Hatfield House
I went to the folk festival.It was hot. But not too hot.
We drank water and some beer. My friend Richard drank cider. He brought salad for lunch and we had a meat pie for tea.
Queen Elizabeth The First found out she was Queen under a tree. Queen Elizabeth the Second found out she was Queen up a tree.
We used to go to Hatfield house for picnics when I was ickle. It seems strange to drive along lanes and small roads to get to the festival car park, as if we were in Lord Hatfield's private garden.
Hatfield house used to be near Elstree studios, so it has been Wayne Manor and Greystoke Manor and something in Chariots of Fire.
There were stalls selling teddy bears made of lambs wool, second hand lady bird books, waistcoats, things made of leather, bespoke fans, soap, and crafty things. There were food-stalls selling pulled pork, burgers, meat pies, Thai street food, fish and chips and waffles on sticks. For the kids there was an actual coconut shy and swing boats and one of those things you see in cartoon strips where you hit something with a hammer and try to ring a bell.
Everyone had a camp chair and no-one had any cash. That is the Legacy of Lockdown. But there was a space at the front where you could only stand and a place at the back where you could only put gazebos. So there was no problem getting a good space to hear things.
A gazebo is a kind of antelope native to the planes of Sans Serif.
There was a smaller stage which alternated with the bigger stage; you had to stand but you could get close enough to hear most of what was going on.
They handled the queues very will considering how hot it was, splitting us up into four smaller queues in the shade. There was a group of children doing Morris dancing. One young lad did the "oomph" sounds when they bashed their sticks with great aplomb.
Great Aplomb is a small town near Hemel Hempstead. We saw signs pointing to Potters Bar, which is the place where all the busses went when I was a kid. I still don't think it really exists.
Jim Moray was the compere. He is the patron of the festival. It is kind that such a prominent performer introduces the other acts even when he isn't performing himself. He said we should enjoy the weather but also fear it a little bit. I kept my shirt on.
Sam Sweeny's band played mostly English folk tunes, a bit more up tempo and poppified than he does with Leveret. He didn't tell the violin story. The should be an award for the Most Smiley Man In Folk Music so Jack Rutter can win it.
The AKA trio was a man from Senegal, a man from Brazil, and a man from Italy, playing kora, drums, and guitar. We seem to be hearing a lot of kora. If folk music is the kind of music that folk play, then world music is certainly a kind of folk music, because England is part of the world. If folk music is the kind of music that folkies listen to, maybe not necessarily so much? It's mellow and clever to listen to with you salad on a hot day, but I have never learned how to concentrate on it. I rather liked the instrumental one about liking soccer.
I am still waiting for my lightbulb moment when I grok the Unthanks. (I think I heard them in a pub in Stokes Croft when they were still called the Winterset.) Rachel and Becky have brilliant voices. I very much see how The Scarecrow Knows ended up on the soundrack to Wurzel Gummage. There's a kid of Clannad-ish otherworldyness to it. There's a big stringy band behind them. I am just not quite as excited as I maybe should be by Copper family songs with very slow choruses.
Richard Thompson is Richard Thompson. He did some new songs and some greatest hits, including the one about a motorbike and the one about a lady who won't settle down. God, he can play that guitar. I don't think I'd heard the silly one about the musician on a touring cruise in the style of a sea shanty before. He talked briefly and personally about Sandy Denny and sang her one about the passage of time.
Spellsongs is one of those ad hoc thematic supergroups, based around the idea of "lost words", words which have been excised from a particular children's dictionary. (Chaffinch has been replaced with Hashtag, apparently. I think this may miss the point of how dictionaries work.) It includes people of the calibre of Kris Drever and Karine Polwart, and Seckou Keita the aforementioned Kora dude. I think the new collection of songs was considerably stronger than the last album.
The festival often winds up with a Slightly Less Folkie headliner. (Last year it was that American man who plays blues on handmade metal banjos.) I literally only know two songs by the Proclaimers; you may be able to guess which two. So I was surprised how much I enjoyed their set: there's a range of thoughtful songwriting of which the bouncy singalong numbers aren't really representative. Particularly enjoyed Streets of Edinburgh. The evening always finishes with fireworks, and they managed to coordinate the big fire-burst with the man threatening to collapse outside his girlfriends door after a very long walk.
We forget where we put Richard's car and spent ages walking round the Duke of Hatfield's garden in the dark. We didn't see any queens or any ghosts but we did see lots of oaks. I fell asleep on the way home and snored but Richard didn't mind.
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