This exercise is proving to be a source of much joy, largely through the discovery of albums I never knew I had. I suspect I bought Atomic Kitten and their grannies Bananarama, for the sleeve photos more than the music, but Nathan Jones being chided for being “gone too long”, still makes one catch the breath. Neil Sedaka’s album ‘Laughter and Tears’ sums it up perfectly though. That’s what music does; it brings laughter and tears. How often does a particular number remind you of where you were - or of a past love? How does it do that?
Now 50 years later, my love of the guitar is resurfacing…
I have just booked a 3-day course in January at a college in Northants to learn
song-writing. As guitar-playing skills will be exercised, I have picked up one
of the acoustics again and am playing once more (a) to restore flexibility in
the fingers and (b) to loosen up the voice. I have few unfulfilled ambitions,
but one that remains is to write a song and record it. I have written several
songs and have a recording deck which records instruments and voices to six digital
tracks for mixing down to the two other tracks to get stereo. Repeating this
process allows you to superimpose further instruments and voices.
Being
able to play guitar means I can cover the demands of lead, rhythm and bass.
Then, if I start in the right key for the main tune, I can sing harmony with
myself. Finally, having a keyboard that does drum voices including cymbals, as
well as 70-odd instruments including piano, strings and wind instruments, one
day soon I hope to have a song written, performed and arranged, entirely by me.
I don’t promise anything professional or even hope for approval. This will be
little more
than the realisation of a dream that I never got around to doing anything
about. Probably one of the last things on the Bucket List.
This
is the real reason behind the CD listing exercise. In general, the bungalow is neat
and tidy and I live it in quite happily. However, this study still has boxes
everywhere; boxes that contain mysterious treasures waiting to be discovered.
In a corner behind me, there are six guitars in their cases that I can’t get
to, and two banjos. In another corner lies a keyboard, on its side. Dotted here
and there are instrument and mic stands. In a box somewhere, lies a transformer
and a lead that the keyboard needs. Without that, it remains resolutely silent.
Until all of this is in its place, the recording project goes no further.
Ideally, I need Mary Poppins to help tidy this room because if I have to do it manually… I
shudder at the thought.
I
had lunch with my son Steve on Friday, we often do this to catch-up on each
other’s lives, then did a bit of Christmas shopping in Peterborough. In the
exploration of Peterborough’s town centre, I found a ‘Jessops’ and was
pleasantly surprised at their product range. It seems that one’s digital photos
can feature in calendars (that can start at any month), desk planners,
notepads, mouse mats, key fobs, mugs and acrylic or chipboard blocks - so, plenty
of ideas for presents. Vistaprint offer similar products as does Photobox. Many
sentimental projects lay ahead.
My
photo collection is extensive with a capital ‘EXT’. Apart from the thousands of
digital photos in this PC, there are even more in paper form from the preceding
50 years of film, in 30 albums and five plastic crates (also waiting for Mary
Poppins), plus thousands more negatives where I no longer have the prints. Luckily,
I have a scanner that turns negatives the right way around, in digital format,
ready for improvement/restoration in Photoshop, then saving onto the PC.
Apart from recent visits to Ken & Maria in France, Chelsea Flower Shows, National Trust houses and gardens and the Lake District, I have photos of all of my life: my sons as children - this is Stephen arriving home from the hospital, (he’s 39 now),
my teenage years in a pop group - the Sabres - in the 60s, mainly in
black and white, although a few in colour, life as a young married, then, after
the divorce, the girlfriends and the years of travel, the people I met in those
travels, and the friends I made.
Two
years after my divorce, I was given the chance to travel around Europe with
Ford, first as an Internal Auditor, then launching accounting systems. The Iron
Curtain was still up so I just saw Western European capital cities from Finland
through Scandinavia, down to Portugal, across Spain to Italy and up via Austria
and Switzerland back into France, Belgium and Holland. For 10 years, I stayed
in grand hotels and ate in fine restaurants, courtesy of Ford to whom I am
immensely grateful for providing the lifestyle, experiences, education and the resultant
friends. Then, after the Berlin Wall came down, the USSR broke up and the Cold
War ended, I saw Belgrade before Yugoslavia went into meltdown; all of this
between 1980 and 1990.
In
the years that followed, the travel continued and by the gift of two friends,
Pete Smith and Norman Lyons, I experienced life in Portugal for five years in
the mid-90s, made close friends and saw fabulous sights. I stayed in castles,
palaces, monasteries and a hunting lodge perched on the edge of a cliff, saw
breath-taking valleys in the North and unending Roman roads bisecting vast plains
of wheat in the heart of Portugal, peasant villages off the maps, one with a donkey
tied up at a front door and two women washing clothes at the village pond; treasured
memories of a world that I didn’t realise existed.
Lastly,
at the end of the 20th century, my cousin Lorraine invited me to Oz
for the wedding of her daughter Desirée to Rob - which led to four more visits in
the next five years. This was mainly to see the cousins and their families in
Perth but which also managed to encompass visits to Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns,
the Rainforest, and the Great Barrier Reef, while seeing the deserts that make
up the middle of that country. Also Ayers Rock, emus, camels and kangaroos in
the wild and the salt plains - by train and plane when travelling back and
forth. Flying there and back gave me the chance to take a look at Dubai,
Muscat, Bangkok, Singapore, Los Angeles (including the Hotel California),
Hollywood, and Hawaii. Separately, in this period, I ran with Terry Russell (at
his instigation), in the Paris, New York and London marathons in the 12 months between
May 1990 and April 1991. As I write this, further memories of golf tours,
holidays, barbecues, landmark birthday parties and simple dinner parties resurface.
I
mention these experiences because I had a camera with me in all these places
and back there for a moment, we were talking Jessops and their product range
which uses your own photos. I also mentioned having “thousands of
photos”. You may have thought that was just a turn of phrase like the overused
and misused "Amazing", "Awesome", "Absolutely" and "Literally" but there are
literally, thousands of photos. In short, my life can be told in pictures. What
a task that would be, scanning where it’s a paper photo, sorting, remembering
(correctly? By no means guaranteed), then adding a few words to give the photos
meaning to a future viewer.
While
these thoughts have meandered freely because undoubtedly, I ramble, there is
usually a point, and the point is this: “Give it a little thought. Doesn’t this
apply to you too? You all have photo collections. Don’t they tell your life
story; your triumphs, your holidays, the people that mattered, your kids' development
across their tiny dot, cute years?” Aren’t we lucky that in our cameras,
scanners and PCs, we have the instruments of capturing our lives so readily and
so cheaply?
Certainly,
four of you, Bill, Carole, Gabrielle & Pete are genealogists, interested in
family trees, our histories and the lives of our forebears in general. For you
four - and any others to whom this idea appeals, why not leave a pictorial history
of your own family life for descendants that might have a similar interest? You
could just leave a pile of photos for people to puzzle over when you’re gone, or
perhaps leave a few words as well, to tell them the story of your life - or at
least bits of it?
I’m
doing that to some extent with these Letters From Lincs. Big Swinging Dick did
that with his wonderfully entertaining letters from St. Helena. Apart from the
light relief that they provided at the time, they are also a record for future
family historians.
The
best bit for me, is that these letters we write, or indeed anything we write,
are not just a simple record for the history books. They tell the world who we
are. The way they are written speaks of our essence, our nature; whether we are
optimistic or pessimistic, celebrating or complaining, cup half-full or
half-empty, self-centred or giving, Drama Queen or philosopher. The style of
writing we adopt paints us for all to see. What we talk about, the humour in
describing it, the things that matter to us and the words we choose to show
that they matter, they all speaks of who we are.
On the subject of complaining, the news is currently providing much to moan about. Journalists
are a waste of space aren’t they? F’rinstance, they talk so critically about
the West Coast Train Line contract debacle but don’t name and shame the people
that messed up. Nor do they talk about what’s happened to them now it’s out.
Have they been sacked with a golden handshake like the BBC Director General, quietly
pensioned off, or promoted? We will never know as journos show every day by
their actions that they are only interested in the briefly sensational, not the
full story.
Talking
of ‘reward for failure’, the BBC boss George Entwhistle, got rewarded for doing
a bad job for less than 2 months, with a full year’s salary. No waste of
licence-payer’s money there then. He was weak, uninspiring and dithery in any
interview. What a wimp. Who on Earth thought that he could be a leader? Again,
not the full story. I’d like to know who chose him and who decided to give him
twice what he was entitled to (for failure). Why give him such a generous contract in the first place; one
that rewards failure? Let’s examine the people that appointed him - and why.
My
perpetual criticism of politicians is that they live in a world of pretence and
appearances. No one deals with reality. Greek debt is a prime example. No one
is ‘lending’ money to Greece, they are giving it to them. They’ll never
pay it back. They can’t. They have no prospect of finding the discipline to get
themselves organised financially in the foreseeable future. Large chunks of
debt will have to be written off (sorry Hans, this affects you more than the
other 99 people reading this).
That’s
the cost of creating a United States of Europe. If you doubt that this is the unspoken
agenda of a European Common Market, can I point out that they’ve already
slipped in a President, a Constitution and our courts and government are routinely
overruled by European organisations.
Happily,
the rich countries; Germany and France, have to buy this power - and it will be
expensive. A United States barely works in America where they have the
advantage of a common language, a common currency and similar distribution of
the rich and the poor within each member state. While we have wealthy Germany &
France on the one hand, with Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal heavily in debt
on the other, and then poorer Eastern European countries also queuing up for hand-outs, it’ll all end in tears. They tried this on a smaller scale by forcing
Yugoslavia to be a united ‘country’ and we saw how that ended. Blimey! I sound
like the lovechild of Nigel Farage and Enoch Powell after his “Rivers of Blood” speech
- writes Doleful D’Abreo, Prophet of Doom.
As
ever, I try to tie the end of my letters back to the beginning so I will close
with a little about the Lack of Time in our lives. Magicians use misdirection
to take the audience’s eyes off the main trick. This is what I believe happens
in our consistent whine that we “don’t have enough time”, to justify rushing blindly
from pillar to post. We consider so rarely, what really matters. Our American-led
work lives train us to assess that everything matters and having
multiple Number One priorities is the acceptable norm. Is this really true? It
will be if you let it, but that is going along with the herd and letting the mindless
hysteria of the masses draw you into a lemming-like charge.
It
is a simple truth that Time is the one thing that we have in unlimited
quantity. There will still be Time after we are gone. So getting us to focus on
a lack of time is the misdirection, achieved by giving us too many options. We
try to accept every offer on offer (back to FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out,
mentioned a few letters ago). Next year is the 100th Chelsea Flower
Show. I have been to the 96th, 97th, 98th and 99th. The 100th should be something special - but
they are all wonderful. (Here’s a pic from last year).
When
I go, I go on Members’ Day - next year, this will be May 21st. On May 22nd, I will either have gone or have missed it. Either way,
Life will go on. The world won’t end. Yesterday, I played golf, today I am
typing this to you. Later on, I will be reading, maybe working on a story, maybe
shopping, maybe packing my bags for the visit to Essex next week, maybe playing
a guitar… I don’t have a measurement system that tells me which is the ‘best’
choice. I do the last thing that appeals and live with the disappointment of
looking back at the inviting things I could have done - but didn't.
I have
a mate, Paul, of some 30 years standing and we’ve often discussed the mistakes
we’ve made in our lives. They are manifold - yet we have no regrets as our lives have been full and generous. We deal
with reality via a common philosophy of life - “It seemed like a good idea at
the time”. When I look back wistfully on things I might have done, the thought also
occurs that I might have dropped dead during that alternative activity or as a result of it.
As I am still here, it seems that I have made all the right choices so far.
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