Not too busy this week but had a couple of nights out.

Last Saturday I stepped into the Tower of London moat with Owen - luckily it was drained in 1830 - to see a WOMAD festival. Don't worry Constant Reader, I have not gone all NUTS IN MAY on you, I accompanied Owen to see The Imagined Village which is a bit of a folky supergroup collective.
There was a very genial atmosphere around & about and we we had timed it just right, leaving us about 30 minutes before The Village imagined. Sadly those minutes were spent queuing at the one and only food outlet. A massive, empty tent contained a table with a till and cashier who took your order and shouted it to the staff on the adjoining table to reach behind them for either a burger, chicken breast or veggie sausage on a grill - 30 bloody minutes we were in the queue!! That also meant 30 minutes of listening to the screamingly predictable whine behind me of two female WOMAD-types - meditation, friends who have kids called Emma and Jake, the fact that one of them was just back from her holiday in India where she had taken her sketchbook - oh you know... the usual.Anyways we headed off to the main stage and got nicely positioned by the wall of the Tower just as The Imagined Village were made real. Father and daughter folk stars Martin and Eliza Carthy were joined by the one and only Billy Bragg, fiddle player Chris Wood, Indian drummer Johnny Kalsi and singer/musician Sheila Chandra. They give you traditional folky songs but shot through with Indian instrumentation, British music for a multi-cultural age.

Now anyone who knows me will know of my biological aversion to finger-in-the-lughole "Well I went out a-wandering" songs full of suicidal milkmaids up the duff and disappearing soldier lovers, but I enjoyed The Village's set - a nice big full sound and all propelled by Kalsi's drumming as he wandered around the stage. Eliza Carthy is a fine big lump of a girl and fiddled up a storm! It was great to see Billy Bragg in his pearly suit and he sang his songs of multi-cultural Londoners with his usual effortless charm. He asked me to budge up the pew at Kirsty MacColl's Memorial Service you know...We decided to head off after the lights came up as we had seen who Owen wanted to see - and thank God we did because the heavens opened as we walked along the Southside of the Thames and sounds of drowning were heard drifting over from the former Moat.

On Friday night it was finally time to see Janeane Garofalo at the Bloomsbury Theatre - I had booked the tickets in April! I have been a fan of Janeane through her film and tv roles and have admired her publicised and much-criticised stand against the Iraq War so this opportunity to see her in Stand-Up mode was a necessity.

She was great - a hypnotically laconic performer - and loved the way she leapt from subject to subject in a totally conversation style: maxi-tights, airport security, feminine hygene, incontinent boyfriends, puppies, Southern Baptists, Catholicism and alcoholism as a lifestyle choice and as a pro-active help to recession-hit off licenses. I was as upset with the red light as she was... I would have happily listened to her for a further 45 minutes!

She was supported by the deceptively subdued Al Madrigal whose tales of unexpected fatherhood were sly and knowing.

A hugely enjoyable evening - and I am so happy that I've finally seen one of my great screen heroines Heather Mooney from ROMY AND MICHELLE'S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION live on stage!