Dear all,
I can’t quite believe I’m about to say this but I have ONE gig left this year. The review of the year will of course follow but it must wait til my live year has officially finished. By that I obviously mean my year of gigging not my year of being alive…although that will also have finished. Anyway, I have just returned from Norway which was an absolutely wonderful place though fairly chilly at this time of year as one might expect and by god it’s expensive. However, it was a very pretty place with lots of lovely people and two rather marvellous gigs. A special thank you to Mark and Gillian for making the Bergen gig possible and to the gang at Bluegrass at Buckley’s for a fantastic gig there too. In Bergen, I played to a front row of viking looking heavy metal fans and a very beautiful woman. Rather fun. As for Oslo, Buckley’s was an amazing place – a roots and blues joint that had music five nights a week all of the…er…roots and blues variety. If that was near me I’d be in it a LOT.
Prior to Norway I played a couple of UK shows in Faldingworth and Telford, both of which were real crackers. Faldingworth Live is a long running successful gig in Lincolnshire with a lovely audience and it was great to hear Rebekah Findlay do her thing first as well. Then I played the newly relaunched Meadow Folk club in Ironbridge which again was a really lovely gig. So to finish off the year will be my annual end of gigging season finale at my beloved Market Vaults in Stafford. Join me for a ludicrously long set filled with lots of favourites and a few surprises.
Can I point out that I am typing this in my front room and my housemate has just uttered possibly the best sentence of the week:
‘I only use the word shit in a professional context’. I enjoyed that.
So a few other little things to tell you about. Firstly, to explain the title. As many of you will know I am singularly cursed in travel situations – scroll back for examples such as the unexploding suitcase, the attempted banjo theft, the three hour power cut, the urinating man etc etc….But I have a reason to believe that the curse may have been lifted. Admittedly, I flew to Bergen from Gatwick and it was an hour late which does rather cast this aspersion into doubt but one incident has surely given me hope. I flew back to Gatwick with no hitches and I walked to the train platform. I opened the BBC News app on my phone and the main headline was ‘travel chaos hits London airspace’. I opened it and it turned out all flights to and from London were suspended for at least six hours. And it didn’t affect me!!!! It didn’t!!! I’m free!!!! Yeah give it time…
On another note, a classic overheard conversation at London Euston. The dialogue ran as follows:
‘If I want to say four words I usually only manage three before you interrupt me’
She interrupted him at ‘before’.