of substance because I have worked hard over the years to create this rounded physic and a lot of money and time has been invested in that too…although not always mine. I also tend to plan meals and always have fresh vegetables and herbs in and outside the house ..that’s the herbs not the vegetables.

I am a reasonably good cook who has no idea about presentation and occasionally the cooking doesn’t go to plan. My strength is soup. Last year Boxing Day started with a roasted beetroot soup that was spectacular and this year it was a pea and roasted garlic soup. Lighter than the beetroot and equally delicious.

I’d spent a long time researching making a nut roast for my sister for Boxing Day. She is a fish eating vegetarian and not at all fussy but does have some health related issues so can’t do fatty or heavily fried things etc. Normally I do her fish (and quite often join her in that myself. She would also be just as happy with a plate full of vegetables and the trimmings etc. But I really like to try and create something special as I often feel vegetarians can be short changed or an after thought . Because the meat eaters were having roast beef I thought nut roast might be the better option but they are often dry and sometimes tasteless. So I’d found one on line that claimed to be the juiciest and tasty too. It proved to be both but because I wanted to get the proportions right I’d made enough for about eight people. That meant the others could taste it and Fi had some to put in the freezer. The key seemed to be the addition of cheese to the loaf, egg and not too much nut. For me I think the texture still wasn’t right and so I will be working on my own variety. I do do a very nice lentil loaf anyway so I make look to combine the two.

The beef….well despite following the cooking timings it was over done as far as I was concerned. Still slightly pink but not pink enough for me. It tasted good though. Vegetables for all were asparagus and green beans quickly steam cooked in a little water and a tiny bit of salted butter. There was mashed potatoes for all as everyone had a sauce. Meat juice for the meat eaters and a Porcini, garlic and white wine sauce for my sister. That was made by hydrating dried porcini and keeping all the juices. Cooking the mushrooms in a little butter then a little wine and reducing it down, adding the porcini juices and reducing down and a little butter on the end for glaze and thickening.

Pudding was two fold and not made by me. A traditional trifle…yum and then ‘affogato’.

‘Afffogato’ ,if you don’t know , in it’s simplest form is just a nice vanilla ice cream with a hot espresso poured over the top and in it’s more celebratory form, with a brandy as well as the coffee..or other triple that tickles your palate. I do not like coffee flavoured things but I like coffee. This desert is lovely.

The other thing I am fortunate to do from time to time is to be treated to top end restaurants and yes, we are talking Michelin. They have all been good and some have been remarkable and many, memorable. It sounds like I have been to a lot and in some ways I have although others have been return visits . Two places I have returned to L’enclume in Cartmel in the Lake District and Martin Wishart’s in Edinburgh. Both truly delightful. L’enclume was the first place I ever experienced the playful artistry of complex dishes. Things made out of things you are not expecting them to be made of and looking like something else. Once this went from the sublime to the ridiculous with IOC in Copenhagen. The dishes there were so ridiculous at times (you often felt like you were crawling through the undergrowth, that we spent a lot of time laughing….nothing wrong with that and they did taste good. However I don’t think those serving were expecting that level of hilarity and some of the other guests were either eating in reverential silence or so used to high end experiences they couldn’t be bothered to enjoy the experience at all but maintained the same sour face throughout. On the whole I have found the experiences to be beautiful. Gorgoues surroundings, wonderful food served with a real artistic flair….something I’d love to aspire to but know I’ll never achieve because it takes hours and hours of preparation.

I take these experiences as an absolute privilege and never lightly . I cannot ignore the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer and there I am eating food, often at eye watering prices, that might keep a family in ordinary food for a month…or more in some cultures. I am, like many, conflicted. I did not have a privileged upbringing but I have learned that a little bit of luxury can be very nice. I love it I confess. I am also aware that the ability to have these moneyed experiences could change at any time and so enjoy them fully I will while I can.

Last night we went to Sylvio Nickel’s restaurant in the Coburg palace in Vienna. A two starred Michelin restaurant . We were met downstairs in the hotel, ushered through to reception and then sent up in a lift. On exiting the lift you are met by staff who take your coats and lead you to your table. The restaurant was spacious and we had a sort of crescent shaped banquette seat that allowed us both to face towards each other and then outwards. They ask you if you would like to choose from the menu, have the nine course tasting menu or have the chef’s choose where you can choose the number of courses you think you can manage but the chef decides what those courses will be. We discussed it and decided to let the chef choose but to go for five courses not nine. We were also asked if we would like to see the wine menu. We said yes and then laughed hysterically as the A3 size manual was placed in front of us. We always try to choose local wine but even the Austrian section was absolutely massive. Unlike, some people I have heard, unfortunately usually men, who feel the need to show off by saying, “yes, interesting, your wine menu is very extensive but do you have the Gruner 1978 from the Blahdeblah vineyard”, we laugh and ask for recommendation . Always good and no-one, contrary to popular stereotypes, has ever recommended the most expensive wine. Just as well at those prices. Then the theatre began.

You always get variously titles ‘amuse bouche’ or ‘appetisers’ regardless of how many courses you were having. It started with a growing foliage display that had two little cones of smoked mackerel and pickled vegetables in, some glazed belly pork on a skewer and then a large ostrich sized egg arrived. The lid was taken off and inside was a smoked cream foam with little sweetbreads and a tiny yolk..all with a smoked flavour ….lovely…and a spoon full of tender lamb with a vegetable and mango salsa.

I can’t possibly talk you though all the dishes but they looked spectacular and tasted fabulous. Having been in Salzburg and then Vienna for four days by then and fed on a lot of meat products with very little vegetables we were wondering how the humble Würst and pork shoulder could be elevated to Michelin level but the whole thing was a delight. As well as the cones and pork belly you got a little spoon with some lamb with mango salsa, their own sour dough bread and two types of butter , one herb and the other…I can’t remember but it did taste good. There were also some tiny toasts with some very tasty meat fat type thing on it.

After that came a dish that was such a surprise. Lots of mushrooms and foliage and within it another, larger, mushroom…but it wasn’t it was a perfect looking mushroom made out of foie gras. In the background you can see a tiny brioche loaf. A lot of butter went into that I can tell you. There was dark chocolate in there too.

Then we had a scollop dish. I don’t think either of us worked out what the orangey brown thing was but..yep you guessed it…it tasted good. Next came sturgeon. Barely cooked and delicately flavoured followed by venison.

I’ve missed one out that was one of my favourites. It looked so colourful and tasted divine. It was beetroot, coconut and white chocolate. Not sweet and all the flavours went really well together. I was really surprised by the beetroot and coconut combination. Finally, or at least you think it’s finally , the most spectacular apple desert. It really was so beautiful that you didn’t want to disturb it but I did and accidentally ate the lot. It had a lovely sorbet and some crumbs for texture.

I’ve posted a photo of the wine in case anyone is interested just to finish off but the end is never truly the end. You always get home made truffles of which there were 3 different flavours all spectacular. Apricot, salted caramel and blackcurrant I think! After a meal like that you then have to go and lie with your stomach in the air for quite a while…not in the restaurant silly…back at the hotel. All portions are small and provided you don’t pig out on the delicious bread and brioche you can manage them all….well I did.

Happy New Year. I hope you had as good a time as possible and I look forward to sharing more ramblings with you over 2019. Cheers.

Last weekend I had three gigs in a row, all different repertoires and ensembles. Good for the brain I hope and actually, apart from the four years when Blowzabella was on the road constantly, not a-typical of me. I like it. It keeps my brain ticking.

The first was a club in Staffordshire with Narthen and then off we went to the continent. When I say ‘we’, there were, as usual, travelling complications to sort. The Saturday night gig was a Blowzabella gig in Hazebrouck and the Sunday one a ‘Voices at the Door’ Michal Morpurgo gig in Ieper, Belgium.

The Blowzabella gig only came about because my sister had originally taken a Polka Works gig on that date and that meant we couldn’t do a Christmas show. On the whole December is kept for Christmas shows. We have occasionally done Haddenham Ceilidhs with the Old Swan band in December and that has always been linked to a Christmas concert in the afternoon of the same day at the same event. Anyway…suddenly I was free. The importance of this is that our friends ‘Smitlap’ in Belgium wanted to celebrate their 35 years with us in 2018 but we had struggled to find a date when we were all free . It was little short of miraculous that not only were Blowzabella free but Smitlap, the venue etc etc were all free too. So the gig was born. The conundrum around travelling for this one was how I was going to get there and back. My sister, Fi, had decided not to do the gig she had taken and that meant that my she and my brother-in-law , Barry, could transport me to the gig. It did mean that, after not getting to bed until 1.30am, we were up and away very early on that Saturday morning to get me to the Blowzabella sound check on time, but it all went smoothly and it meant that the rest of the English members of Blowzabella could travel in one car. (Gregory was coming by train).

You’ll have seem some of the photo’s on facebook. The gig was lovely. We had guests playing with us. The event was sold out and all was well with the world. It was also lovely to see friends. In a band that I have been in for 30 years you meet a lot of people and as you become invited back to some of the same places you meet them again and again and they become friends. One of those people who turned up was Alfred Den Ouden. it was so lovely to see him. A man with very twinkly eyes.

When Blowzabella were on the road full time we often looked for ‘filler’ gigs to help with a night off or a journey to and from Europe. Alfred at that time lived in and ran a bar/restaurant in Flanders in Belgium. It was called Half Maan…Half Moon.

The downstairs was the restaurant. I have a vague memory of going up a dirt track drive to the venue itself. The front door opened in the middle of a long side into the main room. Bar at the back slightly to the right, fully to the right ,at one end, the fire place. Sturdy wooden tables and chairs throughout. Behind the bar was the kitchen area. Above the bar was a completely open room where we slept. perfectly comfortably but all in together..can’t remember if I was curtained off or not…. The deal was that Alfred would run a themed evening eg English food. He would do a meal and as part of his ticket price there would be live music…us, crammed into the fire place. We’d be fed as well of course, there was plenty of beer snd we could wind down easily afterwards knowing that bed was only upstairs.

More often than not we were on our way to or back from other countries in Europe.

In those days there was no Euro. I dealt with the money side of things for the band and had to make sure I had enough currency in various denominations to get us to where we needed to be and back…Belgium Franc’s, French Franc’s, German Deutsche mark, Austrian Schilling and Italian Lira….and yes that could all be part of the same trip sometimes with Luxembourg thrown in. So there was a lot to organise. We often used to meet at ‘Tilthams’ , near Guildford, where Paul lived, climb in his yellow and white Renault van and off we’d go. But this was later than that. The rendezvous in the same place but we took a sound engineer with us and his van, Keith Carlton and his Iveco. Keith, also now as ‘Picks’, in addition to doing sound was a guitar case maker but he had a little saying for his PA business. “From the smallest place to the largest hall, Carlton acoustics can do them all”. The nice thing about that van compared to the Renault was space. The instruments and PA got locked in a windowless, boxed in, section at the back. From the inside there was enough room for everyone to sit but there was also a shelf, the size of a small double bed, complete with mattress and bedding. It was on top of part of the boxed in section and meant if we had a long journey drivers could take turns and sleep and the rest could take turns at other times. No need to sleep on the way to Belgium though…it’s not that far.

This time we’d got to the rendezvous, packed all the instruments, merchandise and people into the van. PA was there already and off we went. We were within about 40 minutes of Dover when Paul said, jokingly, ‘I’m not gong to check whether everyone’s got their passports.’..at which point my whole body turned cold, my brain turned inside out and there were red bleeping, flashing lights behind my eyes with a loud klaxon and a sign flashing danger..danger..danger…FUCK (excuse the swearing but that was mild in comparison to how I was feeling)…which complete idiot hadn’t brought her passport. The one thing that hadn’t been on my check list. We were too far gone to go back or anything and we’d have missed the first gig. I was faced with the thought that they’s have to leave me at Dover, they’d do the gigs on their own and I’d make my solitary, depressing journey home at great costs and no earnings and no fun and music…or….

We discussed it and thought we just might get away with it.

I climbed up onto the bed at the back of the van and covered myself with duvets and kept very still. At the port Paul, who was driving, explained that we were one person less than on the booking, and on we drove….I got out on the boat feeling like I had ‘Guilty’ tattooed on my forehead, got back into my hide out for the checks on the way out and we were though. It was quite lucky really as vans full of men were quite often easy pickings for customs…potentially smuggling something. They’d never have guessed about this type of contraband though!

I think that was the weekend when all the gigs were in Belgium. It was absolutely freezing . Minus 13 degrees with freezing fog and the frost on all the branches and the tiniest twigs was magical. As well as performing at the restaurant we were playing elsewhere in Belgium but come back to the Half Maan to sleep and to eat wonderful food that the lovely Alfred had prepared for us.

I did not feel comfortable the whole weekend as I was scared I wouldn’t be allowed back into England again. The whole thing had taken the shine off everything and my anxiety levels were high. On the way through the French side I was back in hiding but at the English border I couldn’t stand it any longer . I climbed into the seat at the front (my normal position due to travel sickness) and handed over everyone elses passport whilst saying I’d left mine in Belgium. She said, ‘Are you sure you’ve left it and not lost it madam?’. I said I was sure and she explained that she was only asking because they could help me apply for another …there and then… amazing…and we were waved on. Pheeeeeew! ….maybe those temporary passports were still available then. Remember those?

I never ever want to repeat that experience .

The title of this blog is a little play on words and relates to a solo Cd I did called Female Smuggler’ after one of the tracks on it.

here’s a track..Words Jo Freya tune Barry Coope..’Roses’..a difficult topic you might need a hanky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97F84IDKLa4

The story behind the song..another time!