Well, I’d seen and loved Cream, kept abreast of his famously dissolute lifestyle, worshipped his drumming and read the autobiography. It was going to be a doddle, a privilege, and fun.

But that was before “Beware Mr Baker”, the documentary about Ginger which appeared, with uncanny accuracy, just before the start of the tour, of which the Railway was the very first date. All of a sudden, my friends were taking the piss in a major way. It didn’t help that I’d just completed a novel centred around an innocent person being murdered in a music pub, and that apparently the film starts with Mr Baker using his walking stick to break the nose of the director, who had had the temerity to mention Jack Bruce. Facebook positively lit up with comments speculating on my chances of survival. Someone even sent me an anonymous threatening postcard purporting to come from Ginger.

Was I worried? Actually, no. If he turned out to be as big a bastard as the reviews were saying, at least I wouldn’t be surprised. I had no intention of saying anything to inflame his ire, and a friend who had seen him recently said he was completely harmless. I suspected, and still suspect, that many of the articles in the papers were re-hashed press releases designed to sensationalise the film and put bums on seats.

I was more worried about the audience than about Ginger. Many of them would be decrepit, and the small size of the room meant that we didn’t have room for more than a few chairs. Others, towards the back, would be unlikely even to catch a glimpse of their hero, and might complain. Recently, we’ve had trouble with irritating people talking loudly during shows (they nearly ruined an appearance by Terry Reid) and I might have to shut them up. My greatest fear was that some idiot might call out for Cream numbers, in which case the shit really would have hit the fan.

Jim, the Railway’s booker, had prepared well. He’d bought every last item on the rider, prepared the dressing room, printed out running orders, “Quiet Please” signs and a full page of instructions for me. My job was to get to the Railway at 4 pm, when the band would allegedly arrive, and generally attend to their every wish. But in fact, the only person there at four was tour manager Doug, an implausibly young but very friendly individual, whose job was to do pretty much everything. He explained that Ginger himself would simply be collected from his hotel at 8.15 and walk straight onstage without sound checking. This sounded like a recipe for disaster to me, but I had reckoned without the super-efficiency of Doug, who took two meticulous hours to set up Ginger’s enormous drum kit and its numerous attendant percussion nick-nacks, before sound checking comprehensively on his behalf. Blimey, I thought, Ginger’s going to have to go some to be better than his drum tech.

The other band members gradually arrived. There was the very affable Alec Dankworth, an absolute dead ringer for his famous dad. Normal sax player Pee Wee Ellis was absent, being replaced, just for one show, by another impossibly youthful musician called Josh Arcoleo (whose name Ginger later amusingly forgot). This is never going to work, I thought, but the moment he played his first note, it was clear he was a virtuoso and completely unfazed by the potentially intimidating situation. Ghanaian percussionist Abass Dodoo was full of joie de vivre and obviously very concerned about Ginger’s welfare. All of them exuded concern that nothing should happen which could upset him.

A potential problem came up straight away, and that was how to handle the interval between the two sets. The dressing room was up two flights of stairs, and Ginger doesn’t really do stairs. An alternative would be to come into the front bar, but Ginger certainly doesn’t do mingling with the fans. Or he could hang around outside, but it was freezing cold, windy and pouring with rain. No one liked the idea of coming off stage all sweaty and potentially catching a cold at the beginning of a lengthy tour. In the end, a compromise was agreed whereby he would sit in the upstairs bar, which was almost empty.

By way of preparing the young saxist, a very lengthy sound check then took place, so lengthy that, by the time the rest of the band went to a local restaurant for dinner, it was clear that the start time was going to be missed. The audience didn’t seem bothered or even to notice, but I was getting twitchy as the inevitable happened: Doug arrived with Ginger in his car and was about to enter the stage door when the band wasn’t even in the building. As he stepped out, wearing a beige cardigan and a woolly hat, he looked dangerously frail. I ran up and, with no introductions taking place, guided him slowly to the upstairs bar to wait. The downstairs bar was full of fans, who were transfixed to see their hero ambling past the pool table and up the stairs. Shall I try to engage him in conversation? I wondered, instead deciding to go in search of the band.

Eventually all were convened and I pushed through the audience to open the side door and let them in. It was instantly obvious that all was going to go well. The room was warm and packed, and the affection that greeted Ginger as he entered was quite moving. He was smoking a cigarette, which caused a great laugh. Still a rebel! He stubbed it out in the ashtray which forms part of his kit. He looked a completely different person, back straight upright, and as soon as he started to play, he lost twenty or thirty years in a flash. Has he still got it? He sure has.

I’d forgotten that jazz shows are peppered with audience applause for very solo. And boy, were there solos. Each number started with a sax riff, proceeded to some improvisation, a bass solo, a percussion solo, more improvisation, a drum solo and finally back to the riff. The quality of the playing from all four members was quite astonishing. What’s more, all of them, including Ginger, were smiling at each other. “That’s a good sign,” said Doug, standing like a coiled spring, ready to leap into action at the slightest sign of a problem. “They don’t always smile.”

After 40 minutes, it was time for the interval, so out we came again, down the side alley and into the upstairs bar again. Would they like a beer? No, but a coffee would be nice. I went and made a couple of Nescafés, and that was when I had my conversation with Ginger Baker. I could only carry two cups, and as I placed them on the table, he looked up at me dolefully.

“Milk!” he said gruffly.

“Of course.” I turned round to go and get it.

“Sugar!” he called out after me. I nodded, returning shortly later with both.

“Spoon!” Damn, I’d forgotten the spoon.

Then it happened, as I came back with the spoon. “Fank yew,” he said, and smiled. Now according to Ginger’s reputation, he should at the very least have nutted me for my forgetfulness, but not at all. Ginger Baker was thanking me. It’s been a good night, I thought, and it was only going to get better. The second set was even more exciting, with the audience reaching fever pitch.

What I only found out later was that Ginger had had a barney with the security guy, who had told him off for smoking in the building. But he seemed to get over it very quickly, and Doug made a point of going to the security man and apologising. The second set started with a typically abrupt introduction from Ginger: “The smoking laws in the country are absurd. So we don’t get cancer, they make us smoke outside, so we all catch pheumonia.” And then, before the last number, noticeably out of breath (a man half his age would have been): “This will have to be the last song, that is unless you want to watch me die onstage.” This drew a bitter-sweet round of applause.

There was no encore, of course. Ginger was into the car and off into the night in a flash. The others hung around for a while, saying how much they’d enjoyed it. Doug, stuffing the remains of the rider into his bag, even said, “See you next time.”

So there might be a next time? Yes please.

Why didn’t I take “Burnt Offerings” straight to Stick It In Your Ear? Scratching around in what remains of my brain cells, I do remember that I feared it wasn’t cool enough for them. They regularly had their cassettes and their fanzine positively reviewed in Sounds, Melody Maker and the NME. Their bands tended to be quite serious and post-punk. And the main (i.e. best-known) band on Burnt Offerings was Thieves Like Us, the band I had fruitlessly been managing for several years. That band was popular but wasn’t viewed by the music intelligentsia as cool at all. I believe I feared that Geoff and Phil might reject the tape, and I have endured a lifetime of not being able to cope with rejection.

The other matter was that the quality was dodgy. The home-made cassettes were spliced together from demo tapes and live recordings and had a lot of hissing and clicking going ion. I feared that it was below the standards of sound quality that SIIYE would have expected.

The thinking behind it was to try and emulate the compilations coming from cities like Bristol and Manchester, even Southampton (the City Walls compilation). My job/hobby as music journalist took me all round the Hampshire area and I was constantly frustrated at seeing great live bands who had failed to break though nationally, or even properly into London. This seemed quite unfair, and there was another, greater frustration eating away at me.

Thieves Like Us had been signed to the Earlobe label, an imprint owned by a New Yorker called Larry Uttal, renowned for having discovered Blondie and founded the chart-busting Bell label (most famous artist – ahem – Gary Glitter). Hardly was the ink dry on the contract before it all went horribly wrong. He wanted to turn the band into a poptastic chart act, while they had gone all serious and wanted artistic integrity. Personnel problems raised their ugly heads and the recordings gradually being made in various studios at Earlobe’s expense featured varying line-ups. By the time Burnt Offerings came up, the band had effectively split, the label had effectively dropped them and the rights of the recordings rested with Larry, who had no intention of releasing them. Of course, we couldn’t release them either, and could never have afforded to buy them back. Angry at all this, I was determined that at least some of their music should see the light of day, so started to put together some live recordings. Tommy Winstone, our long-suffering sound engineer (who went on to become one of the UK’s top tour managers) had been recording shows at places like the Pinecliff in Bournemouth, Jumpers Tavern in Christchurch and the Greyhound in London, so I started sifting through them. It soon became clear that there wasn’t enough material for a live album, but I did rescue three tracks which represented the band’s new arty, non-commercial direction: Golden Handshake, One Man’s Beat and Trampoline.

It must have been then that the two ideas – a Thieves live album and a local combination – gelled into one and the idea of Burnt Offerings was born. I had recently bought, from Comet in Southampton, an extraordinary Sharp hi-fi system which had twin cassette decks. I only bought it because it was in a sale, but the possibilities presented by the twin decks soon became clear: I could duplicate cassettes. It wasn’t exactly sophisticated and was very time-consuming and painstaking (it all had to happen in real time), but it worked. I started thinking of what bands to invite. As a local radio broadcaster, I was forever deluged with demo tapes, and as a live reviewer, I had several special favourites.

In Winchester, a jobbing pub band called Zip Code had changed into an image-conscious art-rock band called Four People I Have Known, modelled, image-wise, on the band Japan. Thinking about it now, for the first time in over thirty years, I realise that there was quite a lot of politics involved. Four People I Have Known’s drummer was Paul Bringloe, who’d split amid much bad feeling from Thieves Like Us a year or so previously. Leader of Four People I Have Known was a rather scary guy called Jack Burnaby, and I visited him in Andover Road to get a copy of their tape. He couldn’t have made it clearer that he assumed I was planning to rip them off, but he did part with the demo, which consisted of Blood On Your Hands, Be My Animal and Walking To The Centre Of The Earth, three rather similar sounding tracks featuring heavily flanged guitar from Rick Aplin, who I am pleased to say I still see at gigs to this day. The tracks represented them well and I had high hopes that their followers would buy a few tapes.

By coincidence, another band was doing the same as Thieves Like Us and changing from a great novelty band to a more serious type of outfit. The Time, a lively four-piece from Gosport, had recently issued their own cleverly packaged tape but it disappointed their fans, who were hoping for the funny songs in their repertoire, such as Stephanie And Peter and Roughies And Toughies. Both of these I included on Burnt Offerings, together with a newer track called This Fever. The Time, too, were effectively in the process of splitting up, but  felt I was doing some kind of public duty in letting these tracks see the light of day.

Yet another ex-Thieves Like Us drummer, John Parish, had retreated to Yeovil and formed a new trio called The Headless Horsemen. Their tracks were the slow, obscure Hopeless, a ditty called Wet Lunch Hour and a cover of the Beatles Drive My Car, which was seen as a work of genius or an absolute disgrace, depending on how you viewed the Fabs. The Headless Horsemen later evolved into Automatic Dlamini and eventually into the PJ Harvey Band. John is now a renowned producer and solo artist. If you add in Kevin Robinson of The Time, a comedian with his own BBC 2 series “It’s Kevin” under the name of Kevin Eldon, Burnt Offerings contained a couple of pretty famous people. Not that we knew it at the time.

So there we had it. Twelve tracks, all of which I thought were good, and representative of the Hampshire / Dorset “scene”. I found a shop which sold TDK C45 tapes, which were the ideal length. I attached a label to each side, typewritten and stuck on with Pritt. Then I asked Jenny Rosser, the partner of my neighbour Tony Hill of Sarsen Press in Winchester, if she could design me a cover. I have absolutely no recollection of why we called it Burnt Offerings, so it can’t have been of any particular significance. Jenny came up with a cassette sleeve depicting a burnt chicken being removed from an oven, and listing the tracks in her beautiful handwriting. Tony then printed them on some lurid orange paper which he had left over and wanted to get rid of. Everything was in place, and everything fitted neatly into the DIY ethos of the times.

The system I had dreamed up worked like this: I bought the tapes for 80p each and sold them to the bands for £1. The sale price we set was £1.50, so if the bands sold them at gigs, they would be making 50p a time. Of course, I had given no thought to the publicity, advertising or shipping, so ended up making a substantial loss. But everything I have ever done in music has made a loss, so nothing new there. We sold them at the record shop in Stockbridge Road, Winchester Wax, and gave their address in publicity, as it seemed more professional than a private address. I placed a series of small ads in the NME, and it immediately produced results. Anorak tape collectors from all over the UK and even abroad started sending their cheques and I spent untold hours duplicating those damn cassettes and packaging them up. The bands dutifully flogged them at their gigs and the greatest success came in the PR department. All the bands were photogenic, so I sent the local press and the national music papers some good black and white photos and a detailed and user-friendly press release, which many of them duly used. The tape got plugged and reviewed all over the place, but there was never any radio play, since radio stations weren’t geared up for cassettes.

Looking back though the paperwork now, I reckon we must have sold several hundred in the end, which was quite a result. Sadly, a search of the shed and the attic has failed to turn up an actual copy of the tape. If you’ve got one, don’t bother to send it. I don’t have anything to play it on.

This is going to read like a “Dear Diary” piece, but I can’t think of any other approach. This is what we did, and this is what we saw.

Wednesday kicked off with new Loose  signing Johnny Fritz at a far-flung venue called Weather Up, getting to which started work on the blisters which would characterize the week. Fritz was slightly upstaged by an extraordinary off-the-wall performance from John McCauley, looking wasted but sounding sublime, as, alone with an electric guitar, he gave us enticing previews of what is clearly shaping up to be a fantastic new Deer Tick album.

At the plushy Convention Centre (ideal respite from the charming but frankly unhygienic dumps which make up most of Austin’s venues), a Swiss girl band called – yes – Boy were doing a passable First Aid Kit impression. I was all set to dislike Jake Bugg, especially as he looks as if he is yet to sit his GCSEs, but actually he was unaffected by the environment, making no attempt to ingratiate himself other than with his good voice and nifty songs. A good guy, who could teach Frank Turner a thing or two.

Back to Weather Up for a beautiful set from the Milk Carton Kids, gossamer-light harmonies and self-deprecating humour abounding. You’d never think they hailed from Los Angeles, but they do, as do the magnificent Dawes, who followed. This was just the third of their twelve – count ’em – sxsw performances, but they sounded sublime, playing to a hundred or so sun-drenched souls and presenting a load of new songs which bear their trade mark of being instantly accessible.

Now it was time to prepare for being unable to get in to Stubbs for Nick Cave, but no, the queue moved swiftly and I was able to get in the front row, ready to get my head blown off and be bollocked by security for my inability to switch off the flash on my camera. A Nick Cave show is more a triumph of theatricality than a traditional rock show but deeply affecting nonetheless, swaggering with confidence. After that, it was a bit of a comedown to be confronted with the sub-Eltonisms of Tom Odell, including a horrifically misjudged attempt at “Honky Tonk Women”. The evening finished at the comfortable Stephen F’s Bar, not really  designed for music but a nice place for Welsh roots artist Christopher Rees. After that, it was tempting to go and see Dawes again at the Moody Theater, but that would have felt like stalking, and tiredness triumphed.

Thursday would be a long haul, but worth it. At the excellent Ginger Man venue, the Waterboys’ Mike Scott was kicking the day off with some traditional folk. At the Paste stage, Hurray For The Riff Raff were entertaining a big crowd, but I was on a mission to find the Allah-Las, which entailed walking agonizing miles to an amiable dump called the Scoot Inn, situated in a wasteland and doubling as the venue for a diverting skateboard competition. Squeezed in among various unidentified metal bands, the dapper Allah-Las took me back to my teens. Their vocals and stage moves were pure Herman’s Hermits. Twee, sure, but I loved every moment.

Back in the Convention Center, Hiss Golden Messenger was flu-ridden and fresh off a plane, so it would be unfair to judge him on his allotted twenty minutes. It was off to the Chuggin’ Monkey, a typical Sixth Street dive, for Peter Bruntnell and band, on sparkling form presenting their new “Retrospective” compilation.  Then it was on to Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop (one of the more inimitable sxsw venues) for the much-anticipated reunion of the True Believers, with Alejandro Escovedo and Jon Dee Graham. They rocked out with aplomb but the volume was so ludicrously excessive that I was lured by the siren call of some shrimp fajitas. Well, you gotta eat some time.

A short queuing process allowed access to Austin’s famous blues cavern, Antones, for a typically well-judged half-hour of Richard Thompson and his hot electric band, opening with a blistering “Tear Stained Letter” which was one of the week’s highlights. Sadly, it was followed by a very low lowlight. A high-risk queuing strategy surprisingly allowed us admission to the small-scale Flaming Lips show at the Belmont (they would do the full production extravaganza the next night at Auditorium Shores). Things were running very late, which meant that we were exposed to the bland horror of an entire set by Alt-J. Insipid, soulless and generally useless, they nearly sent everyone to sleep with their warbles and bleeps. Considering Depeche Mode were in town, they should have hung their heads in shame.

Even the Flaming Lips were a let-down, and I never thought I’d say that. They’d decided to forsake all their visuals and perform the whole of “Yoshimi vs The Pink Robots”, but it didn’t really work. The augmented band was strangely hesitant and disjointed, and with little to catch the attention, it sort of fizzled out.

On Friday, there was the most ridiculously high quality showcase going on at Waterloo Records, with the likes of Frightened Rabbit, Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris and (ulp) Alt-J, but I was desperate not to miss John Murry, so determinedly headed to the far-flung Hole In The Wall to experience him playing just four songs to a small but rapt audience. This led on (after some amiable psychedelia from the Besnard Lakes at Ginger Man) to one of those endearingly unique sxsw experiences, as John Murry agreed to spend the day with us. Surreal wasn’t the word, as we found ourselves miles outside town in a fabulous, classic roadhouse called the Sahara Lounge. It was Happy Hour and the venue’s speciality was an unspecified and evil concoction called Devil’s Piss. Here, Peter Bruntnell and band were playing pool but no one else was present. If it hadn’t been for me, John Murry and my companion, they would have been playing to their tour manager and the sound engineer. This, I hasten to say, didn’t indicate any lack of popularity, simply that it was in the middle of nowhere and no one knew about it. The Bruntnell band (featuring Dave Little on storming guitar) cheerfully blasted through Pete’s greatest hits, doubtless fuelled by the Devil’s Piss.

Canada House this year was situated at Friends, in the full-on bedlam of Sixth Street. Here, Whitehorse (Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland) proved themselves masters of the mountain of technology they’ve acquired and now sound, as a duo, more like a six-piece band. The energy is breathtaking.

At Red River, a far from sold out Stubbs played host to Cold War Kids who were deservedly received with deafening silence, and to the Specials, who caused frantic skanking with an unashamedly hit-laden set. Going through the motions in  the most pleasant way, seemingly sponsored by Grecian 2000.

Saturday was the day in which you could have seen, in true crazily eclectic sxsw fashion, the Zombies, Eric Burdon, Charlotte Church or Prince (we didn’t). Much more fun was the Yard Dog Gallery (it’s a blistering suntrap), where the Minus Five featured both Scott McCaughey and the legendary Clem Burke. After that, Austin’s lucky mascot, In McLagan, presented a bunch of new songs, plus of course “You’re So Rude”.

Then it was on to the Broken Spoke, where line dancing is the norm. A disturbingly bland Laura Cantrell and the gimmicky Pokey Lafarge were both put firmly in the shade by the cheerful Caitlin Rose – small of stature but big of lung – and her hot band. Not far away, Alejandro Escovedo’s day party was taking place at Maria’s Taco Express. As we listened to the Mastersons, I drank a couple of exquisite Margaritas and proceeded to buy some shirts which I couldn’t afford. Don’t ask.

At Joe’s, Dawes were concluding their (almost) final show. With immense courage, they first proved they can stretch out and improvise, then finished with a quiet, slow and brand new song, earning an encore, normally unheard of at sxsw. An hour later, they unexpectedly popped up yet again at the Moody Theater as guest backing band for one song with John Fogerty, whose super slick, over-frantic approach to the Creedence legacy is almost parodic in its overkill. He really didn’t need the three extra rhythm guitarists to back him as he galloped round the stage like Benny Hill.

So, as we say very year, “It was the best sxsw ever!”

Of course, everything was fine. The next day, Turnip took us out to Hellshire Beach, where we were quite clearly the only tourists among the Kingston families out for a Sunday swim. Giant sound systems shook the whole beach as we crunched our way though a lobster caught specially for us. But in the shacks behind us, there were definitely dodgy dealings going on, and Turnip had had to negotiate animatedly to get a parking slot. We never even considered there might be a safety issue.

The next evening, we set out to find a particular music bar recommended in the guide book, and got completely and utterly lost. No one seemed keen to help us as we wandered along increasingly deserted and badly-lit streets. Was this a sensible thing to do in a city like Kingston? We didn’t really give it any thought.

All this was three years ago. It was only when reading a “Warning Of The Week” slot in a newspaper’s travel section that I realized that actually, we were probably being rather foolish. Out of curiosity, I took a peek at the Foreign Office website’s advice for Jamaica. Good grief!

“There is a risk in walking alone in isolated areas or on deserted beaches even in daylight hours.” Whoops.
“Don’t walk at night.” We did.
“Only hire taxis authorised by the Jamaica Tourist Board.” There was no way dear old Turnip’s jalopy had ever been licensed by anyone. In fact, he’d wooed us by driving slowly alongside us and enticing us in.
“Try to vary which restaurants you use.” We went to the same one several times.
“Avoid large crowds.” It was Bob Marley’s birthday so of course we went to an outdoor concert.
Well, we had a great time and it makes you wonder whether you’d actually go anywhere if you followed all the official advice. If you read the Evening Standard and digested its contents, you’d never step outside your front door in London, such is the catalogues of muggings, rapes and random attacks chronicled within. But having perused the Kingston advice, I thought I’d reconsider another couple of recent holidays in the light of what the Foreign Office says (my wife and I have reached the age where we want to travel a lot and we want to travel independently). It was quite a sobering read.
A couple of years before, we’d rented a lovely villa in Tobago. After a series of independently-booked, self-catering Caribbean island holidays, this seemed like a great option – and it was. But we were slightly startled to find that we had a 24-hour guard and triple locks on the doors. Nevertheless, we wandered round in the dark, visited deserted beaches and, on at least one occasion, stumbled around the place in a rum punch-induced stupor. If we hadn’t been adventurous and willing to engage complete strangers in conversation, we’d never have met Michael de Souza, creator of the now mega-franchise Rastamouse. We also visited the home of the eccentric German sculptress Luise Kimme, who had twelve guard dogs and massive barbed wire defences and claimed she never left her compound. What does the Foreign Office have to say about Tobago?
“There have been a number of serious robberies against tourists. Some of these incidents have been accompanied by violence, including attempted rape.” Ulp.

“Caution is advised when renting villas in Tobago.” Ahem.

“Visitors are advised to visit isolated beaches only as a member of an organised group.” Oh dear.

Now this is when it gets really serious. We had the most wonderful, carefree time in Tobago, but, weeks after we returned, we read that a Swedish couple living in the same street as our rented villa were hacked to death with machetes in their own home. That concentrated the mind.

Not enough to deter us from taking an independent coastal holiday in Kenya the next year, though. It has only been the recent subsequent series of kidnappings and murders in this area that has made us realize that we may have been not only naïve but perhaps genuinely foolhardy.

We had a gorgeous villa and there were a couple of staff on hand. Our “servant” Bernard wouldn’t let us go anywhere outside the grounds on our own, insisting on driving us to and from restaurants and waiting outside while we ate. He was shocked to see me setting out on a walk around the area and demanded to accompany me every step of the way.
Kenya: “Remain vigilant at all times.” We didn’t.
“Muggings and incidents of armed robbery can occur at any time.” Hmmm.

“Attacks can occur anywhere, but especially in isolated areas such as empty beaches.” I’m beginning to feel ill.

So what can we learn from this, particularly in view of planning future holidays? One response is clear: We have always had a wonderful time and never encountered any trouble, therefore there is nothing to be concerned about. On the other hand, we have probably been exceptionally lucky. But to what extent should the official advice be treated as gospel? I looked at the advice regarding places we have recently visited for weekend breaks, such as Riga and Vilnius, and they are pretty doomy too. Certainly, the reports in our local weekly paper would incline you never to go out on a Friday night in your home town.

We can’t just become recluses, but one thing we are agreed on. We’re going to be a bit more cautious in future, but we’re certainly not going to be put off searching for adventure.

There was a San Francisco showcase going on round the corner in the Red Eyed Fly, which was a good opportunity to check out the excellent Spinto Band, the happening Dodos and wait in vain for Mark Eitzel, the reason I was actually there. There was no explanation for a completely different (and useless) band going on when he was due, while Mark sat and watched in bemusement. This encounter would have to wait.

A trip to Maria’s Taco Express is always obligatory. Lovely food and a laid back family atmosphere made an ideal setting for the cheerful jazz of the Jitterbug Vipers, alias veteran guitarist Slim Ritchie and singer-songwriter Sarah Sharp.

Then followed a failed attempt to get into Stubbs to see James Blake (just out of curiosity really). It’s a shame that it’s now impossible to get into the big shows if you aren’t willing to queue for hours and forego everything else. I wasn’t willing, not even for Foo Fighters or (gulp) Duran Duran, so it was off to the Black and Tan Bar for the aural smash and grab raid that is Edmonton’s Hot Panda. Not a million miles from Barry Adamson-era XTC, they are young, quirky and pure fun.

Sixth Street was hotting up and a couple of wildly crushed shows followed in quick succession. I’ve always loved The Dears, and a gremlin-bedevilled Murray Lightburn was on fire as he celebrated his fortieth birthday in the familiar prog rock maelstrom. Just next door, on a stage she obviously considered a little small for her, was Ellie Goulding, of whom massive posters and projections were all over town. It’s always kind of exciting to see a big star in a place the size of a postage stamp, but it’s hard to see quite what the point of her is. She’s like Kylie with a worse hairstyle.

After all that craziness, calm needed to be restored, and that was provided by the beautifully soothing music of Vetiver in St David’s Church. So soothing, in fact, that I dropped off in the pews.

Thursday
Thursday started in a way which is very typical of sxsw. Being intrigued to see Yuck, I walked many miles and then stood in an immobile queue for an hour while, presumably, the band played inside. Then it was a four-mile hike to the opposite end of town to my next scheduled show, but it was worth the sore feet. She Keeps Bees is a fantastic soulful power duo like a reversed-out White Stripes. In their element in the quaint vinyl treasure trove of End Of An Ear, the only sad thing for them is the current prevalence of bands with Bees in their names. A delicious (free) beer in the sunny courtyard next door and it was time for a truly wonderful band from Portland called Dolorean. Yearning songs and an understated presence made for a beautiful atmosphere.

Not far away is one of the best “secret” sxsw daytime venues, Home Slice Pizza. As the sun blazed down, the running order in cheerful disarray, we grooved to the lilting melodies of Great Lake Swimmers and simply swooned as Mark Eitzel and Marc Capelle ran through some American Music Club classics, minus poor Vudi, who was stuck in traffic and arrived (cool as a cucumber of course) just as they finished.

The Strokes were playing at Lady Bird Lake and a mini-riot was breaking out as I arrived and the barricades were being breached. Despite their being mere dots on the horizon and the sound that of a distant tannoy, their snappy simplicity and style still shone through. Now, one has to suffer for one’s pleasure and I have particularly suffered over the years at Cedar Street Courtyard in an effort to get close to much-admired bands. My weakness for The Bangles (and never having seen them) meant I was willing to endure the torture of standing though categorically two of the worst support bands in world history to be in the front row. Was it worth it? It surely was, as they blasted through a greatest hits set, still looking like teenagers although they must be approaching fifty. “Eternal Flame” was positively tear-inducing and they climaxed with an inspired segueway of “Walk Like An Egyptian” and The Who’s “Magic Bus”.

Friday
Friday began in a similarly frustrating way as Thursday. Julian Dawson was reading from his excellent new book on the life of Nicky Hopkins at Waterloo Records. Outside, the Dum Dum Girls were performing (great, by the way), so I had to leave before Julian started, as I had at date at the Yard Dog Gallery on South Congress, scene of all the best boozy day parties. Strutting her stuff was Exene Cervenka (previously of the band X), her punk attitude being enthusiastically applied to her clever, melodic songs, with vocal support from Cindy Wassermann of Dead Rock West and some gorgeous psychedelic pedal steel from Maggie Bjorklund. You wouldn’t want to tangle with Exene.

In a dramatic change of atmosphere that was to be typical of the day, we found ourselves next in the plushy but almost empty Convention Center ballroom, where the sparky Caitlin Rose was clearly spooked by the formal atmosphere. Great pedal steel here too, from Spencer Cullum Jr, and fabulous Steve Cropper style guitar from the impossibly youthful Jeremy Fetzer.

It was back to the most primeval down and dirty rock and roll as we joined the mischievous Jesse Malin in the tiny Aquarium Bar on Sixth. Jesse and the St Mark’s Social duly laid waste to the place, with Jesse prancing along the bar, then getting everyone to lie on the floor before finishing with a singalong “Instant Karma”. He’s like a naughty New York schoolboy intent on causing trouble, which he certainly does.

Every visit to Austin requires an hour or two to be spent on the 18th floor of the Hilton Garden Hotel, a sanctuary of peace and quiet amidst the mayhem. It was a bit too quiet for She Keeps Bees (so good, we saw them twice) who, like Caitlin Rose, couldn’t quite cope with the reverential atmosphere. It was eminently more suited to This Is The Kit (one man down on account of a refused visa). Their folky music suited the environment, although, on account of the venue’s inaccessibility, they were performing largely to their friends.

A final desperate and unsuccessful attempt to see Yuck later, we ended up with Lucinda Williams in the brand new Moody Theater. She’s a country-rock legend and her band consists of the slickest musos in the business, with massively impressive dual lead guitars. Unfortunately, though, with her Dusty Springfield panda eyes and her super-professional but largely immobile stage presence, it was an impressive rather than an emotional experience.

Saturday
Saturday at sxsw has a tradition that I’d like to tell you about in a bit more detail. It’s the day of the Mojo barbecue at the Mean Eyed Cat. Because the venue is so far off the beaten track, it tends to be sparsely attended despite the stellar nature of the line-up. This gives it a real feel of occasion, a genuine privilege to be able to attend. Me, I’m always transfixed by Phil Alexander, Mojo’s editor, who not only compères the show but also makes copious notes. As an enthusiastic admirer of his writing, it’s all I can do to prevent myself from sidling up and trying to squint at what he’s writing, so as to get a sneak preview of the review in next month’s magazine.
Nicely fuelled by Margaritas and quiche from the Six Shooter Records brunch, we experienced an unbelievable sequence of contrasting acts, all of them brilliant in their way: garage punk crossed with Little Richard from the blindingly good Jim Jones Revue, pastoral melodies from Erland and the Carnival, Louisiana swamp-folk from Hurray For The Riff Raff and acoustic storytelling from the beatific Josh T. Pearson, the man with the kind eyes. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard his extraordinary cover of Boney M’s “Rivers Of Babylon”.

The weekend was completed by some true American music. At Antones, Joe Ely and his ultra-slick band did the trick (ahem, we’ll draw a veil over Hansen). At Jax Bar, Eilen Jewell was as charming as ever, sending me home to the cold UK with a warm heart.

Take a look at Oliver’s sxsw videos by going to You Tube and selecting oliver794

From The Hampshire Chronicle

Fast forward a moment. We’d been in Grenada for a week. Our daughter and her friend were meant to be flying in a few days later but got stuck at Gatwick in the snow for three days. Now we were picking them up from the airport and had some lovely things in store for them: the warm, beautiful weather, then, on the way home, the incredible Christmas lights at the roundabout near Grand Anse, and then a meal amid the beautiful twinkling fairy lights at Mangrove Hideaway. They’d love it! Except that, as they exited the terminal, the rain was torrential, and as a result, all the lights had been switched off. For a moment, they must have thought they’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

But only for a moment, because our Christmas in Grenada was incredible. The internet was telling us how the UK was shivering in the cold snap, while we were fulfilling the ultimate holiday dream, spending Christmas Day on a virtually deserted Grand Anse Beach with champagne and crisps, before returning to the house for an open air turkey dinner cooked by the girls. The evening before had been a riot of fun, partying like crazy at Prickly Bay Marina, with what we agreed was the best pizza in the world and a fantastic band led by Barracuda Man, plus the best and cheapest rum punches we found anywhere.

We’d been to Grenada once before, but only for 24 hours on our way to Carriacou in 2003, so hadn’t seen anything of the island. That’s where Vaughn came in. We’d been offered a tour by Henry’s Safari Tours and jumped at the chance. We’ve travelled widely in the world, but this was the best tour we’d ever experienced anywhere. The girls jumped into the Concord Falls, while I was slightly more interested in the Rivers rum distillery, although the tiny sip I took of the strong stuff nearly blew my head off. Lunch was a delicious Grenadian feast at Helena’s Ocean View Restaurant in Sauteurs, shortly after the fascinating nutmeg factory and shortly before the bizarre but charming Glebe Street Museum, full of things like a portrait of an owl, helpfully labelled “Portrait Of An Owl”. By the end of the day, we felt we’d learnt a massive amount about Grenada from the incredibly articulate and knowledgeable Vaughn, who later revealed that his house had recently burnt down, not long after being reconstructed after Hurricane Ivan.

On that day, Vaughn was driving, but we had been lent a car and took a while to get used to driving on Grenada’s roads. I soon descended into road rage at what appeared to be impatient drivers hooting at me so they could overtake, but soon it became clear that they were merely politely alerting us to their presence. Nevertheless, descending the hill from the Grand Etang forest towards St George’s in heavy rain but with the sun directly in my eyes, was the scariest driving experience of my life, as I could see literally nothing but was aware of a deep gutter on my left and a sheer drop on my right. It did make for a good rainbow though.

Culinarily speaking, our greatest triumph was the cooking of seven (yes, seven) lobsters, which we collected direct from the boat in Lower Woburn. As we feasted on the delicious meat, I reflected that the cheapest lobster I’d seen on any menu was 75 EC dollars, while we’d paid just 100 EC for all those lobsters. Bargain! We planned to eat out as much as possible but in the end (no way were we going to risk drinking and driving), we ended up walking over the hill to Le Phare Bleu on several occasions, as it was just a five minute walk from the house. We didn’t risk the beautiful but pricey Västra Banken lightship itself but found the Poolbar restaurant a great place to chill with nice food, very cheap Happy Hour Carib Buckets and live music of varying quality. We disgraced ourselves by allowing our guard dog to follow us into the complex, whereupon she promptly stared a dogfight in the middle of the restaurant, scattering the diners in terror. This is by no means the “real” Grenada, by the way, more the sanctuary of well-heeled European yachtie types, but still a beautiful place to relax.

Talking of Carib, I’m afraid I’m addicted. We adventurously ventured to the brewery itself and bought two crates, which I’m embarrassed to say I single-handedly emptied in a week. It’s nectar.

We just had to try BB’s Crabback in St George’s, as Giles Coren had pronounced it the “best restaurant in the world”. I don’t think even BB himself would claim that, but the food was indeed delicious and he fitted us in without a booking, even though an entire touring UK cricket party was also there. We left before it got noisy. We sadly didn’t make the highly recommended Fish Friday in Gouyave, but other random places we tried included an incongruous but rather sweet German restaurant on the harbour, the aforementioned Mangrove Hideaway (while the lights still worked) and the more upmarket Dirty Dock, great for plane spotting. But none of them could match the simple majesty of the rotis at the Hard Wood Snacket in Carriacou, where we’d taken a day trip with the Osprey (shockingly referred to by the locals as the “Vomit Comet”). But that’s another story.

One thing’s for sure – no future Christmas will ever measure up to this.

Three things softened the blow of turning sixty: the winter fuel payment, the bus pass and the free swimming. The free swimming has already gone and surely the bus pass is next. This added urgency to my plan to hit the road with the bus pass and see how far I could get. The idea, as the sun came out in June, was to take a day as an experiment and see if there was any hope of it working as a full-on holiday.

The prospect was scary. The only bus I take with any regularity is the E1 to and from Eastleigh and if that’s anything to go by, the risks are manifold. For a start, there’s also an E2, which has the same starting and ending points but takes a completely different route in between. Apart from that, it tends to arrive very late, very early or not at all. Any of these would threaten the route obligingly provided by a website called Traveline, which plans bus journeys. I decided to try and reach Gloucester, where I grew up.

The start could hardly have been worse. The E1 took me to Winchester bus station, where I was due to wait half an hour and then take the X24 (what is it with these letters?) to Andover. “You’ll have to get yourself up to Peter Symonds,” said the lugubrious lady in Winchester’s uniquely sordid bus garage. This would have meant absolutely nothing to anyone not local, but I knew what it meant and the news was not good.

Peter Symonds is the local sixth form college and it lies a good mile (uphill) from the bus station. I knew there were road works in the area but not that the buses made no attempt to divert round them but simply ground to a halt there. The humiliation of not even getting past the first hurdle would have been too much to bear, so I set off to jog, on the hottest day of the year, in search of the X24. As I was suffering from plantar fasciitis (don’t ask, it’s an extremely painful foot), this was inadvisable but what other option was there? A taxi would certainly have been cheating.

As the Peter Symonds complex has three different entrances fronting on to three streets, I positioned myself where I could see all of them. Like a mirage, the X24 appeared and drew up at a stop labelled 77. Of course, I should have known. I ran the hundred yards to the bus and breathlessly explained to the driver, “I have walked all the way from the bus station”.

“Why?” he asked. “We go to the train station anyway.” As this would have been a much shorter walk, I was not pleased.

“They didn’t tell me that.”

“I know, we keep telling them. Hopeless, aren’t they?”

At this stage, therefore, I was actually going backwards, heading back into town the way I had just walked. But at least I was on the road, positioned in the spot I love: upstairs front seat on an unsurprisingly otherwise empty double decker.

In Andover, there was a stand for bus 80, as designated on Traveline, but it ominously said it went only to Marlborough, “with connection via route 70 to Swindon”. Hmm, connection. With things being so haphazard, “connection” was actually quite a loose concept. But no fear, a large sign (albeit with several letters missing) pointed to a “Bus Information Kiosk”. This turned out to be a Shopmobility depot, where a kind lady told me, “There hasn’t been a Bus Info Kiosk here for years. You could try asking one of the drivers, but I wouldn’t count on anything they say.”

One thing that had not crossed my mind for a second was the matter of toilets, and the fact that buses don’t have them. For a middle-aged gentleman with incipient prostate issues, this was going to be a problem. Andover bus station Gents was inevitably “closed for refurbishment”, so I followed an instruction to seek out “alternative facilities in the shopping centre next to Argos”. This at least was open but the hand dryer wasn’t working. Of course you never discover this until your hands are wet, leaving you the option of trying porous loo paper which gets stuck to your hands, or walking around flapping like a seal. I opted for the latter, but otherwise felt quite at home in the shopping centre, as it was identical to Eastleigh’s, right down to all the same shops in the same order.

The number 80 arrived in plenty of time, but the driver locked up and disappeared, only returning some ten minutes after it was due to depart. How so? Of course, he, too, had had to walk all the way to Argos for a pee and had had to flap his way round the shopping mall. He was a really nice chap.

“Are you going to Swindon?” I asked. “It says something about changing in Marlborough to the number 70.”

“Oh no,” he explained. “It’s the same bus, I just change the number.” This one had double legroom in the front upstairs seat; it felt like an airline upgrade.

The route took us round the periphery of ugly and desperate army barracks, along a road called, ghoulishly, “Somme Road”. A couple of army wives with pushchairs got on and off. The nightmarish vision of Tidworth gave way to Salisbury Plain, a beautiful landscape cruelly scarred by tank tracks,

The 80 / 70 delighted by disappearing down single-track country lanes to picture postcard villages where no one got on or off. My crow’s nest afforded me a bird’s eye view of Savernake Forest, thatched roofs, perfect cottage gardens, idyllic pubs and tiny shops. This only got better as an increase in horse boxes signalled the proximity of Marlborough, so it was an unpleasant shock when we suddenly crossed the frantically noisy M4 and headed into the awful reality of Swindon.

Full marks, though, to the bus station, where the number 51 to Cirencester was purring in the adjacent bay, ready to leave. This was almost Swiss efficiency. It was only a single decker but it had the novelty of actually having passengers. I was relieved to have a couple of seconds to stretch my legs, as another unthought-of matter had arisen: that of discomfort. The trip from Andover had lasted one hour and fifty-one minutes, pretty much the maximum you could take in one go.

The naughty 51 departed a full three minutes ahead of schedule, so it was a good thing the 80 / 70 had been punctual in arriving. The 51 soon made amends by diverting into glorious places like South Cerney and the frankly bizarre up-market holiday camp that is the Cotswold Water Park.

There wasn’t much chance to explore the Roman city of Cirencester because the next bus arrived immediately. Rather excitingly, it was a “Cotswold Green” (all the others, apart from the E1, had been prosaic Stagecoaches). This bus (the 54A, fact fans) was the ultimate proof that you can use your bus pass as a tourist and get your touring holiday for free. Far from hugging the A419 as expected, it diverted via the narrowest of lanes into the sweetest Cotswold villages with names like Sapperton and Frampton Mansell. Excitement was caused every time we rounded a bend to confront terrified car drivers coming the other way, all of whom dutifully reversed when faced by a vehicle far too huge for such roads. A minibus – or even a Smart car, actually – would have sufficed for me (surely the randomest passenger they’d ever had) and my sole fellow traveller, a nice African lady who’d been visiting friends in Cirencester. We tumbled down the Alpine hairpins and into the Stroudwater Valley, where the old woollen mills are now scruffy factories manufacturing all manner of odd items.

Stroud, very near to where I grew up, is now an “alternative” town in the manner of Glastonbury, ideal for a spot of people watching. I managed to get the final bus of the day, the 93 to Gloucester, which had a hard time puffing up the 1 in 6 gradient to Whiteshill. Arriving in a filthy bus station in a classically misjudged 70s city centre destruction zone was a major comedown, but it fitted with the obvious conclusion of the day. Service buses aren’t designed to get you from source to destination, like trains are. Imagine if you had to do some business and had to take a whole day to get there and another to get back? What the buses do, however, achieve is to offer a transport lifeline to all the little places between A and B, which was very convenient for a tourist like me, enjoying the landscape and smelling the culture, all for the price of … zilch. To prove the point, and with renewed confidence, I took the opportunity, on the return journey the next day, to stop off and explore beautiful places like Painswick, Cirencester and Stockbridge. As luck would have it, several of the return buses took completely different routes. Cotswold Green number 28 wound its way through the most perfect limestone Cotswold villages, Rodborough, Minchinhampton and Box. Then, the 79 from Andover to Stockbridge (incidentally the only bus of a sensible size for the type of road and number of passengers it was carrying) took in the most glorious villages of Hampshire, the Clatfords, Wherwell and Chilbolton. Even the bus from Stockbridge couldn’t resist a detour through King’s Sombourne. From there, it was back to the E1 (not the E2, remember?) for the home leg.

So it worked. Next, I’m going to have a full-on fortnight’s holiday using this method. After all, we live in an age of austerity.