No sound, but plenty of vision and down in Dundee.

 This is turning into a lovely summer as per usual, even if the weather has turned bad. I have had my annual outing to the proms, with school chum, I have run up to Scotland and back, (blurb to follow - I am all out of sync) and I am shattered after just coming back from my annual trip to the Cambridge Folk Festival.  

I go up every year to Cambridge in memory of JG, who was right after all when he said he was a sickly child as 12 years ago he died. We had long since broken up as an item but he was always a friend and so going to Cambridge with Graham has always been important for that reason alone, but of course it is also a great chance to dance and chat and have fun basically.  

This year there was more to it too. Unusually rather than booking for the short Thursday, I booked for the full length Sunday to see that force of nature Angelique Kidjo and was then rewarded by discovering that not only was Angeline Morrison, on the bill, who I had heard talking on Radio 4 about her Black British Folk Songs experience, but the legendary Judy Collins.    Listening to Angeline Morrison is beautiful and yet painful.   Folk songs are often about the terrible things in life, but songs capturing the experience of slaves, must be amongst the most bleak, even when wrapped up in her beautiful voice.   Later on in the day Angelique Kidjo had the audience both in the palms of her hands and singing we are all Africans.   The woman is an extraordinary force of nature and it is hard to stay sad in her presence,  but first Judy Collins took the audience down memory lane. Most of the audience being in their late 60s, remembered their teenage encounters with her music which she was revisiting with a little orchestra There is a slight catch in her voice, but at 84 that seems allowable, apart from that Clouds and other songs were as hauntingly wonderful now as they were when I first fell in love with them so I am gutted my recordings turn out to have no sound on them. She also told great stories about Mick and Leonard and Joni.  :).    No sooner had she mentioned the rain, which had held off for the others for the whole of the weekend, than it started to fall down soaking us all and so after that I went in search of music to dry clothes to and discovered The Chair,  traditional Orkney fiddle music, and even more wild, electro fiddle music,  Elephant Sessions, who were completely fantastic and I even ended the day with some Dub music.  Cambridge folk music and audience is increasingly diverse.  

Earlier in the summer, I took a break from marking I attended an honorary second cousin's wedding in Glasgow and then headed up to Dundee, both to see the V and A and a friend's daughter.  Unfortunately she was down south however, but there was plenty to see in Dundee in the sunshine including Scott's Discovery and the Jute factory (as explained in the recent BBC documentary Brian Cox's Jute Journey) and I even bumped into a couple of people I vaguely knew from Hertfordshire.   The new V and A is curious, I was not a fan of the interior, but did enjoy the workshop I did and the food and the view down over the Discovery and the fabulous Tay river.