Hi Guys,I hope to see some of you at the Mesquer Festival this weekend,I’m sure that it’s going to be great,I’m looking forward to learning some Bretton tunes and sample some French cuisine.
See you there.
Phil.
hi Phil,
it will be a pleasure to meet you there. Maybe I’ll bring some beer from home for the party. Beach, cuisine and all is very nice, but you never find any decent beer in the “hexagone”.
- claudine -
Now, that’s prejudiced! Beside, going from France to Brittany do like Dante: forget all hope about Vreench cuisine.
Buckwheat pancakes and chitterlings (the stuff which by comparison makes steak and kidney pies smell of roses…).
And raw oysters: if it doesn’t squeal “oy!” when you eat it, then don’t eat it.
Now, do bring your beer, please: we may run out of it, on such a week-end.
Feedback?
Were there no survivors?
Casualties: count me on–just pooped. The festival plus setting up / hosting my photo show proved a bit too much for my tender age.
Couldn’t make it, with a solid excuse: Stacey (Alba).
Unseen: Sylvain Barou, probably tied up with concerts.
The Festival was supposed to last from Friday to Sunday. How it turned out, the first sessions started on Thursday evening, and kept rolling without seeming interruptions until… Monday noon. Considering the music played consisted of 99,95% reels at “session” speed, you may call this stamina.
Maybe it ended because the village was sucked dry of beer–we thought we had reserves, but forgot to account for the gang of the Irishmen from Nantes. Everything went, from stout to lager. Anyway, we saw a couple players having tea on Monday afternoon, proof (or signal?) the festival was finally over.
Survivors: Claudine and her hubby who just sent me an email. They drove over 550 miles across France to arrive on Friday evening, and had to return on Sunday morning.
Reported missing, but research not abandoned: Phil Hardy. Normally, he had money for his journey home, with all the records he sold locally–one of the Festival’s hits just by word of mouth.
Testimony on his last whereabouts contradict: one says he was last seen frantically looking for a guitar to borrow, the other he’s still giving a whistle workshop or was it low whistle, third pretends no he was improvising a bodhrán class, others say he never left the 3am session in the restaurant.
It’s all bs: I think he was at the beach all the time.
Well, maybe I’d better get some sleep, now…
Couldn’t make it, with a solid excuse: Stacey (Alba).
Yea! but next year 
I sort of made it too. Couldn’t get away from the wedding down the road in Ar Poulgwenn until Sunday afternoon (yes we had a grand time, unsurprisingly with half the guests coming from Ireland, and music from a cracking local trio of young women playing fiddle, flute and guitar and improbably calling themselves “The Three Badgers”).
When we rolled into Mesquer at about 4pm on Sunday, the first group of people we encountered were 3 or 4 low whistlers and a couple of fluters sitting cross-legged in a tight circle on the grass behind the town hall, hooting softly in some musical language of their own. It was exactly my idea of what an “Ent moot” would sound like.
Emerging into the square in front of “Le Skipper” pub, I spied the unmistakable dreadlocks of Phil Hardy, who was engaged in earnest conversation with another man. Goody, I thought, I’ll be able to claim my new-Chieftain whistle! I didn’t interrupt what appeared to be a sale but went to the bar for some mineral water, plus some Murphy’s for the wean’s bottle. When I came out Phil had vanished - and my chance of a free flute along with him.
This seemed to set a trend. A session was in full swing in the square, dominated by fiddlers playing Scottish tunes and makey-uppy stuff that must have come from a lot of records I don’t have. I sat on the fringes sipping my Perrier citron while the baby staggered joyously around the square. Eventually the repertoire headed off in a direction I knew. There was a very good whistle player playing some unidentified species of aluminium whistle with what looked like a blob of brass for a ramp. I joined in with a couple of tunes that he probably thought nobody knew (not being recently composed no doubt) but far from showing pleasure at this manifestation of chiffy solidarity, he promptly got up and left without so much as a glance in my direction.
At this point I began to wonder. As the session thinned out I struck up a conversation with a flute player and started off a set of tunes that she joined in with, but by the time the set finished (the baton being passed to some of the fiddlers) she had vanished! (I Checked my pants zip and my shoulder in case a second head was showing but couldn’t detect aught amiss.)
By now evening was falling and we decided to see whether anything was happening out at the adjacent village, Quimiac. As we pulled up to the cafe we could see people set-dancing on the terrace and musicians inside. Oh goody, I thought. But by the time we’d parked and come in the dancers had left and the musicians were packing up. Ah well, we thought and resigned ourselves to yet another meal of buckwheat galettes. The beach at Quimiac is simply fabulous, BTW, although by this time I was a little worried that if I set foot on it everyone would run away. (They didn’t.)
That was all we had time for, so I had a distinct feeling of having missed out on the action. I knew that I would miss Claudine but was sorry not to meet Zubivka. I just didn’t feel like accosting every passing Ent or human clutching a whistle and asking, “Is your name Zoob?” Well next year maybe.
Too bad we missed each other so I couldn’t host you and point to where the action went!
I was just in front of Le Skipper, in the old house where some were selling flutes and music, but upstairs hosting my photo exhibition!
Actually, on Sunday late afternoon, I was there mostly shooting portraits of musicians and their instruments: you could have walked in for a free mug shot 
Or maybe you spotted someone looking like Tintin (thanks to the barber who brilliantly f… up my haircut!) and driving a champagne/black Triumph T-bird? That’s the Zoob in flesh (and drags).
The unknown whistles with a blob of brass for ramp are made by some guy in Paris. A curios, is all even if a blade made of a different stock may be a good idea.
You missed Phil Hardy? No wonder. The ubiquitous bloke was reported seen simultaneously–however briefly–in all the beaches, pubs and workshops of the place. I’ve seen a documentary movie on his motion technique, I think it was called “The Matrix”, you need a VTR with slow motion playback to really get it. Because of this, one always sees his hair as sorta fuzzy. 
Well, next year?
PS: congrats for your Breton but… “Ar Poulgwenn” 
You rock! but how do you expect the buddies to locate you when all maps print this town’s name in French?
Hey Zoob, 
Sounds like you had a good time even with the bad hair and all! So who won the whistle giveaway at the Great Mesquer Festival? 
Wish I could have been there.
Cheers,
Kathy
Kathy, haven’t you won enough whistles already??!!!
~Larry
Can you ever win enough whistles? :roll:
That was a point I inissted adding to the rules, as main referee/grand juror/capo-di-tutti: one had to be physically present in Mesquer.
Beside, don’t you have already an Alba Practice whistle??? Or are you planning on winning a second one, to make the first Scots Dvoyanka*? 
*NB: beware of cheap Zulu Dvodentsivka copies!
Drat! Sorry to miss your exhibition, Zoub, but the girlfriend visited it and just gave me a favourable report. She chatted with you, or someone else minding the show, but did not describe you as resembling Tintin.
BTW I have very fond 30-year-old memories of a friend’s Triumph Thunderbird (old pre-unit model with black leather tank covering). But I think the BSA Super Rocket I had at the time was generally a better, if less glamorous, bike.
As for the Breton toponymy, well “Le Pouliguen” just sounds silly, doesn’t it? But of course I gave my post-festival VIP visitors the French version.