It feels like autumn with the leaves still falling but it is winter now and the wind is whistling through the London streets. Almost dark outside at 4.30 and cosy inside.

This is the time you want to find a nice place to be, on your own or with other people – what years ago I coined an ‘eat-ooterie’, a place to ‘eat oot’ (after my Scottish mother-in-law told me that an outside seating area was called a ‘sit-ooterie’).

I made a little folding paper list of my favourite places – ‘Eat-ooteries in Central London’ – and gave it to friends or visitors. Maybe you had one.

Sadly many of these places have now closed down – The Piccadilly Cafe off Shaftesbury Avenue, where the waiters wore white jackets with epaulettes, and most recently and very sadly, Cheng Chuen Ku, the huge trolley dim sum restaurant in Wardour Street.

So I am trying to support those that remain and find new ones.

I spent a few hours at the weekend waiting at various points in London, filling in time. It was noticeable what a difference it made to wait whilst eating in one of these individual and interesting places, how I felt happy and not lonely there on my own, and how corporate chains just don’t do the job at all.

An interesting encounter on Sunday gave me a new insight into Soho, where I have played many gigs over the years, – Ronnie Scott’s, The Borderline, The 12 Bar Club – venues that have now either gone or entered new eras – and also eaten many meals.

Walking past the cheap and cheerful Stockpot I thought I would eat there – for the last time as it turned out. I knew that it was closing but it turned out to be its very last day.

Memories of pre-evening out plates of gnocchi and long-gone day job lunches flooded back as I ate seafood risotto and sympathised with the sad-looking waiter.

An elderly Chinese man spoke to me from the next table.

‘Last day today’, he said.

I said I hadn’t realised and we started talking about The Stockpot and what good value it was, and I found out he had been a manager of a restaurant in Chinatown, that he had lived in Germany for 20 years and that he would only manage to eat all his risotto if I took 3 of the first course of calamari he had ordered and which were too much for him.

He kept coming back to the theme that Cafe Boheme opposite (where I sometimes sang jazz standards for a while many years ago) would give you 50 per cent off with a ‘club card’. And so would the Soho Kitchen next door. I said that was good but I didn’t get up there very often any more.

It was nice to talk to him and after a while I said I had to leave, whereupon he left his seat and said, ‘come with me’.

We crossed the road past another favourite place and Soho institution – the amazing patisserie Maison Bertaux – and he opened the door of a small red and gold signed building with Chinese lettering called ‘The Man Clansmen Association’.

Inside were small tables full of elderly Chinese men and women playing a card game, all of whom returned my polite nods. My new friend opened a small cupboard above the tea-making facilities and took out a pile of cards.

‘Club card – 50 per cent off’, he said.

I wasn’t sure if I should accept it but thanked him outside in Greek Street and said I’d like to send him a present and what was his name – ‘no presents’, he said. ‘My name is Man’. A Clansman.

There are still lots of individual cafes which serve good food cheaply and which are interesting and part of London history. On my list still are Capitan Corelli in Battersea Park Road, cheap proper home cooked food and like being in Italy, and the Bagel Bake in Brick Lane, where they tell you how to say Beigel the London way. And Gaby’s on Charing Cross Road, which was recently saved from closure by petitions.

And Mr Man said New World in Soho still do trolly dim sum, so I will go there next time.

We have just returned from what I think is our 4th trip to play in Western Crete. It was as wonderful to be there as ever, and this time I appreciated the friendship and welcome even more than before.

The connection began several years ago when I looked out into the audience at the Royal Festival Hall Foyer in London and saw my old friends Phil and Francesca Harrison standing there, after many years of lost contact. We exchanged details and they said simply, ‘come and play in Crete’. People often say these things, but as they do with everything, Phil and Francesca made it happen.

Phil Harrison was an important mentor to me as a child, along with his musical partner of many years violinist Stuart Gordon, encouraging my early songwriting efforts and including them in the (to us) legendary ‘Animal Show’ held in West Wales in the 1970’s organised by Pat Wolseley.

Of the London and Somerset children who spent a week there making costumes and music and putting on a show along with children from the local village, several others are now professional musicians –  singer/songwriter Taz Alexander (formerly with folk band Siné and Juno Reactor), Justina Curtis (keyboard-player, singer and long-time collaborator with Goldie), and Hawi Gondwe (top session guitarist and Omar band member).

After a long musical career which included The Korgis and their worldwide hit ‘Everybody’s gotta learn sometime’ (featuring Stuart Gordon’s iconic violin solo), and a second career as a linguistics professor, Phil and his watercolour-artist wife Francesca settled in Crete, where they run KAG – Kalamitsi Arts Group – and provide musical and artistic events for the large community of English-speaking people living there.

On the first 2 visits to Crete we played an evening gig in the Arts Cafe in Vamos, and took part in the gala concert to end their week long arts festival. We also played in the beautiful Western City of Chania at the jazz club Fagotto.

The second year we were there with Stuart Gordon too, and I am so glad to have had this opportunity to play with him and Phil together. We sang their Korgis hit in the stone amphitheatre, with Andy on bass, and a lot of things were joined up for me.

Stuart sadly died last year and his incredible musicianship and vitality is much missed.

The third year we went with my parents and our daughter Ruby and were there at the same time as poet Roger McGough, a fellow Liverpudlian and old friend of Phil’s.

My Dad wrote his first poem at Roger’s workshop and we all enjoyed the sunshine and good food and being with old friends.

This year we returned with Ruby and stayed in the historic village of Vamos in a traditional apartment organised by Yiorgos and the Vamos Tourist Office, who also organise off-the-beaten-track visits to food producers and hidden coves. There are wonderful tavernas serving traditional food, and Yiorgos’ own taverna has traditional music and locals filling the tables and a fantastic lively atmosphere.

The village itself is very small and friendly and has simple shops selling local produce and crafts, with few tourists in sight. You can swim at the nearby beaches in crystal clear water.

By now we feel that we have made many friends there amongst the concert-goers, great people – English, Dutch, German – and Cretans, most particularly Yiorgos who brings together the local and ex-pat communities and is a fine musician and singer himself.

It is amazing to start a concert in another country and have people immediately join in with my songs. People have collected my albums and keep in touch with me between the visits and I appreciate that very much.

This time I had the bad luck to get a bad cough before I arrived, and as the week went on it got worse. The first concert I got through pretty well with the help of hot raki (the local spirit) and honey.

By the second concert which was luckily as a band, with Andy on bass, Phil on keyboard, singer Alison Hatzidakis and mandolin, guitar and banjo-player John Mansell, I had partially lost my voice. I was like another singer with a deep range but no top notes.

I felt like walking off into the hills as it seemed impossible to sing, but people rallied with more hot raki and mountain tea with honey, a neck massage and on the spot reflexology from nurse Lizzie Mansell, and so much goodwill I just plunged in and decided to do the best I could. Alison took over and sang my song ‘Orange Roses’ which she has recorded with Phil on their album ‘ Unlikely Story’, and somehow it was ok. I got through the lower songs and sang backing vocals on some covers including ‘With a little help from my friends’, which seemed very apt. The feeling of friendship in the room at the Durakis Winery was amazing and I was so grateful to everyone.

Sometimes it’s just very annoying being a singer.

I realise how much I love it there, because I enjoyed being there so much in spite of my voice troubles.

The sunshine, the beautiful village of Vamos with its cobbled lanes and traditional houses and the friendly shopkeepers and taverna owners, the smell of herbs in the evenings, and the beautiful sea and mountains. The delicious, unpretentious food and local wine. The great conversations we had with everybody.

At some point I’d like to rent out my flat and go and stay there for a month.

It’s very good to know it’s there.

I have been working hard getting my new album out to radio stations and feel I have done everything I can and it has been well received – been played on BBC Radio 2 and the World Service and BBC London and everywhere I hoped it would be.

Sometimes everything is going well and you are pleased with it all, but your head is too full of plans and your body too tired from carrying them out, and you just need to head off somewhere new and experience things without trying to influence them in any way.

So a couple of weeks ago I felt glad to be setting off for Gloucester to do an interview and a song on lovely singer-songwriter Johnny Coppin’s Acoustic Show on BBC Gloucester.

Johnny has played my songs on his show since 2002, so I felt like I knew him already and was happy to be meeting him in person.

It feels good when I put my guitar on my back and set off with just a small bag. It feels very free and exciting and a change from the routine. I was also looking forward to staying the night with my cousin in beautiful Stroud, and the train journey was just what I needed. It was a beautiful day – hot sun in London and I was in the mood for meeting people and seeing new things.

On the bus I had a chat with an older and very elegant French Algerian man, a long time Londoner, on his way to Peter Jones in his padded jacket.

At Paddington a young girl in high heels misread the sign for the toilets thinking it was £5 and said loudly, ‘Shut Up!’

On the train I noticed an Indian man wearing lots of beads and eating an avocado with a spoon, and there was another Indian man on the tannoy announcing ‘Light Freshments’.

I just looked out of the window the whole way, as we travelled into the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside.

I had played at an 80th birthday party a few weeks earlier and the piano player had said ‘Stroud, very nice – Gloucester not very nice, unfortunately’, so I wasn’t looking forward to the place. It’s true that arriving at the station, then walking through the bus station, everything was postwar destruction 1950’s concrete, functional, run-down, with huge greasy spoons, charity shops and Wetherspoons Pubs – everybody smoking and drinking pints at high tables outside – everybody walking along smoking too. The plainest town square town square you can imagine, and almost like nowhere I’d seen before, except maybe a communist era Yugoslavian town. Everybody very friendly though and helpful with directions and smiling in the sun.

‘But the cathedral is nice’, he had also said –  and I looked up and there it was, reaching up beyond all the low buildings – a beautiful filigree tower of stone, vast and imposing, a pastoral presence for the ugly rebuilt part of the town. I walked in the right direction having some time in hand, and saw that the sign said ‘Cathedral, via Via Sacra’, and then I started to notice that all the streets around it were called that – a sacred way, a pilgrim’s route – like Canterbury or Santiago.

The lane opened out into a huge open space with grass and in the middle was the Cathedral – soaring up into the blue sky. Office workers and students were sitting in groups eating their lunch, everybody smiling, and all around were Georgian houses and some half-timbered ones. It was like another town.

Inside, the vast building was all plain stone, huge round pillars and cloisters with arched walkways and more filigree round windows. A reward for the pilgrim.

I thought I’d just have time for a cup of tea before going to the BBC, and the street leading away from the Cathedral was full of cafes, the first one called understandably ‘the Comfy Pew’ which was a bit too full of chip smoke for a pre-interview stop-off.  But next door there was one with tables in the sun – and in that location the most surprising concept. ‘Hubble Bubble’, and its sister shop next door ‘Spellbound’ were staffed by very friendly and smiling goths wearing black eye liner and forehead tattoos. A billboard advertised courses in witchcraft and tarot and clairvoyance and the coffee was served in jam jars. I commented on the interesting and tolerant juxtaposition and they just smiled and handed me a lovely pot of peppermint tea and said they’d look after my guitar case.

The only cars driving down the cobbled street were an occasional cleric in a dog-collar.

I walked back through the mainly pedestrianised town with more lovely Georgian houses this way, and thought how nice it was to be away from traffic. Passing through the concrete square again I saw the Indian man in the beads from the train, sitting with a woman in drawstring cotton trousers. He called out to me and said ‘you look like a wandering minstrel!’ And I said I was really and told them what I was doing there. I said how much I had loved the Cathedral and felt like a pilgrim, and he shouted to me, all smiling in the sunshine, ‘yes, you are a musical pilgrim!’

The radio interview was lovely and Johnny Coppin drove me back to Stroud, and on the way told me about his collaborations with Laurie Lee and about other Gloucestershire poets, and about the 100 Yews of Painsey. I thought how much I’d like to spend more time in Gloucestershire, and with any luck I will, when I follow up all his gig suggestions.

I am musical pilgrim!

A long time has passed.

Long wintery days and much rain, but many good times too, braving the elements in Scotland, walking and cycling in bad weather and winter sunshine.

The best winter nights out have been my appearances at much-loved poet and musician John Hegley‘s regular monthly nights at the Betsey Trottwood in Clerkenwell. Here I have made new friends of comic songwriters Diego Jones and The Good Fairy and Bob Karper, been astounded by performance artist Andrew Bailey, and listened spellbound to singer-songwriter Victoria Hume. 

The most recent Betsey night featured a visual art section, passing round images of Nice in the 1930’s by John’s father, of nearby Biot in the 1920’s by my great-grandfather Edward Wadsworth, and by my father Alexander Hollweg of Watchet in 2012. They had all painted these different seaside towns, fascinated by the shapes of the buildings and the light. John is interested in everything. You never know what is going to happen on these extraordinary evenings, and there is either much to think about or  much to laugh about. I always laugh a lot.

Thanks to these nights all the songs for my new album ‘Country Girl’ have now been aired and gone down well, letting me enjoy the process of recording them with infinite help and work from my bass player husband and producer Andy Hamill.

The plan is to have it ready by the summer and release it in September, with a London album launch gig as before.

This week I am looking forward to a house-concert in Bristol, and then a gig in Aberdeen at the lovely theatre venue The Lemon Tree on Wednesday 9th April, my first in Aberdeen since supporting first Roger McGuinn of The Byrds in 2002, then Paul Carrack in 2003, both at the wonderful Aberdeen Music Hall. That seems like a lifetime ago, before the birth of my daughter and doing my first solo support slots. Exciting to be opening for such musical legends, and nerve-wracking too. Sometimes having a ball staying with old friends along the way, sometimes hard to be travelling round the UK on my own staying in cheap B&Bs. So it was lovely to arrive in Aberdeen and stay with welcoming relatives and have cheerful conversations and porridge waiting for my breakfast. I love the seafront promenade between the Dee and the Don, the bright northern light, and the Italian Washington Cafe, long owned by the family of my singing colleague Donna Canale, who make their own ice-cream.

I am also excited to have been asked to do a double bill on May 15th at the lovely Green Note in Camden, with Nashville singer-songwriter ‘Mean Mary’, who has famous fans from the American music scene. I hope to do a gig in the USA this year, possibly in New York, and am getting interested in visiting Nashville too so this seems like good timing.

Meanwhile, I am urban vegetable gardening and right now harvesting overwintered broccoli and lettuces, and planting garlic, peas, radishes and shallots.

Now I have a shallotment.

A whole summer spent outside, in other northern lands – in the sun, swimming in the sea, rivers, lakes, camping, kayaking, lighting fires – and now the autumn has come suddenly, but just at the right time.

I am resuming London life. Walking in the park, urban gardening, going out into the town at night, writing, working on my new album and on touring for next year, happy to see friends again.

This autumn I intend to do more songwriting, jam-making, painting and decorating, vegetable gardening and piano playing.

I want to keep speaking German and possibly learn some Greek in preparation for a return to Vamos Festival in Crete next year.

I look forward to making toffee apples and Austrian Linzertorte and bonfires, and to collecting some more blackberries, and to helping pick other people’s apples.

And to rugging up, but not too much.

Hello from the first day of Spring by the look of things. The crocuses are out and some daffodils are poking their heads up here and there in South London.

Today I just went for a walk.

In a sudden space, I did some stuff – some parcels and envelopes addressed to friends and family ‘on the continent’ – and then went out into the beautiful winter day, the morning’s bright blue sky paler now.

Criss-crossing to stay in the sun, I walked up to the river, along the bank of famous views, nodding to the Buddha, past the silent fountains, round the lake – through the holly bushes, under the plane trees, between the shrubs – admiring the Henry Moore (donated to the long defunct London County Council by the Contemporary Art Society), the Barbara Hepworth across the water. Taking in the herons in their nests like mistletoe.

Stopping for a cup of tea, my only mistake was a probably defrosted tiramisu so sickly I still regret it, but not the view and the still air by the water.

I am thinking about Christmas, about how it used to be and how to make it mine. Wondering if I can come back with some secateurs  and snip a few holly suckers from the ground, and put them on my mantelpiece in a sumptuous way.

At the end of the year I hope I have acquitted myself well enough and can feel alright. Not  think of what I haven’t done, of what I must do next – appreciate a still point before moving along.

Next year I am determined to laugh at the difficult stuff and be in the moment more. I am going to frame the motto coined by painter and printmaker Martin Grover which says ‘PANIC AND GIVE UP’. And sometimes do that for heaven’s sake. But mostly laugh when I walk past it.

Now the light is going I will allow myself to be inside, do some hoovering, or vacuuming – ‘staubssaugen’ as they say in German – ‘dust-sucking’! While my parcels and envelopes head off in that direction, I will try to make my house look like it does in my head.

It’s already April but because of Easter holidays I am just posting my March blog. Apologies.

When the band and I played on the lovely Janice Long’s BBC Radio 2 show for the release of ‘Orange Roses’, she asked me on air if I had spent that summer playing festivals, and I replied that I had spent it on windy beaches. We discussed very briefly but in a heartfelt way how life changes when you have a child. I find that my work goes on hold in the holidays apart from actually doing gigs. It is right that it should be this way round, but I find that I have forgotten everything and lost momentum. When our lovely daughter was tiny I stayed up half the night doing emails and hustling gigs and became so run down I couldn’t sing properly. Nowadays I lose the plot for a while and then pick it up later on. So here I am.

Anyway, there was snow, and then there was sunshine and warm days of t-shirts and cycling and walking along the Thames. I found lovely things to see on the river and felt less hemmed in right here in the centre of London.

In March once more Andy and I were the guests of poet John Hegley at The Betsey Trotwood, in the company of 93-year poet Jennifer Cobbing – whose razor sharp and touching ‘I’ve lost the plot’ and fresh love poem ‘Cloud 10’ won me over.

I’ve been spending some time imparting musical knowledge and singing insights to young people, and have also been asked to learn some new stuff myself with the brilliant Julian Ferraretto who plays violin in my band. I am going to revisit my Grade 7 violin-skills and take part in his jazz violin ensemble workshops culminating in a concert with Neil Cowley. I hope I am up to it and will let you know how I get on. (In the words of the BBC radio sitcom ‘Fags, mags and bags’, it should be ‘amazing and great’ – I’ve been enjoying listening to this http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fbnb7)

To demonstrate what I am always trying to remind myself – that nothing stays the same – I have spent each summer since that conversation with Janice Long playing at at least one major UK festival, and I have been asked to play at Latitude in Suffolk again this year, on Friday July 13th. The next day I’ll be playing an evening concert at the very beautiful Cothay Manor gardens near Wellington in Somerset, a truly inspiring garden maintained by a family team http://www.cothaymanor.co.uk/Gardens (You may have seen it on ‘Country House Rescue’).

Meanwhile there is progress with my new album and 4 tracks have gone off to band members for them to add their parts. I have 3 more new songs and another forgotten collaboration to add to the track listing. Nearly there.

Another small burst of activity with the children’s story I wrote with illustrations by Jeb Loy Nichols, ‘The Ball that Got Stuck in the Tree’. More independent bookshops including the National Theatre bookshop are stocking it and it is available on line via paypal as before from my website www.rebeccahollweg.com/books

Today the sky is blue and London is full of camelias and magnolias and wisteria.

Happy Springtime.

Hello and welcome to my first blog entry.

The ‘b’ on my keyboard keeps getting stuck so I nearly said ‘log’ by mistake, but what I really want this to be is just a place to tell you about any interesting work I’ve been doing in the previous month and also a place where I can enthuse about things that I like. I recently discovered that, as someone who does gigs, I could be called a’social node’, and it’s true that I do really like introducing people to each other and telling them about great things people I know are doing.

When I like things I really like them a lot. So there’ll be lots of links to all sorts of things and places. I hope you go and have a look at them and enjoy them too, and tell me what you think.

February 2012

I love snow. I’ve written about snow in 2 of my songs and I’m sure I will write a song entirely about snow one day. I worked as a lonely chalet girl in a French ski-resort in my early 20’s, cooking up daily feasts from the paperback Penguin Cordon Bleu and skiing round the mountains every afternoon, often on my own, sometimes with my lovely chef friends C and Tracey. But I rarely felt lonely and loved the bright light and the muffled sound of living surrounded by snow for several months.

I felt very happy on the day in February when it snowed here and we went sledging on some very small hills. Going to meet friends in East London, I loved travelling on the tube in skiing clothes and walking boots, carrying a plastic sledge, cutting through the normal smartness and formality. The snow quietens everything down and covers up the concrete and pavements  making the city look part of nature again.

My German grandfather was a veteran of winter sports, ski-racing in a jacket and tie in the days when you had to climb the mountain to be able to go down it, and playing ice-hockey in the 1936 Olympics. He would step outside to see what kind of day it was, then wax our skis by hand and put a toblerone in our pocket to keep us going. The mountains in Scotland still have that same atmosphere. http://www.ski-glenshee.co.uk/

Back in London and my new favourite night out (it’s on the 4th Monday of every month) is ‘John Hegley and Friends’ upstairs at the Betsey Trottwood pub in Farringdon Road. (www.thebetsey.com)

Andy Hamill and I were his guests last month and went back as audience members last week to see Simon Munnery as special guest.

John links fellow performance poets and musicians with his ever-brilliant, sometimes poignant and very funny poems and songs, and regulars Diego Brown and the Good Fairy bring their clever songs and fairy cakes with lit candles. Gary rounds the evening off with a few choice tracks, and suddenly we are all up dancing to ‘Love Train’, not expecting it and loving it, strangers grinning at each other across the room.

I felt inspired to use a night at The Bull’s Head in Barnes in a similar way, and called it ‘Rebecca Hollweg’s Lucky Dip, inviting fellow songwriters to play with Andy Hamill on bass and Julian Ferraretto on violin: Victoria Hume and Chris Letcher, Julian’s wife Elizabeth McCall, Sam Willoughby and my childhood friend Taz Alexander, all very special and very different to each other.

Julian and Andy were joined by my brother Lucas Hollweg on trombone and Mike Quint on tenor saxophone to form the Lucky Dip House Band, performing live ‘stings’ to go with my Ian Dury style Lucky Dip song, written using rhymes with ‘dip’ suggested by people on facebook. Very 21st century, and very good fun as it turned out, thanks to a lovely humourous crowd. There was also a real lucky dip with prizes for everyone, found in my loft and wrapped in newspaper. We’ll do it again sometime and somewhere.