Well, duh! It’s perfectly obvious when you know – but I didn’t realise that ‘Simon Says’ was the centenary celebration of De Montfort Hall and therefore ‘Simon’ refers to Simon de Montfort. I always wondered why it was called ‘Simon Says’… De Montfort was credited with being the architect of English democracy but he was also something of a Bad Egg because he killed lots of Jews.
But! Zooming forward to recent history – yesterday, in fact – well, what can I say? I had a terrific day, poeting in a Winnie-the-Pooh sort of demi-forest, and then drinking mild and eating curry before lapsing into the acoustic tent to listen to a three-piece. The acoustic area was not as acoustic as I would have liked, and the queues for beer grew unfeasibly long so that I only managed a couple of pints during the whole afternoon (probably no bad thing) – then we went outside for more poetry and thence into the marquee to watch Andy’s partner’s son’s band Skam, a competent three-piece who play very loud thrash-rock: and then into the main auditorium where we saw ‘By the Rivers’. Another ‘duh!’ moment occurred as I then realised that BTR – of course – play ska/reggae: it was great stuff and very boppy and I even managed to get Mark dancing. This was no mean feat as he has consistently refused to dance with me ever since our wedding (not that anything untoward happened at our wedding – he’s just got a complex about it). Then by about seven, having been there eight hours, I’d had enough and so we slogged it home through near-torrential rain (my clothes are still drying) discussing the poetry and the music and how great it was that so many people had been able to come and cute all the babies had looked in their ear-defenders.
Here’s the vid of me performing. A lot of people seemed to like ‘The Ballad of the Bowstring Bridge’ and I have had requests for a video of the musical version, so watch this space…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCxm91-tdIA
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 