It's been one week...
Aug. 24th, 2003 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaWell. Where's Elizabeth been all week ? She's been at Whitby Folk Festival...
As one of my colleagues put it when I mentioned that I was going to be away for a week: "Are you going somewhere nice, or are you going to Whitby?"
Well, in my opinion, both. Whitby has been our family holiday destination since before I was born; both for sea-and-sandcastle fun, and for folk festivals. It's sufficiently close to my parents' house to be day-trippable as well (so we did). Then there's the sword festivals there, the goth weekends, the now-defunct competitive festival, the regatta... I've spent a lot of my life, one way and another, in Whitby. Am I bored yet ? Er, no.
And, of course, its geographical location means you can get decent food. Hot roast animal of your choice, innabun, £1.60. The bakeries (that's bakeries plural, Oxford take note) sell cornedbeef pasties. And when I ordered Yorkshire gammon in The Vintner, the slice I got was the size of my plate and two inches thick. When I poured out my tea in The Walrus and Carpenter, though, the lady came back anxiously to ask me if she'd forgotten to put the tea bag in - I hadn't left it to stew for the requisite half an hour, and the pale colour of my tea had not convinced her at all.
However, notwithstanding the tea-and-lard outlook, there's a new All Bar One-esque place opened opposite the Elsinore, with an interesting-looking menu. We didn't make it in there, so that's on the to-do list for November.
Pintwatch was perfectly happy drinking Jennings' Cumberland Ale all week, though a little disappointed that the Spa was charging £2 a pint for it. Note to WGW-goers: the Spa is prepared to get proper beer in if it thinks there's a demand for it... There were four guest beers on for folk week.
Recently, someone at the goth weekend asked me what the folk week was like. I thought for a bit, about lazy days spent chatting in pubs, and evenings in the Spa, and answered "the same but with different music". This, of course, isn't strictly true. But it did convey something important which many don't seem to realise: in among the music and the dancing, folk festivals are about people having fun, and doing ordinary holiday things.
Having decided this year that both Samantha and I would like a lazy week, instead of a week spent dashing around doing, I didn't even read the program of events properly. I did, however, get off my bum and go to a clogdancing workshop every day.
Clogdancing is a word which makes pretty much everyone smirk, as part of the great British tradition of despising our own heritage. (Actually, I'm faintly curious as to how many people have seen any, and how many just think it's an inherently humourous concept. Have you?) My funky purple clogs come out only rarely these days; however, my annual resolution to change this might hold this year, as I've actually managed to find myself something to use as a practice board, which I'll be hauling back to Oxford with me.
Clogging seems to be something only very rarely done by blokes, so the workshop was almost wholly populated by females. I find it persistently amusing to see people in such a variety of clothes... and clogs. Sensible middle-aged ladies in sensible summer dresses, or loose trousers, and clogs. People in shorts and t-shirts, and clogs. Teenagers in hipsters and strappy tops, and clogs. Meg, standing in front of me, in violently clashing colours, spikey hair, fishnets, and clogs. The two spooky kids we christened "the Manson twins" some years ago (they really are twins, though they seem to have got over their Marilyn Manson phase now), wearing weird-arse Japanese animé t-shirts, enormously baggy jeans and (presumably, somewhere under the bottoms of those jeans) clogs. A cross-section of the population, you might say. Normal people in folk-dancing shocker.
So, I did a quick re-learn of Sam Sherry's hornpipe sequence - this is kind of the Stairway to Heaven of the clog world. If you find someone with clogs on, the chances are they'll be able to fudge along to Sam's hornpipes. It distressed me, slightly, to realise that it's now more than twenty years since I learnt them properly. And I learnt some entirely new stuff, which has the potential to be pretty good if I can sort out the technical difficulties of not getting my legs in a knot.
Towards the end of the week I learnt some ragtime stuff which comes from a guy called Alex Woodcock. He was a music-hall dancer, and though I'm fond of the traditional dances, it's the music-hall stuff I really like. On the whole, traditional dancers were dancing for their own entertainment; people dancing in music halls were dancing to entertain others. The dances are flashier, and a lot less rigid.
If you've been reading my LJ for any time at all, you'll be used to me waxing lyrical about the atmosphere and friendliness at folk festivals, and about the ever-present music. So all that, as usual. This festival involved rather less rapper (Boojum went out one evening, simply because five of us happened to be there), and rather more cake, than normal. Also rather more sleep, so I'm not the usual post-festival wreck.
In between the bouts of snoozing, lying about reading, ambling gently along the beach and sitting in cafés, we just about managed to squeeze in a ceilidh or three. Peeping Tom, back at Whitby after a long absence are still great (and my parents still think they're too loud :) - very few bands can play north-west morris tunes in such a way that you can samba to them...
So now I'm home, and we're having an orgiastic excess of music-listening as we all fight for the CD player to test-drive the new CDs acquired this week. So far, of those I bought, I can report that the Witches of Elswick (four women doing unaccompanied harmony) are great. I went to their CD launch mid-week, and was, as usual, unreasonably jealous of people who can sing. They're about my age, pissing around and drinking fizzy wine, and capable at any moment of, with no apparent effort, launching into complicated part-singing. Grrrr. Lusana (three-piece-plus-friends Celtic band) are pleasant enough to listen to, but hardly groundbreaking, and by saying "Celtic band with pipes, fiddle, guitar and a bit of flute" you already know exactly what they'll sound like. (Their website is www.lunasa.ie, but it's annoyingly flashy and has non-negotiable sound).
Oh, and today I mended an anglo concertina with some old bits of insulation sleeve. Let no one say I'm not adaptable.
This week's designated hero is again a business. This time it's the Java coffee bar in Whitby, which is just generally great. Apart from having a good snack menu and doing all day breakfasts, it is the only place I've ever found which does mint milkshakes.
Having said that, some of its staff aren't too bright. I commented to one that I'd never seen mint milkshakes anywhere else, and I'd like to be able to make my own at home. So what were they made with ? "Milk", apparently.
As one of my colleagues put it when I mentioned that I was going to be away for a week: "Are you going somewhere nice, or are you going to Whitby?"
Well, in my opinion, both. Whitby has been our family holiday destination since before I was born; both for sea-and-sandcastle fun, and for folk festivals. It's sufficiently close to my parents' house to be day-trippable as well (so we did). Then there's the sword festivals there, the goth weekends, the now-defunct competitive festival, the regatta... I've spent a lot of my life, one way and another, in Whitby. Am I bored yet ? Er, no.
And, of course, its geographical location means you can get decent food. Hot roast animal of your choice, innabun, £1.60. The bakeries (that's bakeries plural, Oxford take note) sell cornedbeef pasties. And when I ordered Yorkshire gammon in The Vintner, the slice I got was the size of my plate and two inches thick. When I poured out my tea in The Walrus and Carpenter, though, the lady came back anxiously to ask me if she'd forgotten to put the tea bag in - I hadn't left it to stew for the requisite half an hour, and the pale colour of my tea had not convinced her at all.
However, notwithstanding the tea-and-lard outlook, there's a new All Bar One-esque place opened opposite the Elsinore, with an interesting-looking menu. We didn't make it in there, so that's on the to-do list for November.
Pintwatch was perfectly happy drinking Jennings' Cumberland Ale all week, though a little disappointed that the Spa was charging £2 a pint for it. Note to WGW-goers: the Spa is prepared to get proper beer in if it thinks there's a demand for it... There were four guest beers on for folk week.
Recently, someone at the goth weekend asked me what the folk week was like. I thought for a bit, about lazy days spent chatting in pubs, and evenings in the Spa, and answered "the same but with different music". This, of course, isn't strictly true. But it did convey something important which many don't seem to realise: in among the music and the dancing, folk festivals are about people having fun, and doing ordinary holiday things.
Having decided this year that both Samantha and I would like a lazy week, instead of a week spent dashing around doing, I didn't even read the program of events properly. I did, however, get off my bum and go to a clogdancing workshop every day.
Clogdancing is a word which makes pretty much everyone smirk, as part of the great British tradition of despising our own heritage. (Actually, I'm faintly curious as to how many people have seen any, and how many just think it's an inherently humourous concept. Have you?) My funky purple clogs come out only rarely these days; however, my annual resolution to change this might hold this year, as I've actually managed to find myself something to use as a practice board, which I'll be hauling back to Oxford with me.
Clogging seems to be something only very rarely done by blokes, so the workshop was almost wholly populated by females. I find it persistently amusing to see people in such a variety of clothes... and clogs. Sensible middle-aged ladies in sensible summer dresses, or loose trousers, and clogs. People in shorts and t-shirts, and clogs. Teenagers in hipsters and strappy tops, and clogs. Meg, standing in front of me, in violently clashing colours, spikey hair, fishnets, and clogs. The two spooky kids we christened "the Manson twins" some years ago (they really are twins, though they seem to have got over their Marilyn Manson phase now), wearing weird-arse Japanese animé t-shirts, enormously baggy jeans and (presumably, somewhere under the bottoms of those jeans) clogs. A cross-section of the population, you might say. Normal people in folk-dancing shocker.
So, I did a quick re-learn of Sam Sherry's hornpipe sequence - this is kind of the Stairway to Heaven of the clog world. If you find someone with clogs on, the chances are they'll be able to fudge along to Sam's hornpipes. It distressed me, slightly, to realise that it's now more than twenty years since I learnt them properly. And I learnt some entirely new stuff, which has the potential to be pretty good if I can sort out the technical difficulties of not getting my legs in a knot.
Towards the end of the week I learnt some ragtime stuff which comes from a guy called Alex Woodcock. He was a music-hall dancer, and though I'm fond of the traditional dances, it's the music-hall stuff I really like. On the whole, traditional dancers were dancing for their own entertainment; people dancing in music halls were dancing to entertain others. The dances are flashier, and a lot less rigid.
If you've been reading my LJ for any time at all, you'll be used to me waxing lyrical about the atmosphere and friendliness at folk festivals, and about the ever-present music. So all that, as usual. This festival involved rather less rapper (Boojum went out one evening, simply because five of us happened to be there), and rather more cake, than normal. Also rather more sleep, so I'm not the usual post-festival wreck.
In between the bouts of snoozing, lying about reading, ambling gently along the beach and sitting in cafés, we just about managed to squeeze in a ceilidh or three. Peeping Tom, back at Whitby after a long absence are still great (and my parents still think they're too loud :) - very few bands can play north-west morris tunes in such a way that you can samba to them...
So now I'm home, and we're having an orgiastic excess of music-listening as we all fight for the CD player to test-drive the new CDs acquired this week. So far, of those I bought, I can report that the Witches of Elswick (four women doing unaccompanied harmony) are great. I went to their CD launch mid-week, and was, as usual, unreasonably jealous of people who can sing. They're about my age, pissing around and drinking fizzy wine, and capable at any moment of, with no apparent effort, launching into complicated part-singing. Grrrr. Lusana (three-piece-plus-friends Celtic band) are pleasant enough to listen to, but hardly groundbreaking, and by saying "Celtic band with pipes, fiddle, guitar and a bit of flute" you already know exactly what they'll sound like. (Their website is www.lunasa.ie, but it's annoyingly flashy and has non-negotiable sound).
Oh, and today I mended an anglo concertina with some old bits of insulation sleeve. Let no one say I'm not adaptable.
This week's designated hero is again a business. This time it's the Java coffee bar in Whitby, which is just generally great. Apart from having a good snack menu and doing all day breakfasts, it is the only place I've ever found which does mint milkshakes.
Having said that, some of its staff aren't too bright. I commented to one that I'd never seen mint milkshakes anywhere else, and I'd like to be able to make my own at home. So what were they made with ? "Milk", apparently.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-24 04:37 pm (UTC)the great British tradition of despising our own heritage
Surely our heritage as Great Britons is to despise our tradition? Or some such.