I finally did it. Having fully intended to go visit the Lymington Folk Club real soon for a lot of this year and so having made arrangements with a mate for Christmas drinkies, we decided to chance our arm at some live culture. No, not the sort of thing you get in yoghurt nowadays. So off to the Thomas Tripp we erm, tripped.

It was billed as the Christmas bash where every offering had to be Christmas related. Now I don’t know about you, but at such a time stuffed full of traditional, and stuffing filled with Thyme, I don’t mind the annual trotting out of standards. Seems that everyone is trying to be edgy and ironic which doesn’t exactly help the sing-along aspect of a lot of traditional songs. Of course when I say traditional songs that includes Santa Claus is Coming to Town and it’s ilk.

So when it was announced at one point that the performer wasn’t going to do the obvious choice of songs, I have to confess to feeling a tad deflated. It’s not like I was expecting All Around my Hat, but I was hoping to exercise the vocal chords to some degree. As it turned out the song that followed was the Fairytale of New York, though the Christy Moore one, not the Pogues version. And a decent fist was made of it as well, though to my mind it’s become something of a Christmas standard in it’s own right.

Enough of the high-falutin music discourse, the evening was about enjoying yourself and aided by the Ringwood Brewery, we did just that. An added bonus was that having walked into the bar at the start we met our friend Mr Jim Anderson, accordion player extraordinaire, who not only got the first round in, but was shortly afterwards up on stage exercising his superb accordion stylings. In theory it was a Christmas medley, but so many tunes were included so quickly perhaps a Christmas mash-up would be a better description. For me one of the highlights of the evening.

Now if I were any kind of a diligent reviewer I would have taken note of all the performers and therefore been able to steer you on their relative merits. However the convivial atmosphere and the assistance of Messrs Ringwood meant that I can’t do that. Oh well. However I did particularly like the band with the young bloke playing the ukulele banjo. I like ukuleles, I like Christmas. What’s not to like.

What I can do is recommend the Lymington Folk Club as a good way to spend an evening. If the Christmas bash is representative of their regulkar meetings, then don’t wait until the evening is due to start to turn up. The seats will all be gone and you’ll have to stand at the back. There are worse things to have to do but I’m just saying.

Finally I can only wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It’s not Folk, but it’s my Christmas song for this year. A wonderful Reggae track from the Maytals. Apologies for the advert at the start.

We are most firmly in the interactive digital age now. How do I know? A couple of days ago my digital Freeview tv insisted on telling me via a black box on my screen that there were to be two steps to the digital changeover. To learn more select the blue button, to remove the message select the yellow button. I’m not sure whether this counts as pedantry, but I think it should have said to temporarily remove the message select yellow. As soon as I changed channels the message was back. So I selected blue in the hope that it would register that I was interested in what the tv was trying to tell me and would therefore stop trying to gain my attention.

One lives in hope. If my tv had its own voice it would probably have said ‘I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that’. Funny how one always expects electronic goods of any sort to start channeling HAL when things go wrong. Blue or Yellow made no odds. Change channel, turn off, turn back on, message in black box. So I thought maybe it’s imminent and therefore necessary that I do something right now. So I Googled when the digital switchover was due putting in my postcode and noticed that my house name or number was also requested. A little strange, so I made use of the ‘Why do you need this?’ link only to be told that the results would be a lot more accurate if I input this detail.

Now I’m no expert on public transmitters, digital or otherwise, but I have the sneaking suspicion that, unless you live on a road the length of the M3 the number of your house isn’t going to make that much difference to which transmitter you are getting your signal from. This suspicion was born out when the results came back saying ‘The Rowridge transmitter in the Meridian TV region is your most likely transmitter.’ So much for accuracy.

Expecting the changeover date to be that night because of the insistence of my tv, I was a little surprised to see that it was in March 2012. A horrible thought then dawned on me, what if this was going to happen every time I changed channel or switched on until Spring next year? Fortunately it seemed that there was to be no repeat the following day, or the day after. One cannot help but have the sneaking suspicion that the black box may be appearing again before we are launched into the digital wonderland next March. One last little point to give us all the feeling this will all go fine and dandy is a note on the Digital UK website which says “You won’t see these messages if you already watching digital TV (e.g Sky TV, Freview or another) or if your aerial is pointing at another transmitter that will switch at a different time.” That worked then and nice to know they can spell ‘Freeview’. Details such as they are below.