I probably packed too much into this summer. Two arts festivals, one convention, three counties, two concerts, two talks, one opera patched together from at least six others, fourteen train journeys, goodness knows how many bus journeys, more stuff than would fit in a decently sized Kia, two passenger ferry crossings. Four scheduled family get-togethers, ranging from two people to fourteen.
Two worlds, for goodness’ sake: the flat one on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle, and the regular round one. Three centuries, although we seemed to keep skipping over the middle one. Potty training. More dead relations than I’d been expecting. My birthday. That weird thing that time does on the Isle of Wight. Emotions, loads of them.
Specifically, all of that somehow folded up and fitted into three weeks, and now I’ve written it down I’m thinking it’s not surprising I’ve been absolutely shattered ever since we got home from the Discworld Convention. Yes, there is certainly a school of thought that says summer holidays ought to be relaxing, but it is fair to admit that this one wasn’t, really. Although I’d go back and do it all over again.
Two festivals and a convention
Music in the Burnhams. Ventnor Fringe. The International Discworld Convention. The two festivals overlapped – that is, the week that was Music in the Burnhams sat neatly within the ten days that was Ventnor Fringe. At least I’d booked the whole lot as annual leave early in the year. Then we had a couple of days of actual seaside holiday, with intervals of Removing Stuff From My Late Mother’s House, and a week at home before DWCon.
Two concerts, two talks
I’d have liked to have got to more. I’d have liked to hear every single piece of Julius Benedict’s music on the whole week-long programme. But aside from the scheduling, there was travel and childcare to contend with, and what I got was two talks by the world Benedict expert (I didn’t know there was a world Benedict expert! but I am very pleased to have found there is, and to have met him and been enthusiastic) followed by two lunchtime concerts in the Burnhams, and the offer of a ticket at Fringe that I couldn’t realistically take up.
But my word, those two were quite something. By virtue of being the featured composer’s great-great-great-granddaughter, I had front row seats. That gave me a very good view of some extremely good musicians playing some fiendishly difficult music. It always takes me several repetitions to get my head around a piece of music, to have any coherent reaction beyond ‘Wow’ or ‘What?’, and until I get to hear these again I’ll be stuck on ‘Wow’ (and also ‘How?’).
And then there was the rather overwhelming awareness of the fact that I am in the church where Nelson was baptised, listening to music that has not been heard by an audience in one hundred and fifty years, written by my great-great-great-grandfather, who I feel as if I am just beginning to get to know, wishing my parents could have been here to hear this too.
Slow travel
My father would very much have approved of my second day at the Burnhams in particular. I took an early train to King’s Lynn, then rode on the top of a bus that headed for the coast at Hunstanton, sat there for a while to get its breath back, and then traced the coastline. I watched the architecture change from red brick filled in with yellow brick to red brick filled in with flint; lamented dried-up duckponds; boggled at a Fat Face shop apparently in the middle of nowhere. Sat outside a rather chi-chi Italian deli and drank a cup of coffee and watched the world go by. Learned more about The Lily of Killarney – and once again regretted the fact that there was an almost-complete recording on vinyl in 1968 and Pa apparently never knew about it.
Then – and this was more something that other members of my family would appreciate – I rode my little orange folding bike from the talk venue to the concert venue, up and down a single-track lane that dissolved into sand at the verges.
As for the other journeys, well, I’ve taken many trains to Portsmouth and many ferries on to the Isle of Wight. I will say here, though, that it continues to be worth the extra twenty minutes or whatever it is to take the Thameslink through London, change at East Croydon or Three Bridges (you could change at Gatwick Airport, but I wouldn’t) and bumble gently along the Southern line to Arundel and Chichester. There are two reasons: firstly, avoiding the Underground, particularly with a three-year-old, is always a good thing; and secondly, Arundel is just ridiculously beautiful with its spires and turrets set against the South Downs.
Island time
Island time is slow time, and Ventnor time is basically geological. It’s because there’s so much geology around there. I have no idea how the Fringe organisers manage to make the shows start on time. Maybe they don’t. I made it to precisely one show this year, and I was late to that. Anyway, it was good. Weird, and sad, because it’s been weird every year since 2020 and sad every year since 2022, but good. We hung around at the Book Bus, and we hung around at the bandstand, and we got some executor stuff talked about, and I’ll be glad when we don’t have to talk about executor stuff any more, but I’ll also be glad to come back to Ventnor.
What worked
I bought a pair of Loop earplugs on something of a whim ahead of the convention, wore them at dinner with a portion of my extended family at a notoriously loud restaurant, and was an instant convert. Of course, just because I could suddenly hear them didn’t help with anybody else hearing anything else, but it was lovely to see them all.
Other things I was glad I brought to the convention: peppermint teabags; a very large bag of (mostly) shelf-stable snacks; my adorable toucan butter knife; Compeed blister plasters; safety pins.
But in Ankh-Morpork…
I married into Discworld fandom, and, you know, as in-laws go, it’s great. Interesting and amusing people. A chance to apply my English Literature brain, particularly in regard to performance, arts, and stories. The food was a bit of a disaster, but I had prepared snackegy, and there were enough places within a reasonable driving distance (and we’d brought the car) that we didn’t go hungry. But the main point of the event so far as this household was concerned was to see my husband sing two and a half Mozart arias in character as Casununda the amorous dwarf (or, in his case, to actually do this, obviously), and this went extremely well. There was a small exclamation of “That’s my daddy!” from the audience but happily this only reinforces the characterisation.
And that wound things up in a surreal but really rather appropriate manner. Summer for me is for the performing arts and for family, and if that expresses itself in the form of my beloved spouse singing Here in Ankh-Morpork my target is eight – ahem – seven plus one!, very carefully not putting any weight on a disreputable wooden stepladder, well, why not?
Kathleen Jowitt 