Weekend

On Saturday I made a quite a spontaneous trip to York to see Mick, June, Laura and Danny. It was a lovely cold, sunny day, but York was on the cusp of being flooded after having had a very rainy January.

We sat in the basement room of Betty's surrounded by wood panelling, drinking tea and eating fabulously cooked food. We had a lot of catching up to do, as always, and by the time I left we were all smiling and very glad we'd seen each other.

Sunday, I headed down to the Betsey Trotwood for the celebration of my brother James McCallum's life. I know we have to have funerals: they are an essential ritual that marks the end of a life. But the memories of the person haven't gone away, and I just thought that the legacy of sadness, that exhausting energy, should be diverted into something more positive, a musical get-together because James really did love a party! His son Alex's band Gillterwound had agreed to play, and Alex's guitar duo, Ephraim Maaler. 

It was a task for the resident sound engineer, Joao, to set up Glitterwound, who are a seven-piece of multi-instrumentalists. 'Don't worry, they are a bit scared of me', I whispered to him. The day before they'd had a band in who had spent their sound check time rehearsing, and I think it had been a bit of a trial. Actually, Glitterwound's sound check was all done and dusted reasonably quickly. 'Stop chatting everyone', said Raz the bar owner. Paul and me also had a quick check before people started showing up. We were playing Freight Train with Alex guesting on trumpet, and Femme Fatale.

I'd had to rely partly on word-of-mouth that people would remember to come, even though Offsprog One had made a fabulous invitation. There was a brilliant turnout, with lots of people from the Camberwell days (Litza, Nat, Mark), Brighton (Pete Chrisp, Glen and Eric, and Claire), Mike from London days, Valerie, and loads of relatives. Cousin Pete came down from Northampton and absolutely roared through Donald Where's Yer Troosers wearing one of the hats that Paul had supplied (the red tartan ones with inbuilt ginger wig) as the whole pub got it completely wrong. It's one of those songs that's designed for getting wrong, isn't it?

When the band did a cover of James's song Nutty the Squirrel, emotion completely overcame me. He would have loved his party; he was a very loved man, and I'm glad we could get together and feel that again.

In the evening I went over the The Spice of Life for the Country Soul Sessions Robert Burns night. It was an early start, with poetry, haggis, neeps and tatties. NB Herd started the musical side of things with his strong, folk-influenced music: a band in a man. In between the music, there were readings from Rabbie and even a William McGonegall poem, a three-line wit. I'd learned Charlie is My Darling, a favourite from schooldays, and was delighted that people automatically joined in the chorus. I also sang Cailin Morun Sa a cappella and some of my own songs too. I love these nights that Drew and Alex put on. But I was so emotionally worn out by James's party that I had to leave early and was sad to miss Emma Scarr's set. I also left my hat behind, but they found it.

I've been battling against AI auto-correcting this posting. I've had to keep correcting it. Isn't that ironic? It wants to interfere and re-spell words that it doesn't know, in order to pull them into it's familiar territory, and it's been making me write nonsense. It's bad enough being dyslexic without all that going on! The computer thinks it knows best. How long before we abandon computers and just go back to pens and paper again?