Sadly Georgie Fame's not in the line up this evening, but it includes Andy Fairweather Low, Terry Taylor and Geraint Wilkins. It is very disconcerting that, when Bill walks on stage I think it's my old Auntie Doris, little stick legs and big hair. It’s a great mix of Cajun, blues, rhythm and blues, and numbers written by Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. There are a couple of ballads and a few belted soul songs. The stage is full, with the four guitarists, drummer, keyboard player, two saxophonists, plus two black singers separately giving us Soul Man and I Put a Spell On You. It’s a lively set, and a good-natured atmosphere on stage, with Bill Wyman quietly smiling as he plays his bass. Andy Fairweather Low’s voice blends well with the other singers, and is ideally suited to the Cajun numbers. Geraint Wilkins from Wales sings rich, deep and low, serious blues. I didn’t stump up £5 for a programme so I can’t get all the names but the black singer, the soul diva, is Felicity. Hers is a big voice, full and rounded, great for her and Andy’s rendition of Harlem Shuffle. Good fun.
An email from a friend of mine arrives; she complains that, at work, she is routinely subjected to gruesome accounts of female colleagues’ intimate medical procedures and gynaecological problems. I am all commiseration because I, too, have had years of listening to workplace chats about periods, childbirth and sex lives. Oh please. Later, I wander off for a walk in the early evening sunshine and it is so silent and so beautiful that I flop down on the grass and lay awhile gazing out over the rolling fields, and the mouth of the river, and fall into a reverie. Two men pass by. A few minutes later sounds of women’s talk float nearer and, by the time the two females of the species draw level with me, I have risen up from my deliciously recumbent position in the meadow, alert and tense, something like a meerkat. “I do feel for her. Going down that IVF route is such an emotional roller coaster. I was never prepared for how terrible it was going to be.” I remain frozen in my meerkat position...
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