I'm completely folked.............

Ah, the Coco Lounge. Such style, such class, such ferkin expensive drinks. The Festival Club Night was held therein in a room of such slumminess that any self-respecting tramp would have turned their nose up at it. Lovely formica tables, drinks in plastic beakers, dirty beige walls, loudly grubby carpet, a background of pumping disco sounds through the walls. Three drinks for £10.60 - I nearly carked. Nice bar staff, though and the musicians were very good, if a little teeny, weeny bit.......peculiar.

Well, to be fair, one of them was. The rest were just folky.

Poor N came down from t'Smoke and got dragged along. I think she enjoyed it, but she might just have been being polite. She arrived by train on Saturday evening with Betty Brompton the Incredible Folding Bike and a lemony smelling box of bathroom goodies and we hurtled back here from Bugville station in time to wolf down a sticky chicken salad and a blueberry cheesecake before introducing her to the delights of Tinytown. As if Tinytown Folk and Roots Festival weren't enough of a torture to inflict on one's friend, the Boy introduced her to his geetar repertoire when we got back here and there was singing in the sitting room until quite silly o'clock.

This was slightly daft, as The Boy had to get up at stupid o'clock to oversee catering numpties in't Smoke, leaving us to while away most of the day in the sun on the verandah, chatting. Like girls do. We did go for a bit of a stroll on the beach as well - down to the Greensward and back. N collected stones and shells and wrote our names in chalk on the groyne post. Like kids do. Luckily, the sun was out for that bit, unlike later, as we left for Bugville and the train, when it was pissing down and we got soaked. Like idiots do.

Later, the Boy and I, as gluttons for a bit of punishment, drove to Tinytown for yet another concert at the Windmill. This was a real class act, costing £4 each.
The Windmill is quite sweet. It's a little theatre come cinema, staffed mostly by volunteers, unlicenced (so you have to go to the Arvester next door for anything verging on the alcoholic), but with a dear little kiosk where you can indulge your fancy for Losely icecream and Minstrels ad lib.

The concert itself was excellent, though. Once we'd got over the shock of seeing what looked like a small bundle of tie-died, velvety hippy dangly-ness stroll onto the stage carrying a guitar and begin to sing, we were mesmerised. This Sue Dubowi was the support act and she was awesome. Intriguing, other-worldly voice and stunning guitar playing. She just looked like an illustration from a 'There once was a kindly old witch....' book. She sings in a really quite languid and lowly sexy way, like you imagine a siren would, all beguiling and come-hithery which is bizarrely at odds with the way she looks. The Boy is ever so slightly in lurve. I might be too, were I that way inclined.

The main band were Legacy - one of the fiddle players and Mal from Friday's Triskel concert, plus a different guitarist and another flute-playing girly, from Ireland, to be sure, to be sure, but posh. They were pumping and diddly and channelling the Chieftains, but none the worse for that. We had a great time.

What was sad about the whole weekend was that it was pretty poorly attended. The theatre was only about a quarter full, there were only 30 or so at the Coco Lounge and about the same at the Squash Club. I don't know about the pub gigs inbetween. The Tinytown Council had put up some money and were supporting the whole Festival but personally we'd not have found out about it had we not been last month to the Bugville Folk Club and seen a flyer on the table. We get the local paper, but there was nothing in there, nor did we see publicity anywhere else. It's the sort of local initiative that really should be encouraged.

Having said that, should you be a Gay Hussar, a salty old seadog, a rosy cheeked ploughboy or a maiden of any sort (abandoned, disappointed or betrayed) with a penchant for blossom picking and listening to the birds that do sing or be there any sort of three day folk festival nearby in the next few months (or even in the month of May), I'm not your woman..................

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.