Here's another list of things I learnt this year

[venta]

Well, there were further thoughts from a small folk festival, only I haven't had time to write them down. First I was busy thinking them, then driving down, then at work, then broadmeadow and I went to a peculiarly imaginative quiz last night, run by a friend of his.

They may get written up at some point. Or maybe not. However, to be going on with:

Things I learnt from listening to folk songs[*] this weekend:

• Any broken-down race horse running at fantastically long odds will come in first.


• Women can't be trusted.


• Men can't be trusted either.


• Things used to be better.


• Things will be better tomorrow.


• Seven (long) years is enough to render the love of your life unrecognisable.


• Gentlemen: if you meet a woman who is crying on account of her love being lost at sea/killed in battle/otherwise missing, the correct course of action is immediately to propose marriage. This may result in felicitous domestic bliss, or the lady spontaneously committing suicide.


• Cocaine's for horses but it ain't for men.


• Black socks never get dirty.


• It's difficult to catch an excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.


• A shark in the garden pond will cure your wife of reading Dennis Wheatley novels.


• Seemingly blameless activities like hunting for black hares, catching birds, or sitting side by side in assorted forms of agricultural transport can result in pregnancy.


• Bosses are bastards.


• You can't break the faith of a Tolpuddle man.

[*] Where a "folk song" is defined as something I heard someone sing in a place notionally called a folk club.

In other news, thanks to my lovely parents and the lovely DaveT (who renovated it for me), I'm now the proud owner of an English concertina. Yay :)

Now all I have to do is learn to play it, of course.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hope you're as musical with it as your other auditory exploits!

[narenek.livejournal.com]

What makes said concertina english?

(I was originally going to ask what made it differ from an accordian, but google images answered that one).

Demon-stration?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Took, err, however many years, before I got to see the demonstration of clog dancing. How long are you intending to hide the concertina?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Oh, you've missed out the classic:

Highly uncommon avians (even if flightless) should not be disposed of by throwing them over a cliff.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to catch an excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

This one is A.A. Milne, surely? Has someone written a folk tune to it?

Penny

[(Anonymous)]

Rushes always grow green (unless it's the version where jam is jam and always plum and evermore shall be so)

If a man has a fiddle in his knapsack he has wicked designs on any female wandering along the same grassy bank and playing tunes on fiddles ia simply a euphemism

And you can't take that on the train

Any male in a border ballad is a mass murderer