Cure for the common cold

Well, not quite cure, but close.

Go and see Kate Rusby, owner of the 'most beautiful voice in England', says the Guardian, on her website.

I can't swear to that, but she can't be far off. And what I can swear to is that she will remind you that you are British, and make you feel that being British is not such a bad thing to be.

While loving political (Billy Bragg) or modern British (Richard Thompson) or American (early Dylan) folk music, I never listen to traditional British folk music in the sense of putting it on at home or even seeking it out on the radio. But I do like it live.

I used to go to the Fir Tree in Oxford, before it was the Old Ale House before it became the Fir Tree again only not like it was before. Before, it was full of men in waistcoats with bits of tapestry on them who had their own tankards behind the bar. You would buy your pint, roll your roll-up, and squeeze yourself into a little chair at a little table. Then the folk music would start.

Mostly the musicians were older than me, in their 40s and 50s (I was at this time around 24 or 25). Lots of beards for the men and rather too much crushed velvet for the women. There were accordions and fiddles and songs of the rolling countryside and the sea.

Once, there was a rosy cheeked boy with curly blonde hair, an acoustic guitar and the voice of an angel. He and his sweetheart a-wandering would go. I fell in love, and had a recurring fantasy (part of the my non-spotless mind series) which involved me wearing long flowery skirts and cheesecloth and owning nothing but a hip flask and a chocolate brown labrador. Hand in hand (with the boy, not the dog) we would gambol through wild flower meadows, sleeping on beds of heather, like the Famous Five used to.

Of course, such fantasies were quickly dashed by both the reality of my life (pre-existing relationship with Significant Ex, reliance on mod cons like hot water and clean bedding) and the reality of the 1990s (unlikelihood of folky boy actually having capacity for commitment, access to hedgerows, labradors, etc).

So the dreams die, because of course they never really lived, but a small part of me will always be willing to take Richard Thompson up on whatever kind of offer he is willing to make.

But this is supposed to be about Kate Rusby. And there's a link -- she did cover RT's Withered and Died, and there aren't many better songs in this world. But mostly she played the trad stuff, and explained what each song was about, and why we should care. And I bought it all.

My favourite Kate Rusby song, though, is Our Town - which she wrote herself, about how you feel about where you grew up, about life now in where you grew up, which ain't necessarily what life's supposed to be like.

She didn't play Our Town, but she did play a song she wrote for her grandmother, who is still alive and who nursed her grandfather to an early death from respiratory failure caused by a working life spent down the mines. The original recording was with the colliery band: for various reasons they were unable to travel to Oxford so instead we had five members of the Coldstream Guards making an unforgettable brass section.

While not from mining stock, I come from that part of this country that was ripped into bits by the closure of the mines, by the end of heavy industry in Britain generally, and which has never recovered. Kate Rusby sang, the boys played their brass, I cried like a child.

And that's why I love folk music.

joella