Patricia Hammond - The Canadian Nightingale

Ragtime Parlour!

2012-02-20T13:47:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite covers.

Here's something you don't get very often. A combination of stompingly good Ragtime, and the Parlour songs that preceded it, and the songs that were informed by it after, and a band that doesn't really need amplifying. It's genuine, hundred-year-old fun. If there are ANY Titanic Centenary events that do not call on us to perform, they are extremly silly. Beyond silly; certifiable.

My first-ever piece of sheet music.

This IS the RMS Lusitania Ragtime Orchestra, Matt on piano.

I've collected old sheet music since I was at least nine. I've gone through mountains of it. I collected it from neighbours, abandoned shacks, benches in used piano shops, charity shops, and through classified want ads. I put out the word, and people gave me boxes of it.
I still have the same system today: I sit down at the piano, play through it and sort it into as many as ten different categories, then take it out and try it on audiences everywhere. I take it to hospitals and to nursing homes where people are brutally frank. If a song makes it there, it will make it almost anywhere.

I've done gigs for Matthew Redman, wunderkind of yore (he's now a wundermann) with his RMS Lusitania Ragtime Orchestra, and I've done gigs for Nicholas Ball and his Flying Aces. Putting together elements of both, and adding my chintz and parlourishness, what we have is this:

I have had people advise me that I should take all mention of Parlour out before going to North America. There was a revival of Parlour in the 1970s, and it wasn't all good. So, they tell me, it is doubly, triply, stuffy. I ask you! Is this stuffy?

For one thing, you'll never hear a Sousaphone imitate a bumblebee anywhere else.

We are like a Renaissance "Broken Consort" in a way, because we take on different combinations through the concert. I started a capella with Stephen Foster, then we launched into Oh Johnny all together, then the four instruments did a fresh and bright rendition of "Aeroplane Rag of 1912", then Nick came out and sang a solo, then Matt and I scaled right back with a guitar-and-voice "Love's Old Sweet Song", and then he sat down (not on his tails) at the piano to play "Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar", and then we were all of us back with "Moonlight Bay", and so it went.

Simon can't resist touching it.

Footage is still being edited from this concert, and then you can see Nick's fabulous singing-trumpet and hear how mellow his voice is through it. He made it out of a metal waste-paper basket, part of a vaccuum hose, and some red enamel paint. Works a treat. Simon Marsh's marvellous clarinet, with its beautiful vibrato, developed specially for this project and era, you might remember from "Our Lovely Day". Listen for his little counter-melodies through the music. Bliss.

At Mayfest. Hence my flowers, hence Nick's boater.

And what does one say about the Sousaphone? It is an edifying sight. And played by Dickie, an edifying sound. This is a man who has played in symphony orchestras, but doesn't mind dragging his massive, hundred-year-old instrument on and off night-buses for gigs at the Experimental Cocktail Club, or in this case, to a church in Notting Hill.

The audience was very happy to see us again. We had appeared in the Notting Hill Mayfest 2011 and believe it or not, when I was wandering along Portobello Road a few months ago, a very respectable lady actually stopped me and said "Did you sing all those wonderful songs, with the sousaphone and the banjo and everything? I never had so much fun in my life!"

Lucky Dog Picture House, Emily O'Hara

2012-02-09T07:29:00.000-08:00

Splendid Emily O'Hara is an inspiration! Here I am being inspired by her proximity.

Emily made her own cloche hat, too.

Long before she knew about the fabulous film "The Artist", Emily had wanted to put on a Silent Film night. So she hired the Jamboree in Limehouse (once a sweet factory's worker canteen), pinned up a sheet, chose some films and asked some pianists to play. Oh, and also made the signs, flyers, popcorn-containers and vending boxes and had her lovely family come and help.

The hair is real, but it's not mine.

Debee, Matt

Matt Redman,
Lovely Day arranger & guitarist & banjo player & mandolin player & bass player & pianist & ukulele player & you get the idea, and Debee Calveche, whose photos you've seen a lot if you've kept up with this blog, were an astonishingly well-dressed couple.

Debee went around with a little box full of cards, on which were written different emotions. She'd ask each person to fish one out, and then express that emotion for her camera. She got quite a lot of different faces from people, and what it really showed was that these silent film actors and actresses were quite talented. It ain't as easy as it looks.

I'm supposed to be 'in love' here. I look more like I'm trying to be Shirley MacLaine, praying.

The Lucky Dog film was accompanied by the wonderfully jaunty and appropriately frantic Ragtime stylings of Julio Schwarz Andrade, a fascinating, multitalented fellow of Brazilian origins who talks like Woody Allen.

This, the first-ever film, gave Emily the name for her venture. The first of many! The Lucky Dog Picturehouse!

Then I got up and sang some songs with Jon Butterfield playing. He's the cute pianist in the Lovely Parlour Trio, remember? The crowd represented a wide age-range, but they were primarily young. So imagine my surprise when I made a gesture for them to join the refrain of Always and the whole room sang "AL-WAYS!" I love it when that happens. By the way, does anybody like Sir Paul McCartney's version of this song, on his new album?

Then it was time for Jon to settle down to accompany the Buster Keaton film, "Cops". I love this film. I love all Buster's films. Those eyes of his! Like the eyes of all great silent movie stars, they're deep, deep pools, unfathomable, expressive. How this man could be so soulful and yet come up with sight-gags that leave you stunned, laughing before you even knew you'd smiled must be one key to his genius. Also, this is the fellow who, as a child, toured vaudeville circuits with his parents as 'the human mop'. In other words, they'd throw him around like one. He was the only man in Hollywood who was not doubled by a stuntman, because even the most ridiculously daring ones couldn't match his particular style. Okay, I confess it. I adore Mr. Keaton.

Well, Jon composed and improvised one hell of a soundtrack for this feature. It was FABULOUS. Nobody, hearing it, would believe that this was his first silent film-accompanying gig. Here's the first part of the score. The fun had by the audience is audible. The piano was hellishly bad. Yet all three of the evening's pianists made it work.

The pictures below give some idea of the atmosphere of the event, but in giving an exposure to reveal the room and the audience, the film looks overexposed. It wasn't.

There was a very bizarre Felix the Cat, which Peter Coldham accompanied in fittingly bizarre music. It was quasi-experimental but really really worked. All the more stunning when he told me that he'd only known about the gig the day before. The story was about the terrible conditions in Russia. Considering that this was the twenties, and knowing what we do now, I guess it wasn't so inaccurate.

The night concluded with Charlie Chaplin's "The Pawn Shop." Jon played superbly for this too. But Charlie has no place in my heart really. It's all full of Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd (SEXY!!)

Emily has also composed some settings of William Blake for voice and classical guitar, and her current project, other than this one, is composing incidental music for the Vectors of Tropical Disease for Resonance FM, something I hope to blog more fully about in the future. This one will be fascinating. She's just finished the louse, and is working on the bedbug now.

Matt, Nick, Peter

London's musical power couple, Emily and Nick. Watch them in the next few years. I promise you will not be disappointed.

End of the year gigs...

2012-02-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

At the Forge...

...the Camden Forge

Blogging requires time, and photos to hand. I didn't have much of either in November and December! So here I am in the snows of January with my memories of the end of 2011.

There was the gig at the Camden Forge with some Flying Aces. Earlier that day I'd rescued a sick fox at the back of a pub in Hanwell.

A week later, or was it the next day? The Lovely Parlour Trio and I were on BBC Radio London's Saturday Breakfast Show, performing live. Jon Butterfield played their wonderful trusty studio upright, Matt Redman treated us to his guitar, and Nick Ball played spoons and washboard, a first for the studio. We did Button Up Your Overcoat and The Honeysuckle and the Bee. Listeners phoned in to say how good it was to hear something that wasn't anything to do with "X Factor Crap". I only quote. Joanne Good and Simon Lederman are the most fun, generous, fabulous people possible.

Photo by David Rowley. Ellen Smith, Patricia Hammond, Zita Syme.

Then I joined Ellen Smith, BEAUTIFUL harpist and Zita Syme, BEAUTIFUL soprano, to adorn the library of the Reform Club. We all wore red, and processed in singing the Hodie from Britten's Ceremony of Carols. Ellen can sing, too. I found a fabulous book on the shelves there: Ronald Firbank's "The New Rhythum" and other pieces.

A random quote:

"'He looks ever so much more like Narcissus than Apollo,' said Wildred, and seating himself on the river bank he recited to the first moonbeam that touched the lake, a poem of Verlaine."

Then went to Switzerland to sing Rossini in a church at the top of an icy hill. It was recorded and photographed, but I have neither...yet.

Hugely looked forward to Ragtime Parlour's return engagement when I got back, and we tried out "Moonlight Bay", as it was written in 1912. A nice, neat century ago. Some dandy footage was taken, but if anyone knows how to edit MTS files, and intercut them with MP4 files, and overlay a WAV recording, please let me know! Then maybe those who weren't there can see how much fun we all had.

But as to the voice and harp combination, here's one Ellen Smith and I did a year ago. I'm wearing my pioneer grandma's pearls.

Album: 'Our Lovely Day'

2011-11-16T08:10:00.001-08:00

'Our Lovely Day' has now been released! Really, this thing's a lot of fun. Even if I weren't singing on it I'd like it. Fancy a song using only spoons as percussion? It sounds as if Fred Astaire's in the room! And have you ever heard a 1930s Novachord organ? There's a solo on one in the second track. It is the sound of nostalgia! A Nice Cup of Tea has a kazoo solo, glockenspiel, a whistling chorus and a ukulele! Track four is accompanied by two guitars and a mandolin, and track five is my most-requested number, ever.
The CD is a lovely thing to have and to hold, and the booklet tells the stories of all these songs, how I came to know them, and how they've affected others. You can buy it and it will arrive in the mail, a physical fact (how retro is that, to put out a CD?) if you go HERE.
Otherwise it exists in these online sources:

For more information please go to: 'Our Lovely Day'

Thank you all for the support and please enjoy, and please, please share.

11.11.11 at 11.11

2011-11-14T06:37:00.001-08:00

I always try to have gigs on Remembrance Day. It's good to spend the day remembering with the people who had their entire lives changed, defined by the war, and who remember their parents and grandparents who were in WWI. And I hope I'm a good enough musician to benefit them by my singing of the old songs we all love so much.

This year was especially busy, because my manager was clever enough to get me in to sing at the Poppy Factory in the morning, in Richmond. So I had four places to go rather than just the three.

I HIGHLY recommend a visit. They make poppies all year round, and have been doing so since the 1920s, when it started up as a way to give an income to the enormous number of injured soldiers. Read about their work here. As far as I know, they don't often have people coming to perform. It's a factory.

This photo was taken at 11:11 on 11.11.11

You can see, framed, dried poppies from Flanders Fields sent by a soldier to his wife in 1917, and the poem by John McCrae, which we Canadians know off-by-heart. Also you can buy lovely ceramic teacups and pots and saucers with poppies on them!

With Judith, post-gig, last month.

I was lucky to have Judith Flint, pianist-saviour, colleague and comrade on many a tour, performing with me. Melanie, the Chief Executive, greeted us warmly as Judith lugged in the piano that weighs as much as she does. General Manager Bill showed us around and asked us what we were doing for the rest of the day. I mentioned our three other concerts. "All on the same day?" I said that Judith and I often did tours with three concerts per day. "So you're not like that Katherine Jenkins who drinks liquids and doesn't talk for two days before a concert," he joked.

Well let's put it this way: I wouldn't get to very many retirement homes and hospices if I was.

Judith, dwarfed by a Yamaha and poppies

We started with "I'll be loving you, Always" and suddenly a whole bunch of German members of the British Legion filed in. They had all married British soldiers, or were children of British soldiers. The men and women making the poppies slowly put their fabric petals, plastic stamens and studs down and came toward us. We were surrounded by warmth. I made a gesture at the repetition of the chorus and they all started to sing!

We went on to "Did you ever see a dream walking" and I started to dance around the room, and held out my hand to factory-worker Julie, who joined me. We did "Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry" and got a real call-and-response going. It was like a scene from a WWII film. All this time I was watching the analogue clock on the wall. We had to stop for the radio to come on, for the silence, for the sound of Big Ben. I watched that minute hand. I knew we had to end with "We'll Gather Lilacs" but I didn't want to have to stop halfway. Judith, as always, read my mind, and after playing the piano intro, she flipped the pages forward and started in on the chorus. We did it once through and ended on a nice, long note. After the applause I thanked them for having me, and AS SOON as I shut my mouth, the radio:

"It is now eleven o'clock". And Big Ben.

How easily that could have gone wrong! It was so perfect, the photographer thought that Bill had put on a pre-recorded version!

At Chorleywood

We piled Judith's piano and music back into her car, got to Chorleywood, and gave a full hour's-worth there, and Chris, who has MS and is in a wheelchair, asked us to do "Jerusalem". Judith knew it and I only had to look down at the sheet she gave me (did I say she was my pianist-saviour already?) a couple of times. It's a memorable text. I noticed from the footage of the Royal Wedding that everyone had their eyes glued to their sheets for Jerusalem. Not the residents at the Chorleywood Beaumont Home. They sat at attention, eyes straight ahead, word-perfect.

Off to the nursing home in Rickmansworth, considerably more humble, and all the ladies (they were all ladies there) assembled in the cafeteria to hear us. A woman was having her 78th birthday, but she'd had a stroke and couldn't speak. Her husband had brought a bunch of silvery balloons and some cards. He held her hand. But when we performed "Smilin' Through" she opened her mouth and sang every word. There were so many smiles in that room I can still feel them today, three days later.

We'll Meet Again

The traffic was kind to us, and we got to the Royal Star and Garter on time. Always try to be on time at the RS&G! The army, navy, air-force, engineers, merchant navy...time means a lot to them. The atmosphere in the huge Queen's Ballroom was intimate, hushed. I could try and write a book about a concert like that; it would involve finding every life-story for every person in the room, and each song in relation to that person.

Back at the Royal Star and Garter's Queen's Ballroom

All I'll say is that you've never sung "We'll Meet Again" until you're holding hands with a WWII veteran in a wheelchair, looking into his eyes and KNOWING that he's thinking of his lost comrades. Seeing them through his eyes, focussed on these people and their stories because of the song you're singing, a magical creation hovering all around you.

(Previous posts about the Royal Star and Garter: Part 1 and Part 2)

Unexpected gig, unexpected aroma.

2011-11-14T00:37:00.001-08:00

On my list of people who ought to be famous but aren't (yet) is a composer called Michael Brough.

Here's a video of me singing one of his songs. I think it's as good as anything Schumann has written...better than any song written by a living composer, and a joy to sing. And there are 80 more from the same source.

Brough is one of those genius-musicians who think in colours, shapes, keys, and look abstracted in company when there's music on, because it's a stronger language for him than speech.

He has a solicitor's office he tires himself out in during the day. You can't pay for a mortgage if you're a composer who is intent on creating pure, meaningful art. And Brough refuses to write for commercial ends, for that tiresome reason so many people of genius have: an inability to compromise. So posterity goes without the symphonies, the string quartets, the oratorios, the sonatas. And wonders why we in the 21st century have such a dearth of those works compared to, say, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago.

He also plays the organ, and a couple of days ago had an organ recital in Notting Hill, which I was looking forward to. There's no better way to sort out any problems in your head than sitting through an organ recital, even when played by a visceral performer like Michael Brough.

The night before the concert, the organiser frantically rang me up. Richard Carruthers, of Music Chamber. A true supporter of the arts, Mr. Carruthers.

"I can't get hold of Michael. The recital will have to be cancelled...the organ's broken!"

I told him that I have seen Mr. Brough casually walk into a church where they'd not had the organ played in 20 years, claiming it's beyond repair, only for Michael to strip to the waist, grovel about a bit amongst the dust and bat-droppings, and have the thing up and running in ten minutes flat. Also that this is an organist who once was playing a hymn for a wedding when the organ broke at the beginning of the 2nd verse, and while the congregation continued to sing, raced up the spiral staircase, fixed it, and got down the staircase to join them again for the last verse.

"Well, I don't think this can be fixed. It'll either be cancelled, or here's a bright idea, the two of you could do a voice and piano recital! Less than 24 hours' notice...ha ha!"

I tried ringing Michael. No answer. I put my mobile on speakerphone and just kept redialling and having the thing ring until it refused to keep ringing, then I'd start over again. After about half an hour of this, he answered and I told him of the possible change of plans. He hadn't heard the phone because he'd been practising for the recital.

The next day I was almost completely certain I wouldn't have to sing. Michael Brough could fix any organ. I dawdled, looked through some music, and dug out songs that I've done with Michael in the past, but haven't done for a while. Thine Alone, by Victor Herbert. Fair House of Joy by Quilter. French salon songs I recorded back in 2002. Some of Michael's compositions.

A pretty, but silent, organ behind.

But I dressed as an audience member on a chilly day. Ended up running through the park to the railway station, as I'd have been late even as an audience member if I hadn't.
Anyway, not even Michael could mend a disintegrated plastic connector tube to the blower, held together by somebody's duct-tape that came off whenever the organ needed more wind. Michael played three substantial piano pieces and I did three sets of songs. Thine Alone? The voice loved it, and it loved the voice. But the words...my oh my. Is it that long since I've sung this? Seems like yesterday. Funny: I wouldn't have expected to stand up and recite a poem I haven't thought of for six years, but I expect to be able to do it with a song. I sang "In thine eyes enfold me my beloved..." and "let thine arms look fondly into mine". Some in the audience said they hadn't noticed. But when you have it within you to do a perfect job...oh how annoying three missed words is! And it's just plain unprofessional.

Having got that out of the way, the rest was fine, and quite fresh for being spontaneous. I did notice a funny smell, especially when I breathed very deeply for long phrases. Sitting down during Michael's electrifying rendition of a sontata by Issay Dobrowen, I tried to get a cluster of autumnal foliage off the bottom of my shoe. Yes, the leaves were being held there. By something brown. By something in the park I hadn't noticed. Yes, I sang two-thirds of a recital with a good two tablespoons' worth of crap on my shoe.

Later, I went to the Experimental Cocktail Club in Soho and sang with Albert Ball's Flying Aces from 11pm to 2am. The gold dancing shoes from Freed's were clean, and I wore a tight, simple black dress with a large poppy as the only ornament. Introduced a new/old song with the Flying Aces: There's a Long Long Trail a-Winding.

Endurance and Artists

2011-11-12T01:12:00.001-08:00

Next to the James Caird. Really and truly, there it is.

Dulwich College is a very surprising place. First of all, its motto is "God's Gift". You HAVE to love that. And not only did P G Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler both attend, (ooh think! The man who invented hard-boiled American 40s slang and the man who invented upper-class 30s twit slang; friends and students in Dulwich) but this is also where you can goggle at the James Caird, the life-boat from the Endurance, the ship that was crushed in pack-ice in October, 1915, in Antarctica. If you want to read a great adventure story that would still be gripping even it were all made up, find a copy of Alfred Lansing's book "Endurance". It was written in 1959, and so the author met and spoke with a number of the people who were on this expedition. When the lot of them realised there was nothing to do but wait, probably for months and months, with no way of communicating with the outside world, they performed minstrel shows, had dog-races - "the Antarctic Sweepstakes" -, put on mock-trials, performed plays, and wrote songs and poems.

There was an artist and a photographer on the expedition, and diaries written by these explorers show an appreciation of beauty, sitting as it does beside a keen understanding of science, that is staggering.

Well, the James Caird Society has two meetings a year at Dulwich College, and my good friend and devout fan Commander Charles Giles (commanded, for the RN, a Minesweeper, a Frigate, and a squadron of Buccaneers, and also flew formation and solo aerobatics) is a member, and took me along. There were drinks, loads of them. And some lovely Whisky, a replica of the Whisky found in Shackleton's hut where he and his men stayed during the 1907 "Nimrod" expedition. A rather grande dame leant over to look at the bottle and asked the two young people serving, "What year is it from?" The young fellow looked at the young woman next to him, and then they both looked at another woman, also in an apron, dispensing the booze. She came over, picked up the bottle and read the label. "1907," she said, matter-of-factly. "Oh," said the woman complacently, taking a glass of it with her. Well all I can say is that, if this is a replica of what Shackleton had down there, those men didn't do too badly in the whisky stakes.

It could be yours for a two-figure sum.

Earlier that day I met up with Ruth Solomons - see previous blog about Balfron Towers - who finds abstract shapes when she looks at figurative art, and whose own abstract artworks are a constant source of wonderment to viewers who see faces, flowers, landscapes and leaves that Ruth never intended. We were taking down some of her works that were in a cafe. Her exhibition slot had ended. The prices for these lovely unique silkscreen prints were extremely reasonable - 30 to 60 each - and I asked her how many had sold.

"Oh, none."
And what kind of people come to this cafe? Idiots?

"Mostly artists."

Poor artists?

"Mostly."

Her friend Ben Walker was there, helping her pack the framed silkscreens away in bubble-wrap and take them on the DLR back to her flat. I brought up the subject of Jack Vettriano for a laugh. All our objections were specific to what we did for a living.

You know The Singing Butler.I'm not going to reproduce this thing here, because Jack doesn't need the publicity, and Jack might sue me, and you'll all have seen it.

Ben's very non-kitsch work...

I told Ruth and Ben that it's cringe-making to have a domestic servant stand huddled in the rain, holding an umbrella so that his Lord-Master and his LM's floozie can have a waltz on a beach, and it's even more cringe-making to force him to sing, with no accompaniment, with the damp wind whipping about. Whatever he's singing (a waltz, so let's pretend it's "Always", see my CD, in shops and online on Monday, step right up folks!) it's going to sound pretty thin and awful in that situation. Nobody would be happy. So it doesn't ring true, and is like a joke that isn't funny and wouldn't happen in real life anyway.

Ruth said "It's trying to be a photograph. It's denying the medium. It's as if he wishes it weren't a painting." She said it would be best used in a colouring book.

We waited for Ben's opinion. Ben's artworks are worth a look. They're like memories seen through a mist. Sharp outlines mixed with yellow, rose, earthy haze. Often, the memories are painful ones.

"It's Vettriano's kitsch interiors, trying to be atmospheric and mysterious when they're not." Ben is soft-spoken and we nearly didn't hear his next comment: "It's offensive."

That evening, I wished Ruth and Ben could have seen the paintings and sketches from the Shackleton Antarctic expedition, shown in slide-show to a packed audience. They are atmospheric, and combine a need for record with a sense of poetry.

I sat next to an elderly but very fit gentleman who asked me what my Antarctic connection was, and I feebly told of my love of the book "Endurance", the fact that I'd been to the exhibition at the Liverpool Maritime Museum last year, and that I was Cmdr Charles Giles's guest. "And what's yours?"

"I've been there a few times."

Dr. Charles Swithinback tells an excellent yarn.

Ha! Dr. Charles Swithinbank has had six geographic features named after him in Antarctica, and has seen more of Antarctica than any other living person.

He has written "An Alien in Antarctica", "Forty Years On Ice", "Foothold in Antarctica" and "Vodka on Ice". He was fabulous company, and this photo shows him mid-yarn. Note the hands. This is a man who can tell a story. Please believe me that I'm listening to him. I only looked briefly at the camera. He loved to speak of his Pianola in Cambridge, where he lives. He took the train back after the banquet, and sent me a copy of "Forty Years On Ice" the next morning. I sent him a copy of "Our Lovely Day", and he wrote a letter immediately, saying "Our Lovely Day gives me great joy. At my age (almost 85) and partially deafened by gunfire in the WW2, I find your instrumental accompaniment too loud, tending to drown your lovely voice. Nobody's fault, just a fact of old age." His book is quite riveting. Informative, economical, full of joy. I had asked him during the dinner if it wasn't a shame that there were so few frontiers left on our earth.
"Absolutely not! There are oodles of things we haven't discovered yet! Many, many things to find out, many places to go..."

His favourite piece of vocal music is Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock, and has said so on the Russian version of Desert Island Discs.

I didn't say to anyone that evening that the room where we were eating was where they filmed the graduation scene in Legally Blonde. So Dulwich College has effectively been a stand-in for Harvard. With "God's Gift" carved into the rafters, over and over again.

Jewellery storage and display. And a video.

2011-11-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

First off, some footage of the Lovely Parlour Trio and Patricia Hammond at the Vintage Fair! Filmed by Debee Calveche! Featuring Jon Butterfield on piano! Matt Redman on guitar! Nick Ball on spoons, washboard, bits of tappy things!

Now it's hints-and-tips time: I'm going to come over all 30s-magazine on you all. Like any female vintage-lover (or transvestite/fancy-dress/pantomime artiste vintage-lover), I have a lot of costume jewellery. And I HATE throwing it into a box, and having it all jostle, chip, tangle, become invisible at the bottom. I also hate having a whole load of boxes cluttering up the place.

In my new abode I've come up with a few solutions which I thought I'd share! They're all extremely easy!

For necklaces, I strung a length of suede (a design feature on a pair of boots that was just one fashiony step too far) with two thumbtacks. Minimal damage to wall, plenty sturdy. Then I hung the necklaces! Look! A festoon! A rope of ropes!

I looped all the glittery glassy necklaces up together through a gap in the side of a bookshelf. Note that said bookshelf is also where I store my silk flowers. I suppose you could say that the flowers could get dusty here, but as they almost all came from Accessorize, they could do with a bit of dust to make them look more venerable.

Dangly earrings are hooked into a length of chain which is set up rather like the necklace cord.

Brooches are pinned to a rope. I wish the rope was plain black, and then the brooches would stand out more. But actually this bright red, white and blue pattern makes the result extremely festive. You can put your brooches on all sides of the rope. So your display is circular as well as long. The image above is only a small section of said rope. It goes from ceiling to floor. I'm silly with brooches. Must wear them more or it's just weirdness on my part.

My stud-earrings arrangement is what I'm most proud of. The frame was from Help The Aged in Slough, and it had a cheap and nasty Balinese leather painting in it. I threw that away (thus undoubtedly helping Balinese leather paintings become valuable in future), stapled this stretchy velvet to it, and because it's rubbish velvet, the earrings poke easily through it. I can't buy many more earrings though. Running out of space.

Clerkenwell's Nice Cups of Tea and a Boy Band

2011-10-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

Nick Ball, Jon Butterfield, Matt Redman, me

Sorry about the break in entries. I did a gig with the Flying Aces at the prestigious Forge in Camden and wanted to write about it, but didn't have the pictures or videos yet. It'll still be a bit of a wait, so that'll be out of sequence. Boring! Sorry.

Also have done a spate of Vintage Fairs. Interesting! They all have cupcakes! All! I wore a lot of Bettie Page repro dresses and put silk flowers in my hair for them, and got all helpless around Community Hall PA systems and learned a lot about the different types of people who go to these things.

Envy and Claire also provide wine-gums.

But this last Sunday I did the VERY FINE Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair, which I would recommend to anyone who wanted to try a Vintage Fair but didn't know which one to start with. Here the fun factor is as much to the fore as a decent selection of proper clothes to look at. Some stalls have delicate, museum-quality Victorian and Edwardian items, and some just specialise in those diaphanous 20s and 30s bits of nothing that ladies wafted around in while Hercule Poirot solved murders. And then there are plenty of sturdy, flattering 1950s numbers with their nipped-in waist. Also two of the best vintage hair and makeup stylists in the business: Envy Greene and Claire Cross. And the old Finsbury Town Hall! It is Victorian Rococo magnificence.

So no room for any reproduction frocks here, or just relying on a few clip-in silk flowers, no matter how convincing the general effect.

Envy Greene. and a genuine New-Look Hat.

With the very dapper Matt Redman

Savitri, who started the Clerkenwell Fair and who runs it with stylish but businesslike efficiency, wanted me to try on a dress of hers, which she thought would go with my colouring. It was a shade I would never have dreamed of. Or thought would work. But there it was, and there it did. Envy Greene worked with it using several shades of eyeshadow. I think she achieved it. I'd been told that there would be an ugly door behind us, and to bring something to cover it up. So I took a few random sheet music covers (oh this is a tiny, tiny fraction of what I have!!) and colour-copied them, and taped them together. Not a bad effect, and Envy's makeup also seems to draw on these covers for inspiration. I have to say that I've never heard the phrase "hang on while I get my 1930s lip-liner" before. And if I had, I wouldn't have thought it'd be in earnest! But it was. As I say, one of the best in the business. I would have loved to have had Claire do my hair, and their prices are extremely reasonable, really a tiny amount compared to what salons charge, and they do a better and far more authentic job, but I had my 20s wig all ready, and it went with Savitri's dress.

Victorian Rococo Splendour. Matt and Nick, on the right, arranged the songs in the album.

There's something for all the five senses at the Clerkenwell Fair. A table of pomades and colognes and perfumes; silks, satins, furs; an artist who draws frocks in the manner of a 1940s fashion illustrator for Vogue; the substantial lemon drizzle cakes and the teas and the sandwiches made right there on the spot; the velvety-smooth brushes of Envy and the bristly proper brushes of Claire; and the Lovely Parlour Trio, referred to on the day as the Lovely Parlour Boy Band!

We played songs from the album, and the 23rd was also the day that four songs were launched on Amazon, 7 Digital, Play.com and HMV Digital..A Nice Cup of Tea, We'll Gather Lilacs, The Honeysuckle and the Bee, and Let Him Go Let Him Tarry. Our rendition of A Nice Cup of Tea drew smiles amongst the nice cups of tea.

Southport recital, Lawnmower Museum, and Books with Fossils and Shells!

2011-10-02T04:35:00.000-07:00

Did a recital in Southport, wonderful old resort town. I long for the days one took a lot of leather suitcases and trunks on a steam-train, dressed in a travelling suit and went to a coastal town, staying in a splendid hotel and braving the foul weather!

Or the beautiful weather, as the case may be.

Southport's Lord Street was, apparently, the inspiration for the Champs-Elysees. Emperor Napoleon III stayed there, went back and said "Make one of those things here." In French, of course.

I adore this 1930s poster of a wet, unpleasant night in English winter, made glamorous by being in Southport! The artist of the poster, incidentally, was Italian.

At the end of the tour with Angela, in 2006.

Southport pianist Angela Thompson and I did a tour of Wales together in 2006, and she's always said she'd have me to sing at her "Midweek Music" series. So she and I performed all sorts of songs from my forthcoming album, and they were massively well-received. I sang Love's Old Sweet Song and everyone sang the choruses. Halfway through the recital, I said "I don't know if you ever see these songs performed in concerts..." and the whole room shouted "No, never!"

And one woman on the front row said "No, nowadays it's a load of old rubbish!" Then she looked mildly shocked at herself and said "I don't mean this series...I mean generally..."

A picture of me singing in the concert. The lighting highlights the churchy accoutrements, and makes me look as if I'm saying something like 'Come into the arms of the Lord'. I'm actually saying 'You are my honeysuckle, I am the bee!'

By the way, you can have that song for free if you follow this link HERE

Afterwards, I made Angela take me to the Lawnmower museum! It's the only lawnmower museum in Britain! I wonder if it's the only lawnmower museum in the world? All I can say is that it's a fun place to visit! Upstairs in a hardware shop, easily missed. And look at this one...looks like a flying saucer! These old machines are marvels of ingenuity, and I learned all sorts of things about scythe-men, and how specialised a job it was, how skilled. And how a scythe-man only got his scythe when he was fully grown, because only then could it be made the right size for him.

Before the concert I went to the most fabulous bookshop, ever. Down a narrow alleyway (with old tiles) and then bang-o! Several floors of books, old leather sofas, old sheet music, and ROCKS, MINERALS, FOSSILS, SHELLS and INSECTS!! I bought a wonderful framed leaf-insect. And a book on modern dancing, written in 1925. Gives a whole chapter on how to make fancy dresses. Example:

Folly: For a smart lady's costume we suggest the following: a black hat with curved crown and two side points, such as town-criers are supposed to wear. on the front a large white woolly pom-pom. The dress is in one piece, tight-fitting round the chest, a strap over each shoulder and no sleeves; full round the skirt and coming to the knees. All this is in black sateen. yellow silk stockings and black patent leather shoes, with white pom-poms on the insteps. A white ruff round the neck and a little strip of black ribbon, tied in a bow, at each wrist. Carrying in one hand, three large yellow air balloons.

Goodwood Day 4

2011-10-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday started early, with the communion service held in the open air, and a small brass ensemble playing the hymns. The morning air was fresh and the hymns sounded beautiful in the place that had been so noisy earlier, and would be noisy again. Prayers were offered up in honour of pilots who died in the Battle of Britain.

A lot of people were there, including a green-painted, bulbous-headed Martian, with "Down with Dan Dare - The Mekon" scrawled on his back. Lining up for communion, just ahead of Lord March and Sarah, Duchess of Richmond, he made an interesting sight. Shirley was still dusted with gold powder from the previous night's party which was themed "Barbarella". "How on earth does one dress for that theme?" she said. "I'll go as Barbarella's grandmother. I haven't even seen the movie." She'd had a fabulous time in the end. She said there were acrobatic girls wearing practically nothing, hanging from the ceiling.

Most ladies on Sunday rebelled against the previous day's discomfort, and had more sensibly-styled heels and warmer clothes. I opted for a suit.

Arm-band

Sunday was also the day I decided that I loved to watch racing.

I'd spent most of my time in the Paddock (love that term, imagining nose-bags and oats and so on) with the cars and racers and mechanics and hugely proud of my "Team" arm-band (which I shall frame. Yes I shall). The cameraderie is something wonderful. So I'd not seen much in the way of shops, such as What Katie Did lingerie (well I don't spend much on what one can't see, anyway!) or Vivian of Holloway (I was actually keeping a tally of V of H dress sightings). So I made a move to go and do a little browsing, but Shirley said "You CAN'T miss the St. Mary's Trophy race!" So that was that.

Aunty Shirley in front of a DeHavilland Leopard Moth

We were so early at the Richmond Pavilion that we saw the motorcycle race too. And what do you know, there was Jim Redman, my friendly companion at Thursday's cricket game (see part one). On his priceless Honda, going round the track with former rival Giacomo Agostini, just the two of them, while the commentators paid them credit for their accomplishments and the crowd gave them an ovation. Then the Barry Sheene memorial race started. One driver skidded off the (very wet) track, right in front of our stand. A gasp went up. Really to see this close-to is quite horrifying. The bike: is it going to go over him? it's heavy and it's machinery and it's going very, very fast. Everything it completely out of control and it's real. The possibilities are suddenly a matter of pure, obvious and brutal reality.

After the motorcycle race was over Martin (Vulcan pilot, DFC) leaned toward me and said "The St. Mary's trophy is racing as I remember it as a boy. Any kind of car, any kind of engine. It's much funner than modern racing. You'll see."

The cars were of all shapes and sizes, and all from the early sixties. Looked like a brightly-coloured traffic jam from an early episode of Columbo, but they rumbled and snarled and went shooting off. Right from the start, there were three jostling for it at the front. They were a MBW 1800 TiSA, a Morris Mini Cooper and a Ford Galaxie 500. The BMW and the Ford roared their bulk about while that Mini went crazy buzzing around like a wasp on cocaine. It quickly wedged itself between the two massive boats, all of them going like a big hurtling metal sandwich. The crowd screamed with delight, standing, sitting, pounding the air with their fists. The angles were completely mad, the cars going like rockets. We could watch those three on TV screens that hung from the eaves in front of us, or we could take a look at the speeding parade of different cars going by as well. There were Alfa Romeos, Fiats, Jaguars, Renaults, Austin Minis, Ford Lotus, a Saab (bless it, came in last), and an Isuzu Bellett. Do not ask me particulars. No. 70, The Alfa Romeo 2600(!!!!) Sprint was the size of two cars put side by side, and roared like the inside of a snoring dragon as big as a mountain. No, that does not do it justice. It vibrated the stand so much that you could feel it coming before you saw it. And as for its noise! It came in 20th but I cheered it out of sheer awe.

Well the BMW won. One of its laps was 93mph. The Ford Galaxie came in second, always getting ahead of the mini on the stretches, with the engine on it. "whoosh".

But we adored that mini. Racing like this is as good as a Warner Bros. cartoon. These cars have personalities. I feel happy every time I think of this race.

Outside, wives continued to vie with the cars for their husbands' attention, and we were all praying for the rain to stop so that we could all look up at the moment when 10 Spitfires sailed up into the sky together. Suddenly at 1:30, there was a little bowl of blue above the Goodwood estate, and surrounded by grey heavy stormclouds, one by one the Merlin engines started up. A man next to me gave a roar of pure pleasure to each.

"Aaaahhhhhhhrrrrh!"

He was voicing what everyone felt.

I wore an Edinburgh Woollen Mill green tweed suit, altered by a seamstress according to a picture of a 1930s fashion plate I showed her. "Like this." Many people thought it was the real thing. the Spitfires did several circuits together, in what Bill told me was "Missing Man" formation.

Then I changed back into my spy outfit of Friday, grabbed some business cards and made to go and do some real networking. After all I have a launch of four tracks coming up, and they are as authentically vintage as modern performances get.

The weather had other ideas. The Spitfires had had their moment, and the clouds would have theirs. Buckets were dumped on us. Torrents, floods. We all huddled with the cars. I changed back into my Miss Marple tweed suit right then and there, a skill one picks up when one has to change for concerts in cathedrals.

The man who runs the Rolex Drivers' Club

I helped tidy things away, carried bags out to the Alpine Sunbeam, got nauseated at the sound of the Butlins girls doing their rehearsed schtick through the public underpass, and bought some mugs and saw Jackie Stewart come in to one of the stalls to buy a t-shirt and form an immediate crowd. He was like a Pied Piper. They frolicked toward him and surrounded him completely.

The sun was low in the sky and the Spitfires went off home, one by one. An old Spitfire pilot was by one of them, looking into the cockpit, and then standing by it with his cane as it taxied off. And I can say that my hat was blown off my head by the slipstream from two Spitfires.

The last Spit to go from Goodwood made a swoop into the sky, from take-off to vertical, and did a victory roll as he went. What graceful, graceful creatures.

And then Shirley led me to the track and showed me what it looked like, standing at her particular starting position. I could see it all: the deafening din of those 500cc engines, ahead of her and behind her, and the track ahead. I said that whenever I think I'm nervous before a concert I'll remember that nothing I'll ever do will be like this!!

Soon the track was filled with journalists and racers and team members and friends. The band was playing Tijuana Brass numbers, and Lord March stood on the roof to present the prizes, which he did with great style, fluency and an obvious and deep love for the sport. The men (and women) who had been inside these machines came up and collected their prizes, and were kissed by Lord March's beautiful daughter. These drivers were of all ages and sizes, some quite elderly. All seemed extremely gracious, sweet, modest and completely without airs. Veuve Clicquot and fruit cake were distributed among the crowd. The little 500s team were the most vocal and demonstrative for their winners. A very sweet group, a real family. The sunset looked like a 1930s motoring poster, all fluffy clouds and gold.

Shirley took the Sunbeam out of the field - practically a lake - for the last time. One more photo of it here. Its restoration a testament to Bill's craftsmanship, as was Shirley's Cooper Mk4, which finished very respectably, and also never broke down once.

Goodwood Day 3

2011-09-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

Don't look too closely, but...

Very proud of the lining of the coat!

Any hopes I may have had of being given one of the coveted bottles of champagne or bouquets of flowers for being “judged by fashion experts as being exceptionally well-groomed” were dashed when I put on my only pair of flesh-coloured back-seamed tights (by Pamela Mann Tights, one size fits all –ha!) purchased from one of the lovely stalls the day before. The right leg went into two long ladders on the front, and a vast hole at the back from which radiated –like the tendrils of a vast jellyfish – a host of ladders. Devastated but ultra-careful with the left leg, I managed to get away with causing only two, but they went a long way down. Limping down the stairs, trying not to bend my knees and make the ladders worse, I got to the kitchen and asked Shirley’s kind friend (and former mayor of Chichester) who was putting me up if she had any nail polish. She did…bright red. Desperately I dabbed a bit on, trying only to get the very edges of the nylon, but naturally it went all over my skin. Nail-polish remover only made things worse. It looked as if the ladders had been caused by a horrible accident which had caused extensive, but ultimately staunched, bleeding.

Perfect for motor racing.

Hell, I don’t do this ‘grooming’ thing anyway. If I’d lived in the 30s, 40s, 50s, I’d have gone for the frocks but hated the gloves. They interfere with life, with piano playing, with turning pages, with insect-rescuing.

Goodwood was hopping. Ladies’ Day had brought out the ladies. Bunny girls, Butlins girls (full of whoops of artificial joy and wearing Carry-On mini outfits that called to mind drive-in girls on rollerskates). And then, the girls who held the signs on the track, showing where the positions were. Two of these could equal one bunny girl in girth, and the bunny girls weren’t exactly fat (except in two locations). For photos I refer you to Flickr. I was busy being awestruck by all those late fifties and early sixties engines ROARING away. Thrilling.

“The grid girls are very thin this year,” said one of the JAP-engine Cooper drivers. “And they’re not as friendly. They don’t chat or make jokes, and that really put us at our ease in past years. I really miss them.”

Photo by Paul d'Orleans, the Vintagent

They were dressed in very small 1960s Mondrian-inspired minidresses and had very specific hand-on-hip stances and white shiny boots. And they must have been utterly frozen. The wind bit hard, and the air was damp. From the roof I kept seeing drivers and photographers talking to them, and the girls nodding their heads rather emphatically.

“You know the question don’t you. And the answer,” I said to Shirley’s friend with the red nail-polish as we held our coats warmly about us. Also with me was Laura, the wife of Martin Withers DFC, Vulcan pilot, and hero. He was pushing Shirley’s car. Shirley was awestruck at being pushed by the man who had flown the famous “Black Buck” sixteen-hour mission in the Falklands. Do click on the link I've put here. It's an amazing story.

Fifteen minutes before the race started, the heavens opened. A waterfall formed at the awnings over the cars in the paddocks. Everyone stood still, and all faces had fallen, in a sort of tableau of despair. It was to be a very different race than they’d anticipated, and set up their cars for. Nobody spoke as we heard the rain pounding above us.

Nevertheless, Shirley did very well with her car, frozen in time as it was, 1951. She did it proud. Being related to me, of course an immediate, ruthless and brutal post-mortem occurred after the race. I know. I do the same after a gig.

Poor ladies on Ladies’ Day. All that finery. All that cold and wet. All those non-colourfast vintage fabrics. It was fun, in a bitchy way, seeing vintage fashionistas with their carefully plucked and pencilled eyebrows, stencilled Barbara Stanwyck lip-shapes, matching shoes, gloves, hat, bag, sculpted hair, posing away in fashion-plate stances and smiling when the big cameras came out, only to watch those cameras shift off to the side and focus on a 1959 Jaguar They happened to be standing near.

A trio of land-girls with hair kerchiefs done up like the “We Can Do It!” poster girl went round doing an Andrews Sisters imitation, mostly in the VIP areas.

And a Hippie camp was set up near Butlins, with tree-hugging and singing and face-painting. Unless they were sticking flowers in exhaust pipes, I don’t think hippies would have attended car races.

“They’d better not stick a flower in this exhaust pipe,” said Bill. He had a big spanner in his hand, too.

(note: the coat pictured at the top, and the hat, are from a Vintage shop in lower GIBSONS, of all places, called Starlet Vintage, and were birthday presents from my brother and sister-in-law. One of the best opportunities to put a birthday present to immediate use, EVER.)

Goodwood Day 2

2011-09-25T03:58:00.000-07:00

The day of trials. “It’s cheaper today, full of enthusiasts with not so much money,” said aunt Shirley.

Her Alpine Sunbeam meant that we got to park in a field very near the entrance to the track. “All tax-exempt cars this way”, it said. I should tell of the beauties we were parked between, in front of and behind, but I’m rubbish at that. And there were three days of it. All I can say is that there was a dark green one, a couple of pewtery silver ones, a red one, a beige one, they were all gorgeous, and that Shirley said “Oh no, not next to the American one,” on one of the days, as we were being flagged into position. It was a field full of works of art.

The NAAFI tent

Despite my earnest desire to push more cars, there were lots of JAP, Cooper, and 500 enthusiasts around, all so eager I didn’t get an opportunity. However the 9 had flaked off overnight. Poster paint wasn’t the best idea. Blackboard paint worked well though. I became my aunt’s general factotum, carrying things, finding things, finding people. Shirley decided that we should change into some finery so we went to the Naafi tent (that’s what it was got up to look like…all sorts of RAF posters and cots and uniforms and bales of hay and the long tables covered with WWII maps) that was attached to the Rolex Driver’s Club. It was guarded by two men in uniform with “MP” arm-bands. One walked along a pathway lined with photographers eager to get pictures of legendary motorists. They were everywhere. Every lovely elderly gentleman who caught my eye and smiled caused Shirley to whisper “That was ………,” and I’d try to remember and then get it mixed up with the last name. There was a clutch of actors dressed in 1930s clothes pretending to be shooting a film, complete with vintage lights, vintage cameras and vintage megaphone. They were mostly ignored, and as the three days went on they took more to lounging on the chaise-longes and less to shouting down the megaphones. The Ladies’ Powder Room had an ironing board, an iron, and hessian floors. Three full-length mirrors.

Ready to plug the forthcoming album...

As soon as we walked back out all lipsticked and tarted up, the photogaphers started to take notice.

Shirley wanted to see the planes. So did I. She said that, as I looked to be dressed as a spy, I ought to pose in front of an enemy plane.

Wish you could see the backs of my tights. They have seams, but also little bows as part of the seam design. A bow for each ankle. I took some great photos of Aunt Shirley in front of some of her favourite planes, and am waiting for her to send them to me!

The most impressive plane, to me, is this beauty. It went faster than anything in the world in 1929. 328 miles per hour. Imagine! It was the space shuttle of its day. Steve, who was with the Solent Sky museum in Southampton and stood nearby to prevent too many people knocking at the pontoons to see what sound they made, knew all about his subject and made it fascinating. But he also knew about my sort of music! Rudy Vallee (and how he died) and Deanna Durbin!

Shirley did her trials, and she, along with the rest of the 500s, worried about the weather for the next day’s race. This day was dry, and the next day had rain forecast.

Goodwood Day 1

2011-09-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

In four days of Goodwood I only wore my normal clothes.

Hell I dress like this all the time. It doesn’t take any extra effort. Only difference was that I used heated rollers in my hair and a bit of Elnett. I reckon I’ll start doing that regularly now…I like the effect.

I was extremely lucky to be there on the Thursday. This isn’t open to the public. It’s setting-up day and all cars arrive, retail shacks are filled with corsets, brooches and car posters and so on.

My aunt Shirley races a 500cc Cooper with a JAP engine, though that does not mean it was made in Japan. Au contraire. J A Prestwich’s engines are as English as they come. The man set up shop in a backyard in Tottenham in 1895. These beautiful machines were still being made in Tottenham in the early 1960s.

The small but mighty cars may look like sleekly-made go-carts equipped with lawn-mower engines, but they snort like six-storey Bison, and go at 100mph. Racing legend Stirling Moss used to own my aunt’s car, and won the Monaco Grand Prix with it in 1951. In a very British display of selfless (and sporting) respect for heritage, Shirley and her husband and mechanic Bill keep it as it was then, even though this means it probably won’t win many races.

Another JAP Cooper was driven by a Frenchman right out of a Stella Artois advert, and it even had the same number as it had when it was raced by Harry Schell years ago, painted on in the same way. It was kept in the Paddock like a museum piece, with a framed oil painting of the car propped up on a chair next to it, and racing overalls artfully draped over the chair. There was also a collection of fliers advertising the museum that usually housed the car, and framed newspaper clippings.

Aunt Shirley picked me up at the station in a red Alpine Sunbeam. Finally an opportunity to do the sunglasses-and-headscarf look. Really this look is a bit silly unless one is in a vintage car with its top down.

I dressed casually. I was given the task of painting the number “9” on the side of the Cooper – Shirley didn’t want decals as they’re not authentic – and I also was given the chance to push-start the car.

“Push down a bit and make sure your legs don’t go out from under you,” instructed Bill. I’d never heard such an engine before, nor been sprayed by Ethanol. The tweed was none the worse for it.

“Baptism of fire!” said one of the other Cooper drivers.

There are some Swedish 500cc (aka half-litre) automobile fans and it’s become a Goodwood tradition for them to serve pickled herring on rye crackers and a choice of six different Aquavits on set-up day. How about that. I tried two. Had been travelling from Vancouver (nine hours, starting at the end of a full day) and then to Hanwell from Heathrow (dump out contents of suitcase, pile in the tweeds and frocks and hot-rollers) and Hanwell to Chichester. It had been long. The Aquavits were marvellous. A hint of caraway. Pleasant warmth. Two lovely ladies in vintage Swedish Navy uniform served. It was like a lovely big family. Other parts of the paddock housed different types of cars for different types of races and they had cameraderie of a sort, but there was nothing like these 500s owners.

Then we all went to Goodwood House for the cricket game, a custom that sees the drivers play Lord March’s staff. I’d never been to a cricket game but I knew the tradition. Secure some cake and some champagne, ensure you have a seat, look interested sporadically (whenever someone’s about to throw something) and then fall asleep. I can tell you that these sloping folding wood-and-cloth seats are designed admirably for this purpose.

I woke up to see the sun setting, and people saying “Ray Hanna came right between those two trees, directly from the sun…” Another tradition. A Spitfire flies over Goodwood House several times, performing beautiful arabesques and victory rolls. This time it was another famous Spitfire pilot, first name Alastair. Those planes fully deserve the fuss people make over them.

Then came the debriefing for the drivers. Huge crowds round the tent and I didn’t like to get too close because the speakers didn’t carry far and others needed to hear it more than I did.

I found myself standing in the middle of the field admiring the sunset with a spry old gent who stood with excellent posture. He said he liked Motorcycles. “Don’t go in much for the four-wheeled.” He told me he was enjoying his old age, that he liked having no ties. No wife, no house, no car. “What people usually do when this happens is buy a canal-boat,” I said. “Oh not me. I like to travel too much.” We stood for a while and then a Japanese fellow comes up with a camera. “May I?” he asked. The gent beamed benignly. The young fellow took a photo and then bowed and backed away, bowing more.

“I think you’re famous and I think I’m ignorant,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Jim Redman,” he said.

I wrote it down. I looked it up later. Yes, he’s a legend.

“I retired, and then years later my kids and I went to watch a race and they entered me in it. I won. I came back the next year and won again. But now I just go around and do parades.”

He then told me about various types of bikes he’d owned, and how a museum finally bought one from him for a massive amount of money and told him he could borrow it whenever he liked. He also rides something around that Honda lends him for events like Goodwood. “A fellow came up to me afterwards once and said ‘Tell Honda I’ll buy that for a million dollars.’ So I did. They said ‘Not for sale.’ I said ‘He’ll pay you two million.’ They said ‘Not for sale.’ I thought I’d see what happened if I said six million. They said that it wasn’t for sale, not for any price. And this was what I was riding all this time.” He shook his head in amazement.

I’ve missed out many of the specifics of his conversation: names of bikes, races, dates, etc. For this, I will have to read his autobiography!

Secret Garden Tea Shop in Vancouver

2011-09-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

I could write a small book about all the things I did in Vancouver yesterday, but I'll focus instead on the Tea Shop I went to.

It's good to have more than just the one thing to do on a day-trip to a city, whether it's London or Vancouver, and so I rehearsed some lovely songs with Doug Balfour, my colleague for the HealthArts concerts.
"They're all different songs from the last time," he said, looking at the pile of them.

"Hell, Doug, that was five programmes ago!"

Sounded like disgusting bragging, but there are so many tuneful, memorable, magical songs from 1900 to 1940, I don't think I'll ever stop adding new ones!

Eva Gersbach, loads of food which we finished, girl who needs to brush her hair.

Then I met with a fascinating lady who will be the subject of a story one day. I found her by the most wonderful fluke. She's 91 and surrounded by antiques from around the world, evidence of her amazing life. And just round the corner from her was the Secret Garden Tea Shop.

This is a special place, and I had someone to share it with. Eva Gersbach, my connection with Schaffhausen, which will also be the subject of a story, of an icy-cold day in January 2000 and a dark railway station in a medieval town when I had nowhere to go.

Back to the Tea Shop.

Afternoon tea costs $27 per person, but they do properly feed you. Three plates! One savory, with fresh mini-croissants with pickled gherkin, honey-cured ham, local cheese; fresh chive corn-bread with goats' cheese, bacon and turkey; then the little rolled spirally roulade white bread with egg and cress, and multi-grain with cream cheese and green onion. I have no doubt I am not doing justice to this. There is no menu to consult because every few weeks the good folk of the Secret Garden change their combinations.
Well then there are the scones. With apple, two of them; with cranberries four other slices. Raspberry jam. Devon cream, referred to as "Devon". "Ask me if you want more Devon," said the very friendly girl. They are generous. The desserts were almost indescribable. Chocolate thingys that combine the sensations of brownies, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and chocolate puddings. Then there were lemon tarts, and these squares of loveliness which had rhubarb in them, and whipping topping that tasted like eggnog, and dried strawberry slices, completely natural and bursting with flavour.

Our tea was Kambaa from Kenya, because Eva wanted something assertive and strong. And it lasted four hot-water refills, keeping its flavour admirably. I loved the tea-cozy so much I bought one. It wasn't cheap, but it was made in Canada, and will remind me of my Secret Garden day where I saw so many people and did so many things and got back on the second-to-last ferry back to Gibsons.

By the way they call this "High Tea", though I was under the impression that High Tea is a tradition from the north of England, where farm-houses need to eat something hearty.
My mum concurs.
"I used to have it in Huyton, near Liverpool, with my friend Louie, years ago. Strong tea, salad with ham; bread and butter...her husband was a Longshoreman. It was instead of supper."

What interested me most was the way that the Secret Garden take the classics of afternoon tea and give them an epicurian, Vancouverite twist. They cater to their regulars, rather than the majority of places in London who cater to visitors and thus keep their classics the same every year.

Surprise for Ma, Ch'nook Scholars and the Sunshine Coast

2011-09-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

I am on the Sunshine Coast, and it is actually sunny. As with Ireland, you don't get green like this without a lot of rain!

I was born here; grew up on the sea amongst apple trees. Here's a view from the core of an extinct volcano that's just behind the house. The house is right on the water, more or less in the lower right-hand corner. My dad would take us on his boat to visit neighbours on the island there, Keats Island.

The beach of my childhood is very different now: back then it had ropes, chains, fishing nets, and some scuffed-up boats that men worked on. Now it's all shining and clean and full of people with lots of money!

My brother's boat, ropes, chains etc are the last ones standing. Long may this continue.

Anyway, I came here for my mum's 70th birthday and surprised her by ringing her from a mobile while walking down her drive. This method was suggested by two Ch'nook Scholars sitting next to me on the Air Canada flight over here.

Pam said "Call her up. Ask her how the weather is."
I told her "She has call-display. I'm amazed we've managed to keep this secret from her so long. She's like Sherlock Holmes!"
Cherie said "That's easy. Take my phone-card."

So I did! She'd just got back from performing in the Sunshine Coast's concert of the Faure Requiem.

"How's the weather, Ma?"
"Lovely and warm!"
"I couldn't phone you earlier to wish you happy birthday...I'm sorry."
"Oh I was performing the Faure Requiem."
"Ah yes! I forgot. Well the weather in the UK is awful. Cold and miserable." (that was true)
"Well it's lovely and warm here."
"What should I do about it then?"
"Come over here!"
"What? When?"
"Whenever."
"How about now?" and I walked in. She really is a soprano, no doubt about that. Her squeal probably carried as far as Keats island.

This is Ma after the surprise, with my sister-in-law Jen. It was Jen's idea to keep it as a surprise. Visible on the table is a nice bottle of Moet, good for such occasions.

This was the second surprise my Ma had: her sister Jane also showed up at the door the week earlier, to spectacular effect.

I have two official gigs with Health Arts in Vancouver this week, and two unofficial gigs in Gibsons, at the two main nursing homes. More and more of my friends live in such places.

The Royal Star and Garter heroes and heroines part I

2011-08-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Every two or three times a year I get to sing in this building.

Only a couple of weeks ago Emily O'Hara (of Vila Verde) and I walked along the Thames from Twickenham to Richmond and were stunned into silence at the sight of it on the hill over the river. It was built during WWI for victims of mustard-gas and has housed ex-service men and women ever since.

I wish I could show you the ballroom I sing in. It has a stage, a grand piano, and huge windows looking out at a magnificent terrace which itself looks down at the Thames. Pat Maynard is an octogenarian with heaps of energy, who organises the entertainment on Tuesday nights and who makes a perfect cup of tea and dainty sandwiches and battenburg cake for the performers.

Our changing room: As you can see, I'm putting the Happie Loves It dress to immediate use. With me is Margaret Lion who is from New Zealand and who works harder than anyone I know. She trundles her piano and suitcase of concert dresses from gig to gig, taking buses, trains, underground and taxis all over the country. She has been doing this for a couple of decades.

She didn't have to trundle her piano today, anyway.

We always manage to meet on the walk to venues because we both like to be early and we both like to walk. Here is Margaret as she is almost every day of the week.

We performed an entirely different set of songs than we did last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. We like to mix it up, and well! I have hundreds of gorgeous songs from my collection, and adding more every week. No need for repeats. Particular hits this time included "Trees", "Meet me Tonight in Dreamland", "Grandma's Doin' it too", "Stay as Sweet as You Are", and "Till We Meet Again" at the end. After it, Pat, bless her, came up and asked in front of everyone that I should finish with "We'll Meet Again," which of course is a high compliment but made me rage inwardly, as I am forever and ever trying to end with Till We Meet Again!!! Which comes from WWI and is a far better song. And I like to leave people whistling and humming something they might not normally hear. Lovely though "We'll Meet Again" is, it's Dame Vera's song, and it does get a lot of airplay.

Clive of the Royal Navy showed me his tattoos. I like Captain Cave Man. He was very proud of them. His blood type is still visible on the inside of his wrist, but getting terribly blurry with age. He had them done in Hong Kong. He leaned forward in his wheelchair and slowly started to pull up his shirt to show me a big one on his back, but Pat rushed forward and said "We don't want to see all of it!"

The Royal Star and Garter heroes and heroines part II

2011-08-26T08:55:00.001-07:00

(It would appear that Blogger hates my having so many photos, so this is in two parts.)

We went to the Combined Services Bar, which is a pub inside the building. Residents are charged at cost, which makes it the most reasonably-priced bar in the country, possibly the world. I got to know more people, including a lady who drove ambulances during the war, and who told me that she was born in Richmond. "I used to go past here with my nanny and we saw the poor soldiers in bath-chairs on the lawn. Little did I imagine I would be here one day." Another wonderful lady, almost 100 years old, was a Plotter during the war, and knew of the Normandy Invasion before it happened. "My boyfriend - he didn't become my husband - kept asking me, 'surely you know something! Something must be happening...'

and so I just said 'Every day things are happening...'" A bearded veteran of the Special Forces nudged me and said "You know who her husband was? He was Commander of the Amethyst, which ran the gauntlet along the Yangtse river when the Communists took over." He had his own special tankard that he drank out of. It was given to him by his mates on the eve of his wedding.

There was a very notable absence at the concert. Nancy Wake was no longer seated in her usual place at the left of me as I sang. She had died two weeks earlier. The most decorated servicewoman in the war, and an inspiration. The Gestapo called her "White Mouse" because

she evaded them so cleverly. They placed a bounty of five million francs on her head. Her story is best told in the numerous Obituaries that have been running lately...I did know that when she parachuted into France she had her lipstick in her pocket, and that the parachute caught in a tree. The Captain she was to work under greeted her with "I hope all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year," and she countered with "Don't give me that French shit." Brava. She loved my French salon songs, and was particularly happy when I sang Handel. She had a calm demeanour and felt the music deeply. She had few words, and would take me by the hand after the concert and give it a brief, businesslike shake and nod once. It was a great accolade. I hope people continue to read her story and be inspired by her.

Malaria Tea-Dance at the LSHTM Library

2011-08-22T00:43:00.000-07:00

"Only in London could we be dressed in 1930s frocks and walking to a tea-dance celebrating World Mosquito Day in the library of the London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine," said Kelley.

What does one wear to a 1930s tea-dance and tiffin to commemorate Sir Ronald Ross's discovery of the link between mosquitos and malaria?

Wish I'd had more time to really think about it! There was this photo to guide us:

The dog's name was Binkie. Note that women wear hats at the table.

I have a nice hat, a very nice hat. Just like these ones. But wide brims suit me better so that's what I wore. And a dress that is afternoony and 1930s. Still! I wish I'd gone more Merchant Ivory, more tropical, more Poirot-in-India.

I met Kelley at Hummus Brothers in Holborn. Boy oh boy. You get fed there. And just because you can buy hummus in supermarkets does not mean that this stuff will be like that. It's really superb. Creamy and subtle and filling. Kelley shimmered in, attired in a bias-cut, dusk-purple silk dress that clung loosely like liquid. Sorry...it really did look marvellous. It's a great tribute to Kelley that "I got it at a Charity shop for five pounds" didn't make me hate her.

Around her neck dangled a tortoiseshell monocle on a lovely dusty-gold chain. How could one be more perfect for a 30s tea-dance amongst scientists?

I'm an Epilator-Procrastinator and so my legs needed a bit of cover. I needed M&S and their hosiery department, so we went to the School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine by way of Long Acre.

We were sidetracked by a sweet shop called Happie Loves It and I saw a dress that looked 50% Little House on the Prairie and 50% Stepford Wives. But once on, it has a way of making a girl look like an exotic concubine, wearing Zandra Rhodes in an early-70s edition of Vogue photographed by Sarah Moon.

VERY nice indeed and I had to buy it. I wished I could have worn it to the dance, but my bra was black and obvious.

The London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine has a shower in their loo. It is a light, airy building in the middle of Bloomsbury, and very nicely old. A man with a beard, wearing cream-coloured linen and a panama hat was signing the visitors' book, accompanied his wife who was wearing a cheongsam.

"Tea Dance"

read the visitors' book.

Upstairs one walked through a tent made of mosquito netting, on which were pinned photos, bits of text and objects related to malaria-related activities by staff, alumni and students of the LSHTM from around the world.

The library was filled with cakes, tea, scones, jam, and people of all ages, and several students. Kelley and I met a really lovely doctor from Cambridge, dressed in a silk dress with a print of butterflies.

The scones were enormous.

The Rag Roof Productions team had written a piece about the discovery of the connection between malaria and

mosquitos, and it was told in an extremely entertaining way, with three of the actors playing Ross, Lady Ross and Sir Patrick "Mosquito" Manson. I was AMAZED at how fearless Ross was, eating dried-up mosquitos that he thought carried malaria, etc. etc. and just how much patience the whole process took. Well done Rag Roof Theatre!

Then came the dancing.

We were all of us shown how to do the Charleston, after watching a fearless demonstration by the professional dancers from Rag Roof.

We had more cake, then the dancers changed to 1930s clothes and showed us how to waltz. Then, as if they couldn't hold it in any longer, they demonstrated SWING DANCING.

Well, the hat could no longer stay on my head, nor the hair up.

Kelley was amazing.

I was hot. And I don't mean that in a sizzling sort of way, but a sweaty sort of way.

The event elegantly tapered off, we all went to the RADA bar just round the corner and had drinks at the prices obviously expected of luvvies, met the Rag Roof folk properly, and also the splendid Rebecca Tremain whose idea all of this was (and who owned the modern Binkie). Then Nidhi (the Cambridge GP), Kelley and I walked to Chinatown and had some truly incredible Dim Sum.

Kelley Swain is the Poet In Residence at the Whipple Museum of the History of

Science in Cambridge.

She has a blog.

The bouquets on the tables at the tea-dance were each six test-tubes tied together with string, and a flower in each.

A photo of Rebecca Tremain doling out the medicinal G&Ts.

The event was also covered by the New Scientist.

Crystal Palace Overground Festival...and Victorian Dinosaurs

2011-08-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Staff at the Crystal Palace Museum say that they still get confused tourists asking where the
Palace is. "But the bus said Crystal Palace. I've always wanted to see the Crystal Palace." So have we all.

Travis found an image of it on his smartphone and held it up against the park where it once stood, hovering the phone just above the seemingly endless field of foundation stones. "That was big," he said.

The Overground Festival was in nearby Westow Park. It was overrun with children, teenagers, young, middle-aged and old. Andrea and I had to change into our 20s frocks in the back of an ice-truck. She was in shell-pink, I in fuchsia pink. The bandstand played host to Pogues covers, Reggae, blues, and then...the Lovely Parlour Band.

As John Baker was busy being married, and Nick and Matt busy playing music for the occasion, and Orpheus busy sunning himself in Greece, it was a rather different band. Simon heroically rushed from John's wedding to play his marvellous, creative and sensitive clarinet, and two magnificent musicians became Lovely Parlourites: former U.S. Navy Travis Finch and his mandolin, and Peter Sachett (pronounced Sackett, though I did it wrongly on the stage) on his rich violin. Andrea carefully altered her parts to include John's bass notes, and Travis gave all of Nick's fills and cues for me, as well as being Matt!

A small gaggle of children sat in a line in front of us, and even danced. many other people seemed to like us too. We were given as many drinks as we liked and I got a little wasted on Perry. Staggering around smiling uproariously afterward, the rest of the parlour Band didn't let me get into trouble, and we were asked to pose for lots of photos. After one of them I said "gah, I'm sure I looked like sh*t, but thankyou." A woman looked daggers at me. Beside her sat her young daughter. But only a few places away, some youths were smoking weed.

"Bouncy Castles!" I said.

"I've always wanted to go on a bouncy castle," said Travis.

"You! The U.S. Navy would have to construct one. How much do you weigh?"

At this point we were sidetracked by masked revellers. Five minutes later, Travis said "Two- thirty."

"Is it really? Wow we've got loads of afternoon left!"

We all went to a very classy Italian joint, chosen by Andrea, and then we

walked over to the 1852 dinosaur sculptures (1852! Before the Origin of the Species was published!). I think we all adored them. The day was dimming down. It was magical.

I remember these when they were a few weird heads and tails poking out from brambles and Tesco bags, behind wire fencing.

Now, restored, they look magnificent, exactly what must have haunted the dreams of Victorian children for years and years.

But we have something of a better idea of what an Iguanodon looks like, today.

Forties at the Churchill War Rooms

2011-08-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Oh the self-promotion doesn't stop. In this case I didn't mind so much. I'd been invited.

It was Friday’s “Late at the Churchill War Rooms”, and it was recommended that one dressed 1940s, but not compulsory. Well I’m representing the Lovely Parlour Band

and and our future gigs there so I did my best with the Bombshell Dress by Folter and some silk flowers and a snood hand-knitted by the SNOOD LADY who is utterly marvellous. Go to www.thesnoodlady.com. Really, do go there. She is over eighty years old, knits snoods the way HER grandmother taught her, and you just send her a cheque and a note to say which colour and she will knit you one and send it to you.

The biggest issue people have with this blog seems to be that I don’t post enough photos of myself. Which means that I must take them with a self-timer and feel a complete chump as my bemused neighbours walk past. Or even worse, wander around these

events with a camera asking others to take my photo. Which I won’t do. In any case, here’s the 40s get-up as I left the house. I didn’t go straight to the event but first sang

for some lovely people at the St. Mary’s Hospice in Chiswick. Utterly gorgeous place, and

friendly sweet people. There were two enormously fat dogs following the Anglican nuns around and being rewarded with gifts of cake which seemed to be in excellent supply. St. Mary’s was built to specifications advised by Florence Nightingale. It has a wonderful garden. I sang songs from the thirties mostly. A lady said that she

hadn’t heard most of them for sixty years, and that she felt young again.

Two hours later: the War Rooms were just off Whitehall and security guards along King Charles Street wished me a nice weekend as if 1940s platform heels, full makeup, snood and silk flowers were normal attire for a day at the office in Westminster. I told them about the event and they didn’t know about it. Appropriate for the War Rooms, which for the whole of the war nobody knew existed except for those who worked there.

It is an atmospheric place, beautifully run and with passionate and kindly tour-guides. Most people dressed up for this, making an excellent effect, though I'd say six out of ten dresses were fifties. A trio of girlies sang Andrews Sisters things, and there was a room full of swing-

dancers, carrying on as if they’d not stopped since the Fabulous Fifties at the London Museum.

A really entertaining, and quite rare film called “A Welcome to Britain” was shown, starring, and written by Burgess Meredith in 1943. It was a guide for U.S. troops on what to expect and how to behave. Highly recommended. Bob Hope made an appearance and the crowd roared.

His quickfire humour translated well to our times, but Beatrice Lillie’s “Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden” did not. Not a smile from anyone. Meredith shows in the film that you’re not to make fun of Scots soldiers’ kilts, eat too much when invited to someone’s house, flash your money around or expect cold beer. And that you must develop a liking for tea. Also there’s a moment where he informs us that if you come from the deep south you aren’t to be shocked when black soldiers are treated by the British with equal respect as the white ones. “There’s no prejudice when it comes to...dying,” says a U.S. General from South Carolina, awkwardly.

Fabulous Fifties and Self-Promotion

2011-08-14T02:18:00.000-07:00

I really hate self-promotion. But given a choice of

A. Talking about my singing to a curator at the Museum of London when she's just given a wonderful lecture and is surrounded by admirers and friends, then going and interrupting her again after I'd gone back to coat-check to retrieve my demo, or

B. Doing nothing, and hearing a few months from now that the Museum of London is doing a Titanic-and-Suffragette anniversary event and have hired another singer and band to do the music, well...

I'll go for A, even if it means standing on Tatty Devine's learn-to-make-a-corsage tables and singing like a maniac.

Fabulous Fifties at the Museum of London was fun and educational. As is the Museum of London in general. One of my favourite museums ever.

Men in well-cut tweed and hats cheerily arranged us in a queue and the girls all eyed each other and I marvelled yet again how well the high street does 50s vintage these days. Girls outnumbered boys by about four to one. Three girls were dressed in Vivian of Holloway and spent their time swishing skirts and posing and being cockney and cheerful to everyone. I think they must have been brand ambassadors. Wonderfully old fashioned. Didn't models used to do this? Mingle and tell people where they got their dress?

Andrea and I were early and we killed time in the nearby Pret, observing other 50s earlybirds. A man in a greased quiff and racing t-shirt and jeans with turnups five inches thick was with his resolutely modern girlfriend in her skinny jeans, ballet flats and layered tank-tops. She looked adoringly at him. A woman in pincurls and a dress that would have been fifties if it had been half-a-yard longer looked strangely bitter as she drank her latte.

Andrea told me she used to play in an all-girl band in Slovakia called the Aphrodisiac Salon Orchestra. They played soft rock in virginal white dresses. This girl continues to surprise.

She looked magnificent in her fifties-style frock. Some people suit particular eras and I think this one is Andrea's. That, or the 1860s, which it is of course based on (so Dior said anyway!)

I wore a dress from Bettie Page clothing, which one has to buy from the States, but everything of theirs that's in a size L fits me perfectly. I wore a gold coin necklace in honour of the Museum of London's Roman coins. The lace of the red dress kept catching on the rough brutalist Barbican cement pillars.

Inside, there was a compact list of things to do: be made over by hair and makeup people (two or three such stations, and free, but one would spend all night queueing),

have a badge made by Tatty Devine out of your choice of London museum images (my three...Andrea didn't want her turn, and I managed an extra), learn how to make a corsage (they all looked identical: a rosette made out of coloured measuring tape), learn how to swing-dance, and/or go to a lecture. We went to both lectures.

One was on the Bohemian existentialist Beatniks in Soho and the Jazz Wars (wooo!) You had the high-energy, retro-loving dancers who revisited the 20s and then you had the ones who were too cool to dance and preferred to sit and look profound. That's what I remember anyway. Subsequent research (just now) would indicate that a person could write a set of encyclopaedias and still not exhaust this subject. Anyway, Cathy Ross did a damned good lecture, and gave me this: Beatniks dressed as Frenchmen because they dug the French thinkers. But Sartre et al wouldn't be caught dead in a striped Breton top and beret. Might as well have carried around a string of onions, too! Hey I like this idea. All people who love Freud and Jung can wear Lederhosen and carry an Alpenstock!

I chased poor Cathy with my chatter and CD and business card ("Here! Oh might as well take two! I've got LOADS!") and Andrea was a stylish antidote to me when I introduced her as my pianist. We wandered through the very loud live music - neither hot nor cool jazz, but rockabilly, of course - and saw lovely Kelley Swain! She is poet in residence at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, has a book of poetry out called "Darwin's Microscope" and is, as I say, lovely. She has a blog http://kelleyswain.wordpress.com/ . We got Tatty Devine to make us more badges, then

proceeded to the next lecture: Coffee Bars and Duffle Coats - Alternative Clothing in the Fifties. We sat next to two gorgeous young women who were living proof that you could be stylish, retro, and not have to rely on a pretty dress. One was in a VERY sharp suit with white piping, and the other had on a yellow-and-green checked tweed waistcoat with watch and chain, and a frilly blouse and tweed plus-fours. She was, as illustrated in the subsequent talk, a Teddy Girl.

On the way out, one of the Vivian of Holloway girls, blonde and in polka-dots, said "Did you 'ave a good time, girls? Find any nice men?" Pianist, scientist-poet and geeky singer stared back at her, unsure of what to do. "I saw some sailors!" she continued, winking archly. "I always like a sailor!" "I don't know," Kelley said. "You can catch some pretty nasty things..." "Oooh, what kind of things? Like a bird?" she said, undaunted. When she'd gone, Andrea muttered "I cannot believe it. I have been attacked by a living barbie doll. Could they create life-sized barbie dolls in the 1950s?"

Sussex Cream Tea the day after the riots.

2011-08-12T02:15:00.001-07:00

I opened a concert with the words "We're both from London, but you'll all be glad to know that we didn't take part in any looting or rioting. Chris Taylor bought this keyboard fair and square."

The audience erupted. At last they could laugh at what had filled them with such horror. These veterans of the second world war and refugees from another era have been all staring uncomprehendingly at the newspapers these last few days.

All I knew about yesterday's gig was that it was a 'Cream Tea Concert' for a Disability Association. Chris and I found ourselves in a large conservatory in the middle of Wadhurst, East Sussex, surrounded by large palm trees, ferns, huge goldfish under a fountain...and about a hundred elderly people sipping tea. We HAD to start with "By A Sleepy Lagoon" of course.

There really is nothing

like that first song. Audiences will have seen singers they were certain had dropped down from heaven, but more often, singers they'd probably pay to have a laryngectomy. When your first phrase is written by Eric Coates, and it's a rising phrase like that one, you've got your audience. They know what you are.

I brought out "Trees" from 1922 and said the opening line "I think that I shall never see..." and several answered back "...a poem lovely as a tree!" A man named Jack in the front row who had been in the Royal Artillery said afterwards that when he was in the desert with the rest of his unit, he was often asked to sing that. "Hilarious when there weren't any trees!" I said. He laughed. But I found out, after further chat, that it wasn't for the irony of it, but because the young men all loved it. It made them think of home. His buddy, Clive, had an accordion, which he carried all through the war, through combat and all weathers.

I showed my Dash's Song Folio from 1942 and asked what everyone wanted to hear. They asked for "When they Sound The Last All-Clear."

When they sound the last All-Clear,

How Happy, my darling, we'll be

When they turn up the

lights

And the dark lonely nights

Are only a memory.

Never more we'll be apart

Always together sweetheart

For the church-bells will ring

And the whole world will sing

When they sound the last all-clear.

How I wish I could have read their minds.

The scones were all freshly baked by volunteers. The conservatory belongs to the Tetrapak billionaire, who lets this charity have its cream teas in it. There are deer everywhere around the grounds.

We walked from the station at Wadhurst to the venue. It was a gorgeous day, dappled sunlight through trees, fresh air, hardly any cars. We carried the keyboard between us and there was a pub on the way. Met a man there who conducts the Beethoven Orchestra of Manchester. He says how important it is that people play in an ensemble, even badly. "Even playing quietly the odd note or two is a more fulfilling experience than sitting in an audience doing nothing."

Chris ordered some Eton Mess and told me he couldn't finish it. That was fine with me! Local cider ensured I enjoyed the walk even more.

The lady who organised us to come down and give the concert saw us on the road when we were three quarters of the way there and very kindly loaded the piano in her car, took us the rest of the way, and told everyone at the venue that we were WALKING!!!! "Walking!!!????!" everyone reacted. "You didn't!" "They nearly didn't get here! They were walking!!" Well, we had already gone three-quarters of the way, and it had been perfectly pleasant, we said feebly. "Walking!" everyone said.

I kept being told there was a place where I could change. I was sure I hadn't sweated that much on the walk. Perhaps they thought my dress (the Fleur Wrap Dress from Heyday: www.heydayonline.co.uk)

was too casual. I'd thought it'd be perfect for cream tea. Lovely crisp colours, print rather like a china tea-set. Turned out that the contract from Music In Hospitals had requested a changing area, and I was only being paranoid.

I told people that the dress was new, made and designed by a young lady in England, and that it was all part of a movement to celebrate our past. Jack's friend Terry told us that he'd been to Bodium castle the other day and there had been a big band playing Glen Miller and young people dressed up in 1950s clothes dancing to it. "It made me feel so good to see that that I actually went round the castle! I had a magnificent day!" He'd been an engineer in the war. His friend Jack sat ramrod straight, and looked younger than him, although he was quite a bit older. Jack was 96.

The place was bizarre. Looked 30s Moorish. Most odd. There were antlers everywhere.

Ruth from Balfron Towers

2011-08-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to look at a flat in East London that had been advertised on Gumtree. It was in the top floor of a brutalist building designed by Erno Goldfinger...yes indeed. Ian Fleming so hated his designs he used his name for one of his villains.

The flat was in the very top floor and along a sort of gangway to another, smaller, chunk of tower. Going along the gangway I felt a horrible swaying sensation. A sweet face poking out of a door said "I'm here..." and that was Ruth.

She had taken this little corner of a cement monstrosity and filled it with art, seedlings, plants, books.

The gangway is anchored in rubber apparently and sways visibly in the wind. Ruth told me I was the first visitor to detect this, which I find enormously hard to believe, but she has an honest face.

She's right above the Blackwall tunnel and so there's a constant buzz (I felt like yelling down: "rather you than me, suckers!"), and you can see for MILES around. It feels as if you can see France. City Airport glows, and off in the distance there's the Gherkin, the London Eye all tiny, and everything.

I couldn't imagine how many trips in the tiny lift my concert dresses would need, and then she has to move out in a year, poor thing, while they do Balfron up all chic and then charge City workers a mint to buy them.

But Ruth is a new friend, and a very, very talented artist. She paints abstracts, but that's like saying someone cooks food. Most abstracts in this world are processed cheese on Wonderbread.

Hers are pea and mint croquettes, roasted aubergine with sofrito and chickpeas.

We both went to the Vortex on Saturday to see Vila Verde.

The Vortex club is in a box in a public square just around the corner from Dalston Kingsland. Ruth used to go to the Vortex back when it was in Stoke Newington, years ago. A large black man with a gold Nefertiti-head pendant around his neck said to me "It's been a while since I've been to the Vortex. Stoke Newington's changed a lot." He genuinely had no idea he was in Dalston. I think he was posh. Anyway, this square had an outdoor ping-pong table which saw constant use the whole time we were there. When we left at 10-ish (I had to play the organ the next morning) two young guys with corn-row hairdos were still playing. The club is at the top of the building and all the blackout blinds were down for a clubby atmosphere when we got there at 7:30. The sun tried to stream in through the cracks. Ruth said "It's raining...there'll be a rainbow." and so we pulled up one of the blinds and there it was, huge. Vast. A full double arc. They aren't Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet. They're Pink Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet Aquamarine and a tiny bit of pink.

We raised a few of the blinds and saw that the ping-pong players hadn't stopped, but everyone was posing in groups on the wet cement against the rainbow while cameraphones were busy. Ruth said that from her flat she sees rainbows that describe a circle. We only see an arch because of how close we are from the ground. I'd like to see that.

Vila Verde was excellent as always. Two of them are playing with me in the Crystal Palace Overground Festival on Saturday: Simon Marsh on clarinet and Travis Finch on Bandolim. He has a tattoo he got while he was in the U.S. Navy. How cool is that?!

Nick Ball's new drum demos, fabulous Choro, and Time for Tea

2011-08-03T07:06:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I paid a visit to Shoreditch's "Time For Tea". I'd met a man named Johnny and his lovely daughter over a stall at Vintage on the SouthBank. The stall sold fairground tat from the fifties....the REAL thing. Hideous buck-toothed, red-nosed and ginger-moustachioed masks, boxes of tiny plastic babies, novelty brooches (cannot hope to describe). If you really want to see (and you ought to!) go HERE. But there's nothing like running it all through your hands!!

In any case I said "It's like that shop where Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard steal stuff on a dare," and a girl in a leather jacket with an angelic face said "Exactly!!" Her name is Tillie. She tap-dances, and her dad owns Time for Tea.

I bought three of the horrible buck-toothed masks for the band I was going to see later that evening.

This was Vila Verde at the Jamboree in Limehouse. Vila Verde plays Choros, which could be described as Brazilian ragtime. Delicate, melancholy filigree masterpieces, these Choros. The lovely Emily O'Hara started the band and they have gone from strength to strength. Her passion has translated itself into a thing of beauty. They even sell green t-shirts for a fiver.

Showed off my "Chic on a Shoestring" book and gave the masks to the band. Emily says that she had nice dreams that night, and that my evil plan had failed.

In any case! Yesterday went to Time For Tea. Johnny Vercoutre is remarkable. We had an interesting conversation on how "vintage" is getting too predictable. He suggested I shave my head. I felt very complimented but couldn't help concluding that the man didn't really get a good look at my ears. He effectively lives in a shop on Shoreditch High Street, which he has gigs in, rents out for parties, and opens for tea on Sundays. The rest of the time it's his home, and people stop by to pet his MASSIVE dog, talk about old bikes, and generally be neighbourly. All on a high street. More people should do this; the world would be a better place.

Nick Ball has uploaded a series of early drum demos! VERY impressive. This is important work, to get the word out on how to perform music from the first two decades of the 20th century. I am honoured to be his colleague.

New clip on YouTube, plus Vintage on the South Bank

2011-08-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

I think I must have said "Sorry, that's my bag not my hand" about six times at Vintage on the South Bank on Saturday. Great fun though. Bought a book from the Fashion and Textile Museum stall called Chic on a Shoestring. It gives instructions on how to make a fascinator out of feathers and a bit of felt, how to make a plain pair of shoes look like really expensive brogues with some glue and scissors and suede (VERY clever. I shall be sexing up several pairs I hope) and also how to make an 'emergency pillbox hat' out of an old CD, a cereal box and some fabric. Oh, and of course, glue!

I was with Andrea and her Czech friend, who did not understand vintage at all. "My grandmother still has this stuff. We don't like it."Andrea fell under the spell though. I think that one aspect of vintage opens up others. So if you came for the clothes, you'll probably grow to like the music. In Andrea's case, it's the other way round!

Andrea bought a gorgeous hairpiece from a fabulous milliner called Valerie Corona. She makes hats at Walter Wright, the oldest hat factory still run by its founding family, still actually making hats in Luton. "We stay alive because of events like this," said Philip Wright amidst all the Chaps, Chapettes, Swing-dancers and tea-and-scone drinkers. "If we'd catered to the high street we would have been forced to base our operations in the far east." So next time you hop onto one of those orange planes to Malaga or Geneva, remember that Luton was originally the town of hats.

Someone has posted footage of me singing an aeronautical (and in the second verse, prohibition) song from 1917. I like the fact it's in black and white. And that it's Albert Ball's Flying Aces! Woooooo! I adore singing with them! Nick Ball on spoons! Ellie Smith on Trombone! Dickie Evans on Sousaphone! Matt Redman on guitar! Simon Marsh on saxophone! Playing pop songs from the first world war.

St. Martin in the Fields debut

2011-07-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today I sang at St. Martin in the Fields for the first time.

I rang Andrea to find out when she'd like to try on a few of my dresses and Orpheus said, in the background, "Ask her to sing the Strauss with us!"

When I first came to London eleven years ago I wanted to sing a recital at St. Martin in the Fields. I went in and asked an usher. He was awfully sweet but said it was at least a year's wait and you had to submit a tape or a CD (yes it was that long ago) and recommendations and credentials. Well I didn't have much of either.

It's still at least a year's wait and as it's unpaid it's a little silly to commit to something like that when, in the course of the 300+ days you could be offered a gig with a fee attached, on the same day.

This must have happened to the singer who was to perform today, because last night Andrea and Orpheus were rung up and offered the slot.

Had to find a dress that wasn't too fancy (at a lunchtime concert never wear anything you can't wear at a lunch) and that was predominantly black (Andrea and Orpheus were in black), and that looked plausible sitting in an audience. One was damp and drying over a door. The other needed ironing. The concert started in two hours.

Out came the iron. Out came some earrings. Two Benefit makeup kits (Big Beautiful Eyes and Justine Case) and the trusty Mason Pearson brush. Out the door. Onto the first train to Paddington. Onto the Bakerloo Line, which had signalling problems. St. MIF was half full when I got there, so no chance of rehearsal. It was entirely full when the concert started.

Orpheus and Andrea played incredibly. Beautifully, wildly, passionately. They were both crying, but not too much to interfere with the performance.

I sat and watched and only halfway through the concert did I remember that I hadn't warmed up, or in fact sung a note since Sunday, when I was exhausted from singing and learning, singing and learning, then crashing and burning (see previous post). Would the voice work?

Orpheus surprised the audience and called me up to the stage to sing the last number. The man next to me stared as I stood up and walked to the front. They started Strauss's Morgen.

The voice was fine.

They went off, were cheered, came back on, were cheered, went off, wiped off tears, took their final bows. An American lady came up to me and said "That was so beautiful. Oh it was gorgeous. So unexpected. Thank you for the beauty." A German couple came up (they always seem to wear well-ironed cottons with a vaguely Safari-look about them) and asked what the piece had been. "Richard Strauss." "Oh one almost thought Mahler! Danke, danke vielmal." Everyone there was a visitor to the country. Very sweet.

Andrea and Orpheus poured out their souls through the music...his quicksilver, warm and passionate Mediterranean soul and her deep, brooding, passionate Slavic soul.

We went to see "Forests, Rocks, Torrents" at the National Gallery, right next door. Rugged landscapes of Switzerland and Scandinavia, seen through the eyes, and considerable techniques, of romantic artists. A black couple, also looking at the paintings, came up to Andrea and Orpheus and thanked them for the concert.

A Bach-disaster

2011-07-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

The Lutheran church in London has a monthly Bach Vespers, where a group of wonderful musicians and a bass, a tenor, an alto and a soprano get together and perform one of Bach's 200+ cantatas. These are little gems. He wrote them for church use, churning one out each Sunday. He wrote many more than 200 in fact, but when Bach was around EVERYONE wrote things for Sunday worship, it was taken for granted, and music was often lost afterwards. Nobody had the slightest inkling that three and a half centuries later we'd be cherishing every last semi-quaver.

Well anyway. Martin Knizia, the musical director of St. Anne's Lutheran Church (on Gresham Street, just between St. Paul's tube station and the Museum of London) has been indulgent enough to have me sing the alto for these events a great number of times. I figure I've sung about 50 cantatas so far. Sometimes one or other of the singers (usually a bass or a tenor) comments "I think Bach was busy this week. Not one of his more inspired efforts", or "What was Bach thinking? Bad day?" But every one of these things is a masterpiece by my reckoning. Sometimes they're eccentric. Sometimes they're quirky. Bring it on!

A Cantata usually lasts about 20 minutes. It starts with a magnificent chorus (some of Bach's best, even including the Passions). At Gresham street we do these one-voice-per-part. Imagine the Messiah with one bass, one tenor, one alto and one soprano. A quartet of a chorus. A few places do this. People sometimes say it's more authentic, likely to have happened at the time the music was written. Sometimes that's complete bollocks. One-voice-per-part happens nowadays because it's too expensive any other way. At least with a quartet nobody has to squabble over who gets the solos. Any alto solos are MINE. Hah! For that I'm willing to carry any number of difficult long choral lines against an orchestra all by myself.

The drill, for me, is that Martin asks me if I can do the Bach Vespers on a given date or dates, and I write them down in my diary. Then I keep checking the St. Anne's website to see if they've announced which cantata it's to be. Then I go to the Cantatas website to download the PDF of the score. Then I learn it right away. I like to know these things inside and out. Completely. No amount of tempo-changes, no distractions of any kind will throw me, I hope. I'm just not a good enough sight-reader to do this music without prior study. Bach has one of the steepest learning-curves of any composer. I've seen people come in and sight-read the stuff and manage it fine, but I can always, ALWAYS tell. The intonation isn't right. The breaths are any old place. The phrasing, thus, is compromised. The piece doesn't lilt, sigh, or live.

Even with my preparation, I'm still thrown by things...a counter-melody from the second violin. The way an oboe comes in just after every phrase I do. The way an overtone in the building's acoustic reacts to a note of mine and affects the way I hear a modulation afterwards. We rehearse for the first time at 4 in the afternoon, performance is at 6:30. Always I finish the concert and always I'm singing the thing, much better, in my head all the way to the underground and all the way home, saying "NOW I know! Let me do it again!!!"

Well anyway. Day before yesterday was Sunday. I had my usual Finsbury Park church gig in the morning, and I looked forward to a lovely Bach Cantata at St. Anne's later; Catholics before noon, Lutherans after. The rehearsal schedule vibrated my Blackberry during the second mass and after a leisurely cup of tea I took a look at it. I saw "Duet, S and A, 5:30"

WHAT duet? I had a recit! What?!"

The website had said "BWV 96". I'd learned 96. It was actually 93. Okay, I'm not a total victim. I'm partly to blame. Had I cared to check, I'd have seen that BWV 96 is called Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn. And 93 is called Wer nur den lieben Gott Läßt walten. And that the number and the title did not match. DUH!

Herr Christ, indeed.

It was 1pm. I had to go to Father David's computer, print out BWV 93 on the backs of some "how to get to the cemetery" sheets left over from a funeral (bless him he said I could use fresh paper but scrap was fine) and watch, with sinking heart, as 16 pages of complicated chorus were slowly churned out. I kept praying for the double bar-line and never getting it. The duet was no easy thing either. Worse than a solo, where

at least I can concentrate solely on my line and the accompaniment, today I had the loveliest Bach soprano in the world, Emily Atkinson, to let down when I failed. The cliché is that the notes dance before your eyes in a jumble. For me it was just an inability to remember how my every entry started, feeling the weight of twenty pages in my hands against the inevitability of passing time, and a hot pressure inside my head and a weird lightness in my gut. Also a feeling that it's not really happening.

In the event, the church was full. The rehearsal for the choral bits was terrible, with me cutting out for whole measures and hearing a blank. The rehearsal for the duet was lovely, getting it slowly but surely, learning it, grasping it.

In the performance, inevitably, the chorus triumphed, and that duet crashed and burned. When the intro was played I didn't recognise any part of it. I sang it as if I was in the middle of a nightmare, one of those ones where something nasty is coming at you and your legs won't move.

There's one good thing about this situation however. No matter how badly you do a phrase, in a performance it's over quickly and you never have to repeat it. Soon enough, you'll be walking back to your seat, making a gurning face at the back wall only your colleagues can see.

I've done these cantatas and had a crowd of people surround me afterwards, saying I was magnificent, melting, heartfelt, glorious. This time, people walked away from me as I moved through the congregation.

For these Cantatas we must wear black. At least for this one I wore a skin-tight, beautifully-constructed with built-in corset Bettie Page early-fifties satin-and-lace black wiggle dress. I recommend the duet from Cantata 93. It is gorgeous. How I would have enjoyed it if I'd known it.

2011-07-22T11:00:00.001-07:00

The rain held off just enough!

The crowd formed above the steps however...the stand is in a dip that's part of all that modern stuff comprising London's City Hall. Essentially, anyone taking a stroll along the Thames stopped in astonishment to hear music from 1901, 1924, 1933 issuing forth from an area that normally features rock, blues and the occasional folk. So we caused quite a jam for the Thames-side promenaders!

There were City-workers with their sandwiches, a well-behaved set of schoolchildren, several retired people, mums and their

toddlers, young hipsters, tourists. They all loved it, thank the Lord.

Nick Ball showed off his skills making the very U2-looking slick modern drum-kit provided by Scoop Music sound as if it was from 1920, and bringing out his spoons to display his unparalleled virtuosity with kitchen implements. He wore a bowler hat and 30s suit. Matthew Redman had 20s gangster pinstripes and a fedora. Orpheus wore his tails and a top-hat, seen here being adjusted by the very professional hands of Mr. Redman. Andrea had her lovely dark velvet and some silk flowers, and bassist John Baker had his morning-coat. I don't know what it is about John. When he wears it, he looks like a sixties mod in Victorian duds he picked up from Granny Takes A Trip on the King's Road. I cannot work out how this happens. He doesn't try for it, I don't think. It's a good look, though.

After the gig we posed for photos, with Debee Calveche, Matt's gorgeous girlfriend, behind the camera. She also did some videos which I hope we'll be able to post soon. Nick's girlfriend, the extremely talented Emily O'Hara, who has a band called Vila Verde, came dressed in a purple cloche hat and lovely little dress and some excellent high heeled mini-boots. Looked so damned good I felt like having her on stage even though she hadn't brought her guitar or ukulele.

Mind you she could have borrowed one from Matt, he having carted along a mandolin, a guitar, a banjo, a melodica and Nick's glockenspiel to play by turns, which he did to excellent effect. I wish I could sing

like a soprano, bass and tenor when I so chose. I do a mean impersonation of a countertenor though, and some people have said I sound like a castrato from time to time. How they'd know, I can't imagine.

The Best at Passing Clouds...No Passing Clouds the day after.

2011-07-21T01:19:00.000-07:00

The sky is a light-pearl colour. Hoping that the rain keeps away, because I am very eager to perform at this Scoop festival on the Thames in a couple of hours' time...it's a stand just under Boris Johnson's nose, just between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. Somehow I think Boris would like songs like "The Honeysuckle and the Bee" and "Come to the Fair". In any case, if it rains it ain't happening.

Last night was the best Albert Ball's Flying Aces gig I've ever seen.

Even including the Astor Theatre at Deal. They really were on fire. All the solos were marvellous. Nick was inspired, and again, defining what a front-man really is. Playing the spoons and singing sweet and comic by turns, and about fifty effects behind his truly vintage drum-kit, music from the late 1800s to the early 30s, trying out new songs...if I had to choose one word it would probably be 'fresh'. People wanted more, much more, at the end, but band members had to get last trains to way south of the river. So the last song was introduced by Nick thus: "We have played songs from before the Great War, and songs from after it. This song was written during World War One, so perhaps we could all just listen to it." and then they played "They Didn't Believe Me", and I saw all the crosses over the hills at the end of "Oh What a Lovely War". People did listen.

I sang "Japanese Sandman" and tried to tell of when I introduced it in my tour of South Yorkshire and we heard of the Tsunami, but I think it fell flat. Luckily I can sing, anyway! We did the best version of "Honeysuckle" I think I've ever been part of.

Now for this weather!

Rehearsal in the Old Royal Naval College

2011-07-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Sort of a moment of truth today.

Does the CD work live?

Nick's and Matt's arrangements on the album use about 30 different instruments and effects (by which I mean real antique car horns, klaxons...) including accordion, cello, harp, ukulele, piccolo, congas, flexatone, spoons, violin, banjo, guitars, bouzouki, clarinets, double bass, souzaphone...! To tour some of these songs we're going to have to make do with less. So Matt's been head down doing touring arrangements for a week and this was our first chance to try them out. We met at the Old Royal Naval College, now Trinity College of Music, and we had a room right next to the Thames. It looked as if we could be flooded if it decided to rise. Wonderful old posters of Granville Bantock's bigger works were framed on the wall, including one called "Ali Baba". I'd like to sing in THAT.

We started with "Yours". The parts were handed round and instruments tuned. I got my recording device out for the sake of study later. Reckoned I'd start recording on the 3rd run-through of each piece; no need to waste the memory card on rough tryouts.

Nick counted "one, two, a-one two three four..." and this shimmering, magic perfection just sort of floated down as everyone started playing, absolutely, beautifully together. I scrambled to press the 'record' button. We ran through "Always", "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Come to the Fair", "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking", "Honeysuckle and the Bee", and "Can't Help Singing".

The answer, in any case, to the question at the top is YES. We are ready. Bring on the gigs. Bring on the ocean liners, the Orient Express Salon Concert carriage with its velvet and brocade, bring on the shopping malls. Get us accompanying the sipping of the tea, the cocktails, the dancing of stylishly-shod feet. Neither the stillness of an attentive concert audience or the rowdyness of a lot of costumed re-enactors and their idling Spitfires will faze us. Here's a heads-up to community theatres across the land: we are ready for you, and you will kick yourselves if you don't get in there now!!

Later, Andrea the lovely pianist and I went looking for 1930s-style dresses. I have quite a few, and Andrea has an array of beautiful black frocks, but she has none in colour. Collaborative pianists (one no longer says 'accompanist') are still expected to wear black in case the diva changes her mind at the last minute and, quel horreur, ends up clashing with, or wearing the same colour as, the girl at the piano. Once, when Andrea felt she simply had to brighten up her world and put on a little pink silk jacket for someone's audition about a year ago, the panel reprimanded her. In any case, Andrea's colour-ship has come into harbour!

The high street is awash with historical pastiche. All decades are here. Except in the matter of hem-length. It's to-the-floor or above-the-knee only. Maxi or mini. So many maxi-dresses out there these days that Victoria Station on a Saturday looks like the biggest Stepford Wives theme-party in history. Drowning in discounted Monsoon silk chiffon, it came to us in a flash: buy maxi, shorten to taste! Or rather, to 30s fashion-plate.

Weird gig with Andrea and Orpheus

2011-07-18T01:35:00.000-07:00

Sang last night at a grand converted nunnery in the middle of Sussex; Andrea and Orpheus (pianist and violinist on my album) knew the organiser. We walked from the tiny station through tall-treed suburbia with Andrea's smartphone detecting our movements and guiding us. Getting off the train at the same time was a billowing silk chiffon dress in a wild print that reminded me of Liz Taylor in her kaftan days. Its occupant was wearing as much slap on her face as Marcel Marceau. Pink, jewelled shoes. Behind her was a man with an interested, lined face wearing a bold Henley jacket and a Panama. Behind them both creaked a terrifying wiry man with dyed hair and the outlines of life-sustaining machinery under his sweat-soaked shirt. "My name Charrrrles. Je suis Francais." I spoke French to him but he didn't answer. They took a taxi and whizzed past us.

At the venue was a jazz trio and friends. Very polished. A slim blonde singer with a face like Twiggy's ca. 1979 got up in her shiny black satin trousers and fitted white ruffled shirt that was just as liquid-looking as the trews, and gave a sophisticated, whimsical performance of Lullaby of Birdland. I've no idea why, but I felt as if it was1982, and it was so sweet it was almost painful.

The pink chiffon got up and imperiously demanded that the piano be 'shut', ie the lid down. She had presence. She was like Prince Philip being rude to Fiona Bruce and Alan Titchmarsh: the last of a species. As for the singing, imagine Maria Callas on her final tour.

Andrea was introduced as 'Alexandria and friends.' We got up and gave them We'll Gather Lilacs and the room changed. It wasn't my singing or even Andrea's, or Orpheus's playing. There are some songs that change a room, and we were all in a different place, and we all knew it. People just looked at each other suddenly, and liked each other. We'll gather lilacs in the spring again.

When we got up again later on the impresario asked me "Jazz or Opera?" He may well ask. Neither, or both?

Orpheus and Andrea stepped up to perform some gypsy and Slavic music, with the fellow from the land of sunshine (O.) and a girl from the land of snow (A.) making for a great stylistic push-and-pull. Worked well.

We did Honeysuckle from 1901, and Always from 1924 and this time everyone sang along, smiling from ear to ear. All ages. Very encouraged. Nobody does this stuff much, and one always asks Hmm, why not? It's good to see that it's not because people don't want it.

Charrrrrles got up with a jerk and grabbed the microphone and barked down it "Oh you can kiss me on a Monday, a Monday, a Monday, is very very good...or you can kiss me on a Tuesday a TUESDAY a TUESDAY in fact I wish you would!" and did the whole song, jabbing the audience with his bony finger with each iteration of the days of the week, and of course entirely without accompaniment. He had a Cockney accent, no hint of French.

Waiting at the station at a quarter to midnight, Orpheus said "That Charles. He's a very scary guy. I wouldn't ever want to mess with him."