Sunshine, sanding and demon fiddlers

Yes, you did read that right.  Sunshine.  We actually had a sunny weekend.  Bang on time for the start of the school holidays, the summer has arrived.

Friday evening was passed grouting and sanding and gloss-painting (& eating curry) with TCI and her lovely (albeit knackered) fella G.  They’re both getting seriously frazzled after living in a house under renovation for well over two months.  The place is still filthy and cluttered; but it is completely transformed from the last time I saw it.  It is going to be lovely, eventually.  In fact “eventually” is almost upon them (though a good cleaning session would make this more obvious).  I am terribly envious; I would love to be renovating my own place >sigh< for me to live in >sighs again< and love and make my own >sniff< and do my best Candide thing in the garden...  Anyway, I enjoy grouting and sanding, and I hope I was some small help, for a few hours.  The curry was good, too.

Saturday was a normal Saturday.  Grocery shopping, washing-machine-running, vacuum-ing, etc.  Plus the inevitable writing, afternoon and early evening, assisted by a wee drop of rather pleasant Islay single malt; and to finish the day off, Tom Hiddleston as Henry V on the tele, looking beautiful and tormented and very muddy, speaking those great speeches of patriotism and honour as if he’d never heard a word of them before and had absolutely no idea that they are, well, kind-of well-known...   It's a lovely magic act; give a good actor a cliché and watch it disappear.

Sunday was the Ealing Global Music Festival.  Festivalette, perhaps, as it’s only one afternoon and evening.  The sun shone all day, and I wore a gypsy top and got sunburnt shoulders (& a surprisingly large number of men looked down my cleavage – hurrah, the old bazzoom still has its mojo!)...  Drank too much cider, danced a lot, ate festival-type food, and listened to good music: Romany pop, Peruvian rock, latin funk, straightforward reggae, lovely country & western (the mellow rocky end of C&W, not the weepy-waily end) from Roosevelt Bandwagon, and total bananas they-made-my-feet-dance-boss-honest mayhem from The Destroyers (think klezmer-inflected lovechild of Bellowhead and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). 

Best act of the day, though, was the first one up; The Long Notes.  It was rough on them; a group this good shouldn’t be having to play the warm-up to anyone, and there they were, giving their considerable all to a half-empty marquee where no-one had yet had enough to drink to get up and dance (not even me, and I dance easy).  Cracking good stuff; Scottish/Irish folk fusion played with passion and stunning musicianship – squeezebox, rhythm guitar, fiery-fingered banjo and one of the best fiddlers I’ve heard in years...    The three blokes were even cute!  Bloody lovely, and a band I will watch out for in future...  If they play anywhere near you, go along and revel in sheer tradtastic genius. 

And in between acts, sitting on the damp grass, drinking cider in the sun, I wrote.  And on the bus home at 11.00pm, I wrote; and sitting up in bed at midnight, trying to finish the scene before I keeled over with tiredness.  To my great delight, the story seems to have gotten enough headway now that the Muse can go off and play fantasy games about actors with nice behinds, and leave me to get on with the work.  This is a Very Satisfying Feeling.  When the story is only going because the Muse is driving its car, I know that the engine may fail at any time.  This engine seems to have its own firepower by now. 

So all in all it was a good weekend, but as happens sometimes I am more tired after my R&R than before it.