Okay... so I was good, and waited not only until the eastern sky began to lighten, but until the streetlamps on the western side of my house went out, and I'd had my breakfast, before attacking the package from my Secret Santa.

Inside, I found a handwritten note, from which I quote:

"...I have followed the Secret Santa Spirit to the letter, deleting my name wherever I could find it."

And:

"You will of course find no diffeculty in doing a small bit of detective work and working out my name -- Then you can let me know that this has got to you."

The first place I looked for clues was the package itself.


First, I pulled out a slim volume of stories and history of the Lake District. But the name of the author was not blacked out. So that didn't offer any direct clues.

Then there was a little "braiding tool" labeled as an "Ancient Lucet", for making bracelets and headbands and chatelaines and the like out of yarn. This, no doubt, I will find quite useful, once I master the technique of it without having my creations unravel on me... It also made me chortle, because the gift from my father was an annotated anthology of fairytales, that touched on the connections between literal "yarnspinning" and literary "yarnspinning"... Synchronicity abounds! But I didn't catch any clues from my SS on Mudcat that s/he was a spinner or weaver, so if there were clues in that part of the package, I didn't see them.

Next, were two homemade cassette tapes of seasonal programs from 1978 (?) on BBC Radio. The handwritten liner notes on these gave the credits as SS and Crookfinger Jack, and Secret Santa and Crookfinger Jack. When I listened to one tape (dedicated to Bonfire Night and Christmas -- the one dedicated to New Year's and Welsh music I haven't got to yet), the bit where the announcer gave the names of the performers had bed censored... I could only assume the bits cut out were my SS's name...

Then there was a cassette tape of an author reading from excerpts from a memoir: "Even More Muck" by Joyce Wilson... but since that name wasn't blacked out, that wasn't my SS, either....

Then, wrapped up in a scrap of local paper was a wee blue and white bivalve shell (mussel? Cockle? Periwinkle? Will have to get out my field guide and have a look see) -- lovely shades of blue... may have a neighbor drill a tiny hole in't so I can thread it onto my chatelaine when I get it made -- and an English penny. The scrap of local paper had a map of the region with the weather report, and the names of cities on it, but since I didn't know my SS's Mudcat name, I couldn't search the member profiles by location...

But finally, there was a CD of music made in 2001 -- a Souvenir Edition from the 1st Dudden Valley Folk Festival -- and the liner notes in the jewel case had names (or at least a name) blacked out all over the place! (Including the guitar/banjo/ accordian/percussion-ist and -- this is important -- "All tunes trad. arr. __________ (c) 2001 except King's Polka No.2 (trad. arr. Lakeland fiddlers)")

Aha! here was my musical Rossetta Stone!

So I went onto Google, and typed in the keywords in the Title of the CD (Full Title = "A Trip to the Lakes") and the band's name (The Boat Band)... If the band had a homepage, I could check the names of band members against those in the Secret Santa Sign-Up thread. I got a lot of hits for Lake District tourism, but none for a folk band with banjo and accordian...

So I decided to do a Mudcat search -- surely someone would have announced the festival in the forum, or given a review, or something, and in that thread would have praised the talents of the mudcat member who was member of the band... But a Forum search was as fruitless as the Google one.

"Well," said I to myself, "at least you can listen to the cd while you're searching for info about it."

And there, on the face of the CD, was the following credit: "All tunes trad. arr. G. Stephens (c) 2001 except King's Polka No.2 (trad. arr. Lakeland fiddlers)". And the wording was too similiar to a censored bit to be coincidence -- this must be the same name as had been excised everywhere else. A look on the Secret Santa Sign-up revealed that yes, indeed, a certain greg stephens had joined in the game....

Mystery solved (though, as I suspect is often the case, the solving of it came more through a slip [?] of the culprit rather than the cleverness of the slueth)!

Thanks for a wonderful package, Greg, and a very nice morning! I haven't listened to or read everything, yet... I want to make this gift last a while....