Of Anger, Guilt And Powerlessness

I woke up this morning. A man I met yesterday was determined not to. I feel angry, guilty, frustrated and really, really sad. For family reasons I had spent a few hours near a town in what looks to be a very prosperous part of the south of England. Before getting stuck into the 150-mile drive back to the boat yesterday I diverted into the town centre to buy some guitar strings. I’ve only visited that town once before, but as town centres go, it is quite attractive. It is on the River Kennet and there are narrowboats. The afternoon light was fading and I didn’t have time to take a riverside walk. I was trying to get back in time for the first performance of a community singing group started by the Drama Lady.

I bought my strings (and some other bits I hadn’t intended) in Hogan Music, a very friendly independent and interestingly stocked music shop and wandered further into town. That’s where I saw him. Sitting on the ground in the near zero temperature in an alley just off the High Street. I tried to remember where he was and decided I would talk to him on my way back from buying a birthday card. I don’t go into towns very often - not when most of the shops are open anyway - so I have to remember things like birthday cards when I get a chance. A few minutes later when I returned he had relocated a few yards into the High Street. I didn’t blame him. The alley was probably a wind tunnel. He was sitting in the doorway of a closed, darkened shop. His knees were drawn up and draped with a thin woollen blanket. Although his coat looked warm, it probably wasn’t.  He looked utterly defeated. Even his hat for voluntary contributions looked wretched. Someone had dropped in a piece of costume jewellery, a brooch of some sort, but I could see no money aside from a few coppers.

I asked if it was okay to sit with him and he looked at me from a very long distance inside himself. I sat among some empty sandwich packets and coffee cups. I have assumed until recently (because several street people have told me so when I’ve done it) that it is unusal and welcome for a stranger to offer a few minutes of time when they drop some money into the hat. In my middle-class, do-gooder way I breeze in and out of their lives for a few minutes of my precious time and feel suitably virtuous. When I visit a place I make sure I have ten pounds in my pocket, which I know I may end up sharing among street people, people busking, people begging and sometimes even people selling the Big Issue. If I didn’t set myself a budget I might be tempted to give everything away. I’ve done it before and given away my train or bus fare. Sometimes I buy myself something from a sandwich shop and get something extra for someone I have seen. I never know whether food and a warm drink is welcome or whether the bodies of these people need some other form of nourishment. I know mine would be screaming for fruit or fresh vegetables (and probably, I confess, some very, very dark chocolate) if I tried to live on a diet of burgers and pre-packed sandwiches.

Sitting with people for a while they invariably have a story to tell. Often just one event has happened to turn their lives completely upside down. There are times in my own life when that could have been me. In Highbury, a few weeks ago I tried to spend a bit of time with people who clearly didn’t want my company. I hadn't really encountered that response before. One man outside the tube station had a palsy so bad he was risking spilling the change right out of the plastic disposable cup in which he was collecting contributions. I couldn’t tell if his attempts at speech were the result of his condition or whether he spoke little English. Whatever, with such violent tics forcing his body to run flat out he must have been exhausted. A few minutes later I dropped some money into the bowl of a very young man who had just enough English to point down the street and tell me to go. “You give money. You go!” He exclaimed in a voice that sounded fearful. Just what had happened to detach him from social contact with people in such a desperate fashion? His response made me question my actions. I thought I was trying to treat each person I spoke to with the same kind of respect I would want for myself. I always ask if it's okay to chat. I know they must be wondering what it is I want from them. I think most of us need something and that what they need is likely very different from what I judge to be the case. What have I been expecting or wanting? I didn't think I wanted anything from them. I felt that there was little enough I could do to show a little bit of human kindness - I have enough for myself with enough to share a little - but maybe I need something more than that. What? Absolution? If I'm lucky I may get a song out of it. Then I have to balance the right to exploit someone else's misfortune against an opportunity I perhaps have to raise awareness. Has Ralph McTell saved any lives by writing and singing "The Streets of London"? My approach to street people since then, however, was to be very unsure of how best to approach them or, indeed, whether attempting conversation was a good idea at all. On balance I think it may be. Too many street people have said how they appreciated someone spending a few minutes with them, having someone look at them rather than the other way and having a chance to tell their story.

There is always a story. Here’s one from a man I also met yesterday. Thirty-three year old P had lost his job, his girlfriend and his flat. He had a place in a shelter which accommodated him and his companion of many years, his dog Tizer. Tizer had a temperature. P took him to a vet who prescribed antibiotics. A few days later Tizer regurgitated blood, lots of blood, seven towels worth of blood. Tizer turned out to have cancer and P couldn’t afford the prescribed operation after he’d already paid out for treatment. He had to say goodbye to Tizer. Then the hostel presented him with a bill for six months of arrears. He had been keeping up with the £17.50 a week that had been asked of him, but now they were telling him that his benefit payments didn’t cover the remainder of a bill he did not realise he was incurring. He had to leave and I was speaking to him as he prepared for another cold night in the open while still mourning the loss of his mother and the more recent loss of his dog. He asked me my name and tried to guess my occupation. He thought I was an artist ... or a hippy! He was pleased and not surprised to find out I was a musician. “What’s your instrument?” he asked. I told him to guess. He said I couldn’t be a drummer or a trumpet player. He thought I was a violinist or a flautist and seemed disappointed when I told him I was a one-man band and did play percussion. We shook hands as I got up to go and he laughed when I told him that his name was the same as my boyfriend’s.

Back in the High Street the defeated man showed signs of being seriously strung out. He spoke slowly, quietly and with effort. There were many pauses in his tale while his eyes went into periods of hibernation before his voice petered out. Then he would re-emerge for few more seconds to move the story on. He had spent the previous night indoors at the invitation of a “friend”. Come morning his sleeping bag, blanket, some spare clothes and his friend were all gone. I was horrified and outraged. He told me to take back the money I had dropped into his hat. There was no point and he no longer wanted to live in a world where such things could happen. I told him to keep the money in case he wanted a cup of tea and I bade him farewell. I knew I couldn’t leave it there. I found a charity shop which, fortunately, was still open and went inside to ask if they had any sleeping bags or blankets. I related the story. The volunteer looked at a few unsuitable options and said she would see if there was anything more useful in the back of the shop. She came back with a bagged up king-sized duck down duvet. I realised this was incredibly bulky for a homeless person, but the evening was getting colder, so I bought it and took it back to the defeated man. I asked him if he minded if I left it with him, because it was wrong that someone should take his stuff. He barely acknowledged me as I placed it on the ground beside him on top of more food containers I hadn’t noticed before.

“You won’t see me again,” he said. I said he was probably right and that I wouldn’t be back to that town for a long time. “No, I just don’t want to live in this horrible world where friends steal each others’ things. I’m going to end it tonight. I shall stay here and get as much money as I can to buy as much heroin as I can get and then I’ll o.d. I have no reason to live and I will die tonight.” He was very matter-of-fact. He had reasoned this out. However shocked I was at what he was saying I could see his reasoning. What would I want were I in his shoes? I had to admit it could easily be something very similar. “I said, okay that has to be your choice, but I hope you can remember that the world where friends nick your stuff is the same one where someone you’ve never met before and will never see again gives you something to try and keep you warm. I hope something good happens for you.” Immediately I hated myself for being so supercilious, but it was the best I could come up with on the spur of that moment.

I left, shaking and weeping. A big voice inside me was telling me to alert someone to his plans, but who should I tell and what would be the result of me saying something? The best that could happen would be that some official would turn up and his freedom would be taken away. I needed to talk this through and the only place I could think of was to go back to the charity shop where the volunteers had been so kind and helpful. They gave me a chair to sit on and a few minutes of their time as I composed myself. When everything else has been stolen from us is it right to take away that final microscopic thread of dignity to make a man conform to our own view of how a life should play out? I’m guessing and hoping that the defeated man had nothing like the amount of cash he needed to be able to close his body down in his chosen manner. I’m also hoping that he wrapped himself in duck down and began to feel differently as his body became a little less frozen.

I turned the wrong way and couldn’t find where I’d parked my van. Asking directions I had to walk the length of the High Street again, passing his spot once more. I saw the defeated man and he was on the move. He was up on his feet and stooping to collect his remaining belongings together. I really wanted to see if he took the duvet with him when he headed off, but that would have ruined the point of the gift. Sharing this experience with you probably also defeats the object. This is not a tale about me, but I am trying to work out what I experienced. It is an expression of the shame and anger I feel that some of us are forced into such a place that suicide appears to be the only remaining option for self-determination. So, in the face of homelessness - and climate change, species decline, greed, famine, war, sickness and poverty - we’ll keep intoning the mantra, “Brexit ... Brexit ... Brexit” and congratulate ourselves on getting our country back; we seem to be doing a jolly good job there.

Yes, I woke up this morning. I was in my comfortable bed and although the cabin on the boat was cold at only 12ºC, I wasn't affected by the wind and, while raining, the rain was falling outside and not on me. Neither had I been kicked awake by some drunken louts out for a bit of "fun". I hope the defeated man woke up today. I hope he experiences a little bit of kindness. I didn't make it back in time for Drama Lady's concert. I hope I didn't make the defeated man's life worse.

Of Unintended Stalking And Magic

I am not a stalker; perhaps that should read that I am not a stalker on purpose, although I do accept that sometimes I get a bit more enthusiastic about my musical likes than some find comfortable or even comprehensible.

Gone are the days when the only way to find out about your musicians of choice was to scour the classifieds in the back of Melody Maker or write to their record company or a radio station. I've done all those and I can testify to the excitement experienced on receiving an acknowledgement. These days, being a fan is so easy. Social networking and mobile communications make everyone available all day every day. We musicians are made to feel we are not doing the job if we don't play the game. Pretence and imitation add to the blurring of personal territory.

When I started listening to music that was not the music of my parents there were few gurus. Like many, I took John Peel as one of mine. Later, Radio Geronimo was required listening. For that brief window during the 60s I was an avid listener to the so-called "pirate" Radio London.

the MVGalaxy from an article by Gerry Bishop, Hans Knot and John S. Platt  (soundscapes.info)

My credibility may have been enhanced had I been able to claim Caroline as my radio station of choice, but that wasn't to be. Radio reception of Caroline was poor and sporadic and I preferred the playlist on Big L. It was John Peel's first job when he returned to the UK from the USA. Listening to him was how I discovered musicians and bands that I have continued to follow throughout my life. One of those bands was Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band. Although he didn't feature them on his show as often as he did, say, Tyrannosaurus Rex, John Peel played Beefheart often. He had strange stories to tell, many of which seemed to revolve around telephones. I have a vague recollection that he was at least once berated by Captain Beefheart (later to be known more widely as the fine artist Don van Vliet) for not being at home when he phoned. Captain B. also appeared to know exactly when the phone was about to ring. Incomprehensible as it may seem now, our telephones were once large blocks of electrickery that had to be plumbed into our houses. Mobile phones were only ever seen on Star Trek or spy films. We had no idea that mobile technology would become so pervasive so quickly in the late twentieth century or a revolution would take place in the way in which we conduct ourselves in the early twenty-first century as a result of "social media".

In the late sixties and early seventies I heard tracks from "Safe As Milk", "Strictly Personal" and "Trout Mask Replica" on the radio and bought the records to hear more of the tracks in their album contexts. No one else seemed to be making music like this, particularly by the time it got to "Trout Mask Replica" and "Lick My Decals Off Baby". Unfortunately, in my family, no one else liked the music ... their loss.

Fast forward to me at the age of seventeen. My family had recently moved to a village near Hertford  and I had been going out with a Stevenage girl for about a year, long enough to get into a routine. Our Sundays were shaped by the church attendance (probably mentioned in other essays here) of our families ... church, Sunday dinner with her family, more church, tea with my family, drive her home to Stevenage. "Clear Spot" had been released and I loved every track. Then came the news that Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band were playing at The Mecca in Stevenage on Sunday, 22nd April 1973.

Formerly known as The Locarno Ballroom, The Mecca was indeed a mecca long before it metamorphosed. Along with Bowes Lyon House - the town centre youth club - the Locarno saw most of the famous bands of the sixties on stage, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who (several times), The Small Faces, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Paul Simon and many others. By 1972 the big live gigs had reduced in number although dances were still held there between bingo sessions. That there was a gig there at all was one thing, but that it was Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band was something quite amazing. I was challenged to make a choice between the normal Sunday routine and something utterly extraordinary. I think it was one of those relationship tests that seemed to appear from time to time. Of course I went on down to the big dig ... er, gig. I didn't know why it had to be a contest. There was no question in my mind that we could go together. There was no question in hers that we would go at all. We nearly ended there, but we went on to get married a couple of years later, although she always left the room if ever I put on a Captain Beefheart record. This is my long-winded way of trying to say that it feels as though The Magic Band and I have a long and sometimes complicated relationship.

You probably know that Don stopped performing music, moved into the desert and took up painting as his main occupation. Sadly he passed away in 2010 as a result of MS. In January 2004, though, John Drumbo French brought a reconstituted Magic Band to The Royal Festival Hall. Made up of members from different stages of the Band's forty-strong list of musicians and played some of that music I thought I would never hear played live again. That evening they were supported by The Fall - another of John Peel's favourite bands, albeit one that didn't touch me at all. Since 2004, though, I have seen The Magic Band play many times on their return tours to Europe. This one that finished on Sunday, 26th November 2017 was, it seems, the final tour.

The Magic Band 2017  (l-r Eric Klerks, John French, Jonathan Sindelman, Max Kutner, Andy Niven)

I saw them twice that weekend - on Friday night at the Garage in Highbury and on Saturday night in Norwich. Norwich was more relaxed and the band played a storm. By many accounts the following and final night in Essex was even better. After the show on Saturday, all members of the band eventually found their way into the bar at Norwich Arts Centre. Anyone who knows that space will be familiar with its intimacy. I managed to hold a conversation with every member of the band and was once more impressed by how nice it is when musicians make themselves available, no matter how exhausted they must be. There is a huge difference between musicians who meet and mingle and those who don't. Some need the safety of a structured space, Peggy Seeger and Donovan, are examples of people who choose to keep a desk between them and the public as they chatted and signed merchandise. The Magic Band, along with others like Arthur Brown, a man who needs to prove nothing, are prepared to mingle. This attitude is in such contrast to a band I've followed for decades, when after a show this year in Nottingham, about twenty people were waiting behind Rock City where the vehicles were being loaded. Everyone was keeping a safe and respectful distance. I just thought it would be nice to say a quick hello, thanks and wish them well for the remainder of the tour. I didn't expect anyone to know my name or remember extended conversations we have enjoyed in past decades. I waited for a long time. Eventually members of the band came by. They weren't the stars. They were this year's new young musicians. There was no danger of anyone being hurt, but not one of them stopped or even acknowledged the greetings and good wishes of those assembled. They seemed to gather into a single file and, eyes fixed ahead, marched right through us while road crew cleared an unnecessary path. It looked so arrogant. It felt so dismissive. Forty-five years of support for this band and >£250 spent on that evening alone - half of that on merchandise - should not have made any difference (any and all of that was, after all, my choice), but somehow it did. I suspect some of them might have liked to chat, but they were following orders. The stars of the band are knocking on a bit and no doubt need their beauty sleep, but what a difference in attitudes!

Simple things can make all the difference. As far as The Magic Band was concerned it was being able to talk to Andy Niven and Max Kutner about their Android Trio project (well worth a listen by the way). With Jonathan Sindelman I talked synthesisers. Eric Klerks (the third Android Trio member) made my night even better by giving me a huge smile that shone like the sun and threw his arms round me in a lovely embrace.

I may not be a stalker by intent but temptation, by definition, is hard to resist. Perhaps i can express this modest thank you to all those musicians who have brought me so much pleasure over so many years.

Of Non-Days & Songs That Are Out Of Control

Have you ever had one of those days that were full of good intentions and by the end of it you realise you had achieved very little? This could turn out to be one of those days if I don't do something productive soon. Hence this non-post.

I suppose I could credit among today's achievements the couple of hours I spent writing to someone I have never met who is really struggling to cope with her tinnitus; the glockenspiel practice I spent time on, so I'd be ready for percussion lessons I'm teaching tomorrow for a friend who is in America for three weeks; the processing I've been doing about a song I've been working on that will probably have to undergo a massive dose of therapy itself if I am to avoid trouble down the line ...

Songs can be uncontrollable children and this one certainly has been. I've mentioned in other posts that I find writing lyrics difficult, but I have read and heard many times the smug adage that many of the best-known songs have arrived fully-formed and that one should stop tinkering with them and get them finished, learned and shared and that, anyway, the best songs are always the ones you don't mess around with too much. That don't impress me much! I don't know if I shall ever experience such a pleasure or even that I actually agree with it. I do a lot of editing - sometimes over days, weeks, months or, in the case of a couple of songs, years - to make my words say exactly what I mean them to say. Perhaps it is a case of writing, writing, writing and occasionally the subconscious yields a gift as some sort of reward. I don't think I've written in sufficient quantity recently to merit that, although I have spent at least a couple hours most days practising and rehearsing. I don't know how people find the resources both to write and to practise. They require completely different frames of mind. Perhaps this non-post is an address to that very problem.

The most difficult bit for me is finding a subject sufficiently engaging that a song demands to be written - I put it down to my unprofessionalism and lack of imagination. I think this is one of the reasons I love Richard Thompson's songs so much. He seems so prolific and has covered a lot of subjects in his songs. He never seems short of places ito start. If he doesn't have an angry relationship situation to set down in a tear-stained song he'll imagine one, or he'll write about a motorbike, a lost love, a race horse, a Victorian beggar girl, an abused child, a night on the town, a fantasy wedding ... hell, he even managed to write a song about Sting! 

The lyrics of my new song appeared in a first draft quite quickly a couple of days ago at about three o'clock in the morning. By six a.m. I'd written three verses and a substantial chorus with a bridge. I'd even had ideas for the melodies for the bridge and the chorus that I noted down in my manuscript book. I'm trusting that whatever melody I compose for the verses will arrive at some point when I sit down with the intention of doing some work on it. However, the lyrics ... they are fierce and angry and, while that's not normally a problem, this time it is. I don't know whether that anger is justified or where it should be directed - which is just another way of avoiding admitting that I really need to look in the mirror. I have directed my anger at someone who didn't deserve it while I was being a prima donna. I let a personality glitch spill into the professional attitude of which I am so proud.

Have you ever met someone who was probably full of good intentions and they simply rubbed your ego up the wrong way? This was a case of that. I perceived a request being made, I offered a solution, the solution was rejected, I took it personally and the ointment I applied to my thin and bruised ego was to stop talking and retreat into my metaphorical ivory tower. Without giving too much away I talked it over briefly with the wise bass player last evening and I'm glad we found time for that brief exchange as he was preparing for a gig with his own band. Now I have to discipline my delinquent song. I've been thinking of ways to do that. Pity really, I did come up with some first-rate bitching!  

Notebooks and pencil on the bed and at the ready.

Of The Pleasure Of Small Gestures

Did I tell you about the early concerts I attended? They were life-changing events in that they are still with me fifty years later. I'm sixty-two and I feel myself slipping into life as one of those older people who loves to share stories of earlier years. If I find them so fascinatingly memorable, why doesn't everyone? In 1967, the so-called summer of love, I was one of the many swept up in, amongst other things, Monkeemania. There was something so appropriately sunny about the music, even when the subject matter was slightly daft ("Your Auntie Griselda"?), somewhat improbable ("Saturday's Child"?) or even downright stupid ("Look Out [Here Comes Tomorrow]"!). I enjoyed the weekly antics on the television show and bought the first three albums - Meet The Monkees, More Of The Monkees and Headquarters - as soon as they came out. I went to their show at the Empire Pool in Wembley, dressed in my Sunday suit, and experienced the grip of mass hysteria as I stood up on my seat and screamed like all the girls were doing. My mother, could only sit next to me in horror and amazement.  By the time we got to  "Piscces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Limited" and "The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees" my attention had moved elsewhere. My interest was raised again with "Head", but the relationship was never quite the same. That show was opened by Lulu. She was sunny, bubbly and totally inaudible, but I decided I loved her too. I bought several of her singles.

I had begun to devour the weekly music press at the age of twelve, starting with Disc & Music Echo, while John Peel had become my guru on the radio. I had listened to him on the independent radio ship, Radio London, and had reluctantly followed him to the BBC and their new venture, Radio 1. While never quite being able to forgive him for taking Auntie's shilling he did still play the most interesting music. He played Tyrannosaurus Rex every week and they became the next object of my adulation. Again I bought the first three albums the moment they were released. I had pestered the poor man behind the counter at the local Rumbelow's for weeks leading to the release of "My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair, But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows" and I bought Marc Bolan's book of poems, "The Warlock Of Love", with similar haste. I was devastated when Steve Peregine Took left. He was my favourite - it wasn't just the long hair, the cloak and the percussion, but he added those strange and beautiful vocalisations to the songs. I was horrified when, in 1970, Jeff Dexter played "Ride A White Swan" over and over and over again at the Third Isle Of Wight Festival. I wasn't aware of the controversy caused by Bob Dylan's expansion into electric expression at the time, but I think I felt betrayed in the same way as John Cordwell who shouted, "Judas!" during the second half of the concert at The Free Trade Hall in Manchester on 17th May 1966. From that moment my relationship with Tyrannosaurus Rex was severed. I had been prepared to give the new man, Mickey Finn, a try but every further move into commercialism (including the unconscionable shortening of a great band name) distanced me more from the band.

At the height of my affection for Tyrannosaurus Rex, though, I begged my parents to let me go and see them play live. Obviously it was not feasible for a thirteen year-old to be allowed to attend one of the all-night gigs at Middle Earth in London that were the tofu of many legends in those days, but when the Babylonian Mouthpiece Show was organised at the Royal Festival Hall 3rd June 1968, my mum and dad relented and bought tickets for the whole family to attend.

This isn't my ticket, but wasn't far from where I sat.

The evening opened with Stefan Grossman. I seem to remember him singing the line, "Delia, I wanna steal ya", which made an impression on a young man who had yet to write his first song and a whole year before I plucked my first guitar string. After his set was David Bowie, who didn't sing a note that night. Instead, he danced/mimed his way through a story about a village being invaded by an army, I think. I could look this up, because someone is bound to know. I do remember this was the time of discontent over US involvement in Vietnam and at one point Bowie was heckled by a man with an American accent. Tyrannosaurus Rex were the final act of the evening and of course they were wonderful, but I was actually most taken by seeing Roy Harper play for the first time of what was to become many times. His second album, "Come Out Fighting, Ghengis Smith" had just been released and he was also singing songs from "Folkjokeopus", which wouldn't be released for a while to come.I remember my father laughing at a line in "She's The One" and my mother giving him a disapproving look. Roy Harper had mentioned "pants" - shocking. My two younger brothers slept through it all - pity, they'd have thought it very naughty and a lot of fun. I bought "Ghengis" within days of attending that concert and I played it almost literally to death. I made the mistake of using a brand of so-called record cleaner on it. This imbued the music with a hiss which over months became a storm of noise on the record that gradually obliterated the music altogether. I've kept the album, but it has been unlistenable for decades. From time to time I looked for a replacement in whatever format I could find, but nothing seemed available.

Recently I stumbled across Roy Harper's website. He seems to have most of the licenses to his recordings and is able to offer them as downloads. I jumped at the chance of buying a download copy of "Come Out Fighting, Ghengis Smith" and getting my ears wrapped around the title track that has been such an important influence on the way I make music now, or the mysterious "Highgate Cemetery", the doped up, "You Don't Need Money" and the extraordinary "Circle". Although my own parents never put me under the same pressure as the parents of the schoolboy in the song I identified very strongly with the protagonist - victim status has been fashionable for a very long time. As I was downloading the album and one or two others that caught my eye I also saw a hardback version of a book of Roy Harper's lyrics, photographs and recollections, "The Passions Of Great Fortune". I bought that too. I sent an e-mail message to the web-site sharing something of what I have written here. I didn't know if Roy Harper saw the e-mails that were directed to his site. A few days later a heavy package arrived from Ireland. It was my book. Indeed it is a beautiful volume and it was great to have the lyrics of most of the words in one place. As I opened it I came to the title page and there in thick black pen was a personal message from Roy Harper addressed to me and thanking me for my recollections. I cannot say just how much I was touched by this simple and thoughtful gesture. It's a lesson many could learn and a reminder to myself to try and be nice to people.

Coda
A couple of weeks ago I went to Norwich to see (and this time hear) Lulu in concert. She was, of course, superb. She has one of the finest rock voices this land has ever produced and, maybe I'm just an old softy, but I did find it very moving that she has only recently found her own voice as a songwriter along with the confidence to sing her own songs. I bought a signed copy of her cd of those songs. I do find great satisfaction in completing previously unfinished business, even if it takes me fifty years.

Of Right Times and Right Places

Any passing reader may be aware that my way of living is different from that of many. One of the consequences of living both in the Fens and the Alps is the probability that I shall be in an inconveniently distant location at any given time. Wrong place, wrong time could be on my coat of arms.   However, occasionally things come together in a most extraordinary way. Take a weekend earlier this year, for example. I had plans - some work, some play, lots of playing. Two days before a paid job, a social ceilidh in a village in the East Midlands, the gig was cancelled. I hadn't organised it.  Friends were playing as a scratch band, although we all play regularly in a number of combinations, we all take on the fixing and admin roles differently. Some like the clarity of a contract, others are more comfortable with a telephone call or a handshake. I tend towards the former. The fixer on this occasion seemed inclined to the latter. This meant that no cancellation arrangements were in place, including any arrangements for paying cancellation fees. In any life the loss of work at such short notice leaves little opportunity for replacing it, which is a bother. Just saying though that if you choose to renege on one of my contracts I will hunt you down ... On this occasion the evening wasn't entirely wasted. The bass player normally hosts an open mic evening on the first Friday of the month. The sudden hole in the calendar allowed him to undertake his hosting duties and gave me an audience for some Marshlander-style musical agitation.

After a rehearsal with a quintet led by my composer friend, Jane, in the morning, Saturday's plan was to take up an invitation to John's (a storyteller friend) birthday party. He had attained seventy years of age the previous weekend, but his work as a professional storyteller and poet had engaged him elsewhere. The party was at The Steamboat, apparently a well-known pub on the dockside in Ipswich. I would like to be able to say I like Ipswich. I'm sure it has a grand history, beautiful buildings, an engaged community and a thriving cultural scene, but I have not been there often enough to find any of these things. Coming from Norfolk I do know that my presence is not aways welcome among local football fans.

Ipswich does have a musical history though. Pretty much every touring band once played at the Odeon, later the Gaumont and now the Regent, but I have no idea if that is still the case. I'm talking about days when bands like the Small Faces and Pinkerton's Assorted Colours played in Heacham, in Norfolk, or when The Jimi Hendrix Experience rocked the Wellington Club in Dereham or The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent played in Wisbech ... although I am sure the Ipswich venue was used beyond 1965.

Much of the area around the River Orwell in Ipswich is now given over to parking space, except that none of it is neither open to members of the public nor to casual visitors, such as I was that day. The effect of swathes of grey concrete fenced in behind chain-link or more substantial security fencing is to give the dock area the appearance of a town in distress, one deciding whether or not to recover from a war once it can raise some money. It was also frustrating to have found the pub, and see acres of parking all of which was inaccessible. On street parking near the pub was, quite naturally, full. I found a space outside a modern block of flats and reluctantly abandoned the van there. It wasn't clear whether parking was allowed, but there were other vehicles there already.

John, the celebrating storyteller, was at the bar and effusive in his welcome as I crept through the door to the saloon. Other guests were already present and I was introduced to members of his tribe. A small p.a. was set up and it appeared the festivities were going to take on a participatory element at some point. Having my guitar and footdrums in the van I offered my services which were accepted. That necessitated a twenty-minute round trek back to the van. I was relieved to find it still there and the instruments still inside. How nice, though, to be able to repay the pleasure I have received over many years working with John on various projects by sharing some of my creative efforts with him for a change. He seemed surprised as I suppose we might all be when we find that someone has another life outside any hole into which we have pigeoned them.

Sunday was another day. I had planned to meet Jane in Cromer. She and her artist partner, Bob, moved there recently and this happened to be also the weekend of Folk On The Pier, a folk festival in Cromer celebrating its wooden anniversary. As it happened another friend, Richard Penguin, was hosting a weekend of "Teatime Showcase" events and I arranged to meet Jane at the Cromer Social Club to enjoy the last of these. Walking into the Social Club all was not well. Richard was looking concerned and it transpired that the opening act was stuck on a bus between Cromer and Norwich and wouldn't be due to arrive until well after his set was due to start. That was a shock. I had no idea there would be a bus between Cromer and Norwich on a Sunday evening. Although I suppose I shouldn't have been, I was also surprised to find I had worked with most of the people on the programme in some capacity or other over the past thirty years. I had worked with the classes of the ex-teachers, and even in the same band as some of the performers. They didn't make it easy to predict that we would have previous connections since they had changed their real names to more innocent-sounding folksinger names - like I can complain about that! Seeing Richard's quandary I once more offered my services. Although he is a promotor, performer, radio show host, writer and raconteur, Richard didn't really know me as Marshlander - one man acoustic band and songwriter. Once again it was fun to subvert someone else's filing system. In fact he was so delighted he asked for an encore and publicly offered an invitation for a full set at next year's Teatime Showcase. 

So while I may spend a great deal of my time being in the wrong place, it is fun to enjoy an occasional weekend such as this where the stars align and form pretty patterns.

Of Blobs, Scratches And Other Musical Deviations

I'm in the process of writing up a new song, "Vote For Them". So far I'm working on a fourth tune for the song ... the others turned out to be unsatisfactory for one reason or another. This one has promise and will probably end up being the one. This has been the first song I've written up using the new score writing program, Dorico. Until a couple of weeks ago it couldn't handle writing chord symbols, so wasn't much use to to me, but now ... 
Since the 1980s I have used computer programs for writing out my scores - my handwriting being illegible and the ease of being able to print copies as required being really handy. If I go back through my notebooks I can find scores printed out from Steinberg's Pro-24, C-Lab's Notator, Logic (from C-Lab days, through the company's metamorphosis into E-Magic and on to being sold to Apple), Hybrid Arts' very neat and barely known program, EZ Score, Steinberg's Cubase (even in its early form when it was called "Cubit" or "Cuboid" or some such) and others I've forgotten. There was one called something like Music 24, which looked great as a sequencer, was on show at very loud volumes at all the trade shows for a time, was purchased by many schools in Essex and which crashed every time I fired it up to have another go at trying to use it. At least the idiosyncratic Hybrid Technology Music 5000 system didn't pretend to offer score writing ... although wasn't there a Yamaha connection at some stage or am I thinking of something else? I remember dongles and cartridges being involved with a special Yamaha keyboard and a monitor with a blue screen?
Eventually I needed something with more functionality and better-looking scores and Finale seemed to be the industry standard solution. It turned out to be a musician's nightmare. Enduring the horrors of Finale for too long and having to work on each project with its five manuals (!) always on hand, I switched to Sibelius, which had, after some years, finally reached a level of functionality (not to mention its eventual migration beyond the Acorn environment!) that satisfied me. I have been using Sibelius as my score writing program of choice for twenty years or so.
Yesterday I gave the latest version of Steinberg's new dedicated score writing software, Dorico, a trial run. I tried it a few weeks ago, but abandoned the project and had to go back to Sibelius, because I need certain functions which weren't in Dorico until a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, though, I discovered that using Dorico for writing lyrics and chord symbols in particular is rather elegant. Now if I can get used to inputting notes the Dorico way it may soon be time to consign Sibelius to the "thanks for the memory" tray (Sibelius stopped being fun the moment it was sold to Avid anyway - and I refused as a matter of principle to upgrade to the subscription version, Sibelius 8).
Some of you may know that when Avid bought out Sibelius one of their first actions was to sack the team that built it and lose the vision that drove the program. Steinberg brought those gifted people back together a few years ago with a view to producing the new score writing software from scratch. I've never been a big fan of Steinberg in the past, but things sometimes change ...
Naturally there going to be things I don't like about Dorico, but that may just be down to being unfamiliar with the environment. Having to switch tools to perform certain functions seems a retrograde move, although the experience is nowhere near as awful as my encounters with Finale. A manual, specially one of the quality of Sibelius, would be a very welcome development, and plans are afoot for that. Yes, the online video tutorials are pretty good, but looking up something in a handy manual is much quicker and interrupts the work less. A manual also allows me to save some of my precious monthly data allowance for watching cat videos (only kidding!). I'm also not at all convinced, that editing note pitches in Dorico should require two key presses (Alt+up/down arrow when Sibelius just uses the much more logical up and down arrows), but that may be something I can configure within the program options ... (Edit: I have just reconfigured this in the Preferences window and can now alter pitches by using the up and down arrows <happy dance>) Importantly for me, Dorico does not yet have the functionality to write percussion parts properly, which is necessary for several projects, but this is promised in an early future upgrade. I can see myself migrating fully over to Dorico as the functions improve.
I am not sponsored by anyone (although I could be tempted with the right offer ... ) so this little essay is completely independent of thoughts other than my own perspectives and prejudice. However I'm going to go out on a limb and point out that there is a time-limited trial version of Dorico available, if this kind of thing interests you. It has only taken thirty-plus years for version 1.1 of a score writing program to be usable without total loss of hair. Just as well, since I have little more to lose. The portents seem quite positive at the moment.

Of New Ways To Get There

A few days ago ....

"I'm on the Eurostar heading south through France. I have just used my phone to book a rail ticket from Lyon to Bellegarde-sur-Valserine for the next part of my journey. Received wisdom is that rail travel is much better in France. It is great if you happen to want to go to one of the main destinations. Experience has proven that reality does not always match the myth on more local services (one six-hour journey on four trains for a ninety mile trip that takes ninety minutes by car comes to mind). This Eurostar and the TGV are very fast and efficient. I still can't get my head round the notion of having to book a seat on a specific train, even for local journeys, though. Miss that train and one loses the money. I'm sure there are probably more open options, but I'm not sure what they are.

I have made the journey between The Fens and Haute-Savoie most months for nearly fifteen years and today is the first time I have done it using the train. I will usually tell anyone that adventure is over-rated, but I have been looking forward to this trip for weeks and now it is happening it is exceeding all expectations ... mind you, I do have a few hours to go yet.

 I have always hated the whole flying experience, but I have endured it all this time because it has been significantly cheaper than the train when I am going to stay with P. First of all I hate the notion of leaving a huge carbon footprint every time I fly. I hate airports, airport security, being separated from my personal belongings (potentially permanently), all the hanging around, the marketing, the airport as shopping mall, the crush, the queuing, the pushing-in, the noise, the resentment of one's fellow travellers, the squashed knees in seats too close together, the reclining seats, the recycled air, the effect I find an hour and a half spent in a pressurised tube a mile up in the air has on me for days afterwards, turbulence, bored children and exhausted parents, children screaming in pain through changes in pressure on their ears and sinuses, the passenger next to you who throws up, the one behind who coughs and splutters over the back of your head the whole journey, not being able to see where you are, where you are going or where you have been, motion sickness ... I'm sure I could go on.

Today's experience, though,  has been a revelation. I've been staying with an old school friend for a few days while I have had things to do in London. I cannot dispute the convenience of being "in town". The transport infrastructure is very easy. Just load up the Oyster Card and go. It took me only half an hour to get from West Hampstead to Tate Britain yesterday. The horror of being crowded in on tube trains and jostled for pavement space in the streets does tend to take something away from the pleasure of convenience though. Standing crushed in a rush-hour tube to get to Notting Hill for a seminar on Thursday was horrible. I began to see the human species as a virus. We fill spaces and crowd out everything else. People piled on people. Like a virus we multiply until we kill the host that supports us. I feel contaminated and grubby by just being in London. I have never felt any pride through having been born there, lived there or worked there. For me, the best part of a visit to London has always been the train journey home when we pass through Ely and I can see real sky and water again!

Today's train trip was made possible through the introduction of a new rail service to the south of France. I'm on the train bound for Marseille, but I'm getting off at the first stop, Lyon Part Dieu. For some reason this service is much cheaper than previous rail journeys to France that I have researched many times over the years. I have been very keen to use the train, but have never been able to afford it. EasyJet flights have generally been at least a quarter of the price of travelling by rail. Of course flying has enabled the relationship that P and I have enjoyed this long to flourish, but I resented being backed into the flying corner.  I found the Eurostar experience to be pretty much the opposite of everything I hate about flying. Even security was painless. Border inspections were rather charming in contrast with airport border control. Once in the "departure lounge" I wasn't hassled to spend money. Caffè Nero and W.H. Smith were my choices. I opted to breakfast at the former.  The very fact that I am sitting in a double seat on the train and typing this is also an unexpected bonus. I opted for a standard 2nd class; extra legroom would have been another £40+, so I thought I would take a chance. Standard seating is painful on easyJet, but was perfectly adequate on Eurostar. As we whispered out of the Channel Tunnel (does anyone still call it "The Chunnel"?) and into France we picked up speed and when I checked the speedometer app on my phone we were flying along the track at 185mph. I had no idea we were going that fast and I could still type. Compared with the twelve minute waltzer ride on the single track section of railway line out of Littleport this was so smooth. It was also quite wonderful to be able to look out of the widow and pass small fields with trees and hedges. It is not until I see such things again at close quarters that I remember how our countryside used to look when I was a child.

I thought again about how I was going to manage the next part of the journey from Lyon to Bellegarde where P was going to meet me in the car. I thought I would see if I could find another app to help. The Trainline Europe app gave me details of times and an option to buy my ticket. I downloaded the app and as already mentioned bought the ticket for the next part of my journey all while travelling south to Lyon. Trainline Europe helpfully informed me that if I waited two and a half hours I could catch a final segment of the Nice to Geneva TGV Lyria which stopped at Bellegarde before it finished its journey in Geneva."

Lyon Part Dieu was the first stop after Ashurst in Kent. That in itself was pretty amazing. What was distinctly less amazing was the number of ways one may be hassled in a French railway station. Having a good couple of hours before my connection to Bellegarde I thought a sandwich and a wander around this city I have enjoyed a few times over the years would be quite in order. Immediately I set foot outside the station exit I was besieged by people wanting money. One wanted to sell me a newspaper, another - a woman in a headscarf wielding a baby in a pushchair and wearing her most pathetic and imploring expression - was repeating the same phrase over and over, although I didn't get what she was saying. The first time I ever visited Lyon was with P. We saw a number of women who brought, or sent, their children out on to the streets to beg for money. This woman was dressed the same. She kept pointing at the pushchair that she was clutching with her left hand and rolling back and forward as she repeated her words. She had the carriage turned away from me and I wondered if she actually had a child inside. It could have been the week's shopping for all I knew. I never know what to do under these circumstances and she could see my weakness. Whether what she saw was born out of desperation or professional expertise I couldn't make out. I gave her a two Euro coin and fled back into the relative sanctuary of the station building. A trip into the city, hauling thirty-five kilogrammes of luggage - i.e. the things I'd needed for three days in London, assorted computery equipment on my back and a lot of stuff for P. - was never going to be an option at the sort of speed I would require to reach escape velocity. Once inside the station, though, security was on hand to eject anyone soliciting money or favour. That did not prevent a young woman stopping me in my wandering and thrusting a clipboard into my face demanding that I sign whatever it was. This was far easier to reject. I've been hassled by far more professional clipboarders and chuggers on the streets of Manhattan and turned them down when they thought it appropriate to request my bank account details in lieu of cash. I had no intention of entertaining this pushy young woman. I may be a mug for pathos, but over-confidence is not in the least attractive. The next time I saw her she was screaming at a security man as he was ejecting her from the station. Clearly this scene was re-enacted many times daily. I saw her again on my return journey some days later.  

A few days later ...

"I am now on the return journey and, with P in school this morning I have had to undertake the whole trip by train this time. Fortunately P's apartment is only a fifteen minute walk along one street from the station. It's the one that passes through where our little cherry orchard used to be before the trees were uprooted and more apartment buildings grown in their place. I left plenty of time to get there and took a very leisurely stroll down the road.

La gare au bout de notre rue

I did not wish to spend the rest of the day in sweaty clothes. I am looking at six trains to get back to where I left my van over a week ago, on the front drive of a friend in Norfolk. I left P's apartment at 10:36 and I am expecting to arrive home by about 11pm. Long day ahead. The first train was a Rhône-Alpes TER back to Bellegarde.

The new Trainline Europe App on my phone informed me that I would need to get the train from Bellegarde to Lyon from Quai E. Excellent.

Bellegarde has always been a very quiet place whenever I've been there, but today something was going on; it was serious, for sure. Making my way to the end of the platform where train one deposited me there was a bottleneck at the entrance to the slope leading to the underpass between platforms. As I approached some people were being stopped by uniformed militia wielding automatic weapons. I saw a couple of armed police at Lyon on my journey in, but this time there were seven men and women in khaki military camouflage uniforms wielding automatic weaponry protecting the several uniformed police officers who, in turn, were watching over the rail staff checking tickets. I have never seen anything quite like it, specially in such a small and usually quiet town. I slipped through without showing any papers. I was clearly not needed today.  I found my platform for the next train due in six minutes.

I noticed that the next train went through to Lyon Perrache so I had to remember to descend at Part Dieu - no falling asleep allowed. The carriage itself was a delight - old fashioned compartments! I haven't been on a train with compartments for many decades and now I had a whole one, with its eight seats, to myself. I like this.  I am reminded of much loved books from childhood - Emile and the Detectives, The Railway Children - and a very personable controlleur has just been through and scribbled on my ticket (that would have to be a scene from a much more recent story!).

The journey passes along valleys and cuttings with steep wooded mountains towering above us on both sides before flattening out as we approach Lyon. I know we must be near because we are running alongside the Rhône which, as always, is its distinctive chalky green colour. We cross the river before we arrive in the city at Part Dieu station. I make my way along the carriage to an exit door and stand back so someone else can deal with the handle. All train handles are different and I am in mind of the embarrassment I felt when I could not get out of a Swiss train. Handles that push up, push down, turn clockwise or anti, automatic doors or buttons to find and press. I prefer someone else to deal with the door rather than cause a queue of passengers impatient to escape the train. Horror or horrors, though. I have chosen the wrong side and I have to open the door! This one seems to have a turny handle, like the crank handle on the Lister Engine I had on my first boat, Loretta. It looks like there is a choice of two directions in which to turn the handle. Naturally I choose the wrong one first and nothing happens. Of course getting the door to unlatch is only the first challenge on attempting to alight a train. What happens next is usually just as confusing. In this case I get the door open halfway and it took me a moment to work out what indeed ought to happen next. The platform was a few feet below me and I think I was trying to get some steps to unfold which also involved folding the door back into the frame. Eventually I half-fell off the train followed by a stream of passengers alighting as elegantly as you like. I made my way along the platform and down more steps into the main concourse of la Gare de Lyon Part Dieu. Food outlets and shoe shops. It was lunch time. I walked up and down and the queues were very long everywhere, except for in the shoe shops. There is no way I was going to attempt exiting through Sortie Porte Rhône again. I could see chuggers, beggars and any number of people desperate to ask me for something. I went to the food kiosk where I had bought a nice filled baguette on my journey in. When I eventually arrived at the front of the queue I asked whether they had quelquechose vegetarien. No, nothing today, I was informed. Oh must be just on Saturday afternoons then! The man behind the counter pointed across the concourse at La Croissanterie. There was a short queue there this time, so I waited my turn while squinting at the tiny labels to see if I could determine what was in each filled delicacy. I failed and resolved to try out my French again in order to ask. Somehow my place in the queue became usurped by at least four people behind me, but eventually I was served. The vegetarian option today turned out to be a baguette filled with goat's cheese and apricot. Mmmm! Not something I would have thought of myself, but it was rather delicious.


Naturally my journey could never have all been roses! The first challenge once on the Lyon to Paris TGV was to find the correct carriage. Then I had to find my seat. The seat I thought must have been mine was already occupied, so I was obliged to ask an earnest and amorous young man to move away from the young lady he was engaging in conversation. He wanted to swap seats with me. I was quite happy with the one I had been assigned. It was facing forward and there weren't any others available. His would have been facing the wrong way.  The trip from Lyon to Paris Gare de Lyon found me sitting beside the young woman who was carrying some kind of document or art folder that she put on the floor by her feet. It spread halfway across my leg space. Being a double-decker train, the over seat rack space was very narrow and very limited, barely wide enough for a coat so my back pack also had to sit on the floor. Normally this would not have been a problem and I would have placed a foot either side of my bag. However, I discovered her artistic proclivities after I reclaimed my seat from her young male would-be suitor and spent the couple of hours trying to get comfortable, which probably didn't help the painful pulled muscle in my lower back that I had been not particularly stoic about for the past few weeks.

Arriving at Paris confirmed that the French have a cavalier attitude to vegetarian food and, in the main, either don't understand or simply don't bother. I couldn't find anything to eat at Gare de Lyon. I remembered a meal at C's house many years ago. She knew that P. and I were both vegetarian so had thoughtfully left one quarter of family-sized dish of lasagne free of meat ... 

I had researched that the connection for the Eurostar at Gare du Nord involved a two-stop journey on the "green line" ... at least it was green on the map. I later found out that this was also known as route D on the RER. I stood in line to buy a ticket from the self-service machine and watching the woman in front of me struggle with the touch screen I realised I would be unlikely to manage it either so, bumping a few ankles on the way, I excused myself from the queue and found a ticket kiosk where a helpful woman was conducting face to face sales. Thankfully she understood where I wanted to go and even told me I needed platform two. I couldn't find any signs with platform numbers.

Considering there must be a zillion first timers who have to connect between la Gare du Nord and the other Paris termini every week there is a surprising lack of information. Another plus for London, I think. Somewhere between the stations of Lyon and North my phone failed. The battery didn't die, the phone did. It's six months old. It's an iPhone. It shouldn't die; certainly not this soon into its life. No more timely alerts to trains and their platforms of departure. Maybe more importantly, no alarm clock tomorrow morning when I have to be in a school by nine. I had been taking photographs to provide you with some evidence of my door-to-door journey. I may lose all those photographs. The Gare du Nord also failed to provide any veggie sustenance. It was to be a long time till London, even longer when the train arrived late.

I was afraid that I would miss the connection back to the Fens from King's Cross, but the exit from the Eurostar was as painless as the entry a few days ago.

This is definitely the way to travel. After six trains today I shall be home fourteen hours after I left P's apartment. Yes it is tiring, but I don't feel the kind of unhealthy exhaustion that air travel has always induced. Three more stops, a half-hour walk to my van, another half-hour drive back to the farm and I'll be home. I hope it isn't so cold I need to light a fire, but I might just do it anyway, because I can."

P.S. I resurrected my phone, halleluia! The external battery pack I carry for emergencies seemed not to be able to provide the required power to charge the phone. It simply failed to address the task even though the level of charge was showing as full. A quick burst of solar magic once back on the boat brought it back to life and has saved me a trip down to Cambridge to seek advice or redress. That also means that there are some photographs of the trip.