All around my hat..........

I wore intricately woven verdant plant material, but it wasn't for a twelvemonth and a day, just figuratively speaking on a jaunt to Tinytown last night for the opening gig of the Tinytown Folk and Roots Festival. Cost 2 of our English pounds for a comfy seat in a slightly strange venue (the Tinytown Squash and Badminton Club - wall to wall beige with uncertain curtains and a less than competent barmaid fighting with a barrel of Upper Snobton real ale). Good bands, though. A couple of unlikely lads playing bluegrass-y Americana stuff and jigs and reels, followed by Triskel, a 4 piece Celtic roots band of some repute. Serious fiddles, classy guitars and a crinkle haired Oirish maid on flute. She sang a good tune, too.

We enjoyed it a lot. What we didn't enjoy, and can never really get our heads round, were the Tinytown mutant contingent in attendance who seem to think it's OK to talk bollocks and laugh very loudly when the 'turns' are on. Why in Cliff's name would you go to a niche folky event and not listen to the chuffing music? Tinytown is known round here for it's mutant inbreeding and blimey, you could see it in every beetle brow. Obviously, folk music's a bit too challenging for some - all that wordy narrative and difficult foot stomping - you can see how the concentration might wander a bit. As I'd had a less than serene day (what with the specs debacle, the pre-apocalypse planning re-write and De Quervain's Hand of Doom playing up quite considerably)) and being somewhat hormonally challenged at the moment, I was getting a bit...how can I put this.......MIFFY. Luckily, the band had their speakers turned up a bit and that eventually drowned out the mutant braying.

We don our hats again (and I may even stick my finger in my ear and join in the singing) this evening for the Festival Folk Club event, being held back in Tinytown at the ...ahem....Coco Lounge. We passed the....Coco Lounge on the way to and from the Squash Club last night. On the 'to' journey, it looked OK, in a modern, open bar sort of a way. On the 'from' ....hmm....Grant Mitchell looky-likey 'door personnel', lingering puppy fat in unfeasibly tight and short skirts, shaven headed swaggery lads smoking outside and a drum and base riff thudding through from inside. That'll sit well with the be-sandalled, cheesecloth wearing, crinkly haired folky crowd..........and their verdantly bedecked hats.