EDEN ROCK

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon her straw hat,
Has sperad the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. Sauce bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,

They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, 'See where the stream path is!
Crossing is not so hard as you might think.'

I had not thought that it would be like this.

I ain't gonna give you none of my jellyroll

"I ain't gonna give you none of my jellyroll"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhtG5YrQ-lY

"Sweet Emma" Barrett (March 25, 1897, New Orleans, Louisiana – January 28, 1983) was a self-taught jazz pianist and singer who worked with the Original Tuxedo Orchestra between 1923 and 1936,^[1] first under Papa Celestin, then William Ridgely. Also active with Armand Piron, John Robichaux, and Sidney Desvigne, Sweet Emma Barrett was at her most powerful in the early 1960s and became an iconic figure with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

In 1947, she accepted a steady job at a local club, Happy Landing, but it was her 1961 recording debut, with her own album in the Riverside Records New Orleans: The Living Legends series, that brought her recognition from beyond the Crescent City. According to the liner notes of this album, these were her first recording performances as a vocalist, most of the songs on the album were instrumentals.

She was nicknamed, Bell Gal, because she wore a red skull cap and garters with Christmas bells that jingled in time with her music. She was featured on the cover of Glamour magazine and written up in publications on both sides of the Atlantic. When the Preservation Hall Jazz Band began to "hit the road", she took it on international tours. Barrett toured in the United States as well, including a stint at Disneyland in 1963.

Despite the popular exposure she received at concerts and overseas appearances, Barrett continued to feel most comfortable in her native New Orleans, especially the French Quarter. In 1963, on her album The Bell Gal And Her Dixieland Boys Music, Barrett sings on four of the eight songs and heads two overlapping groups. While she is joined throughout by banjoist Emanuel Sayles, bassist Placide Adams, and drummer Paul Barbarin, four songs feature trumpeter Alvin Alcorn, trombonist Jim Robinson and clarinetist Louis Cottrell, Jr.; the remaining four numbers have trumpeter Don Albert, trombonist Frog Joseph and clarinetist Raymond Burke. Overall, this set gives listeners a good sampling of the sound of New Orleans jazz circa 1963 and is one of the few recordings of Barrett mostly without the regular members of what would become the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (Robinson and Sayles excepted). The ensemble-oriented renditions of such numbers as "Big Butter and Egg Man", "Bogalusa Strut", and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"' are rendered with fun and joy.^[2]

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band made a brief appearance in the 1965 film, The Cincinnati Kid, which featured Barrett as vocalist and pianist for the band and included a close-up of her.

In 1967, she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her left side, but she continued to work and occasionally, to record, until her death in 1983

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD!

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD! OK – here are things you need for very best choc cake of all time!! 2 round 8” baking trays line with a circle of gproof paper and smear with margarine so they cake will not stick electric blender to mix it all Next . . . . . oven at 180C or Gas 4 50g/20z cocoa powder (sift if lumpy) 6 tbspn boiling water 3 eggs 20ml/4floz milk 175g/6oz self raising flour (if plain add 3 lev tsps of baking powder!! 100g/40z margarine 275g/10oz castor sugar put cocoa in blender bowl add boiling water bit by bit – blend together – scrape all down from sides too add rest of ingredients – blend well until smooth and thick share equal into two baking trays – middle of oven for 20 –25 mins until fairly firm in centre remove firm oven - let cool for 15 mins put on tray or something – (tip upside down on left hand – and upside down on tray ok – two halves made put coating of apricot or some other jam on one half Now the icing – easy you need – 50g/2oz butter 50g/2oz icing sugar 2 round tblsps cocoa powder put butter sugar and 6 tblspns water in pan heat until butter is melted and sugar dissolved – boil for 5 mins sieve icing sugar and cocoa together – no lumps see add bit by bit some of the liquid – beat with mixer until it looks glossy should stay on spoon – if runny add a bit more sugar done put layer of icing on top of jam put other half of cake on top coat of with rest of icing – swirl with knife – careful ‘cause cake is soft! die for this cake – soft moist – perfect with ice cream
from Isle of Skye – Moyra Mackenzie

time and tide

In the time it takes a tear to trace
a salty line upon your face
the earth has spun a little more
and wet the pebbles on your shore.

In the time it takes the tide to turn,
you might take the time to learn
that a sea will erode over many years
this place you've wasted all these tears.

Louisiana 1927

Randy Newman's song Louisiana 1927 about the great flooding of New Orleans - August 29th 2005 which became an anthem for the devastation from Hurricane Katrina. In the city the storm surge caused more than 50 breaches in drainage canal levees and also in navigational canal levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States. By August 31, 2005, 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Ninety percent of the residents of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation's history. Randy Newman is one of the great songwriters - no doubt. Find him out if you don't know that.


Martin Simpson does this with great feeling and style - as he always does. Listen to him here performing in California.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3nv4vdASBQ

Its a typically graceful and stylish accompaniment using a CGCFCD tuning which, though not hard on the fingerboard, requires subtle timing and intonation to make it move under the melody as Martin makes it. If you need the Tab it is available on his site
http://www.martinsimpson.com/

If you haven't played in this tuning before - once you have you will want to.

Sammy's Bar - Cyril Tawney

Sammy's Bar - Cyril Tawney

My first venture onto the folk scene was at a pub in Devonport (Plymouth) in around 1965 as a young and aspiring guitar player who had heard Davy Graham. Running this club was Cyril Tawney who went on to be a broadcaster and professional folk singer for 44 years - a record he proudly held. I remember the evening well. I was introduced to Cyril and he asked me if I wanted to do a spot. I did and made a nervous stab at Seven Gypsies (a la D. Graham). Later on Cyril asked me to join in one one of his songs - simple enough he said and indeed I tinkled along happily.The song was Sammy's Bar. I have never forgotten it or stopped singing it along with Cyril's other songs.

Here it is

I went down to Sammy's Bar

Hey, the last boat's a'leavin

By the shore at Pieta

Haul away the daighsoe

And my real love, she was there
There was sand all in her hair

How did sand get in your hair
Darling Johnny put it there

Been with Johnny all the day
Down at Ghajn Tuffheija Bay

He's a better man by far
Because he's got a Yankee car

I went out from Sammy's Bar
Had to hire a Yankee car

Fourteen days I drank no wine
Saving for that love of mine

Then one day in Paula square
At a paper I did stare

Johnny tried a hairpin bend
For my love, it was the end

Going back to Sammy's Bar
I don't need no Yankee car

Cyril Tawney (12 October 1930– 21 April 2005, Exeter.)

Here is Cyril's site - http://www.cyriltawney.co.uk

Thank you Cyril - for the memories and the songs.

Conservative credibility

Of the 31 of David Cameron's Cabinet - 18 have public/private school backgrounds. Can these people really have any inkling what it is like to be without, hard up, in poverty, at the bottom, feel despair, loss of self respect, loss of community etc etc

VOTE AGINST FASCISM

Stepping stones to power

David Williams discusses why today's BNP presents a far more serious political threat than the 1970s National Front.

The British National Party is determined to contest more seats than any British extreme-right party ever before. With over 160 candidates declared for the general election at the time of writing, the BNP appears well on track to reach its target.

The figure the BNP has to beat is the 303 candidates that the National Front (NF) fielded in the 1979 general election. However, their average vote of 1.5% was the end of the road for the NF, which had overreached itself and imploded. Out of the ruins was born the BNP, founded in 1982.

Unfortunately there are few comparisons between today’s BNP challenge and that of the NF.

The NF had never really been interested in contesting elections for their own sake, preferring a more violent path. It believed it could rise to power if it could “kick our way into the headlines” through demonstrations and marches in an attempt to “control” the streets.

Nevertheless the NF did contest elections and occasionally achieved some notable results. In 1973 Martin Webster, the NF’s national activities organiser, polled 16% in a by-election in West Bromwich. This compares favourably with the 16% that Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, polled in Oldham West and Royton in the 2001 general election and the 17% that Richard Barnbrook won in 2005, the highest percentage achieved by the BNP at a general election to date.

Nick griffin leading a National Front march

However the NF was not geared organisationally towards contesting elections in the same sustained manner in which the BNP has focussed on cultivating wards and constituencies in recent years.

The NF believed that its support, which was concentrated in the West Midlands and Greater London, would simply filter outwards but did little to facilitate such growth. NF support experienced two distinct spikes related to the influx of Asian immigrants in 1972 and 1976. BNP support in contrast, although similarly concentrated in pockets of the country, shows some sign that it is transcending the regionalisation of its core support base.

Since emerging as an electoral threat in 2001-02, the BNP has fielded increasing numbers of candidates at local and general elections. It currently has 56 council seats, one member in the London Assembly and two MEPs.

BNP support appears less volatile than that of the NF, which has given the BNP a measure of electoral stability that the NF never managed to achieve.

There is another crucial factor, which invalidates any comparison with the 1979 general election. The BNP’s fortunes are still rising; the NF in 1979 was already in decline, which its appalling showing in the general election that year only helped accelerate. The party was in poor shape after being wracked by splits in the middle of the decade, which the temporary boost given to the NF by the arrival of the Malawi Asians in 1976 served to mask. The party polled strongly in the 1976 local election and in the following year fielded more than 400 council election candidates across the country, achieving 235,000 votes.

In the 1977 Greater London Council election the NF stood in all but one of the 92 seats and took 119,000 votes, over 5% of the total. In Hackney South the NF polled 19%. This was the peak of the NF’s electoral achievement.

The BNP is simply not in the same position. Griffin is more realistic about his prospects and is standing for Parliament in Barking largely to boost his party’s attempt to win the main prize, namely control of Barking and Dagenham council.

The BNP has implemented a “ladder strategy” – securing one tier of government before contesting the next – something that was beyond the resources and strategic imagination of the NF. However, it offers the BNP its most realistic chance of putting down enduring roots in Barking and Dagenham.

In addition, the BNP is operating in a different political context. In the 1970s Margaret Thatcher led a resurgent right-wing Conservative Party that won support on the back of campaigning against immigration. There was also a strong left, both inside and outside the Labour Party, which acted as a pole of attraction for working-class militants.

These factors are not present today. David Cameron is desperate to divest the Conservative Party of its right-wing image but is widely disliked by the type of working-class Tories who flocked to Thatcher in 1979. The left is considerably weaker than in the past and less involved in the lives of working-class communities. The vacuum, on the left and the right, is now being occupied by the BNP.

It has taken the BNP a long time to reach this position. After founding the BNP in 1982, John Tyndall perhaps unsurprisingly remained committed to the same failed strategy as he had followed while leader of the NF.

The BNP would have to wait more than a decade for its first whiff of electoral success, with the election of a councillor in Tower Hamlets in a by-election. The party lost the seat in the council elections seven months later and it would be another decade before it began to focus on elections and grassroots campaigning. Unlike Tyndall, however, Griffin has belatedly learned many of the lessons of the past, making the BNP and the threat it poses in the forthcoming general election a very different proposition.

Some argue that the BNP is overstretching itself by fielding so many candidates in the general election. However, the position of the BNP today cannot be compared with that of the NF in 1979. Contesting a large number of seats will give the BNP legitimacy, a free mail shot to millions of voters and television airtime. With many of its candidates likely to save their deposits, the BNP will see the money paid out as a good political investment.

MY COMMENT :

BNP can believe what they will. Personally I find their views repulsive. What I also care about is the adoption and then corruption of folk music - the tradtion, the heritage, the musicians and the heriatge they uphold that is being used for scurrilous political propoganda. I have been a folkie all my life - some 50 years and while music comments and satirises - it does now represent racist political parties - not for me. The Nazi party used Wagner - BNP want to use Kate Rusby - its obscene.

Give your support to Folk Against Fascism - go here :

http://www.folkagainstfascism.com

and go here . . . . http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/

The redwing is most commonly encountered as a winter bird and is the UK's smallest true thrush. Its creamy strip above the eye and orange-red flank patches make it distinctive. At a first glance you see a regular Thrush but the splash of red gets you looking twice. They roam across the UK's countryside, feeding in fields and hedgerows, rarely visiting gardens, except in the coldest weather when snow covers the fields. This has been so during this rather snowy winter and we've had them in our garden here in Argyll. Also heard owls which is unusual so close in - hard times for themthis winter.

About Folk Against Fascism

The British National Party’s manifesto encourages its members to insinuate themselves into the folk and traditional customs of Britain. This involves the appropriation of British folk music and culture as a means of spreading its peculiar brand of racism and intolerance.

The UK folk scene is a welcoming and inclusive one; folk music and dance have always been about collaboration, participation, communication and respect. Folk Against Fascism has been created to take a stand against the BNP’s targeting of folk music, a stand against the appropriation of our culture. Folk Against Fascism isn’t a political party or a bureaucratic, top-heavy organisation. It is any and all of us who want to make ourselves aware of the BNP’s bigoted view of our history and culture, and who want to do something about it.
The BNP want to take our music, want to twist it into something it isn’t; something exclusive, not inclusive. We must not let them. Folk Against Fascism is a way to demonstrate our anger at the way the BNP wants to remodel folk music in its own narrowminded image.

The BNP’s Activists and Organisers Handbook encourages its members to get involved in the folk scene; Folk Against Fascism aims to make such infiltration impossible, with support coming from all sections of the folk community. We can be found on the web and at various folk clubs and festivals, and we encourage people to organise and support events in their own area.

If you sign up to our newsletter you’ll receive updates and information on Folk Against Fascism events. We are currently organising a series of large-scale concerts to be held starting next year, but also encourage people to join the group, set up shows, distribute our stickers, badges and T Shirts, or simply pass on information to friends. If you’re a Folk club or organisation, you can affiliate to Folk Against Fascism.

“Maybe I should talk to you about fascism. It is a big word and it hides in some pretty little places. And it is nothing in the world but greed for profit and greed for the power to hurt and make slaves out of the people. Fascism and freedom are the only two sides battling.”

Woody Guthrie

Wherever you are in the world - add your voice by joining and supporting today.

http://www.folkagainstfascism.com

Swooping Molly- Martin Simpson

Martin Simpson is, for me and many, a guitarist and composer of such unique quality, skill and sensitivity to theme and interpretation he is unsurpassed. I've listened to many guitarists over the years - played with a few - but Martin's ability to arrange and develop both accompaniments and compositions is second to none. He can take a song and give it a totally different colouring with use of tunings and deft left hand and use his great singing voice to give sincerity I just keep returning to. I've been trying to play like Martin for a while - using his techniques and phrasings. Sometimes successful to an extent but never anywher near his skill use of tone and attack. If you haven't heard his music - traditional folk, American blues with superb slide guitar and wonderful banjo - get out today and do so. If you are a guitarist - go sooner.

Swooping Molly is one of Martin's recent compositions - you can discover the meaning of the title when you get the CD. Its played in CGDGCD - a tuning he uses a lot and which I really enjoy playing in. You can get Martin's Tab for this on his site from Brass Tacks. http://www.martinsimpson.com/
Its a tricky piece mainly because you have to be nimble to keep up with it and its easy to rush and hard to gain Martin's fluidity and clarity. Its basically two sections with repeats and some variation. The Tab is Ok but you need to listen to the music too. Wavepad is handy for replaying parts..

Here is Martin playing the haunting Granuaile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piK4Lwm4Y9k&feature=relate

and here ae some extracts of him at a gig at Arts Centre in Shoreham by sea, West Sussex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijzEBNpYngk

Enjoy.

As if we need this to tell us its a wee bit cold. You can see our snowman (personage)- its 397th left from a very cold bit in the Highlands! Its been hard on small birds though and I've broken the ice in the water and left loads of fatnutsseeds stuff out for them. We have a tame pigeon who calls around now and then and jumps on a hand that contains visible peanuts.
Huge icicles this year too. Our heating broke down and we lived very cold for four days - a few heaters and lots of candles and hw bottles. You survive.It doesn't take much to bring things to a halt though really in this country. I can't see us surviving the next ice age like our ancestors did. At least there'll be no Big Blubber to want us to not want to!
Hope you all get on ok.