The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Turns out I seem to have been missing a really good festival by having never been to Broadstairs before. It's got a lot more character to it than somewhere like Sidmouth or Towersey, which although lovely do seem to have a "mass produced" feel about them. They also don't have 10 hobby horses running around the town causing complete chaos, which Broadstairs does! :-)

Went up Friday evening and after getting the tent up headed over to the Friday evening ceilidh. I've never walked into a ceilidh to find all the sets back-to-front before (men on the womens side, women on the mens side), but it was consistent. Generally the Friday ceilidh was a very weak start to the weekend, not many people there and generally lacking in energy. I've not heard the Knifegrinders before, they didn't have a lot of drive to them, but that could be down to the audience. I think part of the problem was that 7.30-9.30 does seem very early for a ceilidh, the late night one on Saturday worked a lot better, as did all the late night spots.

On Friday the late night performance was by Mamienco, a French group mixing rock, jazz and gypsy music. They had a lot of energy and the pavilion was a lot more packed with much younger people than the ceilidh earlier in the evening, which gave it a much better buzz too.

On Saturday we were performing most of the afternoon at various places along the seafront. It was a nice laid back arrangement of dance between these times, here's a suggested starting spot, but we'll leave it up to use your judgement to move around spots. The one criticism I would have of that system is that they didn't include any details of when different sides were dancing in the programme, so you had no idea when to look around for them.

There was a short procession along the seafront to the bandstand during the afternoon followed by a performance there, which generally went down well, but not as well as the evening.

It was the torchlit procession that was one of the major highlights of the weekend. We'd been asked to lead it, so we were right at the front and the streets were absolutely packed with people. As it was dark we had the lights in our masks on and apparently as soon as the procession reached the bottom of the hill and turned onto the seafront, you could see our glowing red eyes bobbing up and down from the bandstand as we headed down that way.

As soon as we reached the bandstand, we found they'd changed the running order for the sides that they'd changed the running order for the sides which had been asked to do a dance at the end of the procession and we'd been moved from first to last. We got a good cheer at the end of that.

The performance nicely finished in time to get to the Glorystrokes ceilidh, who were good, but not as good as I've heard them play before. They only had one of their melodeon players (they've had 2 every other time I've seen them) and although it's the heavy metal electric guitar sounds that make them different they don't work quite so well without both melodeons cutting through it at the top. 2 hours did seem very short for a ceilidh and I could have happily danced a couple more hours afterwards.

Our second busking spot was on the Sunday morning and our dancing was generally a lot better than I've seen it in years. I was still buzzing from the Saturday evening and as it was our last day there was no need to save anything for later, so I was just going for it and I think a lot of the others in the side were doing the same. There was certainly plenty of energy flying around.

Loitered around for the Sunday evening, which was well worth it as the late night concert on Sunday had to be the highlight of the whole weekend. I'd never heard Warblefly before, but they had this amazing grungy folk rock sound. Was pleased to see they will also be playing at Wallingford, only to discover that they're concert is at exactly the same time as our ceilidh spot on the Friday evening, bother! I'm sure festival organisers shift through my brain to figure out the things I'd like so they can make them deliberately clash with spots.

All in all an excellent festival. I'm very tempted to try and go along for the whole week next year.

By the sounds of things we went down very well, so hopefully won't be too long before the Hunt get invited back again.

Yesterday was fun.

Was a bit worrying at first when at 10.05 I seemed to be the only Gog there 10 minutes before the procession. Hoddeston offered me a kazoo, so I could process on my own though. The rest of the side arrived shortly after that though, so I didn't have to resort to that.

It was the first time they'd asked me to call a procession, which was quite fun and seemed to go reasonably well (we didn't have a lot of music, so it was a little difficult to hear). Not sure what the rest of the side thought of it, but I was fairly happy with my calling for it. We seemed to keep a fairly consistent distance from the team in front, did a reasonable number of figures where there were large bunches of audience and they all seemed to hear me ok.

We did our spot in the main display, which seemed to go ok. It was a bit of a shame that the audience had thinned out a bit by then though (then again, that will partially be the sides earlier in the display disappearing off and it's difficult to maintain interest of shoppers for 9 dances).

The rest of the afternoon was a fairly relaxed affair going around with Bedfordshire Lace and St Alban's Morris Men. The spots were only 30 minutes, so we got about 3 dances at each. I wasn't convinced by some of the spots as Christopher Place and especially outside the Cathedral seemed to be away from the crowds (there was pretty much literally no-one but us at the latter), but then there are limits on where you would be allowed to dance and the market was taking up most of the main shopping area in the city centre.

Had lunch between the displays and the first spot, so during the actual lunchbreak I ran off to the amazing tea shop next to tourist information, which morganmuffle has introduced me to when I went up there in May, and dragged half of Molly with me. Actually, I think I managed to drag all of Molly, but only half stayed for tea, the other half opting for the pub instead (admittedly a difficult choice).

Turns out it's a really good thing to post details of where we'll be dancing on here, as jinglebellafeed turned up at the Cathedral spot bearing many ice-lollies. If you ever want to know how to make molly dancers happy that's a good way of doing it *subtle hint for anyone else reading this*

We only did one dance at the last spot, as people had to run off, but it was quite interesting to see Wicket Brood doing a version of the Mississippi Mud Dance (one we nicked ourselves from Ouse Washes), but with Sticks in Border Style.

To make things even better the weather remained hot and sunny until we finished dancing and only then did it start the thunderstorm :-)

Stomp were amazing as ever in the evening.

All in all a good day and I seemed to have endless amounts of energy. Still seemed to have plenty left after the whole day of dancing, plus the 4.5 mile walk back home from St Pancras. Think I must be getting fitter again, which has got to be a good thing given I was feeling a bit unfit dancing back in April.

Feeling more tired today, but it's more "lack of sleep" tired rather than "lots of dancing" tired, which also makes sense as I can only have got around 5 hours of Friday night and didn't get home and to bed until about 3 am last night.

Rounded off the weekend with a trip around the Tower with miriammoules today, which was nice. Once again, managed to escape without having my head cut off, which has also got to be a good thing.

There seems to be a thing going round facebook at the moment with people listing what they're thankful for each day for a month, perhaps I should just be thankful for not having my head cut off each day for a month... That is rather reliant on me not having my head cut off though, so I guess as I can't tell the future I'll leave it, especially given Thrales will probably make attempts on it. *crosses fingers and acquires large amounts of duct tap just in case*

Then again, perhaps I'd get a sainthood the same as Alban did for having his cut off? Do you think they'll mind that I'm not Christian like he was?

NEXT TIME ON THE WEEKEND LIFE OF A hmmm_tea: Touring the Borough with Thrales on Friday, followed with being at Paddington at 7.45 am on Saturday morning (ouch!) to go off to Chepstow for the weekend dancing with Wild Hunt.

So, having just got back from DERT, 2 week's later, it's probably about time I finished posting about IVFDF

Saturday Workshops

( cajun, appellachian and dancing in wheelchairs )

Saturday Evening

( Fiddlegang and the Committee Band (briefly) )

Sunday

( Salsa, survivors ceilidh and aimless wondering around Exeter )

Overall Summary

It was generally a good festival this year.

If I was going to make one criticism, I would just say it was a shame Richard Mason was chairing again (his 5th time). Although, I'm sure his input must have been very valuable given his experience, it would have somehow been nicer if he'd taken a more backseat advisory role and let someone else have a go. I think one of the best things about IVFDF is how it offers the chance for anyone to gain experience of running it if they're part of a student folk group able to take it on.

Admittedly this will have happened anyway, as there will have been a number of other people on the committee and helping the committee who wouldn't even have been around last time it was in Exeter in 2004 (let alone the other 3 times he's chaired it), but given the size of Exeter FolkSoc, I can't help but feel that there must have been someone else both capable and willing to take on the overall driving seat. Then again, I've really no idea what went on and for all I know they could have twisted Richard Mason's arm into doing it.

Booked train tickets to IVFDF this evening (tried yesterday lunchtime and at lunchtime today as well, but the National Reservation system was apparently down).

I booked the Friday of IVFDF off work to avoid the rush hour and to get there in reasonable time for the evening ceilidh. Having a whole day on my hands and wanting to get a cheapish train ticket, I thought I'd go in the morning and have an afternoon exploring Exeter (hardly been there other than changing from train to bus, etc).

Anyone know if there's anything I should particularly make sure I do/see while I'm there?