Folk Festivaling

Thursday 24 March

OK, so you caught me out. I actually had nothing to do with writing that song I used in my last blog entry. In fact, I was a baby when it was #1 in the charts, and although I’m very clever, and was an extremely clever baby, I still couldn’t write a #1 hit song. So thanks for the use of the lyrics Sir Paul McCartney.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks, but absolutely brilliant. I ended up in London and was going to go to Ireland. I had a ticket to get there, but couldn’t get any accommodation because I’d forgotten it was St. Patrick’s Day over there. I managed to cash in my ticket and ended up going back to Oxford. I had to stick around the UK region because I’d promised my friend Brett I’d go to his band’s gig on the 25th. More on that later.

I chose Oxford because it was on my list of places to go back to if I had the chance. When I was traipsing through the UK in January I only spent an afternoon there because I was on my way to somewhere I thought would be much more exciting. Obviously I was wrong, because I discovered Oxford was the best place in the entire UK. So I headed back for a few days to explore.

Oxford in the 3rd oldest university in Europe, with buildings dating back to the 12th century. It’s absolutely beautiful, and even more so in the springtime. I went for a big walk alongside the canal and decided that if I ever do move the UK it will be to Oxford and I will live in a houseboat. They are the coolest things ever. I even saw one being driven along the canal and watched the process where they lower it into the next part of the canal using floodgate-thingys. So perhaps I don’t know the ins-and-outs and all the technical stuff involved, but it’s pretty darned awesome.

I even got chatted up by a 21-year old Australian guy who was in the same hostel. Kind of flattering, except for the bit where his jaw dropped when I said I was 32. I don’t think he’d ever realised that people could be that old – he certainly was never going to be that old. He spent the rest of the night going round saying “32? 32?” But then he got distracted. There were some Swedish girls staying there and he knew how to say some naughty words in Swedish, so he went to hang out with them. Perhaps not my soul mate
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On my final day there I got talking to a girl (Australian, not Swedish) at my hostel who had a programme for a folk music festival. I asked her if it was happening at the moment as I figured that would be kind of a cool thing to go to (stop laughing – I’m becoming a big fan of folk music festivals – I’ll tell you why in a minute). She said it was happening the next weekend, but she was coming back because one of her favourite bands were playing. I asked who that was, and she said…The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

Well, you know me and ukuleles…(actually, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m developing an unhealthy obsession with the uke…). I got all excited and she got all excited and it turns out that we have heaps in common. Ukuleles, Beatles… She was heading off to Liverpool for the intervening week (oh gee, I wonder why…) and I decided that I had to come back for the festival, so I booked myself a ticket up to Glasgow to return the following weekend.

I went online to check the availability of tickets for the festival and found there was a volunteering form – and the payment for volunteering at the festival was…a free pass to the whole thing. Which meant I could go and see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for FREE. If I was accepted as a volunteer.

Glasgow was fantastic. It was sunny the whole time I was there (yes, I know, I was shocked too. I didn’t thing the sun ever reached Scotland). I went up to Kintyre one day, hence the last blog), mucked around for a couple, visiting different parts of the city and went for a day trip to Perth.

Now, Perth is a pretty small town, but nevertheless, it’s still a town. A friend of my mother’s lives there, Christine. She used to live in Mac Bay and I used to babysit her son, Robert (who is now in his final year at university…). Sue had given me Christine’s address before I left NZ, but somewhere along the way I’d lost it. On the bus on the way there I thought to myself “wouldn’t it be funny if I bumped into Christine, ha ha ha”, because, obviously, that was never going to happen.

Except that it did.

I was walking along the banks of the River Tay when I could sort of feel someone beside me. I stopped, turned around and a familiar face in the most incredulous voice imaginable said: “Justine? Justine?” So, yeah, I bumped into Christine. She had seen me and thought I looked like me (funny that) so she started following me (not in a freaky stalker-y kind of way). She was on her way somewhere and I only had a short amount of time in Perth before my bus went back to Glasgow, but we spent about ½ an hour catching up. Funny the way life works!

Back in Glasgow I had an email waiting from the organiser of the folk festival saying that I could indeed a volunteer for the weekend, which meant in exchange for 8 hours of my time, I could have a free ticket.

The festival was brilliant. I ended up only being used for about 5 hours all up, because there simply wasn’t that much to do at the place where I was stationed. I just had to point people in the right direction for things and hand out programmes. Pretty easy!

This was the first folk music festival I’d ever been to, and I’ll definitely be going to more. It was great getting to meet the other volunteers, most of whom almost make a career out of volunteering, going from festival to festival, listening to all their favourite bands for free.

My main focus was the ukulele orchestra, but I discovered SO much new music and so many new bands. You need to google or YouTube these bands, because they’re amazing:

The Dhol Foundation
Lau
Kris Drever (a member of Lau)
Spiers and Boden
Jack Harris
Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

I even went to an accordion workshop one afternoon. Uh, guess what my next instrument might just have to be? But never fear, I won’t be abandoning the ukulele! Or the flute. Or percussion. Or the violin…

I’m back in London now and am heading off to Belgium tomorrow, en route to Italy. I went to my friend Brett’s gig last night in London, which was great. He plays guitar in a band called Lo Star. Again, YouTube them.

It hit me the other day that I only have three more weeks left in Europe, so I’ll have to get busy to see the places I want to. I really want to see Rome, so I think I’ll base myself there, somehow make my way back to the UK to go to Ireland, try and get to Sheffield to see my friend Kirsty and then back home.

I’m definitely ready to come home – I really want to play some music (flute, perc, uke – don’t care) and I’ve even been having these really disturbing thoughts of wanting to get back into teaching. Bizarre, I know.

It’s also just hit me that throughout these blogs I’ve subjected you to about 10,000 words. That’s nearly half the amount I submitted for my postgrad diploma thesis. Scaryy!! So I apologise for making you read through all my ramblings. (As an aside to you flute-y people – there may be another blog in the making based on different ideas I have re the whole music-making process…watch this space. Well, not actually this space. It’ll be a separate blog).

Alright – see you in Italy!

Justine