Up nice and early for the next leg west on our tour. Cuppas and ablutions finished, we tidied up the Airbnb and readied ourselves to get the instruments back into the car. All very efficient. So, it was a bit of a shock to hear a noise and find a man in our living room speaking only Polish. The next guests had arrived early - two hours early to be precise. Anyway, using his best Polish and hand signals, Rob told him to give us 15 minutes and we'd be gone and, with that information, a smile and a shrug, the man ducked his head and departed.
Car loaded, we set off to get ourselves well beyond Bristol before breakfasting. At that time on a Sunday morning the traffic was reasonably light and we managed to reach Taunton Deane services before our stomachs were rumbling too much. The food wasn’t great but it filled a gap.
The M5 and A30 had only light traffic and we managed to make such excellent progress that we could afford to push on a little beyond our planned destination near Redruth to visit St. Ives. The rain clouds vanished over the Moors and we arrived in the pretty port in sunshine and spent a pleasant 90 minutes exploring the harbour area.
Then it was back in the car and on to meet our hosts for the evening , J and N. We arrived with them as planned around 4:00pm just in time for a lovely cup of tea and some lemon drizzle cake in their beautiful cottage garden. We know J through our links with the IBMT and it was J who persuaded the Dreamers Folk Club to extend an invitation to us to perform there.
Having been shown to our rooms for the night, we were then treated to a very nice pre-gig meal, perfect for an energy boost.
Meal over, we followed J and N to the Dreamers Folk Club which is held in the large backroom of The Victoria Inn in Four Lanes village near Redruth arriving at the same time as many other performers, and the beautiful, deep red, club banner was already in place behind where performers stand to perform. The welcome from club organiser, Jonathan, and others couldn't have been warmer. It was a real pleasure to be there.
The room was set out with tables and it soon filled up. Jonathan and his partner began the floor spots with a crowd pleaser, Peter Sarstedt’s ‘Where do you go to my lovely?’. We then had some topical songs about local issues and an hilarious modern take on Matty Groves which sets the fight challenge in a pub over a game of snooker! Laugh out loud material. This was followed by a gorgeous version of jazz classic, Georgia, on acoustic guitar with beautiful vocals and sweet, understated, harmonica playing.
Nigel then performed an excellent monologue about Neolithic NIMBYs’ downbeat reaction to that newfangled Stone Age construction at Stonehenge. We followed on with our first set.
The Dreamers’ audience was very much up for singing and choruses all seemed to be picked up quickly. It was also an excellent listening audience which meant the quiet songs were also well received. We had some lovely feedback at half time from an audience full of energy. A significant compliment was from one woman in the audience with a reputation for knowing an immense amount about the British folk song canon, who thanked us profusely for playing songs that she’d never heard before.
There were more excellent floor spots before our second set began from excellent guitar-vocal duo Paul and Ruth, two great songs from Hilary playing guitar solo, and then Jane sang a truly rousing version of Keith Marsden's ‘Idlers and Skivers (Knocking on the Door)’.
Our second set seemed to go every bit as well as the first. We performed our song ‘Only for Three Months’ especially for J who we know has performed it unaccompanied many times at Dreamers Folk Club. As with the previous night in Bristol, we finished the night with an encore of The Maid of Culmore.
After some final conversations with club members, we were reasonably quickly packed up and on the road again, following J and N back to their cottage. We never drink alcohol before performing so, on another baking hot night, it was very generous of J and N to break out some cold beers for us after the event. It was lovely to relax with a cold drink and enjoy such stimulating conversation with our hosts in the living room of their beautiful cottage before slipping off to bed.
After a very peaceful night’s sleep, we were all up in good time to make the 300 mile journey back home to St.Albans. J and N's hospitality was to the fore again as they provided us with a splendid breakfast to send us on our way and, with that, we said our goodbyes and turned for home, up through Truro to the A30, which was again kind to us, before the M5, M4 and the inevitably troublesome M25 home.
Many thanks to the Dreamers Folk Club for the invitation to perform there and to J and N for their boundless generosity and hospitality. It was a long way to Redruth but it was worth every mile travelled!