Wednesday 2 October 2013

For all folkies.

One of those great synchronous moments the other day, having visited an old schoolfriend who I hadn't seen for about 25 years. Spent a great evening with him and his wife and had lots of exotic, [at least to me], real ale. Dave has very similar musical tastes to myself and introduced me to one or two artists who are still huge favourites to this day. We both dislike jazz, but have a penchant for English folk.

The next morning, after the genuinely felt 'keep in touch' and ' see you soon in Sauve,' I started the car, set the Sat Nav to 'home' and with a final wave, pressed the button to switch on BBC Radio 4. A programme started at that very instant featuring Norma Waterson, singing 'The Bay of Biscay,' a song which I do with Millie. Even we have managed to reduce people to tears with this song about a woman encountering the ghost of her lover lost at sea. These songs are part of a very ancient genre known as 'night visiting songs.'

The upshot was that the programme was so fascinating that after about 20 minutes, I noticed that my Sat Nav was showing 45 minutes to arrival. It said 35 when I set out.

I won't elaborate any further, but for those who have an interest in this sort of thing, I highly recommend this fascinating radio documentary: 'The Night Visiting,' BBC Radio Four, presented by Tim van Eyken.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bqws9

1 comment:

  1. An excellent night we had too. I love the idea that real ale is "exotic". I'm looking forward to listening to the programme you suggest - and this one is going to cover the wonderful "Bright Phoebus" album by Mike and Lal Waterson; http://bbc.in/19ZtTne.

    See you in Suave.

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