Sally-Part 86. THE WONDERFUL KARINE POLWART...EVENTUALLY !

HOW THE MORNING NORMALLY LOOKS FROM OUR SCOTTISH VERANDA !

I awoke late to a boringly grey, overcast day which promised nothing but grimness ! Yesterday's bright sun, dramatic cloud formations and scything rain were now just a memory ! My nose froze last night as it poke out of the quilt .

I came through to the lounge dressed for the first time ever wearing the dressing gown my children had bought me for Christmas, presumably, as I was getting older, for going into hospital with ! I wasn't due to go into hospital and have only ever been after I had an incident when a dustbin lorry mechanism accidently  lifted me up when I was throwing in a box of rubbish and  I got something rather private crushed !

I think that you're supposed to wear a dressing gown over your pyjamas but as I don't own a pair, I got fully dressed first before putting mine on over my clothes and then standing beside Shirley dressed in hers, stared at the reflection in the mirror which displayed in truth, a pair of slightly malodorous looking, mis-matched and tousle-haired lesbians rather than the sartorially elegant great author, musician and raconteur Noel Coward and his fashionably fabulous wife which I had expected to see as we moved into position .

One of Karine Polwart's albums was playing and I suddenly felt all flustered as the memory of my own arrogance came back to me ! Karine Polwart had once actually sat next to me !At the time I didn't have a clue who she was or how much I would admire her ! Actually 'admire' doesn't do justice to the feeling of sitting in and audience listening to her !

About twenty years ago we were flying back from Spain and the couple sat next to us said that they were going to fly out to somewhere else the next day because life was too short not to and there were bargains to be had !

Envy set in. We loved hot beaches and could lie and sunbathe all day without too much suncream and with no thought of the effect on our skin that the ravages of time would one day display.

But actually, we never did follow their example because once the children had all left home we discovered that we could rent a place on the Hebridean Island of Colonsay for a month at a time and that out of season, the price dropped to become a bargain.
                                                                               
So that's what we did for a few years.

POST-GOLF WITH MY ELDEST . WHERE ELSE BUT COLONSAY ?

April and September became our 'months' on Colonsay in various houses until only Glebe would do !

GLEBE . NOW YOU CAN SEE WHY WE ONLY WANTED TO RENT HERE !

In September 2007 and coinciding with our stay, Colonsay held it's first Music Festival of Scottish Folk Music. At fifteen pounds a ticket for three days solid entertainment featuring half a dozen groups and individuals, pub sessions and tutorials and a Ceilidh, with those capable, able to drink all night as all the musicians carried on playing through 'til dawn, I sort of looked forward to it with some reservations as early-life experiences of  English bearded, finger-in-the-ear nasal nightmares had put me off 'folk' music for ever !

I'm a Tchaikovsky man so the thought of wailing, wild-hairerd nutters didn't appeal to my utterly unjustified bigotry ! I couldn't have been more wrong ! I was in the early and very tedious stages of teaching myself to play the classical guitar and all the doors between Shirley and I had ( and five years later still have ) to be solidly shut before I was ( and am ) allowed to take up my cheap and awful-sounding instrument! I had reached the level where even a child scratching away on a violin still made a more musical sound than I could and five years later nothing has changed !

On the first night, Pedie MacNeill, one of the organisers and one of the world's greatest unknown and self-effacing singers, song-writers and funny men opened the proceedings with his fellow Islanders and quite honestly had me applauding as loudly as I've ever done at any classical concert or opera !

Shirley hadn't been there, saying that why waste the money on two tickets when wasting it on one would be bad enough but Oh was she wrong ?

I staggered home stunned by what I'd seen and heard and quite forgetting my place in the pecking order, dared to wake her from one of her ever-worsening night's sleep and raved with enthusiasm about Pedie and Jen and Morna and Keir and Anna !

The next morning on my way to play golf on my own as usual, I called into the Hotel to watch someone called Stephen Polwart give a guitar lesson to a group of Island children ! I sat on a settee listening, not daring to admit to myself that they were so much more advanced than I was as they plinked and plonked away !

And then a woman sat next to me and in a moment of quiet I said patronisingly, " Hello. Do you play at all ? " She replied, " A little and if you're going to the concert tonight you'll see me playing with my trio. " Not yet feeling totally stupid, I asked her what her name was and she said " Karine, Karine Polwart. "

"And what sort of music do you play Karine, folk ?"

Shirley's right ! Someone SHOULD heat a spear in a furnace to white-hot and stick it somewhere painful ! That evening and perhaps not for the first time , I learnt that I was not worthy !

How dare I stand within spitting distance of a woman who is, to put it simply, fantastic in every sense of the word ?

Her writing, her playing, her beautiful, haunting voice and I dare to say her soul all combine to make her awesome and recognised by all the great professionals if not the entire musical world as being right at the top of her craft ! I had no idea that she had had awards heaped on her ! And Stephen, her brother, is equally marvellous and Inge Thomson, the third member is a master of many instruments and her voice is also hauntingly perfect and she  has produced her own brilliant album !

If you get the chance, go and see them in concert and buy her and Inge's albums and play them over and over again and then send me a note of thanks !