Coach Fatigue

Spent this weekend (well, the Saturday anyway) in Edinburgh with Mons Meg in order to get out one and only rehearsal for DERT (yes, we're taking it ultra-seriously this year...). Caught the national express coach up on the Friday night and it was packed to the gills so by the time I got up to Edinburgh (having passed through snow in Northumberland, not that that worried me at all, oh no!), I'd concertina'd up nicely. Add to that the fact that I'd had no sleep at all due to personal space defence (and I think my personal space is getting larger as I get older. At this rate, by the time I'm 50, I'll have to go and live on a deserted island.) and I was heading for silly mode the minute I got into the city.
Had a lovely Saturday. It was great to see Mons Meg again and to dance in The Village. We made the most of our practice time and I think we've got a respectable (if not precisely prize-winning) dance and our borrowed Monkey dancer fitted in just fine. The pub tour was also great fun (although the audiences were a bit odd. They cheered us at the end, fair enough and we wound up with plenty of money in the hat but very few cheers for the tumbles which is unusual. Never mind) I thin the stand out pub (for possibly the wrong reasons) was the Southsider. We walked in just as a live band were doing their soundcheck. On questioning, they said they were going to just try one song for the soundcheck and then we were fine to dance. They actually did 2 songs which were...not my cup of tea precisely but, heigh ho and then we went on to dance. We had a hairy moment when Mary Ann went a bit haywire and we ended up with our new number 3 on the wrong side of the sword for his first tumble. He managed to fix this by jumping over the sword while it was still at thigh height and then doing his backward tumble. We were all suitably impressed, the audience seemed harder to please. Far more annoting was, the whole time we were dancing, the drummer putting beats in. I'm not entirely sure whether he was just trying to join in (in which case, that band need a new drummer because I don't think he managed to hit a beat during the whole dance) or whether he was trying to put us off in which case he failed (I suspect our cock-up was us putting ourselves off as per usual) because he was up against a melodeon and, while he was amped, melodeons really don't need to be and they come with the beat built in, so to speak. We finished the night with 2 good dances, one at Doctors (the site of Trina's former bloodbath. Well, one of them anyway) and the second at the party of one of Dot's friend where the audience were super receptive and I think we did our best dance of the night. We all ended back at Trina's (with the usual suspicious cocktails) and just had a great evening. I was really sad I had to leave so early on Sunday morning (and incredibly grateful that I still seem to be immune when it comes to hangovers), I'd have loved to stick around and go round Edinburgh with everyone else but the coach called again. And what a hellish trip. Another packed coach with people encroaching on my little bit of space from all sides and a heater that they couldn't turn off again so we were all roasting for 10 hours. I think that irritation and access to twitter may be a bad combination for me since I think I moaned on it all the way down so apologies to anyone who had to put up with that. I managed to grab a rather nice steak sandwich in a pub while I was waiting for my last connection which turned out to be far less crowded and a much nicer experience altogether (Huzzah for the Oxford Tube) so I was almost calm again by the time I got back to Oxford. However, I have spent today with a particularly quizzical tilt to my head thanks to the kink in my neck from my travels. Have decided that I need to set up a train fund, especially as I'm heading back up to Scotland for a Borderers event mid March (and I don't want to miss it , particularly after my dismal showing last year!)

Still, all worth it for rapper and DERT. Only 2 weeks left now! Little bit excited, just a little bit...

Have booked my coach tickets for IVFDF (I know, I know but this journey 's only a couple of hours so nowhere near as bad!) next weekend so looking forward to that and am contemplating going to Tom McConville's fiddle workshop in Lewes on March 12th. Have had a look at the music and it may be a bit of a stretch but I love his style and I can usually pick up something, even from difficult workshops, to have a go at (The one with Matt Cranitch being a case in point) besides which, I still haven't found a fiddle teacher and I'm desperate for some form of tuition. Yep, I think I'll give it a go. Now just have to find my chequebook. Just let me go and get my rope and climbing harness....

But still, DERY, DERT, DERT!!!