Despite it being a long way to go, after days of blisteringly hot weather in London and St Albans both of us were looking forward to travelling to the beautiful coastal village of Cley-next-the –Sea in Norfolk to play a concert as part of the local Contemporary Arts Festival there. We have found that our music goes down well with the audiences for such events and had a good feeling about the evening ahead.
Given the distance, we shared the driving and the journey to Norfolk proved uneventful other than for a minor accident just ahead of us which blocked the road and required Rob to execute a tight 3-point turn on a narrow country road minutes after taking the wheel of my car for the first time in a age. Adrenalin is a great thing and despite his unfamiliarity with the car, we were back on the move again quickly and homing in on Cley.
Once there, we found our way to the venue, the magnificent local church, and were greeted warmly by the lovely Marie Askham, one of the festival organisers. Given we had arrived in good time, Marie showed us some of the church and we were able to take in a little of the quite major art exhibition being hosted there. Notwithstanding that the artistic gene-pool of my family has been thoroughly drained by my brother and daughter who are both excellent artists, I have always loved art and art exhibitions and this contemporary exhibition in such an historic setting, had many very interesting pieces to view. There were other, larger, pieces throughout the nearby graveyard.
The Church of St Margaret’s stands testimony to the historic affluence of the village of Cley. It is a beautiful and peaceful building, full of rich detail and, of great significance to us of course, a wonderful acoustic. It even has bats in the belfry – two types of bats in fact.
We decided we didn’t need a p.a. system given the wonderful acoustic of the church and so the set up for the concert was straightforward. Marie kindly made us a life restoring cuppa and we had time to have a little rehearsal and a bite to eat before the audience began to arrive. Marie has an academic interest in aspects of the Spanish Civil War and was very interested to talk to Rob about his family’s experiences.
Unlike most of the UK that evening (Glasgow at 30 degrees), Cley was unusually damp and refreshingly chilly as a sea haar rolled in off the North Sea. Still, a hardy mix of local people, local friends and folk-oriented visitors to the village came along and we held a truly lovely, intimate, concert.
This was just our kind of audience; interested and listening intently to the stories we were telling. At both the interval and the end of our performance, audience members were keen to chat and find out more about the various stories we had been regaling them with.. We tried out the new opening to our new song Garden of England and it worked pretty well with the song now beginning to settle itself nicely into our repertoire. Rob also concluded our new French translation of L’Amant de Nantes with a beautiful set of harmonics.
Having not set up a p.a., it was quick to get packed up. We said our farewells to Marie and a number of her fellow festival organisers and turned for home. This was an early evening concert and, as such, we were back on the road for 10.00pm. This caught Frustratus, the God of roadworks and road closures, off guard and the journey was uneventful other than for a Starsky and Hutch driver switchover at a local petrol station and the jaw-dropping realisation of how big the air bases in that part of the world actually are.
Thanks to Marie and all at the Cley Contemporary Arts festival for the invitation. Whether as performer or tourist, I shall certainly be returning the Cley-next-the Sea in the future and Rob tells me the pickled eggs in the local pub are pretty good too!