Capo-itulated.

*bleats weakly*

Finally, after years of resisting Iian's excellent advice;
"For god's sake woman, use a capo."

I have gone through my song list fiddling with keys and am probably half way through.

I started this project in Hometown, fooling myself with idle talk about how I'd just see how it went etc. etc. because I know that one thing that was stopping me do it was the sheer magnitude of the task, and the knowledge that once committed we'd become some kind of remorseless Capo Discernment Team mercilessly capable of playing "Back Home in Derry" thirty times before finally choosing between capo 5 and capo 6. (Capo 6)

It is begun, it is well begun.

3/2

In childhood I learned a corrupted version of Barbary Ellen in 4/4 time and it's really HARD to make the shift to 3/2 time now. I know I'm probably just suffering some kind of sideways effects of other people's misery here at Polly HQ but I'm feeling short bursts of anger about stuff like that - it's so infuriating that we can't share musical knowledge easily. Why musical knowledge has been attached to our episodic memory and not to some other more generous plane I do not know but it pisses us off.

Mum on the verandah made an extraordinary claim about our 'impeccable sense of timing' which might have been true in childhood when we were musical stars of a sort, but is not true any more, or at least not for me. (Timing is one of my weaknesses as a musician now) And it made me so angry.

It's all here, in this brain. Surely??? All the things different people learned at school and in orchestra and through practice and some gifts. Why can't we just have them? Why do we have to learn everything all over again, as individuals?

On the verandah.

On the verandah, two years ago, we played (mostly Irish) with Brian and Sylvie and Gray, while Andrew was up in Watkins and Cairns, visiting people. Our sister, Megan complained bitterly about Brian;
"He doesn't talk like that normally."
on account of Brian's Irish accent, which has an algebraic relationship to the degree of sentimentality of the ballad and the number of glasses downed. Mine's a bit like that too.
But I was playing the fiddle then, so it's (sorry) harder to pick.

No fiddle this time, just our sister Fiona's lovely lad's guitar on loan.
I played guitar every day, Friday sitting on my feet, Mum doing the crossword at the table.

Up in Watkins, I played "Sandy's song" to Sandy, and the River song, and she recorded them on her hand-held cam-corder. (I think that's what she called it.) I didn't get time to see it, but I heard later, from Stan's girlfriend that it was 'lovely'.

Sandy called me by my old name, and I liked it very much, and realised with fresh anguish how very little say I personally have had in the new directions we've taken, and how dreamlike the last few years feel to me personally, and how vivid the time up there in Watkins is, by contrast.

It was wonderful in the milky turquoise coloured pool.