Away for the weekend

Helen and I found a flyer at Pilates advertising a "Folk and Ale " weekend down near Waterlooville in Hampshire.

Oh yes, what fun, lets go and ...camp!

CLOUDS ON THE WAY DOWN

So , campsite booked at the princely sum of £6, we prepared to go.

Then, flash flood warnings, dire weather conditions and an executive decision was made to go bed and breakfast, thank God!

OUR ROOM

Helen drove down (my car is being mended from a crash but Ill write about that in another post).

We arrived at around 10pm and , all I can say is that the "village hall" appeared to be a nissan hut with approximately two and a half people in it.No, I lie, three people.

Convulsed with hysterical laughter would not be an exaggeration.We were unable to leave the car for fear of wetting our knickers but eventually we ventured forth.

Janet and I had been in touch by email and she made us very welcome. As we stepped into the throng of revellers we were bowled over by the exciting buzzing atmosphere and ambience...no, thats not right, oh yes, there was no atmosphere or throng of revellers, simply very very aged villagers (think duelling banjos here) listening intently to unaccompanied , finger in the ear folk singing of the " when we went down the mine and got blown up and everyone died and the ship sank at sea and Jenny lost her maidenhead"...etc etc.

A RIVER IN THE GROUNDS


Occasionally someone played a guitar and we heard snippets of Ewan Mcoll type folk music which was great but mostly it was damn depressing and mind numbingly boring.However, how could we leave with Janet being so nice?

We also met up with Arthur who also welcomed us but had a rather bizarre way of sidling over unexpectedly and revealing snippets of totally inappropriate gossip throughout the evening such as " see that one over there? Last time I saw her she was a man" and stuff like that.
Unfortunately for him, he revealed this shocking information to Helen who really was no fun and nodded wisely saying" yes, its very difficult for people"

That wasnt what Arthur wanted.I knew that.If only he had made his revelation to me I would have responded in a much more tabloid way with " Oh my God! You cannot be serious! How can you BEAR to be in the same room as him? etc etc" But no, he stuck to Helen , revealing more and more which simply drove her deeper and deeper into understanding social worker/liberal bleeding heart mode.The advantage of this was of course that he soon gave up all attempts to shock and sidled off to boil a baby.


We stayed as long as was polite and then got off to the hotel.At least the beer was good.

The room was somewhat like a chalet.Look at the pics.All ok except we had no hot water for the whole two days. We did get a discount.Watched a bit of Glastonbury , had some wine then hit the sack.
Next day, Helen and I practised a Steel eye span song, the Drunkard. This was with a view to singing it at the evenings revelries.Yes, we were going back.

SOME OF THE GARDEN

I was really impressed with Helen.She had never heard the song before but managed to learn all the words and the tune.

We went back, suffered more finger in the ear stuff and chorus songs.One of them sounded like it was praising paedophiles but it may have just been the way we interpreted it!

And some old biddy told some god awful story , using props like soap and jif and Mr Sheen to make it funny which it wasnt.I tried so hard to look interested but Helen said I didnt succeed.

We sang our song, the highlight of the evening, and it went down well.Then Helen one two raffle prizes, one which was a joint of meat and as her and her whole family are vegetarian , she told them what to do with it ...no...not really....told them to give it to someone else.

The weekend was really a great laugh and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but not for the folk singing.I think Helen did too.Cant wait for next year.

We wont be going, unless its to see if Arthur has had a sex change.