Current Mood: Happy

Little Birthday Bohemia
Sunday May 10th
Olive Bar, Gregson
 
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a birthday party, but this year I got organised. On the evening of Sunday 10th May, we had ‘Little Birthday Bohemia,’ a night of hawthorn, music, poems, comedy and rocky road.
 

 

 

Rocky Road Saturday.

 

Preparations started in earnest the day before. Mum and I braved the heaving currents of Saturday afternoon in Lancaster town centre, in search of ingredients. We had decided on Rocky Road as the ‘cake.’ The original plan was sherry trifle. I love trifle. At least I think I do – I never seem to get it - my vote being outnumbered at Christmas for the preferred Pannetone baked pudding – also delicious, so it’s not a heavy cross to bear.

 

We unpacked a haul of milk chocolate, maltesers, marshmallows, crispies, caramel bars, wafer bars and raisins on the kitchen table. I love working with my hands, snipping marshmallows with scissors and snapping into segments bar after bar of chocolate. A word of advice for anyone cooking with melted chocolate - as soon as you add dry ingredients it starts to set – quickly. (Surface area, said my one remaining science brain cell as we flapped about with cling film and baking trays) Muffin cases were abandoned and all was dumped in a baking tray sans papier unfortunately, but it was too late by the time we noticed.

 

Despite our fears, I got a call from Mum that evening saying the cutting up of the Rocky Road had gone relatively smoothly, apart from a minor injury to her finger…

 

 

How to make a table bloom?

 

Last month I had the pleasure of performing at ‘A poem and a Pint’ at Greenodd Village Hall, along side Writer-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Adam Riordan (CHECK) . One of the organisers, (David, I think) decked the tables with a beautiful mix of spring flowers from his garden. There were tête-à-tête daffodils, snowdrops with green filigree on the petals, grape hyacinth and something that looked a bit like heather but wasn’t. We were warmly invited to take some home with us. I didn’t wait to be asked twice and started gathering a sprig. I was spotted, more flowers were brought, and before I knew it was laden with armfuls of flowers – gorgeous!

 

I knew I wanted some sprigs on the table at the Little Birthday Bohemia. Sitting on the kitchen step I inspected my yard. A few things are out, the aquilegia, and one stoic little calendula that has – to my amazement – over wintered and flowered again. But we’re not talking a room’s worth of blooms.

 

No, it was a problem. But, coming back home on the Number 2A bus after making the Rocky Road, the answer presented itself. I was looking out over the River Lune towards the Quay, the cycle track sliding alongside, banked by bough after bough of … hawthorn blossom! It’s a May birthday after all, wouldn’t that be apt, plentiful and pretty?

 

 

The Hawthorn Goodwife

 

 

On Sunday afternoon Rob and I nipped out with the secateurs to the cycle path and soon had more hawthorn blossom than I’d hoped for. A lady of a certain age passed us and commented, ‘It’s a bit early for blackberries.’ We said we were collecting the hawthorn for a do that evening. ‘Very nice,’ she replied, ‘Did you know,’ she added, ‘hawthorn used to be bad luck taken in the house?’ She must have seen my face drop. ‘Mind you, everything was bad-luck in those days. I cast a spell,’ she waved her hand, ‘There, all bad luck gone.’ She was a fab lady.

 

 

Little Birthday Bohemia

 

All was ready. The Rocky Road was out (we’d wiped the blood off), the boughs of hawthorn fronted the stage with the fairy lights and Rob had knocked the PA into touch.

 

16 acts on the bill in just 4 hours … what was I thinking? I called on my powers of writing lesson plans to jiggle a bill together, but it was so regimented I felt ought to provide handouts and be stern… Never mind, I thought, tacking it to the wall, it will go out the window soon enough. It’s just there for reassurance!

 

 

ACT 1

 

Good friend, and fellow Rack Monkey, Norman Hadley kicked off the night with a fine set of poems. A man with boundless energy which drives him up mountains and down again, he has just brought out a new book in collaboration with photograher Andy Carson, ‘On Pendle Hill.’  

 

Meanwhile, I was in a white screen of panic, it finally sinking in that a compere was needed and I was it. I hadn’t prepared anything to say. Like an old petrol mower, it took me a while to get going, but the patter improved as the night went on. Cider helped.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, comperes like John Freeman, Simon Baker and Ann Wilson have risen even higher in my estimation. You’re the glue – your role is to be almost invisible in a way but without you in all the right places, things fall apart. I was lucky though, to have such a warm audience.

 

Ron Scowcroft was next, and read two of my favourite poems, ‘A Different Parrot,’ and ‘Beneath the Ice,’ the latter published by the Guardian not long back.

 

Some prose next, from Mr Simon Unsworth. He read a piece he hasn’t brought to Monkeyrack (which is hardly surprising - the man is so damn prolific…!) called ‘A Day Out With Danny,’ set in Happy Mount Park, somewhere I used to go a lot myself when a child, although, the pirate ship setting did make me think of the rocking galleon at Frontierland. (What that had to do with the Wild West frontier, I’ve never been sure…)

 

Pascal finished off the first Act by reading two prose pieces, one about his greatest fear: not sharks, not snakes, not Friday the 13^th, no … Thursday 19^th. And he proceeded to tell us why: the man is a danger zone, ever ligament, bone, plate, and brain cell seems to have come significantly a cropper on Thursday 19ths. In the break he showed me his scars. Birthday girl.

 

ACT 2

 

It was around about now that the running order was thrown out of the window – such a relief! The fabulous Sarah Hymas performed (not ‘read’ – performed) two of her poems, including the one about the Midland Hotel, ‘A pearl on the bosom of the bay,’ weaving and strutting, leaning and offering – a visual as well as an auditory experience.   

 

Ann Wilson is one of the loveliest people you could hope to meet. For the last few years she has been disarmingly nice to gruff northern types, bringing out their inner creative kittens to the point where now, were a Harryhausen monster to threaten her, we would arrange ourselves into a mob, complete with pitchforks and burning torches and leap to her aid. She is The Dude.

 

She treated us to a set combining a pink flying-V ukulele, Kylie Minogue, women and potatoes. Fabulous.

 

Next up was Eliza Mood, member of Six Poets, dear friend and fellow soldier. She read some cracking, crackling poetry (for her work is always deliciously sensory), including one about her experience of being a bait girl for her brother, rooting out the limpets from their shells for fish bait.

 

Kev McVeigh, he of the multi-coloured tuft and Commander-in-chief of the Lunecy Review, read us an equally revealing short story about his past as ‘Walkabout,’ one of his many alter-egos, and one of a community of hitchhikers.

 

I expect by now the musicians were wondering whether they’d come to the right gig. Perfect timing for Dave George and Simon Fletcher to take to the stage. ‘Shake ‘em up,’ I whispered as they carefully lifted their guitars over the hawthorn boughs. And they did, Rob joining them on drums to perform a truly fantastic rendition of ’30 Days,’ on guitar, uke and kit. When they hit the last chord the audience did that flaring-thing, a level of appreciation that’s like a flash point of applause. They dug it.

 

The lads told me that they were going to do their ‘Special Song.’ Fair enough, I thought and dutifully widened my expectation net to cover all eventualities. I didn’t prepare for what came next though. A slumped down, minor-keyed, insanely genius version of the ‘Only Fools and Horses,’ theme tune. I think at this point I gave up trying to keep my feet on the ground and spiralled upwards into the heavens.

 

Robin from Homemade Lemonade was next, one to watch in my opinion. He did the first number solo then he was joined by Kriss Foster and Tom Bramhall for another. That may have been the Tom Waits cover, I’m not sure, I was too busy boogying!

 

 

ACT 3

 

I have discovered one of the nice things about asking people to do a turn at a birthday do is that they ask you for requests. I have wanted to see Marian’s pigeon sketch for several weeks, but missed the first two performances, so she agreed to do it again tonight.

 

 

Marian introduces us to Arabella Squab, whilst donning long pink gloves and wearing the jacket that, for several years, I’ve known as the ‘South Road Fleece’. There is a magical mind-bending moment when, after turning her back on the audience, in preparation of Ms Squab’s arrival, she then turns back round, perspective shifts, arms become legs, an innocuous cap becomes a pigeon-beak and the transformation is complete. Marian is a pigeon! And a very cultured pigeon at that, performing a short demonstration of ballet work-in-progress, ‘Pigeon Pond.’

 

Mikey and Charley had assured me they would be back for the gig, but, knowing they were playing Holmfirth that weekend, I thought they might well not be able to make it. Silly me! Mikey arrived and played a set of songs that were his 8^th gig in 3 days.  I’ve described him in the past as a force of nature, a pan (the satyr variety, not the cooking utensil) and, when he’s belting out, head back, mouth wide and full of falsetto, like a baby blackbird, waiting for a worm. Which was meant with great artistic affection, but typing it now seems a bit odd. Watch him sing – see what you think.

 

 

 

Fierce Capricorn Tom Bramhall next (what does that make me – Methodical Taurean?) playing some songs from the Ponies Project including, my, well not favourite, because that implies a hierarchy of preference, but the one that always makes me go very still and hum like a wire, the beautiful, mournful and tender, ‘Orphee.’

 

And then, it was us – the Moll Baxter Band, me, Si and Rob playing us out with ‘Passenger of Love,’ ‘Coupledom’ and ‘Alma Garrett’s Shoes.’ Poor old Si had to stand behind the drum kit on the floor due to lead-length issues, and it is alarming to have two musicians who (unlike me) are very used to improvising, turn to me simultaneously with expectant Paddington stares and wait for The Signal. I don’t know the signal? What’s the signal?! If you’d told me there was a signal I would have used it! We will be having a PowerPoint presentation at our next practice.

 

 

And that was it, it was time to go home but I was lodged in the rafters like a blissful helium balloon.

 

Thanks so much everyone who came along. Thanks to all the truly wonderful performers. You made a Moll very, very, very happy.

 

 

 

         

 

         

 

 

Tags: Ann Wilson, Electric Free Time Machine, Eliza Mood, Gregson, Homemade Lemonade, John Freeman, Kev McVeigh, Lunecy Review, Marian Hughes, Moll Baxter Band, Monkeyrack Writers, music, Norman Hadley, Ottersgear, Pascal Desmond, Poem and a Pint, Ponies, Rocky Road, Ron Scowcroft, Sarah Hymas, Simon Unsworth, Six Poets, The Hawthorn Goodwife, writing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 2:56 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.