Mrs Beetle's jazz band

Continuing on Cold Comfort lines, I am encouraging my offspring to form one of they'm jazz bands, and make us all lots of money.

With this in mind I took Darling d to a local jazz festival at Langourla so that she could finely hone her singing skills in improvisation at the end of the evening jam.

Unfortunately, they did not have a microphone or sound system at the jam, all was acoustic, and so we watched rather than participated. We still had fun though...

When we return tonight we shall be asking the musicians to play quietly so that we can do our stuff...

There's no business like show business

I drove rather a long way today, to meet a very nice harmonica player who wanted me to sing with him. We then went to meet the manager of a hotel specialising in Thalassotherapy, who is organising a jazz festival in order to attract clients to her hotel and entertain those already enjoying whatever it is that they do there. It seems to involve sea water and algae and I suspect that bottoms might be targeted, but perhaps that is colonic lavage, and something different.

The manager was quite charming and went into considerable detail about the large number of acts that she was booking for this year, and how well it had gone last year, and how they were closing in September for five months in order to upgrade it to a 4 star hotel. Good I thought, sounds like they have a few bob to invest, and so they will be able to remunerate their artists appropriately. Imagine my surprise when she announced that the method of payment would be “échange de marchandises ” – that we would be paid in kind, because she did not actually have a budget for the festival. We would be offered some of the services available at the hotel.

This would mean that I would drive a long way, sing for an evening and not get paid, and then, someone would do something to me with cold sea water and seaweed, perhaps involving my most intimate downstairs bits. I said I would give it some thought…
And I did, on the long drive home again (35 euros of petrol!)

I imagined going to the supermarket and offering them a quick chorus of “Lady is a Tramp” in exchange for a baguette and a tin of cat food. I think I know what they would say, and where they would tell me to put the baguette (but only after I had paid them good euros for it, of course).

On the other hand, does anyone know what Thalassotherapy actually is? I googled it and found lots of places offering it, but all rather coy about what they actually do.
Perhaps I am missing out on something good.