Anyone for a Music Festival?

The Friends of Stoke Row School (FOSRS) held the second of its Family Picnics with live music on Sunday. The event is timed to coincide with Father’s Day and the plan is that local families bring a picnic to the village recreation ground, and FOSRS organises the music, lays on a bar and doles out strawberries and cream and Pimms. Oh, and it also sells raffle tickets and auctions things. It is an incredibly relaxed format and for the two years that it has been running has been a very good fund raiser for the school.

This year, we had two bands: The Big Ned Lasagne http://www.bignedlasagne.com/
(which played last year as well) and Aitch & Co http://www.myspace.com/aitchmcrobbie,
both of which contained one or more parents of children who are at the school. It is really quite amazing how much musical talent is lurking under the surface in this part of the country. Lynne Butler, the current chair of FOSRS is also getting airplay on US and Australian radio stations for her new CD http://www.lynnebutler.co.uk/.

I would love to include myself in this galaxy of talent but in spite of nearly a whole year of guitar lessons, I am still fumbling around in the primordial swamps of musical ability with fingers like sausages and less sense of rhythm than a tomato plant. This is in no way a comment on the skills of my teacher, Ian Mariss, who has been kind, patient and encouraging. He will no doubt be proud of me when I tell him that I can now see that someone is playing a bar chord . . . .

Enough of the music side of the event. The other aspect of it that should be mentioned was that the children all had an absolutely fabulous time. Stoke Row Recreation Field is a big open space. At one point while I was checking up on the whereabouts of the smaller Darnbroughs, I paused to look around me and saw children everywhere, playing football, playing cricket, throwing balls and Frisbees, riding bikes, climbing trees and generally running around and enjoying themselves. It was an idyllic scene: chilled out parents and happy children. It makes me realise quite how fortunate we are to live in a place like Stoke Row. It really is a small slice of Middle Class Heaven.

So would anyone want a Music Festival here? There are at least two open air venues (the Rec and the Cherry Orchard – complete with bandstand) and at least one, if not two pubs within walking distance that already do live music (The Crooked Billet and The Rising Sun). The Crooked Billet is already a name on the music circuit http://www.thecrookedbillet.co.uk/music.htm and I’m told that it used to have a camp site in the field at the back. . . . it all sounds perfect. At least it would be a bit different to the usual local village fete. . . .and a lot closer than Glastonbury . . . . not sure how the cricket club would feel about it however . . . .