November 6th Snape Maltings on the river Alde.

It's no wonder that Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten choose Snape to set up their music festival in the old malting buildings.

It's a magic place and I love that we have to go regularly to take the potter's ceramics to the gallery. 

I've taken pics every year for...oh it seems for ever.

and these are a combination of several years of photography. I've picked out my favourite ones.

The ones that take me back there when I look through the photo files.

The Story of Ballyferris....and all that Jazz.

Here comes another chapter of the ongoing story of a nowhere place of great significance.

Otilie Patterson and Derek Cathcart.

I was always encouraged by Derek Cathcart to sing. I was a young teenager sitting at the back of his tiny caravan in the coastal district of Ballyferris ,Co Down.
He sang the blues and black American Gospel to a tinny old guitar.
He was the sophisticated older member of that early seaside gang, who sang in the local pubs and bars... a thing unimaginable to me and my strict church upbringing...and therefore for me, all the more exotic and unattainable .
I mostly remember blues like ...Beale street ,St. Louis Blues or St James's Infirmary. Or country and western songs which are always very popular in Ireland.
I pestered mum and dad for a guitar of my own. I left adverts sitting around on the mantlepiece and the breakfast table.
"Almost new guitar for sale...very resonably priced".
 So it was with great rejoicings and merrymakings that I got my first guitar on my thirteenth birthday.
It's not hard to learn three chords from each of the major keys! So that's what I did... and not much more. But I got the reputation for entertaining my friends when we got together in our family caravan as the teenage years went by.
I don't know what happened to Derek...I lost touch with most of them from the smokey caravan. But I loved the music that he had introduced me to and when the other friends were revelling in Elvis, The Beatles and The Stones...I was listening to late night jazz and buying up Billy Holliday and Peggy Lee records.
I dabbled a bit in the university clubs and sang at some of the student balls and rag concerts and on one occasion was at the same glee club at Queen's in the 60s, as an older singer called Ottilie Patterson took the stage. Being young and arrogant , I can remember being quite scathing about her singing.
....Oh the foolishness of youth!
When she died last year, and I read through the obituary, it hit me like a ton of bricks....she was the inspiration for Derek and therefore myself all those years before in the late 50s.
She was born in Comber...and that's just a spit away from Ballyferris and the caravan. So I realised that Derek must have been following her and listening to her in the early 50s in the pubs and clubs where he himself then used to perform.
She married Chris Barber and sang with his band...but like so many singers, (including Adele) she struggled with a throat problem and eventually disappeared from the scene.

Chris Barber, centre, and his band in 1962, with Patterson, and Ian Wheeler on clarinet.

Thanks Otilie....thanks Derek...thanks for the memory....
...oh that could be a good song title....stop being silly Geraldine!

...and there's more....about the garden party!

One of the things that we, that is the potter and myself, really like about these days, is how they bring together all the different parts of the local community.

So the young sit with the old...

....potters chat with painters...

....old friends find time to share their news...

... other long unseen friends turn up out of the blue...

...while new friends find a place to get to know one another....!

The stalls fill up with punters and the selling gets going.

...books....

...plants...always looked after by George, who wins the medals in the local gardening competitions...

...and Isabelle on her tombola table....

...the John Lennon in the back row of the paintings was snapped up very quickly !....

....Shannon looks after Kate's paintings and sells them all...
.... which encouraged her lots....
...behind is great friend Joan who knits in front of the "box" all winter to provide a knitty stall...
...and make lots of money!....

...even the local cat gets in on the act!....

...queues form in an orderly british line for teas, coffees and cake!...

...and the "Abba Girls" wait for their cue in the back room...

...Esther and her best friend sing "Adele"...and I'm amazed at her confidence and thrilled at another singer in the family!....

...local poet, Pat recited two very moving works...that was a first for the garden bashes....

...and  an old friend waits his turn in the music tent....

...Helen is a local professional musician who very generously gave us two sessions during the afternoon...
...great voice and writes her own stuff...

.... people gathered around to hear her perform...

...well!    guess who won the siberian tiger and cub......

..yes...it's your's!....

Everywhere Kate and friends!

Of course.

The day ended at around 5 p.m. and we counted up our takings.

From mainly cake!.....

£700 or so!

Oh and two very tired legs on your's truly!

The Story of Ballyferris. Music at the Caravan.

Music at the Caravan

When we were all rather young, that is, before we became teenagers, a barn was set aside at Turkington’s caravan site, ( the one on the Millisle side of Hope’s) in which  caravanners could gather,  to have a bit of a concert . Well that was always such a good old sing song, and in the inimitable Irish way if you felt like it, you could get up and strut your stuff musically!. Noone  minded... if you got all  the notes ...even if they were not exactly in the right places!

I remember one of the regular favourites was... “Look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind”……now who on earth sang that? Does anyone remember?

Google tells me it was Eddie Fisher !

In the fifties in Ireland I don't remember singing many national folk songs. You would be more likely to hear a country and western being rendered..or mangled, depending on how it came out. But the enthusiasm was boundless.In fact my drama teacher was surprised when upon winning a prize at school I opted for a book of Irish "come-all-yees"...dad's name for Irish songs.

This was at the end of the fifties when Elvis broke into our world and thrilled us with songs such as   “ Teddy Bear” and “ Jail House Rock” and you know…. we kids wanted to rock it up in the Barn.
 I remember one day in particular... at the swings in Turkington's yard with Vicky another caravanner and close school friend....when we must have sung "Teddy bear" constantly all afternoon...and I mean...all afternoon!!

In  Ballywalter... in Lemon’s Café and Fish and Chip emporium..., we often gathered in the store room at the back of the shop to feed our money into their exotic juke box. Bill Haley, Little Richard and The Big Bopper fed our fertile minds and brought us dreams of faraway places and possibilities in distant lands. Could that be one of the reasons why so many  left Ireland for distant shores, as soon as  teenage years were behind them?

For me, even more important than all of this, was the scruffy caravan in Hope’s second field. A musical cooking pot full of enormous significance for my young enquiring soul.

The van was owned by Derek Cathcart.

He was much older that me, and in my young eyes... very worldly-wise. He played guitar and more than that,  played and sang regularly in local pubs. A fount of musical knowledge of a genre  I had never heard before.

I often waited until the other "van" kids were in his scruffy abode some early evening... before he sallied forth to the bright lights of Donaghadee, Millisle or even Ballywalter...and creep in to sit  at the back of the caravan... near the door. A thick smokey fug filled the space and  meant that you could hardly see to the opposite end... and I’m sure more than contributed to his throaty singing voice.

He sang the usual country and western songs of those days. Do you remember..."It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels" ? or Jim Reeves and "He'll have to go"? Oh my ...you  and I are old!!
More important to me however was the jazz that he sang... and in particular the blues  I heard for the first time in my life.

From Derek I learnt to sing "Beale Street Blues, St Louis Blues" and many many more.

One song in particular that I loved to hear him sing, was his rendition of "Miss Otis Regrets".
..I still sing it today.

I was probably only ten or twelve at the most when I first sat in that caravan, and I had already had quite a few years studying drama and music, but this new sound was something that entered my soul and  stayed with me ever since.

Though a  rough diamond, he was kindly. He seemed to recognise something in me and encouraged me to sing. I found that I had a natural inclination to harmonise and so when he launched into some blues piece, I would quietly sing along  absorbed in this wonderful world of music. More often than not I received an encouraging word  from him at the end. That did more for my confidence than all of the scales and classical pieces given to me by my singing teacher .

 I have a memory that once, in a lesson, she informed me that if I continued to sing in the lower register I would absolutely ruin my voice. Ooops!

Ah me what a great memory. Who could better that instruction with so much fun thown in. It was many years before I met any one else who had such confidence in my vocal abilities.

Thankyou Mr. Cathcart wherever you are.