Cleavies Fish Counter #23
Mornin’ fish-heads. Just got back from foreign parts [West Penwith!] from our two Minack gigs. What a place – we love our own bit of Cornwall, but that is something else down there. The Celtic feel and vibe seems that much stronger.
The luckiest girl in North Cornwall and I made a little holiday of it. Talking of vibe, we’ve just bought Jason’s pimped up VW camper from him – he had to sell it to get a pick-up because he’s gone fishing again, and we camped down at Treen, a little too close to the Logan Rock Inn. Brilliant camp site if you ever want to go there, fresh homemade pasties delivered every morning, and even hot cups of tea and coffee from the shop if you can’t be assed to light up the ghastly gas stove….
Anyway, there we were, vibing and dude-ing and hanging in the van in Ray Bans and Hawaiian shirts, beads hanging down [from the mirror obviously] and looking faintly incongruous in a vehicle more suited to someone full of youthful zest and exuberance and the intention to ride the wild Atlantic rollers. Man.
And we went bird watching.
It was good though. The RSPB re-introduced the chough to the west of the county a couple of years ago. It’s the Cornish national bird, and had become extinct here. They’re like a large jackdaw with a curvy red beak and legs, and you have always been able to find them out in parts of west Wales and Ireland, and now they’re thriving again in that part of Cornwall where the scenery is so similar to those other Celtic lands. Marvellous.
When we’d done with the twitching vibe we got back into the van vibe and fired up the Beach Boys greatest hits – you remember them, they were the ones who made The Sloop John B quite popular before we came along and immortalised it. There’s several other songs of theirs we could pinch, maybe ‘The Lonely Sea’, or ‘Sail On Sailor’, but I just love ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, just a pity it’s not nautical….probably just as well it’s not as I’m sure we would bugger it up; just imagine us old farts singing a zestfully youthful song of naive teenage hope and aspiration…
We met loads of folks at the campsite who’d come down for the gigs and were, like us, making a small holiday of it. I was touched when a lady told me that her husband had seen us live for the first time and that he’d cried.
‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘The ticket prices? The crap singing? Hayfever?’
She explained that he’d come down expressly for the Suzanne Vega gig, and got the dates wrong….
Anyway, lots of them were in the Logan Rock Inn after the Thursday night gig, and joined into an impromptu jam vibe thang with guitars and accordions and voices, and Lefty performed The Music Man, carrying Johnnie Mac on his back around and around the bar like a jockey and cracked his head on the nice low beam and we all had loads to drink as usual and left there at three o’clock….there’s zesty, youthful exuberance for you.
So the singing season has begun in earnest fish-heads. It’s the first Platt gig in Port Isaac on Friday, and then up to London for the River Pageant, the Royal Cornwall Show, the Falmouth Sea Shanty Fest, and on and on and on.
I remember a few years ago thinking what we might be getting ourselves into; gigs, recording, tours, signings, TV, radio, lovely audiences….
I remember thinking ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice?’
It is.
Dreckly dears xx
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