Tuesday 28 May 2013

Wheeldale Moor

On Saturday I had my picnic lunch (rather late in the afternoon) sat on a track by the roadside overlooking wheeldale Moor. My companions were 2 ventriloquist dolls made by Dave and myself. One is of the Kaffa Djinn (a genie from Dave's book) and the other was noneother than Jaques, leader of the Ninth Legion, who built the road on the hillside in the distance we were facing. My destination was Botton to give a concert in the evening as part of the Festival. (I loved Botton, by the way!) The last time I had been close to here was when I was 11 or 12. At boarding school Saturday afternoons were thankfully very laid back. The morning was taken up with Games and Latin lessons. We filed past the pantry door after lessons had finished and collected a small paper bag containing a white bread cake with a thin layer of margarine and either peanut butter or marmite (both of which I absolutely hate). Occasionally we had a dried out small slab of orange cheese and we always had an apple or an orange. If we wanted a drink we had to fill any water container we could get hold of and in those days that wasn't easy. I actually had a goatskin flask which my Dad had brought back from Switzerland for me! We were then supposed to file out in a neat crocodile for our Saturday walk. Some Nuns were more vigilent than others but most were just too overweight to start tramping up and down the hills near Whitby. This meant FREEDOM if you were clever enough to slip away un-noticed and also clever enough to be back by tea-time. I was an expert and managed to get as far away as Danby Castle once. Accompanied by a friend who lived nearby we knocked on the door of the farmhouse nextdoor and asked for the key. A smiley lady duly obliged and we unlocked the door up a flight of stone steps and played 'princesses' in the great hall. From memory there was a long oak table and benches each side and a large oak chair at one end. There were also tapestries on the walls. I have just been asked to do a wedding there.

Thursday 16 May 2013

Bookings flying in ...

Hi again - I keep saying I want to get back to it and then it all goes wrong!! I discovered a pile of Christmas presents the other day - this is good news - (yes, really). My music room has been host to 3 room's worth of furniture for about 6 months and I am getting it cleared at last. The next big job is to hang the Caris pictures back up. For those of you who have never seen them they were penned by Dennis Oates, a friend of ours, who used to run The Golden Hind, fish and chip shop with his wife, Betty, on Sun Street, Haworth for years. He pencils the drawings on A5 scraps of paper, whatever he can find, and they are so detailed that they can be blown up to A1 and they still hold amazing clarity. We had a full set printed off from The Book of Caris to hang on our walls. There is Caris, The Angel, Jaques, the main character, Governor General of Britannia in 170's AD, his wife, Ruth, his daughter, Germanilla and his father-in-law, Anon. The pictures are to be relocated and I cannot wait to see them again. This means I have to re-locate the pictures from the room they are to be hanged in .... arghhhhhhh! It goes on and on!!! Anyway I have some concerts coming up so here they are: Saturday 18th May at Poppys, Settle - 7.30 pm, Saturday 25th May at Botton School for new location Ryedale Folk Festival and I am also booked at The Square Chapel on 29th September this year again. All will be on the fascinating story of Jaques and the music is incredible - written by my husband, Dave, and based on styles and actual snippets of music from 2,000 years ago, starting in Aethiopia and moving across to Celtic Britannia. see you there! :)