Well what a boring week I’ve had. After a lovely weekend I started feeling crappy on Monday and streaming by the evening. I thought I’d feel better today but I’m still revoltingly snotty. I really hope I feel better tomorrow as I’m starting a weekly improvisation course in Bristol for the next four weeks which I’ve been really looking forward to.

Anyway – can’t do anything about it except rest and hope for the best.

We got back last night from a couple of days in Nottingham. The first part went really wrong as P was fixing the toilet for his daughter and a plumbing disaster ensued see PLUMBING!!

We attended a great African evening there on Thursday called Africajana organised by a friend of ours and had a briliant night out – I was in good dancing mood so had a real party.

Yesterday there was a series of taster sessions in djembe, sabar drumming and dance, Mandinka song accompanied by Kora etc. Needless to say we did the drumming (surprise, surprise).

Afterwards we went back to P’s daughter to finish off the plumbing to find chaos and the leak much worse but thankfully it was sorted out eventually.

After a quick goodbye to our Nottingham drumming friends I drove the couple of hours back home in time for bed. Tonight we have friends coming round to dinner – should be a quiet Halloween evening.

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Oh and PS – blah blah!!

Well I’ve decided to take some action to try and get my music mojo going again. I know I can’t force anything but I can hopefully help it along and try and re-inspire it at least.

If it means driving to Bristol  a bit more often – well so be it. Tonight I’m going to the open mic I used to go to – it’s its second birthday and there’s a special bash. And I’ve enrolled on a once a week Vocalisation course with someone I know. It’s a freestyling, improvisational fun one evening a week thing for just four weeks.

I’d hoped to find local things here (near Banbury) and who knows, maybe I will – but in the meantime I’ve got to do something creative or I’ll go barmy.

I love my new life out here in the country but I’m finding it harder than I expected to find people to do music with locally so till I do I’ll have to bite the bullet and do some driving!

This was the sight I saw this evening as the sun went down – the view from the back of the house we rent. It couldn’t have been more lovely.

We had a great weekend – two parties – completely different. The first was an outside affair with performances such as a slack rope artist and bicycle pianist – a bonfire, great company. I drank too much red wine and had a hideous hangover in the morning but felt well enough for the Saturday night party – my cousin’s 50th. This was staged in her farm warehouse and they’d brought in two great bands – one of them fronted by Ray Wilson who briefly was the lead singer of Genesis when Phil Collins first left.

Back home now and this Wednesday’s my birthday and we’re going to see Seckou Keita in Nottingham then next weekend’s my stepmother’s 70th party down near Arundel!!! Phew!!!

We’re thinking of going to the Gambia for 3 weeks before Christmas to suss out a few meetings in preparation for next years’ festivals and happenings so all in all a busy time.

Here’s a link to the photos of the two parties!

TWO PARTIES

I’m not sure what to write today – I seem to have got out of the habit of regular blogging for a while and then when I do it’s not really about my feelings as such but about what I’ve been doing, where I’ve been and some nice photos!

Nothing wrong with that of course and I’ve been to some beautiful places and done loads of wonderful things this year.

In fact I’m just back from nearly a week in France on a dutch barge while P was doing some work on the engine I just mainly lazed about and enjoyed the water and the views, good food, good company and card playing. Without wishing to boast – I did keep winning ha ha.

I’m now spending a few days in Bristol catching up with friends.

My problem is that I seem to have lost my musical inspiration at the moment – it’s a year since I wrote a decent song and where we live now I don’t know any local musicians to get together and play with. I know this will change and that it takes time but my confidence (musically) is seeping away a bit at the moment. I find it hard to promote my album  – I need someone to help me sell it – it’s hard work trying to promote oneself and very difficult to get anywhere with it.

Anyway – just wanted to get that off my chest – I know I can turn it around and I’m very happy in my day to day life but I don’t want to lose my music mojo – there must be an answer *scratches head*…………..

Hi there – sorry it’s been so long.

I’m staying with a pal in Bury and today we’re taking the train over to Liverpool (my first ever visit) for a day and night whiz round. I’ll take the camera and try and get some good pictures.

It’s been hectic and I seem to have got lazier at updating my blog recently but you’re not forgotten!!

Next week P and I are off to France to the barge we stayed on before (he works on the boats and I get to go along sometimes).

I’ll be back ha ha……..

Well on the weekend we helped arrange a party at Cropredy instead of the scheduled African Linx mini-festival we’d intended to do as there wasn’t enough time or money for that.

Poor Peter was hitching up the electric mains when he somehow fell backwards on to the path and landed on his back on a big earthenware flower pot and cracked a few ribs. We spent the afternoon in casualty and in the evening he sat dosed up with drugs to the eyeballs to watch the entertainment instead of joining in.

I’m now trying to get him to rest for a few days while the ribs heal up – not easy as he’s a very active guy!

We played a set of sabar drumming and I sang a few songs as well but my fingers were so cold I could hardly play the guitar and I was glad when they put the reggae music on!

Just back from a great couple of days with the van at Halesowen – just south of Birmingham. We went to play drums for their evening party and we had an all day workshop at the same venue beforehand.

We had the same teachers we’d had at  ABC so it was brilliant.

The evening party was great -though unusually for me – I got very sloshed. Everyone let their hair down and danced their socks off to a load of 80’s music after our drumming and a live band.

The only hitch was my van got stuck in the mud getting out and luckily, just when I thought we’d have to get towed, I managed to get her out somehow.

P’s just gone off to London working till Friday and I’m going to use the time to finally set up my music studio here which I still haven’t done since moving in May! I hope I’ll feel inspired to write some new songs and get recording again!

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I don’t know where to start trying to write up the ABC event which is now finished.

A small group of us has been involved in organising it for a few months and at last the time came for the actual event to happen. We got to the site on the Sunday and the participants were going to start arriving on the Tuesday afternoon so they could set up camp, get sorted into the right level groups for drumming and start workshops on the Wednesday morning.

There were about 150 people booked in and it was an enormous amount of organising – the site, toilets, put up shower curtains, mark out fire lanes (had to have a 25′ access way round the whole site in case emergency vehicles were needed), programmes and schedule, crew schedule, put up an outside sink and tap, caterers, sort out the African artists’ camping arrangements, information tent/reception area, car park field next door, rubbish and re-cylcing, you’d never believe how much toilet paper 200 people need for a week,  warn the neighbours about the noise and invite them, evening entertainment and running order – just to get started – oh and not to forget TO HAVE A BRILLIANT TIME!!!!! The organising team (about 7 of us) and the crew were brilliant. The workshops were brilliant. The evening performances were – yes you guessed it – BRILLIANT.

The drumming, dance and song workshops were two days on, one day off, two days on with three or four a day you could attend. The camp was for intermediate and advanced drummers only (no beginners) so the standard was exceptional.

We had the cream of the cream of African teachers – world class performers and on the last night all the teachers got together to do a joint performance that I’ll never forget till I die!

On the day off we had demonstrations of African cooking, drum-skinning etc and it was good to have a more relaxed day in the middle.

I’ve put up photos on Facebook and there are link to some wonderful albums for those who are on Facebook they’re well worth looking at.

Really, this is only a snapshot of the week – it was such a good experience though I’m exhausted. I’ve been working on feedback forms and there are some things we’d have to change a bit if we do it next year but nearly 90% said they’d come back and had a wonderful time!

Some Photos