More From the Festival

I spent a lovely, relaxed evening at Tomatito's last night, out in the patio garden at the back. The bench was damp but the rain held off and the music was wonderful. Alan Cooper the fiddler was playing, with his friends Simon Newcombe on guitar and Di Esplin on cello. They have a new CD out together, called Alive, which they were selling, along with an earlier CD, Street (which I already have - I bought it from them when they were busking in town one day). They played music from Ireland and Scandanavia, and even Venezuela, all completely acoustic - there were no mics.
There were quite a few locals in the audience who appreciate good music. One of them was Chris the bookbinder, who had brought a few copies of the new poetry magazine/book Quirk along. It's the fourth issue, (though number 3 as they started with zero) and I was speaking to Cotters a few days ago about it. One of his poems is in it, with an illustration specially done by Martina Jirankova-Limbrick, which he was very pleased about. There are quite a few other familiar names there, like Sarah Putt from Booths, Tracy Thursfield from Addyman's, Chris himself, Tim the Gardener, and many more poets and artists. I was sufficiently impressed when leafing through it to part with a fiver.
I slipped away as it was getting dark, so I missed music from Jasmine, who had just arrived.

I started this morning by listening to Broadcasting House on Radio 4 as usual, but today it was coming from the BBC tent at the Festival with an audience of around 200 people, and two members of the public were up on stage doing the newspaper review along with David Aaronovitch and Lauren Child the children's author.
I also saw a silver BBC van leaving town, which had been up at the Castle for a new antiques programme that they were filming yesterday.
The rain wasn't quite so bad today, but it was fairly heavy in the afternoon.