Paul of Inglesby Greenhow
It occurs to me that I’ve been doing things online longer than most people I know. I was involved in bulletin boards back in the early 1990s, was a keen user of Usenet, and had a website up and running as early as 1995. It was around that time that I started chatting with Paul Baldwin – a radio producer in the UK.
I can’t remember who got in touch with whom. I think I remember he emailed me, but I could have that wrong. At any rate, we fairly quickly figured out that we had overlapping interests. I was running Adverb Productions, an independent radio company that was heavily involved in programmes about New Zealand jazz. He was running NowMedia, an independent radio company that was heavily involved in programmes about UK blues.
We both got into education around the same time, and have pretty much had parallel careers – other than the fact that NowMedia actually still exists in some form or other. He’s now the radio lecturer at Teesside University in Middlesbrough, and it was under this banner that he arranged for us to actually, finally, meet.
Paul and I even made a few attempts to collaborate on some projects a long while back. There was a rather ambitious Global Radio Show that nearly made it off the ground a few times, and we were co-producing it, with the assistance of contributors from quite a significant number of countries around the globe.
New Radio Strategies
These days, we’re still collaborating on things. He’s an author on my New Radio Strategies site, which I’ve been quietly pleased with for a little while now, largely due to the sheer calibre of the contributors.
I came and gave a guest presentation to his students about ‘The Future of Radio’, which paid for my train fare to the wintery north, and Paul and I had the chance to sit, chat and get to know each other. I met his wife and the son who, while he wasn’t even born when we started this conversation, was now 11 years old, going on 16.
Paul was more or less as I expected. Same sense of humour (dry, quick, wicked), same interest and passion about the craft of good radio. His interest in the blues was well known to me, and I could have guessed the dabbling in folk and country forms of music. But as you might suspect, there were some things that you only find out about your internet dates when you meet face to face.
The Morris dancing was a surprise.
I have no real cultural reference for morris dancing, and so I wasn’t even really sure what it was for or about. But I came to learn the differences between Border Morris – a real man’s Morris dancing (none of these namby-pamby ribbons and prancing, though the little bells remain) – and Rapper Dancing (nothing to do with hip hop, sadly: this is sword-waving, body flipping, wooden pub floor, 6/8 stuff).
I also learned that in the North, men drink beer and women drink lager. I was on the Scotch, but I almost asked for a Grolsch, which could have ended badly.
This is beer – what men drink.
There was so much we’d had in common over the past 12 or so years, and yet there was such a lot to learn. There were some real, genuine cultural differences and huge gaps in my musical knowledge. I like to think I’m fairly broad, musically speaking, but there were large sections of Paul’s CD collection I had just never encountered in any form at all ever.
Paul’s wife Jan was off to a Morris meet, while Paul stayed home to entertain me. And as she prepared to go, I heard a sentence that reinforced those differences. It’s not a sentence I’d ever heard before, and one that I’ll probably never hear again. I knew what all the words meant, but it proved that I was spending time in another world.
“Would you grab your mother’s stick for her – it’s behind my banjo…”
I’ll be going back for another sampling of this strange world. Shame I’m missing their performance at the Goth Festival in Whitby, but I’ll get to see them play dress-ups soon enough.
It was really great to meet him after so long, and I had a really lovely time.
I feel I have to reply. Particularly about the beer. When I was growing up, quite a few decades ago, the gentlemen of the company drank beer. The ladies drank lager. That was the way it was. It was almost a fundamental part of life in the North. There was once the time when someone asked for a Britvic Orange, only to be told by the barman, “We don’t serve those fancy drinks in here.” So he settled for beer.
I know for a fact my two eldest sons drink lager. It was not the way I brought them up – perhaps they are still rebelling. At least my eldest drinks beer when we meet up – probably as a way of trying to appease his Dad’s bigotry.
My youngest doesn’t have the choice. Eleven going on sixteen, but still stuck with Cola or orange juice. I’ll try harder with him.
And the Morris dancing also needs some illumination. Actually I don’t dance Border morris, but I do play the banjo (and rarely the fiddle) for Jet Set Border Morris (www.jetsetmorris.co.uk). My wife dances and it is her stick that was the one in question. Incidentally it is currently nestling in a bag with about fifteen other sticks. We are not allowed to carry sticks individually when we’re out as a team. They are seen as some sort of offensive weapon, and let’s face it if fifteen Morris dancers dressed in Gothic outfits were approaching you with what are essentially decorated pick axe handles in their hands, you’d probably cross the road.
I do dance Rapper (www.blackriggrapper.co.uk). It’s probably the closest you can get to someone in public without being arrested. It is great fun. I am hoping to demonstrate this to young Dubber on his next visit Up North, and get him along to a practice. He won’t be the same again.
Cultural differences clearly, but nothing we can’t cope with. Except perhaps, the jazz. I have tried. Honestly, I have tried, but the synapses just won’t work around it all somehow and it leaves me confused. Maybe it’s because I can’t tap my foot to it? Or dance to it?
Anyway, twelve years is a long time, but it was really fantastic to meet up. Good to know we actually seem to like each other, good to know we can work together. Good to know we spoke pretty much the same language. Good to know he can spell Middlesbrough and Teesside (eventually), though not Ingleby, for some strange reason. And it will be very good to be able to convert the man into a beer drinking rapper dancer (is there any other sort?) with a penchant for banjos.
The weirdness for me was not that beer was for boys and lager for girls, but rather the idea that lager was somehow not beer. In my world, there are several types of beer, of which lager is one. This is why the distinction was remarkable.
It’s like answering the question “Do you have any cash?” with “No. Only £10 notes.”
All I can surmise about the jazz thing is that you’ve been exposed to the wrong sort of jazz at some point, and that the unfortunate incident has left you intolerant to the aesthetics. Any more than three chords, or the inclusion of an instrument you can’t carry in a sack, and your brain must go into some sort of self-defensive lockdown. I’ve seen it before.
But I apologise for the spelling. Names are important things. I suspect I heard Ingleby with an ‘s’ in it because the first place I lived in here in Britain was Ingoldsby Court. Teesside has too many ‘S’s in it for a word that shape. If it’s beside the Tees, then put a hyphen in it or something.
I suspect the biggest job will be to turn me into a dancer of any sort. You’ll be a beret-wearing, free-playing improvisational vibraphonist first, would be my bet…
Not that I’d be able to tell, but I thought these guys seem quite good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCscIiMWCQo
Being a learned, sophisticated, international type person, of course you know lager is a type of beer. And even being an itinerant, uneducated, not very tolerant Northerner so do I. But it’s like saying an amoeba is a type of life. It’s just not in the same class.
And it’s interesting you acknowledge there can be a wrong sort of jazz! But you’re right, I tend to avoid it. It’s possibly the once bitten, twice shy syndrome I think.
We do play tunes with more than three chords for the Morris – one even has five separate chords in it – how about that? And our accordion player Mags – her accordion would not fit in an industrial strength marquee without a squeeze (pardon the pun) never mind a sack. It would actually, but it’s a mother of a thing to carry and play. So those theories can’t be right.
Black Swan Rapper and Triskele Rapper Sword are the boys (and girls) for some first class rapper. They are on You Tube. Pay attention. Learn some of the moves. Practice the “steppity steppity steppity step” and we’ll have you dancing out with us in no time……and drinking beer. Lots of it……
I wouldn’t mind a beret, tho’…….