Holiday

Bob-Dubery · 2009-06-11T05:21:15+00:00

I'll be on holiday from Friday evening, thus will not be clogging up the forum in my usual way. Maureen and I will be seeing The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain on Sunday night. The show is at St Jude's church in London, and the organisers e-mailed to say that as we were coming so far they had reserved good seats for us. What a lovely gesture. The next week end we will be up in Yorkshire and will be catching some of the acts at the Beverley Festival. Mid June through to mid August seems to be festival season in the UK. Loads of them, and most of them on a much smaller scale than Glastonbury or Cropredy. Which is great - the venues are smaller, usually covered and they can attract niche acts instead of going for a Robbie Williams type super star to attract a big crowd. This is the third time now that we've attended a festival of this sort of size. Previously we attended the Lewes Guitar Festival (headline act Richard Thompson) and the Brampton Festival (up in Hadrian's Wall country, headline act Richard Thompson). At this festival this year the headline acts are Billy Bragg and Seth Lakeman (hey! Wait a minute...). In each case the festivals were well run, had good sound, had plenty of loos, good food concessions etc etc. In some cases the festival organisers will put on free shows in the town as well. At Lewes (which ran for a whole week) they put on a free lunch-time concert each day in the town gardens to say "thanks" to the town folk. At Beverley there is a well-organised fringe festival with lots of sessions in pubs and squares throughout the town. Lewes also had a lot of workshops conducted by some of the artists performing there - buy the ticket, take along your own axe. These would deal with specific topics EG gypsy jazz guitar, flamenco, even acoustic guitar construction. You don't have to camp either - though there often are camping facilities provided. If you get in early enough you can always find good B&B accomodation near by. In many cases special shuttle bus services are laid on. So this can be a great way to get some live music into a holiday. You don't have to stand in the rain with half a million other folks looking at the big screen through binoculars. There are also quite a lot of similar festivals dotted around Europe. I don't know about you all, but I'm no longer keen on going to mega-huge events like Glastonbury or some massive show at the 02 Arena. These smaller scale, more intimate events suit me very nicely. And there's always web sites providing all the details, on-line ticketing so you can book in advance.

AlanRatcliffe

After more than 20 years as a vegetarian, black puddin' is one of the very few things I still miss on occasion.

Yorkshire pudding - long history on that, predates WWII by more than 200 years, there's a whole folklore about how it first came about (I think it's the official veggie for Yorkshire or something ?). According to Stanley Holloway, it was invented in Lancashire (although also according to Holloway, a lone Lanky survived the biblical flood by standing on top of Blackpool illuminations, so I'm not entirely sure of the veracity). Speaking Yorkshire pud, don't forget toad in the hole.

Also, bread and butter pudding (which I think did originate during the war) and spotted dick.

aubs1

Brentcgp wrote Enjoy it Bob. catch some cricket if you can ?
And send my condolences to any Ozzies you see wandering the streets of London! ? ? ?

Hey Bob, Brent just beat me to what my message was gonna be........... ?

Have a great time, travel safely, and bring back lotsa news........(stupid statement) :-[ .......of course you will have!!!

Bring lotsa spares to sell, you could recover all your expenses!!!........hahahaha!

Have fun......Aubs and Eli.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Also, bread and butter pudding (which I think did originate during the war) and spotted dick.

You're no longer allowed to say "spotted dick" in the hostelries of England. It upsets the tourists, you see. The preferred term is "dalmatian pudding".

AlanRatcliffe

Bob Dubery wrote You're no longer allowed to say "spotted dick" in the hostelries of England. It upsets the tourists, you see. The preferred term is "dalmatian pudding".

Is that because of Richard Nixon or Dick Cheyney? ? This PC stuff is all kind of silly, IMO. Almost as ridiculous as Mary Whitehouse.

Bob-Dubery

aubs1 wrote
Brentcgp wrote Enjoy it Bob. catch some cricket if you can ?
And send my condolences to any Ozzies you see wandering the streets of London! ? ? ?
Hey Bob, Brent just beat me to what my message was gonna be........... ?

Have a great time, travel safely, and bring back lotsa news........(stupid statement) :-[ .......of course you will have!!!

Bring lotsa spares to sell, you could recover all your expenses!!!........hahahaha!

We're not going to be in London for long. We arrive some time on Saturday, have the whole of Sunday. Then the next morning we pick up a car and start out on our adventures. So I doubt I'll be heading down to Ozzie pub land. Probably I'll head for the British Museum, though I also want to go up to Denmark Street and to go shopping for books, so time is going to be tight.

I've got to pick up some Grover machine heads in Manchester. These things may not be much cheaper in the UK than they would be if you ordered from Stewmac or LMII. I thought that the shops there would have these kinds of things in stock and by the crate, but no... they order in from the USA.

I nearly bought a guitar a couple of years ago. One of these.... . Really lovely instrument. Then our baggage got ripped off between Lisbon and Barcelona so I had to buy clothes, underwear etc and replaced all the wool that The Better 5/8 had bought and which was now a goner. So that was the end of that.

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