16th May 2007

I really don't know where the time goes. I hadn't realised how long it had been since the last post until I was reminded out of the blue. Here was I thinking only a few hardened sessioneers here in Kent might find it even remotely interesting to read the Session Diary when I find that there is a following! So at this point I must mention the Northern Banjolin Fan Club and Sharky, who left a post - eager for the next instalment. Well first of all, I want to hear more about the Northern following of course! Are you all sessioneers? Or is it just 1 sessioneer? Where abouts in the North are you? For us it starts at the Medway which means Londoners are Northern. Well we do live nearer to France than London and it's now easier to get to as it's more downhill through the tunnel since the Earthquake.

I am minded of the the fact that Rochester Sweeps has just been and gone, and usually I go over for the Irish Session in the Bull on the Sunday. I didn't go this year, but reflecting on previous years, you do get a lot of Morris Men coming in to shelter. And play. Melodeons. Irish music in a Morris style is something else. It is something else other than Irish music certainly.

Now I am not knocking Morris Men, having been one myself. I started dancing with Green Oak in Doncaster while at college and later started Cheswold Morris and was their Squire for a few years before moving further south. We could have a whole other blog about traditional Morris v 'modern' Morris and whether women dancing Morris is really Morris, but this isn't the place. One of our sessioneers - an Irish Piper - dances with Headcorn and they are a very good side so that's enough about Morris men. Oh, except that since the tunes are in our collective session unconscious, every so often we have to do a medley of Morris tunes at our mixed session. Well, they are good tunes. It's just that there are others as well.

Some of our hardy Mixed Lumpy session members went on an annual pilgrimage to Ypres (Wipers to my Grandfather) over the weekend and I'm dying to hear how they got on. There's always a tale or two - usually involving being asked to 'play a few tunes' somewhere and finding out it's in front of 2,000 people. Still, who needs rehearsals? I think Belgian beer plays a part in all this somewhere too.

Well, the sessions start again tonight with the Irish at the Anchor in Wingham and the Mixed Lumpy tomorrow at the Bear in Faversham. Last weeks' were fairly normal - as near normal as they get anyway. The Irish session possibly reached new heights of surrealism traveling in one conversation from playing with emotion via the three musketeers to after-shave. (Something along the lines of Pathos, Porthos, Aramis, Brut 33). Also a bizarre and extensive wander down the memory lane of British humour - Flanders and Swann, Gilbert and Sullivan and taking in the colonies with Bob Newhart and Tom Lehrer. Yes, it's always an adventure that leaves many a visitor perplexed and bemused. Including us.

There is a French session (none of them are, they just play French music in striped jerseys and big moustaches with strange instruments) on the second Monday of the month at the Half Moon and Seven Stars and the third Monday is a mixed session at Tilmanstone at which some of the French session play. I wish I could go to the French session. I just feel there would be so much to write about. Like playing tunes through 15 times as though it were a Bal Folklorique. Some of them go out as a band - Les Batons. Yes, we have been asked who this chap Les Batons is. Really.

I will endeavour not to leave it so long before the next instalment!