I never imagined that at the age of 52 I'd be onstage at an arts festival alongside a popular folk act leading a tentfull of 200-plus people in a celebratory dance, in my wellies. But Greenbelt has always provided opportunities for me to surprise myself, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity they gave me this year to collaborate with the very wonderful and lovely Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies (that's them, pictured below) in an hour of appreciation and celebration of the songs of Sydney Carter. If you're keen to peruse the contents of that hour, you can download my notes here [pdf]; if I find that Greenbelt recorded the session and have made it available, I'll link here).
We closed our set with 'Shake and Shiver', Carter's other paean to the Shakers (besides the better-known 'Lord of the Dance') and on a wet Northamptonshire Monday morning our tentfull got Carter and his lightly complex dancing music … as he put it in Green Print for Song,
"Shake and shiver. With terror or delight? With delight: I think of the quivering of leaves, of light on water, or the shiver of small bells on the wrist or ankle of a dancer. But perhaps there is a touch of terror too. Sudden beauty, sudden truth, can make you shiver."
In retrospect, 'terror and delight' might have been a good strap-line for the new-look Greenbelt at Boughton House. The practicalities of getting people on and off a country estate dug deep into a hollow in the Northants countryside, were a terror to some, especially the less-mobile in the mud at the end of the weekend. But the site itself is delightful, with its quirky landscaping, green groves and wide open spaces… and its hiddenness. It's like being invited into a secret: the act of arriving there consists of turning one's back on the fast and furious world represented by the A14, and descending into another place altogether. It is hard work, physically, doing this. Especially if it's wet. But it's hard work like a pilgrimage or a retreat. Not an escape, though of course, for being Greenbelt, once you're there what you find is a community committed to getting straight back into the world and finding the most creative, gracious and beautiful ways, of living out here.
2015 marks the centenary of Sydney Carter’s birth. I’m hoping I might put together a publication to celebrate his work. If you have any particular insights to share about Sydney and his dancing carols, or suggestions about the content of that book, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
