My Girl from the Fens
You may, possibly, not have heard of The Ouse Valley Singles Club, so forgive me if I inform you that their style is often likened to 'George Formby meets the Clash,' and that they have shared stages with Chas and Dave, Pete Doherty, and The Boomtown Rats, and have headlined at the Peterborough Beer Festival, among other festive gatherings such as Bestival, Truckfest and Glastonbudget.....
OK, they are neither Mozart nor Sondheim. Nor are they quite CMAT. Their performances blend 1950s skiffle with the energy of punk and the swing of rock and roll, occasionally infused with a touch of reggae. They layer this with comic folk-like story-telling, often crossing the parameters of what is deemed to be politically correct but keeping it very tongue in cheek.
Anyway the reason I am drawing your attention to them is that I have just survived a visit to the Fens, a part of Britain normally avoided by both invaders and holiday makers, for reasons that we won't go into here. It is a part of the world where civilisation ends (though where it begins these days is another question). And one of the OVSC (Ouse Valley Singles Club)'s greatest hits is a song by the name of My Girl from the Fens, a song that has recently ear-wormed itself into my heart.
It's a catchy ditty, summing up the attractions of the folk that live worryingly near my home. It opens thus:
I love a girl
And that is that
She comes from the East
Where the land is flat
And on the surface
She may seem dumb
'Cause her cousin is her uncle
And he's married to her mum
But she's alright she's my Fenland Rose
And it gets worse.....
The second verse, which is not going to panic the Poet Laureate, nor frighten fans of Longfellow, goes like this:
If you meet a girl who comes from Wisbech
You might have trouble understanding her speech
Oh she sounds just like the Tasmanian Devil
And she gets a nosebleed above sea level
On our first date, we got a bit tipsy
She took me to a place
Where a farmer shot a gypsy
And then we went to King's Lynn
To do some shopping
She's the Cambridgeshire champion of carrot-topping
She's my girl from the Fens....
You see, for us that live beyond the reaches of Greater Anglia, these local references strike home and we chuckle (to avoid the shivers).....
But, don't be put off! There's more to Wisbech than the muddy waters of the river Nene, or the now-closed Bingo Parlour, for example, and there are some (and I use the word carefully) places worth visiting, which include Peckover House and Garden,
the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, the Octavia Hill (founder of the National Trust and a prominent social reformer) Birthplace House, and Blackfield Creatives' Wisbech Gallery.....
Though I did come across this in Wisbech:
I find the third verse to be quite endearing, in a curious sort of way:
Well my Fenland girl has got the X-factor
At 6 years old she learned to drive a tractor
And at 8 she plucked turkeys, 9 she kept quails
She was born with the black soil under her nails
From Peterborough where they're a bit posh
To Spalding and Chatteris and the shores of the Wash
I will follow that girl
And my heart I do pledge
We will grow old together
Picking seasonal veg
She's my girl from the Fens
People here are definitely special, in a no-nonsense sense, though it is not all sugar beet and Chinese veg, shady characters dragging wheely-cases along narrow lanes, boarded up pubs and locked warehouses. King's Lynn, for example, was once the third greatest port in England, with the Great Ouse still accepting shipping from all over the world,
And, scattered throughout the Fens, from Lincolnshire, across Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, there are many buildings of great interest, usually atop solid rises in the marshy surroundings. Crowland Abbey, originally a Benedictine Abbey founded in memory of St Guthlac in the eighth century, has been much battered by history but is now the Parish Church of Crowland.
The Church of St Peter, at Walpole St Peter, is, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, one of the most impressive churches of its date (c1350 - c1400) in Norfolk, and is a favourite of a number of royals, including the current King:
And across this watery world rises one of the greatest churches anywhere - Ely Cathedral - which reaches for the sky 66 metres (217 feet) above the town, which is already almost 30 metres above sea level, so the West Tower is one of the best viewpoints across the fens.
Anyway, back to the song..... the last verse is quite down to earth, I will admit, but having pitched my camp in the area and feeling my feet taking root in the fertile slime of these reed beds, I can certainly relate to it.....
Well she smells of onions
She's got hair like wheat
She's my potato-eyed girl
Sweet like sugar beet
And she keeps all my wishes in a pickling jar
Our love is bigger than a combine harvester
She's my girl from the Fens
She's my girl from the Fens
On her heart I depend
She's my girl from the Fens
She's my girl from the Fens
Where civilisation ends, that's the Fens
She's my girl from the Fens
Now should this drive you to want to spend an evening with the Ouse Valley Singles Club, you could catch them at Doddington Village Hall on November 28th.....
And, by coincidence, the late Kit Hesketh-Harvey (of Kit and the Widow), who lived in Stoke Ferry, not far from Doddington, where he owned All Saints' Church, was a big fan of the OVSC, and this was one of his favourite songs....
And if that isn't a recommendation, I'm afraid I cannot say much more.....
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For CeeJay
