INCREDIBLY busy time at the moment. It all started two weeks ago with our 23rd Glastonwick Beer, Music, Poetry and More Beer Festival near Lancing in West Sussex; beautiful weather and another resounding triumph.

Then, after dashing up to Rochester to take part in the Medway River Lit Festival, I was off to Brussels on Eurostar to visit my old bandmates in Contingent, who I’ve played bass with on and off since 1979, and then trained it down to the Political Song Festival at Lake Attersee in Austria via a gig in Munich.
 
What an utterly brilliant weekend, very similar to Glastonwick in many ways. Beautiful location, 3-400 people, many who come back every year, relaxed atmosphere with (very) progressive political slant. Everything was ace but the brilliant female songwriter Geschichten im Ernst, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkQ_SxvyJ8A, Italian folk-thrashers Lemon Kellys, satirical singer Wendepunkt and the rousing choral ensemble Morgenrot from Berlin were my favourites. And I understood everything that wasn’t in Viennese dialect, managed about 40 per cent of that and got two encores and a standing ovation for my set.
 
And then I was off to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana for the first time.

I’ve always wanted to go and what a welcome it gave me! A cracking gig at Prulcek courtesy of a suggestion from legendary punk taxi driver Marin, who gave me one of his punk history taxi tours. Punk started in Yugoslavia in 1977, one of the first scenes in mainland Europe.