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I believe that the entertainment I supply, by encouraging participation and self-expression, and by transcending barriers of age and race, provides an enjoyable and enlivening experience and makes a valuable contribution to society.
A problem is that when I am at full flight with a lot of children I have no time to take photos. If you have any good photographs of my van in action that you would be prepared to let me use on my website, perhaps you could get in touch with me or with the Webmaster.
Impromptu music sessions occur from single individuals to group playing.
For 2002 I have chosen two simple French tunes from the "The Massive Central Tune Book" No 2, so if anyone would like to practice the tunes we could all join in and play them together. The tunes are Nos 21 and 25, both bourees, which are traditionally played twice each, continuing to the second tune without a break and then back to the first tune (twice) and so on.
I am a self-taught musician and, on the recorder, found that the "Trapp Family Recorder Method Book 1", covers a good range of material.
I also play the Irish Bodhrán (Crowdy Crawn in Cornish) and percussion, some beginners violin music ("a violin sings and a fiddle dances") from "Folk Fiddle" and some beginner's Irish Melodian music.
For learning I find it helpful to colour-code the notes with A (red) through to G (black). When using the tonic sol-fa syllabic names to represent the notes of the scale relative to the tonic (doh, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, doh) it is usually convenient to have D as the tonic doh.
 doh |
 re |
 me |
 fa |
 sol |
 la |
 ti |
doh |
People ask me what I do living in Cornwall during the winter. Well there are lots of good pubs and hotels round here, many of which encourage live traditional folk music and I play sessions at some of them.
For many years I have played at the Liskeard Folk Music Session run by Andy Card (tel 01579 345894) at "The Old Stag", Liskeard, Cornwall. It takes place on the first Sunday of the month, from 3 pm onwards and features Irish, Bluegrass, Traditional, Contemporary, Country and a lot of good singing. The inn is also the home of Andy's group, The Barrstars.
I often go to "The Jolly Sailor" at Looe, where they have music sessions on Tuesdays and shanty singing on Thursdays.