…slippery slope

My day today has been its own little continuum starting with bad and ending up good. I must confess, as I write this on Sunday morning, to be very glad its over and hopeful that I won’t have to go through another day like that again in a hurry.

Anyway, I’m going to focus on the best bit – the evening.

On a complete whim, a month or so ago when I was with my folks in Rosemoor, I boutgh DM and I a pair of tickets to see Paul Jones and David Kelly. I don’t know why I did, except that the evening was described as being great blues and we both love blues music so I thought the combination of Rosemoor, which is now right up at the top of my favourite places, and the blues was perfect.

I confess to being a complete ignoramus though and didn’t really know anything about the two musicians other than the ‘blurb’ saying Paul Jones was in Manfred Mann (yep, ticks a box – liked them). The only other bit I know is that Paul Jones is the incredibly sexy-voiced presenter of the wonderful Radio 2 blues show, which I have raved about before. So, if those two were true, which they undoubtedly were and if Paul Jones’s singing voice matched his speaking voice then it’d be a good night.

We often wobble on the night of a gig we’ve booked tickets for, um-ing and ah-ing about whether or not to get off our arses and go. Tonight there was no such prevarication because we have nowhere to sit in our house because our sitting room is now a building site. (Part of the bad about the day.)

So, we hopped in the car, suitably attired for a night in a tent in September.

As we got out of the car in Rosemoor, we discovered these signs on the grass leading down to the entrance of the gardens from the car park.

I thought they were jolly apt given that I was there, in my M&S jeans (with added lycra for extra comfort) and my QS £5 fleece that I’d bought ten years ago, when on holiday in Cornwall and after four days of solid rain, I had no dry clothes so I popped into Newquay and bought the fleece! My only ‘saving grace’ was that I had actually bothered to put on my trademark khol!

We were also on the way to see two men play who were (as my Mum would say), nearly old enough to be my father…..and she was right there too – DM and I were certainly no older than anyone else there and indeed, I’d have said we were the young ones! Strangely, given the similarity in age between my Dad and these two, my Dad’s own musical interests stop roughly a hundred years before anything these two would play was written – he has absolutely no interest in pop culture at all. (Sorry Dad.)

It was very genteel in fact, marquee on the lawn, proper glass glasses for drinks and everyone sitting down, including the musicians.

That didn’t stop it being one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a long, long time. Paul Jones is indeed a superb vocalist and a double helping of the spoken voice and the singing one was really very pleasurable. What neither of us had appreciated, was that he was ‘mr harmonica man’ in Manfred Mann and, whereas we’d expected to see him play guitar, it played harmonica exclusively. DM was in harp heaven! Dave Kelly turned out to be a wonderful guitar player and an excellent singer too. It transpires that we’d bought tickets to see two walking blues encyclopaedias, without realising the significance of what we’d done.

Dave Kelly has played with John lee Hooker and Howlin Wolf too – what a great way to make a living.

In fact, we came away thinking that they were indeed lucky chaps. Lucky to have such completely amazing talent and lucky to be able to continue to make a living out of that talent well into their sixties. That luck also came our way because we saw an excellent show, full of fantastic music from two guys who knew their stuff and were passionate about it.

Are we, then, on the slippery slope? Well, if we are, give me a shove down it because I can’t think of a nicer place to be.


Today is the anniversary of our grand plan's fruition!