Purbeck Valley Folk Festival 2019

I spent last weekend at Purbeck Valley Folk Festival! It was great :) I've only been to a couple of festivals before, both folk, and only for the day, or a day and a night, and have only spent the night in a tent twice in my life, so I was a little nervous about possible bad weather and mud and gross portaloos and not being able to sleep, but was also looking forward to it. And I loved it!

I went with one of my friends, and a few of his friends. Three of them are in ceilidh band Threepenny Bit and were performing at the festival. I'd only met one of the others before but they were all really nice. Due to the awful weather on Friday we drove down on Saturday morning. Cramming five people and their stuff - not just camping gear but a few musical instruments too - in the car was interesting, but we managed it, haha. We got there about lunchtime after stopping at a McDonald's on the way for a late breakfast, so none of us really needed lunch. Thankfully the camping field wasn't anywhere near as muddy as I was expecting as we were setting up the tents, and I was able to keep my trainers on instead of changing into wellies. (I was also happy to find that, as we were in the artists' campsite, we could use the proper loos! An actual decent permanent little shed with two flushing toilets and a sink with running water to wash your hands and brush your teeth, plus soap!) After we got everything set up we sat down to relax for a bit and had a drink - I'd brought along a bottle of Rekorderlig Botanicals grapefruit and rosemary pear cider (yum), which I'd bought all the way back in April on the little trip up to the Peak District and hadn't yet had, haha.

The festival is a small one, and takes place on a farm - the two main stages, and the bar, are the barns in the farmyard. About 2pm we made the short walk from the campsite past the farmhouse to the festival site, and caught the end of Pons Aelius's set in the Big Barn. We sat on hay bales set up around the sides and watched duo Megson till just before 4pm.

I think we went exploring after that. The rest of the festival site was in the adjacent field, and consisted of a few more small stages, several food stalls, a market, a craft area, a couple of tents for things like meditation and yoga and reiki, and a few other bits like a wishing tree, children's circus skills area, and a couple of beautiful Romany vardos! I bought myself one of those colourful handmade woollen hoodies you often see at folk festivals and in hippy/New Age sort of shops. I've wanted one for ages :)

A band called Juniper did the Saturday evening ceilidh in the Big Barn. My friend and the others watched the first one or two numbers, then went off for something to eat in the artists' area and to get ready for their gig later on. I stayed, but didn't manage to get a partner and join in the dancing. In hindsight, I wish I'd thought of going up to the field to try my hand at the stonecarving and blacksmithing they had going on in the craft area, but it didn't occur to me, silly me. There were a couple of food stalls next to the barn so I bought myself some bunnychow for dinner and stood eating that while watching the ceilidh. Bunnychow is a South African dish, basically a small loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with curry or chilli. The ones they sold here were chilli-filled, and the bits of bread that had been taken out of the loaves were turned into garlic bread and stuck on top, yum =]

After that I went back to the campsite to get out of the wind and warm up before the Threepenny Bit gig. The weather had held and it was still dry and the sun was warm, but it had clouded over as the sun set and there was a chilly breeze. So I put on all the layers of clothing I had with me, haha - fleecy leggings under my jeans, a long-sleeved top, a t-shirt on top of that, my fleece on top of that, and my new hoodie on top of that. Needed it! Their gig was on the Fire Stage in the field, so I also took the camping chair to sit on.

That finished at 9pm and I watched a few minutes of the fire/poi display afterwards, then went to meet the others back at the campsite, where they were putting their instruments back in the car. We all then headed back to the Big Barn to watch Saturday's headliner, Afro Celt Sound System. Their music is a brilliant energetic fusion of electronic, traditional Irish, and traditional West African music, and they had dhol drummer Johnny Kalsi from bhangra music group The Dhol Foundation as a guest, so it felt like some kind of folky-African drum rave. It was awesome! That finished shortly before 11pm and we walked down to the Long Barn to watch the second half of Ushti Baba's set.

The music strictly finishes at 11:30pm. I went back to the tent while the others stayed around the bar for a little while. But it actually started raining about five minutes after I got back to the tent, so they appeared pretty soon afterwards, haha. It was nice to hear the rain on the tent, all snuggled up nice and cosy in my sleeping bag. Where I live at the moment, I can't hear rain on the windows as much as I have in previous places, and we have another flat above us instead of a roof, so I miss hearing the sound of rain at night.

I fell asleep to the sound of rain and woke up to it on Sunday morning, too. I'd slept very well though, and thankfully (surprisingly) I didn't need the loo too badly, haha, so I didn't need to venture outside and could wait until 9am when the rain was due to stop - which it did, and happily it was forecast to be dry and mostly sunny for the rest of the day, yay! I did need to wear my wellies, though.

My friend had brought some bacon, eggs, and bread rolls, so cooked us all breakfast, and the five of us (the other band members were camped elsewhere) ate together sat outside on a couple of picnic blankets, before heading to the workshops starting at 10:30. The others went to the tin whistle workshop run by Flook's brilliant Brian Finnegan, and I went to the longsword and Morris dancing workshop, haha! Those were fun, but I enjoyed the latter more. After that finished we met up again for a little while, before I went to the shanty workshop at 1:15pm. Shanties are work songs historically used on ships to synchronise actions in tasks that required a number of crewmen - such as hauling a rope to lift the sail, turning the capstan to raise the anchor, and scrubbing the decks. (It was interesting to find out that shanties were only used on merchant ships; the British Royal Navy banned singing during work because they thought the noise would make it hard for the crew to hear commands.) They are fairly simple call-and-response songs, designed to be easy to memorise and improvise, so the group doing the workshop - the Wareham Whalers - just gave out some printed lyric sheets containing the choruses of the 16 shanties they would be singing, and told us to sing along, we'd pick it up easily enough, which we did. It was good!

The shanty workshop finished at 2pm and I hurried down to meet the others at the Long Barn where Pons Aelius had just started playing their third and final gig of the weekend. They were brilliant, very high-energy, I highly recommend going to see them if you get a chance (if you're into folk music). Sadly they're Newcastle-based, so don't come this far south very often - they're doing an autumn tour but the nearest places they're going are London, Bath, and Oxford. Hmm, maybe that's an extra excuse to take a day trip somewhere!

The wishing tree

After that we went to the campsite and packed up, roughly loaded the car, then headed up to the field to wander round and get some late lunch. Most of us got pizza - one of those that's made in front of you and baked for just a few minutes in front of a flame in a pizza oven. Yum! I couldn't get a photo though, haha; we had to walk back down to the Big Barn for the Flook gig, and holding onto a plate which is literally overflowing with pizza whilst walking and dodging other people, does not allow for holding the plate with just one hand and getting your phone out to take a picture with the other.

Flook was the band the band my friend and I had been to see the evening before we went up to the Peak District, and they were great again. Threepenny Bit were on afterwards to do the Sunday evening ceilidh - there's a half-hour or so turnover between bands - so I went and sat in the backstage area with them till they went on, then went round to join in the dancing. I wasn't going to miss out this time, so I walked out into the barn to make it clear that I wanted to dance, instead of just standing at the edge looking around trying to spot someone else who looks like they're on their own and in need of a dance partner. Happily, someone I've encountered at almost every ceilidh I've been to was there, on his own, so we basically partnered up for the whole thing. He said he'd got a day ticket to the festival, and come all the way from Southampton, just to come to the TPB ceilidh, which was cool. Thankfully it was easy to dance wearing wellies!

Cara Dillon was next on. She's a big name in the contemporary folk world, but her music is that nice slow vocal stuff, which none of us are particularly keen on, so we went backstage to get some dinner from the artists' catering area. I had ratatouille with rice, which was simple but nice and pretty healthy.

Sam Kelly and the Lost Boys was Sunday's headliner - also fantastic! Most of their set was folky material, and reminded me of Seth Lakeman's music, but it did include a rendition of one of my favourite songs which I haven't actually heard in a long time - Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing (the solo usually done on an electric guitar was done excellently on a banjo instead) - and finished up with a great cover of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain. Again, if you get a chance to go see them, I highly recommend it.

And that was it, it was over :( It was 10:30pm and we left to drive back to Southampton - and, again, it started to rain soon afterwards. We'd been very lucky with the weather!

Part of what was so nice about the weekend was that I was able to hang around with my friend and his friends. That may sound odd, but I'm not part of a group like that and haven't been since leaving secondary school in 2008. My friends don't know each other and all have different interests; I don't have a group of good friends who are good friends with each other because of a shared interest/hobby/passion and we hang out and do things like go to events. So it was really nice to spend time in a small group like that, who all loved folk music too and who were lovely and friendly :)

I was sad that the festival finished and wanted it to carry on. I'd heard some great music I already knew but discovered more brilliant bands I hadn't heard before. I really enjoyed myself and would love to go back. I'd like to make an effort to go to a folk festival every year!

The jumper I bought!

Clowning workshop

When you think of clowning, what comes to mind? Circus clowns, right? Something not 'me' at all. But on Saturday I went to an "Introduction to Playfulness and Clown" workshop, run by my friend. I went because I wanted to support her, and to do something out of my comfort zone, and because I was curious, and to see if I could discover ways to access a more relaxed, silly, and playful side of myself.

Clowning isn't just about what circus clowns do, or performing, or even about trying to be funny. The tradition has a history going back many centuries and can be a very gentle practice, simply about rediscovering a child-like sense of imagination, play, improvisation, and joy. The four-hour workshop was a series of games and exercises done in pairs or in a group, designed to help us start to find and connect with each of our own unique clowns.

There were about ten people participating, and we started off by getting into pairs. Person A was to be a human camera and close their eyes, and Person B was to be the photographer and stand behind them, hold them gently by the shoulders and guide them around the room, looking for things of interest to 'take a picture of'. They had to guide Person A into a position to take a good picture - "Okay, stop here, bend down a little to here, lift your head up like this..." - then squeeze their shoulders once to open Person A's eyes and, after a couple of seconds, squeeze their shoulders again to close their eyes and so capture a snapshot of whatever is in front of them. After a while you swap roles.

I can't remember all the games and exercises in detail or the exact order we did them in, but in another one we each had to choose a colourful feather and, individually at first, then in pairs and then as a group, keep it up in the air. We were given a red nose each and got to choose two costume props (I picked a red bowler hat and a purple-ish rose) and used those to play as a group - we had to use our imagination and use them in different ways, and notice what other people were doing and learn to see opportunities to join in. Another was a mirroring exercise. Most of the time a piece of suitable light music was put on, so the exercises often felt a bit like a dance. The last exercise was in pairs, with one person hiding behind a curtain and making noises that the other had to 'act out'.

Unfortunately I think I've described all that very poorly, haha, so my apologies. You'll have to take my word for it that it was interesting and fun, and well worth doing - if you ever get a chance to do a clowning workshop, give it a go. Although I personally never fully lost my sense of nervousness, uncertainty, and discomfort, I'm glad I went, and I'd do it again. Those so-called negative feelings were actually good things. Clowning is about being authentic and what I was feeling came through in my clown. 

Clowning can be a lovely antidote to our modern world of being constantly on the go, striving, achieving, succeeding, knowing, doing, etc. It's about being in the now, pausing and noticing things, about letting go of having to always be doing something, being okay with not knowing what to do. It's not about creating a comic character, but rather about stripping back the selves we've built up and getting back in touch with the wonder, curiosity, exploration and imagination that came to all of us naturally as children. It's about tuning into whatever you're feeling and being authentic about that. Whether you're fed up, confused, sad, in physical pain - whatever - you show it, and can use it as an opportunity, and turn pain or discomfort into pleasure and humour. The clown is a universal archetype, present in everyone, and by sharing our vulnerabilities we can better relate to and appreciate each other. It's not easy; not because you have to learn to do things, but rather because you have to unlearn things. It's about being, not doing.

They say that the clown's red nose is the smallest mask in the world. Masks allow us to hide ourselves and, in doing so, free our inner selves.

Finally, if you have a spare 11 minutes, I've found a lovely TEDx Talk on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlkPppKZajM

:)

8th August 2019 - Foraging and a barn dance

I was planning on spending this evening at a free ceilidh / barn dance at the fake beach a local business organisation has set up for the summer in Guildhall Square... but after a little while of getting rained on, and there not being enough people for me to have a dance partner, I decided to leave. For once, I would much rather be at home than attending a ceilidh. I felt mean, but there were still 20 good-humoured folks willing to stay and dance in the light rain =] It's a shame, because I love ceilidhs and I'd decided to go to that instead of a talk on sustainable travel and tourism at a sustainable almost-zero-waste café in Winchester, which would have been interesting and useful and where I would have met like-minded people. But oh well. I came back home and wrote this!

In better news, today has been a good one for my recently-begun attempts at foraging. I did some internet research into whether hazelnuts can be picked green and ripened at home - the squirrels always get them all before they turn brown - and was excited to find a blog by a forager right here in Southampton! Not only is the blog extensive and full of information, but the guy has written a book, started a community orchard, and set up an online map where people can pinpoint locations of fruit or nut trees. If you're interested, you can check out the blog at https://theurbaneforager.blogspot.com/

Happily, the answer to my query was that A) you can pick green hazelnuts and ripen them at home, and B) you can actually eat green hazelnuts, before they're fully mature and the lovely brown colour that we're familiar with. Yay! So on my lunchtime walk today I picked a handful of hazelnuts, and an apple (a teeny tiny one), as well as more blackberries.

But, the really exciting moment came when I spotted something I've not seen before (or wouldn't have recognised if I had)...

A WALNUT TREE!!!!!

Cue a gasp and a massive grin :D

Over. The. Moon.

They're green still, but you can only do something with green walnuts quite early on in the season, before the shell starts to harden. So I'll leave them to ripen and hope that the squirrels leave me a few! Meanwhile I'll try to find out some more locations of walnut trees.

I'm so excited to be starting to learn more about foraging and recognise more wild food plants, and am looking forward to harvesting more in the coming weeks and months!