More snow this past Saturday night. The phone call comes 30 minutes prior to session start: "I don't know if I'll make it through the snow, and if I do, I won't have a guitar."
Undeterred and optimistic about my comrades' abilities to make it to the cove, I pack a guitar, whistle and flute on the sled, shoulder my fiddle, light the kerosene lamp (period lighting being a whole 'nuther obsession), and trudge down to the cove. I play tunes alone in the Snug for a few minutes, and in walks Mark with a guitar packed in a plastic garbage bag.
Mark lives in the cove and has listened to us play a few times. I think he's a veteran Tex/Mex RockN'Roll musician, and plays classical guitar beautifully. So we try at Irish Traditional, and we cannot find a groove together to save our musical lives. In walk Karen and Pete, out on a date in the Cove, to listen and bear witness to this musical near-non-event. So it's turn-taking and respectful listening to each other's music of choice. I subject the room to a couple of tunes on three month's fiddling experience.
We pack up early and, slightly crestfallen, I start back up the hill with instruments in tow. I see a car struggling up the notorious Government Road Hill and find Lori (one of the Learning Centre Folks) keen to get home were it not for her now-overheated engine. The car rolls back into the cove, where we run into Kathryn and young Sophie (more Learning Centre Folk) out for a walk. She insists that we all go to their house for tea and tunes. Dan is volunteered to drive Lori home later. He doesn't know this yet.
So it's to Kathryn, Dan, and Sophie's for tea, chat, and a few tunes awkwardly played. Kathryn plays a lovely Scottish air on recorder and invites me to play along.
In F major.
It was a lovely time, nothing short of providence as far as I'm concerned.
I walk home tired but feeling like the Evening somehow "happened" after all. When I get home, Angela is starting the movie version of Pride and Prejudice, which has some of my favorite dancing scenes of any movie. There's also a brief scene where a lone fiddler is playing "The Frost Is All Over". Haaah!
