Sore Roots Trip Log--Day 3: Bass slapping in Oxfordshire

[Robert & Laura]

Tue, Apr 9, 2012

Jet Lag update

Much to our surprise, we haven't really had any jet lag symptoms since Sunday. Apparently, the trick is to have a hazy 36 hour period where all you get is bad catnaps and your sleep cycle gets disrupted to the point that blue is the new 40 and you're ready to adopt whatever time zone you eventually land in.

As you may recall from yesterday (and we only barely recall it), we last left our heroes in a pub pounding down cider and ale, not looking forward to the 1.5 mile (14 quid) walk home uphill in the rain. 

Lo and behold, who's on their way out the pub but another bass player! (We all know each other, because there's only one class.) Well, before you can say "Bob's my second cousin's in-law" we're getting a ride with him. And he's so polite, he lets Laura sit in the driver's seat while he drives from the passenger seat. (This is so supremely weird to us. Cars will go by and we'll freak out because there's nobody driving! Or if there is somebody in that seat, they don't have their  hands on the wheel!)

Which meant that instead of arriving home soggy and sore, we arrive home dry and still snockered. 

Oh, and we didn't get a look at the pub menu until after we sent the trip log, so here's what we could have eaten if we hadn't already eaten dinner (bear in mind, this is the bar menu, which in the US would be nachos and buffalo wings):

- Toast with Lardo

We ask (of course) and "Lardo" is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. 

"Is it lard?" we ask. 

"No, not exactly, it's pork drippings," the nice young waitress answers.

"Which is lard," we point out.

"Well, yes, but it's got bacon bits in it. Basically, it tastes really good, but is incredibly bad for you," she explains. 

Laura debates asking for some Lardo to spread it on the "bacon" we get in the morning, the main flavor of which is "salt." She thinks if we spread it with Lardo, it should add some baconish flavor. 

- Snails and mushrooms on toast

We have nothing against snails (except when they get in our garden). In fact, when he was in college, Robert and his roommate would make killer escargot to lure the ladies over. (Except for the time they accidentally burned half of them, and had to quickly substitute garlic flavored hot dogs for the half that Robert and Dave ate, while the young ladies enjoyed the scrumptious unburned snails.)

But with mushrooms? On toast? That's a bit much. 

- Scotched quail eggs

At first we thought these would be like pickled eggs, only scotch would be involved, and it sounded pretty good. But we asked some of our new British mates and they explained what it really is. "You take this thing that's like meat, sort of like pork, only it's minced up, yeah? And then it's breaded and fried, but it's not fatty. It's also not very good." 

7:00 am

Coffee! 

Laura has rounded up the french press and some coffee and--ecch! We add another notch to the scale. At the bottom of the scale, in the worst taste category is instant coffee. One notch up is the coffee in a tea bag, which is still fairly dreadful. Then there's this coffee, which has the virtue of not tasting quite as bad as the coffee in a tea bag. 

Fortunately, we've asked around and found that there's a general store in Kingham that might carry coffee, so we hope to improve the situation by tomorrow morning. 

Still, the coffee is caffeine-laden and it's a beautiful sunny day outside and even bad coffee can't spoil our lovely view of the school grounds. 

Laura pronounces her verdict on the shower (which has a button that turns it off after thirty seconds, so you have to keep pushing the button to get a full shower, and the temperature is preset to 10 degrees south of tepid): "A shower definitely designed by the British so that you won't enjoy it." 

8:00 am

We're at breakfast, which features a new British dish: Spaghetti-O's! Seriously, it's a red tomato sauce with round O-shaped pasta in it. The O's are bigger than the traditional American Spaghetti-O's, so it's like Upper Case Spaghetti-O's, but in our minds it's not really a breakfast food. 

We also learn more about how the English organize their geography. Where we have states to help keep things straight, they don't. So instead, they identify things by the biggest city that's close to it. So the closest city to Kingham is Oxford. And they use "shire" to mean "near to." So Kingham is in Oxfordshire. 

That means that we live in Bellevue, which is in Seattleshire. 

The person who explained this points out though, that most people use the postal code to figure out where things are, which seems really really complicated to us. It's like saying, "Oh we live in the 980 zip code," and having anybody (other than a postal worker, and even then only 90% of the time) have any idea where you're talking about. 

England is complicated. 

9:15 am

We're back at the general assembly, which has fewer people than yesterday. Despite that fact that attendance is supposed to be Mandatory, we estimate that only about half the participants (and none of the instructors) are here today. They talk about light switches and how they not only turn lights on, but can also be used to turn them off. And about queuing protocol (the British take their queuing very seriously). 

We also learn that a sedative is called a "se-DAY-tive" (this referring to a Scottish woman who needed a ride home). We think these Brits could use a few lessons in proper pronunciation.

11:10 am

Tea break! 

Robert has spent the morning learning what he already knows about relative relations of notes on the bass neck. Only it seems way more complicated without frets to make it easier to hit your notes. But at least today he manages to get through the class without knocking his bass into somebody else's bass (four times yesterday morning alone), so he figures he's making progress (or PRO-gress as they say here). 

In Laura's class, she learned how to played "Hard Times" (a hit from the 1850's), which she already knew how to play, but got to use her C#dim7 chord bar--not usually found in Old-Time music. They also learned a thumb technique for playing 16th notes (semi-demi-quavers as they are called here). 

It also turns out that a "quid" is the same as a "pound" and when we ask why don't they just call a pound a pound, we're asked why do we call a dollar a "buck" ("Well, because it's a dollar!" we reply). They lose when we get to hemi-semi-demi-quavers, which is what they call a thirty-second music note. Everyone agrees that's just stupid.

And we learn that Kingham is not some simple peasant village. It's a place where lots of rich people (like John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin) live and those quaint 500 year-old buildings that are teeny are actually very very expensive. Which would also explain why the pub serves snails on toast. Doesn't explain Lardo, though. 

1:00 pm

Lunch! 

Robert learned how to slap his bass using a one-handed technique, which sounds a lot dirtier than it really is. It's kind of fun, and since it's mostly rhythmical, he does pretty good at it, even better than some of the long-time bass players. Then our 16 basses are joined by a class of 24 fiddlers who all crowd into the middle of the room and we play some songs we never heard of, but we don't much care, because our job is to keep the beat. 

Judging by where fingers are on the neck, we were playing a jazz version of whatever songs they were, because no two of us were playing quite the same note. It's hard enough to hear your own bass in a room full of basses that are playing, but when you add in a couple dozen fiddles, it's hard to hear ANY of the basses. But we all keep the beat pretty well, and after the fiddlers leave, we go back to slapping. 

After tea, Laura practices thumb technique with her autoharp class and they learn a new song (to them) called "The Cuckoo," about a cuckoo bird that flies around and warbles. 

During lunch, the singing class shuffles in and sings a depressing folk song about a guy who will never get the girl he loves, but he pretends he does and that makes him sad. Most folk songs are depressing, and this one is no exception. 

3:45 pm

Back in class after a brief hour-long nap. Hmm, maybe the jet lag isn't completely finished with us…

In Robert's class, the basses practice playing "The Tennessee Waltz" when one of them (Caspar) breaks out the musical saw. If you've never heard a musical saw, it's a regular saw that's played with a bow, like a fiddle. It has an eerie sound, like a Halloween movie effect. And since the song is about a guy that steals another guy's girlfriend (man, folk music is depressing), so the weird haunting sound completely fits in. Plus the teacher is a bit flabbergasted by it. 

In Laura's class, they learned some techniques for backing up a singer and how to do a "walking" bass line to move from one chord to another. 

6:00 pm

Dinner is done!  For us, anyway. 

Apparently somebody has spoken to the serving ladies about customer service, because they are suddenly very solicitous about how we are, and how our day was, and how we feel about the chicken tikka they are serving us. They don't seem to be serving much faster (although we're getting better at being near the front of the queue), but after you've waited for a while, they must figure that you'll want someone to check on your feelings ("Hungry" is how Robert usually describes his feelings). 

We're off to the ritzy and old village of Kingham. We'll probably do a drive-by on The Plough's WiFi and see if we can rustle up another pub in the town. Hey, maybe we'll find a jam session where John Paul Jones joins in! Or maybe we'll find the pub that serves cheap beer. (Call us jaded, but right now we'd prefer the cheap beer!)

Toodles!

  Robert & Laura

  Sore Roots Tour