Saturday, 13 October 2007

Amazing Irish music, then on the move again

12th & 13th October

Friday was our last day of sitting about in Alrewas. It was a cool cloudy morning, spent mooching about doing things like getting a prescription made up and discovering that you can’t get passport application forms from a sub Post Office, only a main one.

Online back at the boat, I found out that you can, however, either order an application pack be sent to you, or start the app process on the website. I did the latter – they then post the completed form to you for signature and return with photos and whatever other docs you need to send.

After all this excitement we pulled the boat back half a length to within reach of the water point, and filled the tank.

In the afternoon we took a short walk, just to blow cobwebs away and stop us from falling asleep after lunch. Elanor and Stuart turned up for a quick dinner; they are together for a week’s holiday next week. They left us at 7 and we went round to the William IV to meet Will and Jane. We went on together to our Friday night entertainment in the village hall.

This was an Irish folk band called Last Night’s Fun, and if Braunston Pickle were good at the Huddlesford Boat Gathering, these guys were superb. I hadn’t given much attention to Irish music really, except as the accompaniment to Riverdance type stuff, but this was just amazing. The four of them played concertina, Irish pipes, bodhran and guitar, and the music just blew your head off. The basic themes are almost mathematical, but then go off into developments and riffs beyond belief, often with changes of rhythm to punctuate the evolution of it all.

It’s as if someone had got Johan Sebastian Bach out of his skull on whiskey, and then persuaded him to play some hot jazz.

We got back to the boat just on midnight, and by seven this morning were up again to start some actual boating. On a misty, murky day, we had a not especially fast run down towards Burton. For the first half we were following Love’s Labour, a Shakespeare Classic line boat. We got into an interesting conversation with her crew at the locks, as they came from Southampton, where we used to live. The guy in fact had a serious sailing background, and was enjoying (as is so often the case) the change of pace inland.

We arrived at the Morrison’s mooring just after 11. It was full when we got here, but a boat was just leaving as we arrived, so we got in anyway. This mooring is like that – either it’s empty, or it’s chocker.

The rest of the day has been spent restocking with two trips to Morrison’s, including getting some passport photos for me. You are now recommended to leave spectacles off when taking the photo, and that, combined with my present very short hair, made me look even more villainous than usual. “This man may be armed and dangerous, and if seen, the public are advised not to approach him.”

Meanwhile, Sheila’s been doing financial type stuff online. Not a fast connection, sadly. This bit of the cut is right by the Centrum 100 Business park in Burton, but neither Vodafone nor T-mobile have a very good signal.

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