Ian McMillan: My two perfect days, with words and music

I was lucky enough to have two such Yorkshire days last week; my first one was last Friday when we and my lad Andrew had a boys' night out at

the Bridlington Poetry Festival. I realise that a poetry festival isn't everybody's idea of a boys' night out, but me and Andrew aren't ordinary boys, and we've both been tickled by the poetry brush.

That train ride from Doncaster to Bridlington really should be on the list of Great Train Journeys of the World, I reckon, as the landscape shifts from industrial to post-industrial to the Humber to the Wolds. The only slight problem on the trip was that Andrew dropped his mobile phone down the train seat and we had to fish for it like kids with a magnet trying to find paperclips at a party, but I always say that you can't fully appreciate perfection until you've had a bit of imperfection, and anyway he found it after a while.

We took our bohemian luggage to the holiday apartment we'd booked. As we stepped out of the taxi, a young girl beckoned us in. "You're here," she said. "Come on." I was a little confused and said: "McMillan; we've booked an apartment for the night." She said: "I know you have!"

I thought I'd stumbled upon some strange workfare scheme run by the coalition to get kids labouring to pay for their school meals; as I say, I was confused. Then her dad came out and shook my hand. "They're here!" the girl said. I smiled. I repeated my little phrase like a tourist in Warsaw who only knows enough teach-yourself Polish to ask the way to the tram stop. "McMillan; we've booked an apartment for the night." "I know. Come in, Ian." It turned out (of course!) that he was from Barnsley and he was a season ticket holder at Oakwell and he'd seen me at the ground. His daughter was fulfilling her duties as a meet'n'greet very seriously. She kept pointing stuff out: "This is a tap. This is a kettle."

Then it was up to Sewerby Hall for the poetry; as you know, Sewerby Hall is a fantastic setting for just about anything, but it seems to fit the reading of poetry aloud very well. I'm overusing the word "perfect" in this column, I realise, but take it from me that the evening really was Yorkshire Perfect: Simon Armitage reading poems in his soft Marsden tones as the late evening light glittered on the sea and doves cooed on the roof of the Sewerby Hall Orangery.

Later on, Andrew and I read a couple of poems at an open mic session and I remembered why I like open mic sessions so much: they're democratic, you get to hear all kinds of people reading all kinds of poems and you get to stand up and read one of your own. Then a Chinese takeaway and an early early night and an early morning stroll along Bridlington Harbour.

We had to be up and off early because the second of my Perfect Days was beckoning; I was off to Leeds for the world premiere of my concert-poem Brass, performed by the peerless Black Dyke Band as part of their weekend symposium.

I wrote the words, a love story to brass and a love story between two brass players, and the music was written by Pontefract's finest, Philip Wilby, one of the best composers of brass and sacred music around at the moment. I'd met the Black Dykes when I'd compered their Christmas shows at the Sheffield City Hall, and their energetic boss Nick Childs had said that I should write and perform something for them; I always want to mix the elements up, so I invited the great cartoonist Tony Husband (he's from Lancashire, so he was Saturday's equivalent of Andrew dropping his mobile down the rain seat, as a glitch in the perfection. I'm joking) to provide live cartoons during the show, which he did.

The setting at Leeds Metropolitan University's Gandhi Hall was grand and, to emphasise the Yorkshireness, gradely. There's something overwhelmingly moving about brass music, and the Black Dyke Band

are some of the best players you'll ever hear.

As Robert Green let the ball slip under his fingers thousands of miles away like a mobile phone down a train seat, we performed Brass to an ecstatic reaction. Brass, voice and cartoons: a winning combination for the modern age. And at the end of the gig somebody came up and said: 'That was perfect." I'm not making that up. Two Perfect Yorkshire Days: champion!