Hello from East Yorkshire

Bob-Dubery

I think "The East Riding" may be the proper term, but still... (funny keyboards in this part of the world, please forgive any pytos)

We had a long drive today up from Norfolk to Beverley in East Yorkshire. Tomorrow night the Beverley Festival kicks off. We will be missing the headline act (Billy Bragg) and instead are taking in the "Americana evening" which is in the alternate auditorium (by "alternate" I mean "not main" rather than "lots of body piercings") featuring The Coal Porters and Bruce Molsky. Looks like a fun weekend to be here with a parallel fringe festival running in the squares (several) and pubs (A ridiculous number of those for a town of this size).

Sunday just gone we caught a bus from Hammersmith to Golder's Green. We'd have got there a lot quicker if we caught the tube but ce'st la vie and all that, and we did get a crash course in multicultural London which left me feeling a little pessimistic. I like to believe that if people smile and are polite then you'll get around most cultural differences etc etc but here we are on a bus where the Somali Muslim women were giving seats up for men and their kids were seriously scared of sitting next to anybody white. Big gaps to be bridged...

The whole point of this bus trip (over an hour) was to get to St Jude's church to take in The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. This was great entertainment, and better musically than I'd hoped. There were a couple of seriously good uke players in the band and a pretty good bass guitarist. Ooops! TUOGB forbid the g... word. They contest that a guitar has SIX strings, a uke has FOUR and so that over there is a BASS UKULELE.

They run the whole range... tenor ukes, altos, right up to a sopranino on one number. They explained the difference between a tenor and a sopranino thusly: When you throw all the ukes on a fire the tenor burns longer than the sopranino. There was also some slide ukulele chucked into the mix.

There was a lot of wit and humor chucked into the mix. Personally I'd have preferred that they played it straight a little more than they did, but the sheer cleverness of the show was... well it was very clever. They had a lot of fun with Bowie's "Life On Mars", turned the Pistols's "Anarchy In The UK" into a campfire sing-along, rendered a version of "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" that I will not quickly forget and climaxed with "Wuthering Heights" song by a bloke with a baritone voice and rendered in a sort of 40s finger-popping jive style with a call and response chorus. So there were some serious points to be awarded for sheer audacity and imagination.

A very good evening's entertainment in a lovely setting. As promised by the organisers we had very good seats - they pushed us a long way towards the top of the bookings list because we had come so far. At half time there was Morris Dancing in the church gardens. Some English wag once wrote that you should try everything at least once - except for incest and Morris Dancing.

We have a DVD as a souvenir. Apparently it features neither Morris Dancing nor incest.

The music stores in London turned out to be not a whole lot better than the stores in Joeys. OK... they did have LOTS of guitars, but anything else.... Gotoh Tuners? "We'll have to order you a set, Sir." Univibe type pedals (even the made-in-England Roger Mayer equivalent)? Forget it. The top British brands - Atkins, Fylde, Lowden etc - are also pretty poorly represented in London. I did find a shop in Norwich that couldn't provide tuners, but did have some Lowdens in stock. FAB guitars. I got to try an F32 (which is what Richard Thompson used on stage for years) and that was pretty good, but the larger-bodied O32 was from a different plane of existence. Really, really good guitar with a full but very well balanced tone. The standard of workmanship on these guitars was superb. No bling on their "production line" models, not even a gloss finish, and it wouldn't bother me one bit even at £2200 (they had a Collings OM for £3500 and IMO it was no contest).

Anyway... soentjies almal. Better go and move the car before I get wheel clamped or something.

Riaan-Combrink

Lovely travel post, Bob.

Keep it coming -I feel like I'm in the suitcase! ?

Squonk

Good to hear from you Bob

Did you go to Hanks Acoustic Guitar shop in Denmark street? All I got was a plectrum!
Hope you are enjoying the Ale and got to have some Bubble and Squeak.

Have you noticed that in the UK, most of store people are not English?
I noticed a huge difference from 2001 to 2007. Much more cosmopolitan.

Keep us updated

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote Good to hear from you Bob

Did you go to Hanks Acoustic Guitar shop in Denmark street? All I got was a plectrum!
Hope you are enjoying the Ale and got to have some Bubble and Squeak.

I did. They only do acoustic guitars, and I was on the hunt for a univibish effect so I didn't spend much time there.

It's been a bit of a curate's egg RE the ale. The pub business in the UK is pretty precarious with taxes and regulations effectively encouraging people to buy a 6 pack of Old Brown's Cheepe Ande Nastye at Tesco's and drink it at home.

TomCat

Good to hear from you Bob. Glad the trip is working out well and that you are having fun.

Had your Bubble and Squeak yet...... ?

aubs1

Good to hear from you Bob! Sounds like you're having lots of fun. Wow, wish I could go to the UK again soon...........
Who's spending more.......you or the better half??

Bob-Dubery

Well we're back. It was nice to see some proper night. Like actual blackness of the sky at a respectable hour ? I found the long summer days in England a bit hard to deal with - It can't be eight yet! There's still so much light (meanwhile it's past 9). I had problems sleeping and the long days may have had something to do with it.

I need to start unpacking once the better 5/8 is up and about. Holidays are lekker, but getting home is good too. Though this morning I am using a bit of slang that I picked up on my travels: It's bloody pearl harbour in Jo'burg this morning. ("pearl harbour" = "a nasty nip in the air")

The Beverley Folk Festival was a really good event - as an event. Excellent organisation right down to the portaloos and the beer tents. They had their own "Festival Ale" and it was pretty good. The sound was very good. The venues were not that big. The main hall was probably 800 sitting. But there were lots of smaller auditoriums on the site, used for workshops as well as for smaller, less mainstream acts. If I go to this festival again (and I'd love to) I'll buy "all day" tickets rather than just target specific events.

Most of the stewards, stage managers, comperes etc were volunteers. Must have been over a hundred of them. Always helpful, always efficient, always friendly and human. They would get an "all events" pass for one day as payment, but had to commit to 12 hours of shifts as stewards, selling tickets, lugging beer casks etc.

Folk festivals in the UK tend to attract a "real ale crowd". The city of Beverley ran out of real ale on this festival week end. Several pubs and restaurants ran out of food and closed early on the Sunday.

Keira-WitherKay

hey Bob how you and pass on my love and best wish's to your your better half too????

lovely to hear from you...sounds like the folk festival was awesome...have a fabulous time....

enjoy

peace and light
keira

TomCat

Hey Bob.....Welcome home.

FatBoy

Nice post man, thanks for keeping us updated!