Memories of Fate, 2009. Day 1

So, this weekend was profoundly magical. I don’t normally blog anymore, but I wanted to keep a sort of record of the who and the what and the where. Let's see if I can do three posts over three days, shall we?

Friday. I arrive early, train to Stockport, train to Shrewsbury, bus to Much Wenlock. Easy. Light rain and the last of the orchids. I’m in a barn this weekend, rather than camping out in the mudflats. I do a celebratory little dance on account of the weather, the green room is quiet, full of tense looking stewards. I make a judgement call about sleeping arrangements, figuring that the noisy bunks over the sleeping quarters will be better off than the quiet one with all the windows because a) I intend on being late to bed and noisy myself and b) I can’t abide too much light at dawn.

This decision gives me a room of ten bunks to myself. Rock. I spread out. Whilst getting changed, Maureen of Artist’s Liaison and Lynne Denman wander in. I’m two thirds naked.

“Hello,” says I, “I think the plan is for women to take the downstairs rooms, and men to take… OH MY GOD! Lynne Denman? I saw you doing Branwen’s story back in 2007! I’m so excited about Hunting The Giant’s Daughter.”

We chat a little. Eventually I have to kick them out because, really, it’s not proper to be having this conversation when I’m not dressed.

Some commotion with the washing of towels. This is The Bad Shepherd’s rider; fresh new towels, washed once to soften the fibres. That’s not very punk, is it? Later I find out that they didn’t even leave their tour bus because they had no wellies.

The Green Tent, (the big one) Mike Rust is MC, but he’s been forced into telling a little tale himself. During the sound check he does a bit of fall of King Vortigern, and it’s the best I’ve ever seen him tell. When he settles into the MC role he’s back to his usual jokes and anecdotes. He’s a charm, but I’m gonna have to call him on it next time I see him. “Mike,” I shall say “you’re better than the stories you’re telling.” I forget the order of tellers, but I remembered well what Eric Boreas taught me in Belgium in 2008. (He showed me photos of the faces I pull when I’m on stage whilst someone else is telling. In my defence, I pull these faces because I’m nervous and because I’m normally running through what I intend to tell in my head, but it’s no excuse.) Friday night, I look enraptured.

It wasn’t too hard.

Cat Weatherill tells a story I make a mental note to pinch. A Welsh blacksmith, his mute daughter, a necklace and a rusty nail. She’s stylised in her performance. Theatrical. Emphatic. I tell alongside her around the bonfire on Saturday, and she’s much the same then, measured. Precise. Talented. I would have liked to see her performing one of her own shows, rather than just pieces in group performances, but there’s not enough weekend to see everyone.

Sheila Stewart, aged Scottish tinker, sings a ballad. I carry her chair, and feel right privileged. She’s one of the few survivors who can speak in the traveller cant. She talks of Stanley Robertson, whose diabetes has led to gangrene in his feet. There was a time when she’d have said “But ye cannae keep the travelling folk dahn.”

Jess Smith, poor dear, is introduced as being the replacement Sheila Stewart for when Sheila is no longer with us. Well, alright, they don’t put it as bluntly as that, but it’s the crux of it. She carries herself well, “I’ll tell you one that Duncan would ne have tald you.” launching into hearthside Scottish wisdom. Lovely.

Dovie Thomason. Dovie. I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty years. Dovie, Lakota tribeswoman, adopted by the Apache after the death of her parents if my childhood memories serve me right. I can remember her very well in spite of the decades and she’s matured. She slips in the odd story about herself, her own life, into the her usual mix of traditional tales. It seems mad to me to watch someone so incredible evolve, adapt, improve. She talks about her grandmother, Dove, who was very critical of having to live in a square house. She has this smile.

Hugh Lupton. Hugh tells one of his chestnuts, the story from West Africa about four brothers. I’ll forgive him, he’s doing about five different shows over the course of the weekend, tough pieces as well, like the Duncan Williamson tribute piece, and his mind must be jammed to bursting with it all.

And here I have a revelation. When I was ten, or thereabouts, you could have asked me where I wanted to be, and I might well have said I wanted to be on a stage with Dovie Thomason and Hugh Lupton. It’s a dream I forgot for a decade or so, but it all comes swelling back inside me. I get a little bit ecstatic.

Me. Mike Rust introduces me like this. “So there was this youngster, right, and we had him up in Whitby running this club in the Ship, you know. And I’d not heard him, but he’d won some competition or something, so I thought he’d be alright, and by the Tuesday or Wednesday people started coming up to me telling me about him. How he...” and Mike freezes for a moment and struggles for something to say, “… how he has great diction. Anyway, it’s a pleasure to introduce him. Tim Ralphs.” Great diction. Ah well, there's worse. I tell Tom Garside’s story about Jack meeting the Devil out hunting, only I’ve re-written it to include a fox hunt first and some poetry I composed on the bus up there. I get up with the intention of holding my own. I do that, I reckon.

So, that was Stories of Welcome. It was telling with microphones, which I don’t like, and I was a bit on cloud nine and giddy, trying to work out how much of a mini Hugh Lupton I look in my waistcoat. I keep bumping into people I know.

Let’s leave the Green Tent. It’s not where the magic of the weekend happened. The real genius went off in the Red Tent, the smaller tent, the acoustic tent. (And such acoustics! Though, perhaps, I'm a little biased by virtue of having been on there myself.)I potter over, having got changed again into something muddy, and I grab a seat for Mike O’Connor’s commission.

Wait up! En route, I meet up with Mai Lin Li and Amy Minns. Mai Lin ran The Tree of Life in Kirklees. She asks what’s going on, how I’m doing. She enquires as to what I’m working on, and has the audacity to remark that I don’t sound very busy. That stung at the time, she said it in a quiet, contemplative way. I didn’t really think
much of it, but it will become relevant later on. Where were we? Ah yes.

Mike O’Connor. The first time I’ve seen him in his element. Mike is not entirely of this world, but he’s also something of an academic and tonight he tells his "Of Gods and Men". A hypothetical meeting of Charles Darwin and William Brookes. The material is very dear to my heart, the conflict between science and religion, and their fundamental humbling before the common rights of humanity. I can’t think of anyone else who could have nailed this, Mike drifts into music of the time on the fiddle, he embodies the two learned men. He calls up a storm and bids it be quiet.

It’s canny. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s Red Tent material. I make the fireside humming noise. (Later, I am amazed that Mike and Michelle O’Connor have identical knees. Creepy.)

Sticking in the Red Tent more or less, I nip out for a beer with Tom Croft, Effie and her partner, Ruthie and Freja, but I’m back in time for Xanthe Gresham.

A friend of mine mentioned Xanthe before, and it went like this: The friend lit up, she made like she was about to burst into song, she tried to put Xanthe into words, paused and deflated. Xanthe is not easy to describe. The morning after, I lend Ms Gresham a hair brush with all the eagerness of a spaniel. Late on Sunday night I find
myself, very drunk, trying to explain to anyone who will listen that it is never going to work between Xanthe and I. I’m not entirely certain she knows my name. Anyhow, she does the first part of her Goddess cycle. Aphrodite and the real red shoes.

Let’s make this clear. I don’t love Xanthe for the indecently short skirt and the thigh high patent red leather boots that she allegedly stole from Coco de Mer. You cheapen our love when you make that accusation. I love her for her innovation. Her energy. Her ability to vanish the fourth wall. Her audacity.

Soup. Chatter. Jo and Fred are over from Belgium. Jan Blake is going on about spinach, having a hypothetical spinach washing workshop. Sometime approaching three I find my bed. Sleep.