The Ouysse is a short but spectacular river that flows
into the Dordogne at Lacave. For most of its 45 or so kilometres, it travels
underground – part of the labyrinth of caves that have transformed the
limestone causse into a geologist’s theme park. After its emergence
somewhere near Rocamadour, the last leg of its brief journey forms a magical
steep-sided valley dotted with some of the finest watermills in the region.
Being a family home, the Moulin de Latreille may not be the best known, but it
sure hosts the best parties.
I went there on Saturday night with a pair of graphic
artists: my friend Dan and his father-in-law, who told me tales of the wildlife
near his home on the east coast of Scotland, somewhere between Aberdeen and
Inverness. We went for a kind of private performance by Gigspanner, Peter
Knight’s spin-off three-piece band when he’s not busy touring (as one of the
group’s founding members) with Steeleye Span.
Peter and his wife, Deborah, stayed at Fi and Giles’s chambre
d’hôte a couple of years ago when they were looking for a house to buy and
no doubt fell in love with the mill, as most people do. I imagine that they
probably stayed in the bedroom whose window looks out on the Ouysse as it
skirts the house. Subsequently, the guests tracked down that elusive house in
the unpopulated wilds of the Creuse. They had talked with mein hosts
about one day playing at the mill and Deborah arranged the gig as part of
Gigspanner’s short tour de France.
We have known Fi and Giles for ten years or so. Due to
the trying business of having to earn our respective daily bread, we don’t see
a lot of each other, but it’s one of those bonds that matures and strengthens
as the years go passing by. Every time we come away from the mill after a party
or a dinner date, we drive home with a warm glow that derives from a feeling
that we have been privy to something memorable. The pair of them know such a
diverse range of people that they’ve become legends in their own lunchtimes.
Giles, for example and much to my envy, numbers Procol Harum’s Gary Brooker
among his coterie. One Sunday we met a friend of theirs from England, who – we
discovered – used to share a house near Guildford with my brother.
Getting to the mill involves a vertiginous descent down a
track ravaged by rainwater. Each time, it creates a sense of child-like
expectancy in me, as if I’m following Jules Verne’s Arne Sacknussemm down into
the centre of the earth. You can measure progress with the mill by the state of
the track. Fi and Giles have suffered for their ‘art’. For years, they banged
their heads against the doors of indifferent officials in seeking help with the
road and with a turbine that would harness the energy of the mill-race. They’ve
endured winters that would have tested the mettle of Shackleton’s Antarctic
team. Parties in the early years were powered by throbbing turbines that
devoured fuel like it was on special offer at the Boxing Day Furniture World
sale. But things have come together over the last few years. Although subject
to the vagaries of the river, the water turbine helps to keep them warm in
winter and the chambres d’hôte are now included in the Alastair Sawday
guide.
We paid the price of admission and parked in a meadow
bordered by the river and the steep cliffs of the opposite bank. If you’re
steeped in the mythology of the Wild West, you can almost imagine that you’ve
stumbled on the hideout of the Hole In the Wall Gang. It wouldn’t surprise you
to see a group of horsemen kicking up dust as they zig-zag down through the
brush of the precipitous rock face. Instead, we stumbled upon kids playing
games and adults standing around chatting or sitting on some of the old
armchairs dotted about incongruously. After the brief overnight rain and an
unpromising morning, the sun had come out in the afternoon and the air was
still balmy, filled with the smell of sausages and chicken wings smoking on
barbeques.
The three band members had set up their stage in the
cavernous barn whose low beams create a deceptive sense of intimacy. Lured by
the sound of Peter Knight on the fiddle, those of us there for the music stood
or sat in semi-silent devotion while those there for the ‘craik’ carried on
carousing outside. One particularly loud group of hooray-Henrys combined the
two. If I’d been Peter Knight, I would have given them a very cold and
meaningful stare until they got the message and drifted off outside. But Peter
is a good-humoured man who clearly has that enviable ability to lose himself
utterly in the act of creation. Watching him communicating wordlessly but
joyously with his two campadres as he stringed or plucked his fiddle, I
thought about how it must be almost a religious calling to be a musician.
Only the previous weekend, I’d watched a clip of Steeleye
Span performing their well-worn ‘All Around My Hat’ on some BBC archive
collection that went with a documentary on Fairport Convention. The 2012
version of Peter Knight was reassuring like the 1960s model: glasses,
moustache, a little greyer, a little heavier. Probably, too, a little funnier.
His laconic introductions seemed suffused with the experience of 45 years in
the business.
I was never a great one for the folk revival as a lad. I
saw Ralph McTell and Al Stewart once, and the unique John Martyn on a few
occasions at Queens University, Belfast. I had a single or two by the
Fairports, Basket of Light by Pentangle and a brilliant album by the
oft-forgotten Trees. But on the whole, fiddles and fingers in the ear weren’t
my cup of tea. On Saturday night, however, I was spellbound by the brilliance
of the musicianship. Just three men and their instruments: Peter on fiddle,
Roger Flack on guitar and Vincent Salzfaas on the most tasteful djembe and
congas. It was folk music, Jim, but not as I knew it.
They played two sets separated by the inevitable extended
interval. They rewarded the woman who brought them a clutch of beer cans with
two extra numbers after the obligatory encore. And then we shuffled off into
the night, some to stay in tents pitched on the meadow, others to drive home. I
asked Fi if they’d made anything out of the event. Not really, but it was
good publicity. More importantly, it was the occasion. And who knows, maybe
next time? Lit up by coloured fairy lights strung from the trees, the mill
sometimes appears as a kind of gift to their friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment