Ban for life from massaging musicians at the Vancouver Folk Festival – Why?

Anna Smith – as ever, thinking blue sky (Photograph by Elaine Ayres)

I have said it before and I will say it again.

Yes I will.

Anna Smith, this blog’s occasional Canadian correspondent, leads an interesting life, sometimes on the boat where she lives in Vancouver.

Yesterday morning, I got this email from her:

“Guess what. I just got banned for life from massaging musicians at the Vancouver Folk Festival.”

“Why?” I asked.

This was her reply:

---

I applied for the volunteer massage work which I had happily done in 2112 and 2013. I enjoy giving massages and it is interesting meeting musicians, even the ones I already know. I have never had any complaint about my massages, ever.

This morning, I received a letter from one of the festival co-ordinators stating:

There is a lifetime ban on you volunteering for the festival from an incident that occurred in 2013. I trust you know what it is in regards to. I’m sorry for not communicating earlier, but the info has just caught up with me. Cheers.

In fact, I don’t know what it is in regards to. It is upsetting but also hysterically funny that this supposedly peaceable music festival has banned me for an incident that I am not even aware of.

I remember massaging a huge, very polite mariachi singer who kept his clean white underpants on and a guitarist whose back was fucked from too much driving.

I massaged the teenaged daughter of a protective blues singer and the daughter talked to me about her school.

I ran into violinist Ben Mink and Dennis Nichol, a bass player who had played at The Zanzibar in Toronto who remembered me as ‘Nurse Annie’ (Anna’s stage persona as an exotic dancer).

None of these people were unhappy to see me.

And I got to hear Lucinda Williams sing Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

It surely could not be because I took a photo of the lady with cucumber on her face or wrote about the hula hoop theft in a comedy blog, could it?

Dressed as a nurse, I stripped for lesbians, but my strip show at The Penthouse was just a month ago, so it could not have been that.

And (unlike Malcolm Hardee) I have never driven any tractors, naked, through any other performers’ tents.

I feel dissatisfied just being banned for life from volunteering at the Vancouver Folk Festival. I wish they could ban me for life from volunteering for anything.

Especially now that summer is here and soon men will be falling in the river again. And dogs.

I have just woken up. It is very peaceful on the river except for a couple of crows causing a little ruckus from the treetops.

Anna’s exotic dancer alter ego – ‘Nurse Annie’

Very late last night, when I was downtown, I met a little old lady as we were waiting for a streetlight to change. She was pushing a walker and was elegantly dressed in a light blue jacket with a long matching blue coloured scarf. She had curly white hair and I almost had to stop her from heading into a busy street before the lights changed to green.

“I’m 94 years old!” she cried cheerfully. “I would give you a hug but I’ve run out.”

She fumbled with a small green purse.

“I had a thousand when I set off this morning,” she told me, “but I’ve given them all away. I give them to everybody. They are only this big… about two inches…”

I heard a skateboarder rumbling towards us, so I stood closer to her.

“We have to be careful,” I said. “They don’t realise the damage they could cause to people our age.”

“It’s true,” said the old lady. “But they are nice, the young people. When I tell them to stop, they always do and they are so sweet about it.”

“I’m 94 years old,” she repeated. “I’m not supposed to be out this late, but I was giving out hugs. People need them, you know. They say Vancouver is the loneliest city in Canada. I’ve had grown men crying in my arms.”

I walked her to her bus stop and waited there with her.

A fire engine drove past and she waved excitedly to the firemen.

Firemen outside the Balmoral Hotel in Vancouver this week

“Oh,” I said. “You wave to firemen? I do that too. I waved to some this afternoon, outside the Balmoral Hotel.”

“I wave to firemen and to the police,” she told me. “And ambulances too.”

Then her bus arrived and she boarded it. She greeted its driver enthusiastically.

I plan on staying home today, thank goodness, so I don’t expect to face the cruel world of folk festivals or anything. I think I may do some gardening when it cools down.