Feakle at the festival

The road led to Feakle this last week for the annual Traditional Music Festival.

There was the usual mayhem outside the pubs. Gentle mayhem though. Mostly.















Outside Pepper's is always a favourite when the sun shines.
 

People sit beneath the road sign at the table across the road and strum guitars or try to look like famous musicians. (Actually some of these might be famous musicians - the two Japanese were fantastic players).

Here's Joe playing tunes in Shortt's Bar on ... Thursday? Friday? Not sure.





This photo pretty much sums up the week really. Some days we played tunes in the afternoon too. We stayed in the van down by the mortuary which is what we've done for the last couple of years, going home at two or three via the chip van. One night they'd all but finished. It's amazing what you'll eat at that time in the morning. Joe had some class of chicken burger and I ate the chips the woman beside me said she couldn't finish because she felt sick.

Each year there are more camper vans/motorhomes. The last two years there has also been a caravan almost entirely held together with duct tape. There are similarities beween boating people and camper van people, one of which is that some of them run their engines for an hour to charge up their batteries. I sit there grumbling when this happens, trying not to breath as the fumes come straight in. I'm generally a wimp when it comes to confronting people with their inconsiderate habits, but I have a good line in 'are you having problems with your batteries?' Oh so grumpy and intolerant.

I was an attractant for drunken banjo players at this festival (husband not included). Both sat far too close. One kept going on about being a Scottish chieftain or some such. He was certainly Scottish.

Some people were having none of this diddly eye nonsense taking up their viewing space inside the pub.









It's a fabulous location for festival, and there's an opportunity to walk off the Guinness along the kilometer between Pepper's and the rest of the village. Great views as you go...

...and the chance for a spot of contemplation.











Recovery has taken longer than usual. On Monday I thought I might get to bed at the usual after-session time of around two. We were down in Shortt's with our friend Pete over from England. Eileen O'Brien was playing with Seamus Bugler that night - she's Paddy O'Brien the Tipp box player's daughter for those with an interest in musician dynasties. A great fiddle player. And then there was talk at the bar. Whiskies were had. It ended up the latest night of the week. Then we had a house session on Tuesday night with festival refugees. Wednesday was boating refugees. Lashing rain, high winds, friends in Scarriff on boat with three children. Another late and great night. Thursday I was playing with Seamus in Shortt's. Dear god and goddess let me have an early night tonight.

Festival and other delusions

I thought we were going to have a great weekend of diddley eye and sailing. On Friday evening we set off in the van for Mountshannon and the inaugural Mountshannon Trad Festival. Dinner first in the fabulous Snug, then off to the hotel. The last session we'd been to there was lovely but this time I was stuck behind a wall of banjos. The first two were fine (and one of them was Joe, so finer than fine) but then another arrived and that was that. Impossible to hear anything but banjo.

There are some instruments you might prefer fewer of rather than more. The bodhran is probably the most complained about. One bodhran can destroy a session if played by someone with no sense of rhythm ('I've no sense of rhythm. Think I'll take up a drum!') and even less sense of courtesy. Two or three bodhrans played with more enthusiasm than ability and you feel like leaving. Some people do. In Pepper's bar in Feakle Gary Pepper always put up a sign during the festival saying 'Only one bodhran per session'. Some people took offence.

The compost heap with mined section

When we got back to the van that night it was cold from the north wind that had been blowing all day. The forecast was for no wind the following day (typical). We only had summer duvets. And we felt like going home. So we did. It became a gardening weekend instead of a sailing and music weekend. Which is A Good Thing. This is my chance to feel that I'm on top of things - a delusion but an important delusion for the gardener.

Why I'm a deluded gardener. I weeded this last week.

Today I was out there again. I found a rich seam of compost in the heap in the corner of the haggard. This is one of those heaps where everything gets thrown. Bits of tree, docks with  roots that would survive a journey to hell and back, weeds loaded with millions of seeds. But this compost has been rotting away for years and it's fabulous. I went mining.

But rosehips like this make me happy.

I'm supposed to tell everyone about the poetry reading in Galway City Library on Thursday evening  at 6.30 because I'm in it. I find it very embarrassing doing so. But in the name of shameless self-promotion (and the comforting knowledge that nobody reads this blog anyway) here we go: