A weekend in Laugharne. In March. It must be The Laugharne Weekend.
Our feet hadn’t really touched the ground. Less than twelve hours after getting back from Macedonia, we are off again to The Laugharne Weekend. Our pop into the house was so brief Megan has brought wet briefs with her to dry in the hotel.
Fortunately, we are not driving this weekend. We are being joined by Judith Chalmers and Alan Wicker, a couple that make us look like Johnny Stay at Homes. They pick us up in their Japanese people carrier/campervan thingy that is full of gadgets, like self-opening doors, remote control for air conditioning and a jacuzzi. Unfortunately, it’s a Japanese import, so all the buttons are Japanish, so we can’t use any of the features. Although if we push random buttons we can avail ourselves of other features we did not know where available.
We are in no hurry so we stop off in The King’s Head in Llandovery for lunch, washed down with cocktails. (Does Gin and Tonic qualify as a cocktail?)
Once lunched up we climb back into the Millennium Falcon and glide down to the Travel Lodge in St Clears. But “it’s not the St Clears Weekend”, I hear you cry. This is very true, but as soon as the festival dates are announced accommodation in Laugharne is snapped up quicker than you can say something very quick.
This means you have to rely on taxis, shuttle buses or stay sober and drive. With so many people wanting to use the shuttle, it’s a bit of a gamble, so after a bit of light ‘pre-loading’, as the yoof say, we grab a local taxi into the village where the festival is actually occurring.
So, for the uninitiated, what’s a Laugharne Weekend when it’s at home? It’s a literary festival, with a leaning towards guests that are either musicians, comedians, or left-leaning artists of some shape or form. Think Alexi Sayle, Don Letts and Jeremy Deller. There’s always curve balls. Lots of curve balls. Last year they had the bloke off ‘Confessions of an Window Cleaner’.
And all this takes place in a handful of venues in the tiny village in West Wales that was the inspiration for Under Milk Wood.
Our taxi drops us off outside the main hall where the ticket exchange is situated. I check my e-mails and spend several hilarious (embarrassing) minutes stood there proudly showing off the QR code for last year’s event whilst scanner man scratches his head. Eventually I realise my mistake and soon we are wrapping this years wristband around our wrists.
We then get straight into the queue to listen to Youth in conversation with Peter Curran. As we sit down an old mate Owen from the Forest of Dean approaches. My mate Michael Pailin is well impressed that he’s brought a pint with him, and enquires where he got it. I can see straight away this is going to be a long and beautiful friendship.
Whilst Youth is probably most famous for playing bass with Killing Joke, he has his finger prints on the work of some of the most famous artists in the world. He has produced Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney and Crowded House. Listening to his Verve stories, I very much doubt anyone would have heard ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ if Youth hadn’t worked his magic on it. When Jimmy Caughty left The Orb, Youth stepped in and the next thing you know we have ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’. He produced one of my favourite club hits of the nineties, ‘Naked in the Rain’ by Blue Pearl.
Over the next hour we have anecdotes about Killing Joke, building studios is Andalusia and The Wombles. We don’t even touch on the various record labels he runs and some of the amazing artists he has remixed. But then, you can’t even scratch the surface of a career like Youth’s in sixty minutes.
*for our 2015 interview with Youth go here. youth-interview-2015/
As we exit the hall, Phileas Fogg tells me Owen has gone down in his estimation because “he’s still sucking on that same pint as he was an hour ago. I dont need that sort of negativity in my life.”
On that note, we head for The Three Mariners to suck on our own drinks.
We don’t have time to hang about though, Mark Thomas is due on at nine of the PMs.
When we get back to the Millennium Hall it is already the proverbial standing room only. We squeeze around the edges and hope our legs, with a combined age of two hundred and forty can cope with ninety minutes of standing up. Even Mark Thomas felt the need to have a sit down half way through his stand up set.
Mark Thomas has been on the circuit for forty years. He’s not a household name because his anti-establishment radicalism is not for the mainstream pallet. But he’s perfectly at home in Laugharne. Jokes about the Orange Order, the church and golf are responded to with raucous laughter. The slagging off of Labour is seen for what it is intended to be: criticism of them for not being true to the Labour spirit rather than just right wing abuse. The biggest laughs though come when he talks of a sixty year old not having long left to live so need to take advantage of any opportunities for sex.
Over the last few years Mark has changed direction slightly. His shows used to be dominated by tales of radical activism, using satire to change the world. He’s leaning more towards actual stand up now. It was a surprise when he first made this change but he’s got it nailed now and he as good as any other stand up on the circuit.
*For our 2005 interview with mark go here. mark-thomas-interview-2005/
Eventually we drag our weary legs down to the Fountain Inn to catch The Family Battenberg. The ever-present Eugene is on the decks downstairs as we head up to catch one of our favourite bands of the moment.
The Battenberg play a funky, hard hitting brand of chunky Psychedelia with skill that kids their age shouldn’t logically have. After almost five decades of going to gigs I have no hesitation in saying they are up close to the top of the list of best bands I have seen.
Which made it all the more frustrating that we had to leave half way through the set to make sure we could get transport back to St Clears without have to go toe to toe with with lubricated book worms over-limited shuttle space. There’s always the compensation that we know we will see this Cardiff band again soon.
But hey, we managed to squeeze in three events in one night. Result. It can be so easy to spend all your time in the pub. Let’s hope we can get a few more events in tomorrow.