THE weekend saw some rum old fun in the sun in Madford-on-Sea.
First of all, Hell's Waiting Room was absolutely packed on Saturday night with musicians, including some of the hey-nonny-nonny, beard-stroking folkie tendency, unfortunately.
But there was also good rumbustious Irish music from Reckless Elbow, who perform all around Wirral and even beyond the boundaries of this peculiar peninsula.

Lofty the banjo player was there, and there were a couple of other pluckers of the banjo family (in various sizes), plus a fella playing a madrigal and, of course, Edmundo the fiddler.
I had, perhaps stupidly, chosen to go into the music room for a quiet pint or two with my friend Dieppe the psychi-nurse.
But we were simply squashed out of the room by the constant arrival of more and more musicians as the evening went on.
It became so very hot and crowded, and I am a martyr to my claggy gusset even when there is adequate ventilation.
There was barely room for the house regulars in the music room, including Rigsby Lingo (and, I think, his brother Tezza), plus Popstar Paul (a semi-regular once again, I am pleased to say), and good old Billy Bustimes.
And I was glad to see Johnny Darnsarf in the house. Hadn't seen Johnny for a while. He's been working away, doing something dull in Dunstable, apparently.
Eventually someone sang a Bob Dylan number rather too loudly for my liking. Any sound level is too loud for Dylan songs in my book.
So Dieppe and me strolled outside with our lagers to try to cool down. But out there on the street it was the same sort of musical mayhem.
Apparently, a group of itinerant minstrels, who had been performing something obscure at the Floral Pavilion earlier in the evening had come to stand in a circle playing like Mexican buskers on acid.
It only needed Stan Boardman to stroll by singing The Germans Bombed Our Chippy to become utterly surreal.
I tried to chat with Dieppe and the Bacardi Queen out on the street but there was just too much musical activity and general giddiness.
The barmaid Tallulah Swells came out to join in the party atmosphere.
And she certainly turned heads as she was wearing a spectacular red gingham "atomic top" - i.e. one giving 90 per cent fall-out.
Tallulah - who was in shock because her elderly mum had run off to the pub in her nightclothes earlier in the evening to celebrate the England win - looked stunning, like a blonde, and much more curvy, version of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Ding dong!
Any sensible observer must have thought this a very Merrie Englande scene outside the Waiting Room, as they passed on their way to the Twisted Halibut chippy round the corner.
Yes, it must have presented a quite medieval tableau...even if you were drunk yourself.
In the end it was all still rocking on the streets of New Brighton at midnight when I toddled home to bed.

SUNDAY was a lovely day. I rose at 8.30, had some coffee and checked on the geraniums in the yard, then made it to the 10.30am Mass at Ss Peter and Paul, that splendid domed basilica on the highest ground of New Brighton.
It was disturbing to hear in church that when the parish priest retires later this summer he is not being replaced.
Instead, just one priest in Wallasey in future will look after three Catholic churches at the northern end of the old borough, including the massive Ss Peter and Paul.
Note to myself: offer the new priest some help and encouragement.
Later on Sunday I did some weeding on the front path before showering and heading off in a taxi for Liscard, where the Barcardi Queen was hosting a barbeque at her house.
A bit of a saga was underway when I arrived. A new gas barbeque, bought specially from the Welsh side of Deeside, could not be made to work.
The BC had the wrong gas bottle. Her sons Dick and Dom and their pal The Spectator tried to make some adaptations but in the end people were dispatched to fetch a different gas cylinder.
Billy Bustimes and Quiet Jack came along, as did Annette Calms, her husband The History Man, and their son Brains and daughter Felina.
Slutty Hardman and his brother Callum also rocked up to the event as did Delilah Durham.
But even when connected to the right gas cylinder later, the new barbeque refused to work properly.
It was shooting flames out over the control knobs, which can't be right.
Not to be deterred, the family's knackered old charcoal BBQ was fanned into action, as was the George Foreman grill thingie from the kitchen. So the food turned out very nice.
But actually, Callum managed to fix the new gas BBQ (something had not been slotted into the right groove correctly, earlier on) and it was operating very efficiently towards the end.
The trouble is by that time there was nothing left to cook on it but bananas.
So for me it was time to split ... and head back to Madford-on-Sea.
After a quick cup of tea with Lofty, I went off home where I "undressed with due modesty and prepared myself with thoughts of death" ... just as I was taught to do every night by the old penny catechism.
Ain't life grand.

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