going bananas

I have just seen an advert for turkeys for Christmas - free range apparently (the legal definition).  Our turkeys are driving us bonkers at the moment.  They are very free range and fly amazingly well.  We were woken by the dogs barking.  On shining a torch out the window we could just make out sillouettes of the birds balancing on the ridge tiles of the old stable. It was snowing gently, there was fresh, untouched straw inside their shed but these daft birds insisted on balancing precariously on a steep slippy roof.  As the dogs were going mad wondering what was going on above their heads we decided to throw my old shoes to scare them off.  I got dressed and armed with a stick tried to herd them back to their shed. They chose the tiniest saplings to roost on, the trees bending almost to the ground with the weight of these birds - anything but their warm, cosy shed.  I gave up.  Next morning it was clear from the muck left behind that they had spent the night on the greenhouse roof.   They have a .lovely life though, at the moment they feast on windfall apples and walnuts.  Dodge,the donkey's favourite is ... bananas!  He eats up the whole lot, skin as well.  My website is being updated at the moment so sorry for any glitches.  Next concert with Eddie Lawler on 23rd November, 7pm.  Tickets £8 from us 01535 642581or on the door - in aid of the roof at venue - Oxen hope Community Centre-

sam hain

For the first time ever we lit our bonfire last night - the festival of Sam Main.  (The computer now insists on spelling it with a 'm' instead of a 'h' ... grrrrr.  Anyway we got a beautiful evening.  This morning on checking the hens, they were surrounded by burnt out rockets stuck in the ground.  Eggs as normal though so no worries.  We are in the middle of recording at the moment.  So far we have picked up every noise imagine able ... but no 'clean' recording yet.  We will keep trying as once we have a proven method there will be no stopping us!  Dave composes ever more amazing melodies to go with his books - and we are only 2 books into a trilogy.  TheBook of Caris is at Oxen hope Community Centre on 23rd November and The Book of Anon is at Poppies Cafe in Settle on 6th December.

whispering voices

The rain is coming down the walls ... on the inside! Just in a couple of places! We are renovating fast so this is just a tiny blip. For the first time in years the windows are painted a d the heating works, so much so that the harps are playing up (whoops, didn't mean that pun). When the temperature drops strings break. As I have over 30 harps this means quite a flurry of work at this time of year. I love Autumn and found literally hundreds of beautiful large red and white spotty toadstools hiding in the woods just behind a wall next to a busy footpath. I have never seen anything like it before in such quantity. Last night I tried to finish off the latest CD to go with Dave's new book. I took the memory card up to Dave to listen with him. At the beginning of one track, running over the start of the music, was a whispery woman-s voice. It was difficult to hear but seemed to say she wanted me to wait until she sat down as she was tired... incredible! This is the third time we have recorded something.

tablets

Long time no blog! I intend to rectify this and to help Dave has brought me a tablet.it is proving to be a huge learning curve but I am adiment to master it... near us is a big farm shop with messages on blackboards outside. This week they are selling a Christmas cake in a bag - everything you need - just mix and stir! It reminded me that at boarding school we all waited in turn to stir the Christmas cake. The mixture was in a huge bowl which the wooden spoon didn,t reach the top of.The cook was brilliant - a ddescendant of captain cook,s - she was tiny, but madefantastic bread aand muffins. Concerts coming up are. Oxen hope community centre23rd nNovember and poppies cafe in settle on 6th December.

Rhubarb

There is sadly no more rhubarb growing on the farm - the winters are just too cold, no this rhubarb is the newly-named nanny goat. Jack has named 3 goats: Adam, Eve and .. rhubarb! I caught up with an old acquaintance at Hebden Bridge festival last Sunday. the Spurting Man certainly has an unusual act. I had never seen his show in the daytime before - slightly scaled down but still funny. Aislbie's revels was based on the 1765 opening of Vauxhall Gardens in London. It was huge. I believe there were lions in cages, poets, plays and musicians, including a tripleharper. London's society flocked to see all sorts of weird and wonderful things! Ours was held in the Water Gardens of Studley Royal a few years ago. Every performer dressed in Georgian dress and my daughter and I made our costumes and played harp in the grounds. We had to watch our backs as two 'angels' painted gold in nappies with plastic bows and arrows would creep up and shoot their arrows at us! The Grand finale was Handel's Fireworks. Over 300 performers would parade around the longest lake with flaming torches in the dark, As the final firework sounded and the music faded we extinguished the torches in a massive 'Mexican' wave into the water. The water was alive with fish swimming as fast as they could to the other side to get away from the flames. The Spurting Man was a favourite at the revels. Poor Jack went to school on Monday morning full of it, desperate to tell his 8 yr old friends ... trying to explain this act is difficult to say the least and his baffled friends commented 'rubbish'. We quickly printed the photos off and Jack returned to school with 'evidence' the following day!

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.

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! :)

The importance of 'O'

I had to play 4 hymns and one of them was entitled Bread of Heaven - this was a message on facebook. I checked my 6 different hymn books and eventually found it. It had 2 tunes - one by Bach. It was a beautiful 'moody' tune so I learnt it. Having not much time and no-one to ask I decided I had better learn the alternative tune as well. When I arrived at the church there was no-one about - except the coffin - so I knew I was in the right place. Five minutes later the church wardens were puzzled when I asked them which tune was usually sung to Bread of Heaven. Eventually they asked 'you don't mean O Bread of Heaven do you?'. Mystery solved ...! I borrowed the organists's hymn book and sight-read the tune. Today's job was to dust off all the harps. There are a few harps in the barn and they were cleaner than the ones in the house! A few weeks ago the ceiling fell in, then the plasters, then the sanding ... the dust was horrendous. I took off the worst with the vacuum but getting between the strings took time and ... turkey feathers! I have noticed as well that they have good anti-stat properties. The flautists in Ireland used to clean their ebony flutes with feathers as they had natural oils. Well, we are nearly back on track in the house - just a few painting and gluing jobs to do. The ceiling knocked the cornices off a couple of antique cupboards so I boiled up some proper rabbit glue which stank but is apparantly what was used in the old days. We'll see!

Snow stops everything

Well since I last wrote the snow arrived and the Rainhall Concert had to be cancelled. I managed to take Copernicus out to the local pub at the weekend to put it through its paces. Dave woke up at 3 am the other morning so decided to email a few venues - whether they were impressed by the timing or just by Dave's words we don't know but it did the trick and we have a few more venues booked for later in the year. The snow appeared normal at first, we normally get a lot of it and have a car that will convert to 4-wheel drive if we need it, but this time we were caught out. We set off to take Dave's son Jack back to his Mum's house and set off up the drive at twilight. About half way up we noticed this white wall and could just see the top 2' of the streetlight stuck out the top. It never occurred to us until we got close that it was snow - we thought a white wagon had parked across the top of the drive. The drift was the size of a bungalow. We reversed back down the drive, which was already over a foot deep in places and Dave went for the tractor. He tried to smash his way through the side but it stopped the tractor in its tracks. Plan 'B' was to go up through the field and smash through the tiny snowdrift across the gate to the road (only about 4' high and 3' wide). It took two attempts and an hour later we set off up the field. We still had to run at it so I stood in the road incase someone was coming. We still have 2' drifts and the huge drift at the top which had to be dug out with the JCB is now about 3' high. Dave is busy writing his new book - I am very lucky to get fantastic bedtime stories! I cannot wait until it is finished - well actually I just want the story to go on forever but then that would be the next book ... already in the planning ... and just wait until you hear the music from ancient Persia. More soon ...

22nd March 2013 The Rainhall Centre, Barnoldswick

I am sat here surrounded by fumes ... Dave is stripping the doors in the sitting room! I have lit lavender incense sticks and opened every window but to no avail ... and we are cold again!!!!!! It is actually snowing outside but not settling. Since last post I have moved the turkeys to a new pen and played in front of a few hundred more people. The front row were moved to tears when I played the laments for Ruth and Jaques from the The Book of Caris. The night before I played I carried 7 turkeys to their new home - up-side-down by their legs. They are so huge that I had to hold my arm up high to stop them hitting the ground. Later we weighed one and it was 30 kgs! I am still adjusting strings on the new harp, Copernicus, and am waiting for my drill to charge up to drill out a couple of peg holes. Just a couple of millimetres will make all the difference! When you have over 122 strings it gets a bit cramped and accuracy to a split millimetre is very important. The other problem I have which is unavoidable is as you tune it (and take out the 27% stretch in the nylon string) you end up with too much wound on the peg and have to undo it pull the extra through, cut it off, and start again. THE BOOK OF CARIS is at The Rainhall Centre, Barnoldswick on 22nd March 2013. More details soon but a lovely story, fascinating history and beautiful music ...

Copernicus

The new harp, Copernicus, is very nearly ready. I painted the back today with blackboard paint and the metal strips are ready to be fastened on the sides tomorrow. We are a little bit more organised since the last post - we are warm again! The boiler was actually condemned because the original installers had messed up 2 years ago. I am disgusted but there is nothing we can do as they are no longer in trading. Roll on Spring - I saw some crocus's today - we are so high up here the snowdrops are just appearing! I am giving two lectures this week, Ripon on Friday and Harrogate on Monday - both on The Book of Caris. We are giving a full performance on Friday 22nd March at The Rainhall Centre in Barnoldswick. I shall leave you with a quote: "Caris told Jaques many things and told Jaques of the spririt of the wind who played music through the trees and the spririt of the earth and how the earth could feel pain when man cut into it for his greed and how it would shake like a dog shifting to get comfortable again and that mankind would know of this shifting."

Wuthering ...

We have had no heating for a week and it is so cold. To make matters worse we had just decided to strip and renovate the sitting room - where the wood burning stove is! It all started just over 3 weeks ago when I walked through the sitting room and heard a noise. Next second the ceiling came down on top of me. I ran (the wrong way as it happens) and it followed me, knocking the cornice from the top of the old bacon cupboard which also hit me on the head. We had a plasterer do the whole ceiling and we started stripping the old wallpaper off. As we did huge chunks of plaster fell off the chimney breast so Dave had to plasterboard it and re-plaster that! Just as we got back to basics again the boiler broke. We have lit the stove and it has 4 radiators connected to it but it barely makes a difference. It is now snowing outside! The good news is that the engineer has just rung to say we are his next job today. Fingers crossed that it is easy to fix ... I am giving lectures in Harrogate and Ripon this week on my husband's book 'The Book of Caris' and its music. It starts 2,000 years ago in Aethiopia and the story and music travels across to Britannia. The history is fascinating, the story beautiful, the words Eternal and the music (which reflects the differing styles) gorgeous. Now too cold to type!

Of Love and Harp Music

I am playing at a Valentine Dinner at SCARTOP RESTAURANT - starts at 7 for 7.30 I shall be playing background music throughout the 3 course meal and then will give a presentation on 'Love' with music afterwards. Tickets are available from Mark of Maxine on 0744 950 9423

Old Year's Night

I mentioned the title today and the reception was surprising. No-one had heard the expression for years apparantly! The reason for my mention was a sad one. We lost Flossy the donkey. She was only 6 but Dave rescued her and the vets wanted to put her out of her suffering straight away. He had to persuade them to keep her alive. She was expecting and gave birth to a very healthy jet black male donkey who we call Dodge. She fed him and looked after him and did a splendid job. He pined terribly for a while and we looked for another donkey but in the end circumstances put us in touch with a pigmy goat called Dennis. He was visibly terrified at first when we introduced them but Dodge was so gentle with him. Dennis has his own corner to hide away in the stable when they are inside and Dodge looks and steps so carefully so as not to harm him by mistake. They are now inseparable and run around eachother when they are in the field. They even share a bucket of food. It happenned by mistake at first and we worried that Dennis wouldn't get enough food. He is very smart however - Dodge is the perfect gentleman and takes some food and then gives Dennis a chance. Not so Dennis. Once he sticks his head in the bucket his horns reach up the rim and Dodge looks on bemused as he lowers his head and gets his nose pricked!