Friday
Friday 19th October 2007. I got up, showered, and tried to wake my wife and son, but to no avail. My son just dived into the now vacant part of the double bed. I tried knocking on my brother's door, but got no reply. So I had breakfast, and then tried waking them again. Nothing happened.
I was about to go for a walk in the town, looking for Nick, when I was told he was eating breakfast. It turned out he had got up even earlier than me, walked around the harbour, bought postcards and written them. When you have not had a holiday for ten years you can get really eager!
Registration was at 13:00 and was followed 13:30 by Ed's introduction to the conference, which I recorded and photographed in my usual way. It was looking as though we would be somewhat short of speakers this year, he said. The conference schedule would start with a session on the baglama in the Melina Mercouri Hall at 3pm, and the plan for the evening was for drinks at 6pm at the ouzeri, where they had been asked not to do food this time, followed by a meal at 8:30 in Lulu's, and then music.
I went off and had lunch with my family, returning for the Baglama session at 15:00.
The Baglama session was presented by Ed Emery, and lasted about two hours. For the first hour, Ed talked about the baglama's form and construction, its history and so on. Then we attempted to play "Nichtos Choris Fengari". For some reason, my left hand had swollen up and become uncontrollable, so I made a very poor showing in my attempts to play the chord accompaniment to the song. I wasn't much better at trying to pick out the melody, either. This was a huge shame, as I had been looking forward to learning some "proper" playing, instead of the random taximia I usually play.
The session ended, and I went off to find my folks. Nick was busily showing Dominic how to play poker, with special emphasis on dealing from anywhere in the deck, apart from the top. We decided to skip the ouzeri to avoid being drunk before dinner, and had a siesta instead. I must be getting old or something.
Lulu's Taverna did us proud, as usual. Liz, Nick Dominic and I had some tzatziki, melitzanosalata and taramasalata (the real stuff, without pink colouring). My main course was lamb cooked in lemon sauce, with bamies (okra in a tomato sauce). It was lovely, and we also had some excellent retsina, several jugs over the course of the evening.
When it looked as if the music would soon start, I hooked my powered microphone over a picture on the wall, well out of everyones' way, and set the Archos recording. Then I found what seemed to be a safe spot for the nice new Edirol recorder, on top of a six foot tall stainless steel rotisserie, and left it recording there, sat on a napkin to protect it from the layer of fat on top of the machine. About five minutes later one of Lulu's staff moved the machine and knocked the Edirol over, which will probably sound awful (or just possibly amazing) in the recording. He stood on a chair to find it for me, while I had awful visions of it broken, or immersed in chicken fat. It appeared to be fine, however and I left it to record for a long time while lots of good music and singing was done.
Among the musicians are Hank Bradley on guitar, Cathy Whiteside on violin, Nikos Politis on tzoura and oud, a blind gentleman from Hydra on accordion, Jason Melissinos on tambourine, and quite a few people whose names I ought to remember, but cannot, sorry folks. Altogether, they made a very fine band!
The rest of the family went off to bed after one or two hours, leaving me recording until I had about three hours of music. Soon after that, things seemed to be winding down, and I wandered back to the hotel.
The front gate was locked, and I went to a spot under our window, and asked for the key. Embarassingly, I managed to snap its handle while trying to unlock the gate. I set all the batteries I could find to charge up, had an ouzo, and went to sleep.
Saturday