Cambridge, Day 2

In brief....

Met Emily Barker at the signing tent, expressed my dismay that the album (which is excellent) is limited edition only, to 1000 copies.

Watched Tift Merritt perform in sauna like conditions, blistering roots-rock, really invigorating.

Seth Lakeman band - hypnotic, urgent, intense, compelling, and really, really loud!

Richard Thompson - guitar heroics with a sense of humour that doesn't always come across on recordings - one song rhymed 'kundalini' with 'weenie'. "Vincent Black Lightning" is probably the best song about a motorbike ever.

Cambridge, Day 3

Spent last night at the club tent watching Uiscedwr, pleasant Django Reinhardt flavoured jazz-folk, and "Waking the witch", a foursome whose influences were a bit of Joan Armatrading, a bit of the Cranberries, and a lot of K T Tunstall.

Finished my first book of the Festival - a proof of "The Woman in the Picture", by James Wilson, a tale of 1930s British cinema and a modern day quest for the truth about a woman's estranged, late film-making father. Not bad - any book with a scene set in the NFT gets my vote - and kept me engaged... but I wanted a bit more resolution to the story than I got in the end.

I'm about 300 pages into "Altered Carbon", proper cyberpunk/crime noir which is extremely violent and very imaginative.

Music so far - an encore performance from Tift Merritt, who signed my CD "To Paul, A Good Hearted Man", and Geordie flavoured folk from Rachel Unthank and the Winterset - there's a touch of the school concert about them, but Becky sung a heart breaking version of Anthony and the Johnsons' "For I Am a Boy Now". Standing room only in the club tent for this, and the banter between the women who make up the group was sparkling.