From Shamrocks to Daffodils

This week saw St Patrick's night - and Shani and I had a gig at a local village pub. Bryan said he may come and play some tunes with us, but not if there was just 'two men and a dog' in the audience.

Don't you just hate flip comments that turn out to be accurate predictions?! OK, at one point there really was just two men and a dog - the pub dog and the two landlords, but at the most I would say there were probably only 8 people in the bar.

This did not stop us having a grand evening though! We played and sang and generally enjoyed making music. At 11pm two ladies came in and, up for a grand evening (it was the birthday of one), we played and they danced. The two ladies and the landlords all dancing round happily whilst we sang some hackneyed Irish songs and a few other standards, for good measure (they loved our rendition of 'Let me Entertain you').

The birthday girl asked us if we'd play at her birthday party on the Saturday night, and we turned up but the way things turned out we didn't actually perform (apart from three and a half songs).

Sunday, however, was Thriplow Daffodil Festival and we played to a nicely full tea tent on a sunny, English spring day. The daffodils, however, were reluctant to perform (given the cold and long winter) but that didn't spoil what is a quintessentially wonderfully English village festival.

We played our set, then were asked for more (not with raucous encore shouts, but because there was more time to fill) and had a thoroughly pleasing little afternoon gig.

Next? Well, there is talk of a beer festival at the village pub ...