Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
In February 2021 I took a stroll and listened to The Ridiculous Ashes podcast while so doing. I wrote up the “event” in the style of a King Cricket match report.
In June 2021 King Cricket published that piece:
If anything ever goes awry with the King Cricket site, you can find that piece here instead.
Photo by Don Stouder on Unsplash
With thanks to Ian Theodoreson, I am delighted to host his story entitled The Unexpected Visitor
The estate agent blurb described the house as ‘A substantial Victorian property carefully restored by the present owners, preserving many of the original features. It is located on one of the town’s premier roads overlooking the golf course’.
What the write up didn’t describe was the fact that the basement displayed yet more original features as it hadn’t been subjected to the same ‘careful restoration’ the rest of the house had. Indeed it had not been subject to any restoration as the Browns had run out of steam. They had devoted five years of their lives and all of their savings doing up the main house and had decided that enough was enough. The basement became the repository for all those things that will be incredibly useful one day and, amongst the piles of boxes, crates and a well-stocked wine rack, a family of mice installed itself. On the whole they kept themselves to themselves, only occasionally encroaching upon the main living area, and regular assaults with a variety of mousetraps by Mr Brown helped keep their numbers to manageable levels.
A neighbour down the road, sensing Mr & Mrs Brown needed a new diversion from decorating, suggested he introduce them to the golf club, at which point they hung up their paint brushes and instead attempted to master the art of hitting a small ball in a straight line, without much success. Gary Player once famously said of golf ‘The more I play, the luckier I get’: if he meant that as a generally applicable aphorism then he was wrong with regard to the Browns.
Their efforts at golf were a disappointment both to the Browns themselves and to the more conservative members of the club, who viewed them with some suspicion. Not only did they not master the technical aspects of the sport, but they didn’t really fit in with the social elite who commanded the club house either. The club secretary was a particularly pompous man, Jack Cuthbert who, in his spare time, doubled up as their local Councillor. His wife Heather, by contrast, was a rather timid woman whose presence merely served to amplify her husband’s sense of superiority.
After a number of years the time came to sell their ‘substantial Victorian pile’ and to move to something smaller. Mr Brown had something of a love/hate relationship with older properties – there was a sense of grandeur living in them but it was constantly tempered with the knowledge that at any moment the decorative ceiling might crash down around ones ears. Consequently, once they decided to sell, the need to do so became urgent, before some further defect revealed itself that would take time and energy to address.
A number of prospective buyers looked around but no offers were forthcoming. The Browns decided that the agent wasn’t doing a good enough job at explaining the potential benefits of living in the house so they decided that they would show the next people around themselves: maybe give prospective buyers a sense of the genteel lifestyle Mr Brown felt the house projected.
It was with a heavy heart therefore that they learned from the agent that ‘a lovely couple, a local Councillor and his wife’, had booked to see the house. Jack Cuthbert was every bit as pompous looking round the house as he was propping up the bar in the club house however, not deterred, Mrs Brown had arranged to serve tea and cake in the living room after the ‘tour’.
In actual fact the Cuthberts were showing some interest in the house not least, Mr Brown suspected, because its imposing bulk could be seen from the nineteenth green. It was however, at this moment, that an unexpected visitor made his presence known. During a lull in the conversation Mr Brown heard the unmistakable ‘snap’ of a Little Nipper mousetrap springing into life. It had been hidden beside the log basket, just out of sight and he had completely forgotten it was there.
Generally when a mousetrap activates, the kill is swift and clean. Occasionally however it catches the mouse a glancing blow and traps its victim without finishing it off. This was one such occasion and the unfortunate animal, its head firmly caught but still able to move its hind legs, leaped into the air and onto the carpet directly in front of Mrs Cuthbert’s feet. There was a moment’s silence as everyone contemplated the vision before them, broken by Mrs Cuthbert’s scream as she threw the piece of cake she was holding into the air and rushed out of the room. ‘How dare you’, shouted Jack Cuthbert, his face red with rage, ‘my wife is a vegetarian’.
It was at this moment that Mr Brown’s calm demeanour finally deserted him – all the tension of the sale, his general distaste for the Cuthberts and the preposterousness of the situation overwhelmed him. ‘Well, we were not expecting her to eat it!’ he shouted sarcastically after their retreating forms and watched them storm up the driveway.
‘Well, that went well’ said his wife, calmly. ‘I suspect they won’t be making an offer on the house though’.
‘And you better deal with that’ she said pointing to the writhing body on the floor, still trapped in the Little Nipper, ‘I think it’s got breathing problems’.
The following day the Browns resigned their membership of the golf club.
ellenm1, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
David Wellbrook curated this edition of ThreadZoomMash. The brief was to write a piece of fiction, 800-1,000 words, entitled "The Unexpected Visitor". I submitted and performed the following piece.
“What the blithering fuck are you doing here?” said Martin, in a daze-like state, having been disturbed from his intense concentration, staring at nothing much, on his remarkably cluttered coffee table.
“I thought I’d surprise you”, said Mary. “You knew I’d be back”.
“Did I fuck”, exclaimed Martin. “This is totally unexpected. The last thing you said to me, as you left, was that you were never, ever, ever, ever…EVER going to come back.”
“But that was months ago”, Mary whispered, coquettishly, “and it was hardly the first time I walked out on you swearing that I was walking out for the last time.”
“Months! At least 18 months. I thought I was shot of you. I thought I was over you. I mean, I am over you. It’s too late. I’ve moved on. I’ve got a new life. I’ve got a new relationship….”
Mary smiled and chided Martin gently. “No you haven’t Martin. I know you haven’t. You’ve been waiting for my return. And now I am back.”
Mary surveyed all around her in the living room of the pokey Deptford flat that had, for several years, been her home. Martin had lived there for many more years than Mary. Before Mary came on the scene, Martin had been with a woman named Peggy for years. Peggy had broken his heart. That’s all Martin would say about Peggy.
It was impossible to believe that Martin had, in any way, moved on. Apart from an increased amount of dust and general untidiness, the place looked entirely unchanged.
Mary smiled. “Let me tidy up and clean up a bit…”
“…oh no you don’t”, yelled Martin, “you can’t just stroll in as if you’d never been away and take over my life again. Leave me alone!”
Tenderly, Mary coaxed him, as she started to tidy up, “you can’t carry on living like this Martin. Look at the place.”
Mary tidied for a while, then took out a dress from the chest of drawers, admiring and imagining herself wearing it. “It’s that second hand Versace dress you bought me. I’d forgotten…it’s so beautiful.”
“Cost me a bloody fortune, that did”, grumbled Martin, “hundreds…”
“…but they cost thousands new, Martin. You were so thrilled when you found it and ordered it on-line. And I was so excited when it arrived. Do you remember?”
“Of course. You looked lovely in it.” Martin’s anger was subsiding.
“Shall I try it on?” asked Mary.
“I suppose so. If you like”, said Martin, quelled. Once Mary had put on the dress, Martin added, “give us a twirl”,
“Let me see if I can find some suitable shoes,” said Mary, rummaging at the bottom of the wardrobe, turning out pairs of shoes, “I don’t think I ever had a pair that quite went with this dress…I don’t suppose you could find a pair of second hand Jimmy Choos on-line to go with my second hand Versace, Martin?”
“Fucking hell, don’t start all that again”, said Martin, the anger welling up inside him once again, “that’s what we rowed over the last time. I was always shelling out money I don’t have, on clothes that you don’t need. I can’t afford you, Mary. I can’t fucking afford you”.
“Oh don’t be like that, Martin”, said Mary in her girlie voice, likely to make Martin even more angry. “I’ll pay towards them if you like”.
“Stop talking rot, Mary. You’ve got no fucking money. We’ve neither of us got any money. You’ve got all these clothes and now you’re talking about buying a pair of Jimmy Frigging Choos. You make me so angry. You always do this. I want to fucking murder you and then kill myself.”
Martin was really wild with anger now. He started hurling clothes around, stomping around the flat and continuously threatening and hurling abuse at Mary. Mary, for her part, was soon reduced merely to sobbing and pleading with Martin to calm down.
Many minutes into the row, came a knock at the door. “Open up! It’s the police! What’s going on in there? Open up!”
“Now look what you’ve done”, said Martin, “the neighbours have set the police on me. This is all I bloody need.”
Martin opened the door. “Good evening officer…officers”.
Two policemen. One looked about fifteen. The other a bit older.
“May we come in please? The neighbours have reported a domestic incident in this flat and we’d like your co-operation.”
“Yeh, whatever”, said Martin.
“Shall I search for the victim, Boss?”, said the younger cop.
“No, wait a bit, Dan…now, what’s been going on, Mr…”
“Martin…”, blurted Martin, before he started weeping uncontrollably.
The flat was strewn with women’s clothes. Martin was on his hands and knees, wearing a Versace dress, leaving blue mascara tear pools on the formerly oatmeal-coloured carpet.
“You’d better sort yourself out, Martin”, said the older policeman, “because if we get called out here again, we’ll have to charge you and you’ll likely end up with a CBO. This is an informal warning, not a formal caution, but you take it seriously, mate”.
“What about the victim, Boss, the woman?” persevered the inexperienced young copper.
“Martin’s on his own here, Dan. Look at him. What a state. Let’s go.”
“I need help”, said Martin.
There were eleven of us reading on the night. David Wellbrook, ever the soccer football fan, liked the idea of associating us all with members of the recently successful England World Cup winning side (1966). This triggered a memory wave from me earlier in the day, as I know what I was up to on that auspicious day:
My memory piece also elicited a memory from Kay, which I felt upstaged my story in drama and brevity:
Your delicious Ogblog has reminded me that Uncle Bob came to watch the match at our house. Drink was taken. Bob was holding my baby brother on his lap for that last 30 minutes. The goal was scored. Bob leapt to his feet and threw baby brother in the air.
Luckily, dad caught him.
For his part, David allocated roles to each of us, in diagram form, which indicated the running order.
I was delighted to be cast as the controversial, hat-trick scoring No 10. Wikipedia introduced me to the juicier elements of that goal-scoring, but it wasn’t my new-found knowledge that amazed most of the group but fact that I didn’t know every detail of those controversial goals in the first place.
Jill, who might be forgiven for not knowing anything about the topic at all given her relative youth and the fact that she was raised in China, turns out to be one of the world’s leading experts on Bobby Moore. OK, I exaggerate for effect, but she had learnt about him as part of her UK citizenship programme, which is clearly oriented towards the really important stuff. Rohan should really write a book about that sort of thing.
Anyway.
The stories were diverse as always, despite the seemingly straightforward title. Several of the pieces had animals as the unexpected visitor; we had a spider, birds and a mouse, in Ian Theodoreson’s story, guest published separately on Ogblog here:
Jill’s story appeared also to have a mouse, but it turned out to be a visitor from four-dimensional space who figured that a small talking mouse-like manifestation might be less scary to humans than the alternatives.
There were several stories that revolved around death, including a murder and one story which included a birth. Covid was only mentioned a couple of times in the evening.
We went into extra time to arrange the next event, which includes a slightly convoluted “shuffling of the pack” which seemed to be confounding everyone until Jill turned out to be an expert on Google Docs as well a leading authority on Bobby Moore and four-dimensional space.
When I reviewed last week’s virtual gathering, I forgot to mention Paul Driscoll’s anecdote about the optional “prefect’s blazer” available to those of us who attained such giddy heights at Alleyn’s School. The blazer was emblazoned (pun intended) with the school crest and motto.
That motto was God’s Gift. Edward Alleyn no doubt meant that motto to symbolise education. But the phrase has a sarcastic meaning in modern parlance; e.g. “he think’s he’s God’s gift.” And as Rohan Candappa so ably puts it, “We are Alleyn’s. If you cut us we bleed sarcasm.”
Unsurprisingly, very few of us took up the offer of this optional, distinguishing garment. Beyond the sarcasm, such an emblem had every chance to land us in a heap near North Dulwich railway station, where the Billy Biros (pupils from William Penn School) needed little excuse to isolate an outlier from the Alleyn’s herd, taking severe retribution for invented sleights and offenses.
The main senior school uniform was a two-piece or three-piece suit. I have only one picture of myself wearing mine:
I was reminded of all of this by a posting on Facebook in the Keele University alums area.
In the late 1980s, just a few years after a left Keele, when Guinness had a particular advertising slogan on the go, some fine folk in the University of Keele Students’ Union produced the following tee-shirt.
It dawned on me that I am a very rare example of someone eligible to wear not only the Alleyn’s God’s Gift blazer but also the Keele Pure Genius tee-shirt underneath the blazer.
In the dying moments of the Trump US presidency, this suitably modest mental image should be shared with the world and saved for posterity.
It’s just a shame I was unable to model the two garments together back then. I would have looked magnificent; indeed it would have been the best look ever, anywhere, for anyone.
This lockdown business is nobody’s idea of fun, but Rohan Candappa has been putting in some hard yards in setting up some meaningful distractions and social interactions.
This “Virtual Buttery” session was the third such gathering of the Alleyn’s School “Class of 1980”. I wrote up the first of those gatherings in the autumn:
It wouldn’t be Alleyn’s School without homework. For this third session, Rohan (egged on by Nick Wahla) asked some exam questions:
Nick Wahla’s suggested a question to ponder: “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”
It’s a good question, and one which I am obviously going to claim credit for. But I’d also like to twist it around a bit. My question is: “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?
I chose to answer this question by Ogblogging about the day I left Alleyn’s School…
…and confessing to the music I was putting onto my mix tapes at that time:
Anyway, loads of people turned up again…but not Nick Wahla – he of the exam question. Typical.
I took the headline screen grab more than an hour into the event, so several people had already come and gone by then.
Again we had participation from across the globe:
…I digress.
It is hard to summarise the answers to the exam questions, not least because everyone had a slightly different take on them. One theme that ran through the answers is learning quickly post school how to be yourself and follow your heart/instincts in what you want to become. Many of us suspect that we had more freedom to “find our own way” back in 1980 than pupils finishing their ‘A’ levels have now – as the route from school to career via university seems to be a more defined path now.
Some raised the matter of careers advice (it’s lack or paucity), others the more informal aspects such as teachers instilling us with confidence, arrogance or in some cases diffidence.
Naturally this led the conversation on to discussion about memorable teachers, good, bad or indifferent. Mr Jones got off pretty lightly considering he wasn’t there…
…which is more than can be said for David Wellbrook, who should have known better than to defy the wishes of Rohan Candappa by going AWOL, if Rohan’s opening remarks were anything to go by. Rohan’s willingness to turn on a loyal follower for the slightest slight is almost Trumpian in its intensity.
But then, as Rohan pointed out when the conversation turned to the vexed question of teasing, banting or bullying, we weren’t saints back then and we are hopefully a bit more grown up about it now. Well it was easy for him to say that AFTER the invective of his opening remarks.
Heck, I’m kidding. It was fun again and it seemed astonishing when Rohan pointed out that those of us who were around for the whole event had been gassing and listening for two hours.
Dumbo: seriously cool…and honest
Dumbo The Suzuki Jimny is an occasional writer, here on Ogblog and also at King Cricket. Dumbo’s writings are more widely read than those of most automobiles. Dumbo only ever refers to me as Ged and to Janie as Daisy. Why Dumbo has chosen to write a “review of the year” public message is a mystery, but 2020 was a strange year in so many ways.
2020 started badly for me. I acquired a squeak that would not go away. It was incredibly loud and hugely embarrassing – heads would turn in the street at the sound of me coming and going.
A huge team at my car hospital struggled to get to the bottom of it. Ged and Daisy started dropping hints about my possible retirement. It got as bad as that.
Eventually, just before lockdown, thank goodness Derek, Colin, & Marlon performed a pioneering operation on my viscera, which solved my problem.
Just as well I got better in mid March, because within a few weeks I was being called upon to do voluntary work.
In theory I was on call for NHS Volunteer Responders from early in the pandemic, but no gigs were coming through at first. So Ged and Daisy signed us up to do FoodCycle gigs once or twice a week, which we have continued to do throughout the pandemic.
My copious rear (as Ged describes it) comes in pretty handy, especially for the FoodCycle gigs.
It wasn’t long before the NHS Volunteer Responder gigs started to come through as well. That and FoodCycle kept us really busy through spring, summer and into the autumn.
Just occasionally, it got a bit much; like the time the NHS Volunteer Responder app went into overdrive…
…and the time Daisy inadvertently switched on the voice recognition for the FoodCycle Circuit Teams app and mentioned Madagascar…
Ged was busy with work the last few weeks of the year, so we did a bit less volunteering in the run up to Christmas, but during that time the pandemic got a lot worse again and the need out there started to rocket up, so we started NHS Volunteer Responding again on Christmas Day and have done lots of gigs since.
My proudest moment of the year was just a few days ago, when Ged and I went to the Co-op on Hanger Hill to get some shopping for a person who is having to isolate. (There seem to be a lot of those at the moment.)
Three young fellas from the Tesla Show Room & Shop around the corner came out of the Co-op just before Ged came out with the shopping. The young fellas stopped to admire me and one of them said, “I think these cars are pretty cool”. Ged overheard him and said, “seriously cool, not just pretty cool”.
So I don’t think Ged & Daisy will be dropping hints about my retirement again any time soon. I think we’re going to be pretty busy with NHS Volunteer Responding & FoodCycle for the next few months at least.
Which is pretty seriously cool.
It’s The Ogblog wot done it.
When I reported on the sad death of Gerry Goddin back in August and then subsequently Gerry’s funeral in October…
…it didn’t occur to me that there might be someone out there looking for the name Goddin for genealogical purposes. Not least because the search for any next of kin for Gerry had been in vain.
But a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a note from Julia Tisdall, writing to me from Australia, whose great-grandfather was the brother of Gerry’s grandmother.
That makes Julia and Gerry second cousins once removed. (Some of my favourite people are my second cousins once removed).
Forgive the pun, Julia, but a second cousin once removed in the antipodes is a distant cousin in more ways than one.
Anyway, point is, Julia was thrilled and saddened to have found this connection but in such an unfortunate context. Here is an extract from her lovely note:
My great grandfather (Gertrude’s Brother) sailed to New Zealand back in 1913 and settled in Dunedin. 5 years later his sister Gertrude died of the Spanish Flu at only 32 years of age.
I suspect this was when my forebears lost touch with Gertrude’s husband and young son (Gerry’s father) Robert Percy Wilfred Goddin.
I am so grateful to see Gerry in Rainy Day Fellas. What a gem that is.
It took my breath away, 1 , because it is so beautiful and 2 because the close up of Gerry’s hand strumming looked identical to my grandfather’s hand strumming.
For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen the video of Rainy Day Fellas, one of Gerry’s songs which was recorded a few years ago with Donna Macfadyen singing beautifully and Gerry himself accompanying on guitar:
“Rainy Day Fellas” (Live) from D-Sav on Vimeo.
Julia said that she would like to speak, so, one thing led to another and I managed to persuade Julia, who was until yesterday a “Zoom virgin”, to join a few of us on a Zoom call.
I was really glad that John Random, Caroline Am Bergris and Graham Robertson were able to join the call. I didn’t feel I knew Gerry all that well; I don’t suppose any of us really knew Gerry well, but between us we knew Gerry from various aspects of his life these past 30 years or so.
Not just the NewsRevue part (although all of us are NewsRevue alums) but also Caroline’s long association with Gerry in the matter of poems and songs. I think/hope we were able to give Julia a fairly rounded picture.
And talking of pictures, John has rescued a few lovely pictures from Gerry’s flat, which I was able to share on the screen. Here are a couple of examples plus a third picture which is a link to a Flickr album with all 11 of the pictures:
So we were able to share a fair bit of information. Julia informed us that the family were to be found at 1 Ravenhill Road, Upton Park in the 1911 census. Not only did Gerry’s dad lose his mother to Spanish flu as a small boy, but Gerry’s own mum, Mona, died when Gerry was only six. By then they lived in Fairbank Street, Shoreditch, which I think has now been absorbed by the Provost Estate in now trendy Hoxton/Shoreditch.
The highlight of the 80 minute session, for me, was the moment when Julia picked up a guitar and played us a few bars of Rainy Day Fellas, with aplomb.
But actually the whole session was a highlight. I think everyone enjoyed the time together and we hope to have another session in the not too distant future. I know that Caroline, Helen and David are looking at some of Gerry’s other songs and trying to work out what to do with them. Once there is a bit of progress with that, it would be super to regroup with Julia and possibly some other members of her antipodean family.
In these difficult times, a bit of good news like this is something to hold on to. And while our lives comprise far too much Zoom and Teams, with far too little human contact (apart from funerals and queuing outside shops)…
…happenings of this kind make me realise that communications technologies – the Ogblogging, the ability to connect with people through social media, Zoom etc. – does enable many things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise at all.
Which makes me just a little optimistic that the post-pandemic new normal might just be the best of the too-virtual world we inhabit just now and the real world social contacts we crave.
On that positive note, season’s greetings to all readers.
I had unfinished business with the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson. I had intended to see Howard Davies’s RNT production in late 1989…in fact I think I might even have got tickets and then had to give them up when I chose, instead, to visit the USA that autumn:
So I was very keen to see this movie when I read about it’s impending launch on Netflix in mid December 2020.
Kim had very kindly bought Janie a 6-month trial Netflix package earlier in the lockdown, which Janie switched on in order to see the mini-series around which Kim had designed her gift. After that, our usual reluctance to watch TV had switched in, so we had watched precisely nothing more on Netflix for just shy of six months.
So I knew we only had a few days left to watch this movie on our prepaid package before…horror of horrors…we might have had to actually pay to watch the thing, having not used our trial package for five-and-a-half months.
Anyway…
…watch it we did and extremely impressed with the performances I was.
Here is a link to the IMDb resources on this movie.
All of the performances were very good indeed, but in particular Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were truly excellent.
Here is the official trailer for the movie:
In truth, it is a somewhat melodramatic play but it holds the attention because it shows an extraordinary moment in the history of music, plus the history of race and gender struggles in the USA, through the lens of a genuine early recording star in decline (Ma Rainey) and a fictional trumpeter whose direct experience of prejudice, racial violence and abuse set him on a tragic path.
Central to the play is the recording of Ma Rainey’s signature song, which you can hear here:
In short, I thought it was a superb movie and well worth seeing. Janie found the accents hard to follow and found the plot a bit basic, but did agree with me that we were watching outstanding performances, beautifully filmed.
Recommended.
This was written 6/7 December 2020 and performed virtually on 17 December 2020 at Z/Yen’s virtual seasonal event.
Note to self – communal singing doesn’t work by TEAMS or Zoom. It’s a latency thing.
DO THEY KNOW IT’S Z/YEN’S VIRTAL CHRISTMAS?
MICHAEL It’s Christmas time, Z/Yen has gathered virtually;
At Christmas time, enlightenment is on the screen.
MIKE And in our world of webclaves, we can spread a smile of joy;
Webinars around the world, at Christmas time.
LINDA But you recall, when we were in one place;
At Christmas time…
ALEX …we’d all gather face-to face.
There’s a world outside your window, that’s in a Covid wave again;
PETER Where the only liquid flowing, is the Dettol and D10.
JULIET And the Christmas bells that ring out, are the viral chimes of doom,
MORGAN Well tonight thank God it’s Teams, instead of Zoom.
SIMON And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time,
At least they can’t blame climate change down there.
IAN Oooh.
ELISABETH To Lothbury no-one goes, Z/Yen’s door is always closed,
Do they know Z/Yen still exists at all?
IAN INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 1
BIKASH Here’s to you;
BEN Raise a glass for everyone.
MATTHEW Here’s to them;
HUGH In that massive atrium.
JANIE Do they know Z/Yen still exists at all?
IAN: INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 2
IAN: INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 3
CHAOS…CHORUS – ALL: Teams Z/Yen’s chorus
Sing Z/Yen’s Christmas song remotely
Zoom Z/Yen’s chorus
Z/Yen’s not choral, not remotely.
[REPEAT CHAOS…CHORUS AD NAUSEUM]
This ThreadZoomMash is dedicated to the late Professor Mike Smith
I chose the topic “crushes” by happenstance. Just before lockdown 2.0, while I was pondering my choice of topic, a couple of old friends and acquaintances, out of the blue, unprompted, confided in me about crushes they’d harboured when we were all a lot younger.
The topic of crushes resonated with me as a rich source of story telling.
It also resonated with my love of medieval music. Without going into too much detail as to why and wherefore, most medieval secular love songs are about unrequited love. The story formula is a simple one – as my music teacher Ian Pittaway puts it – “she is perfect…; I am hopelessly in love with her; she doesn’t want me; I am heart-broken”.
Here is a song I am working on at the moment: Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux. A late 14th century song attributed to Richard Loqueville of Cambrai. Allow me to sing you the first verse and then translate it.
Since I am in love
With you, gracious, gentle one,
I never feel pain
I am so blissfully joyful.Thus I wish to continue dreaming
Of serving you according to my design
Since I am in love…[Love gives to lovers
Translation by Asteria – below I have embedded their delightful, professional rendering of this beautiful song:
Hope, sweet and pleasant.
Now my heart is waiting
For your gracious glance,]
Since I am in love…
It was not my intention to write a crush story myself. That is not normally the way with the role of ThreadMash curator. But events since I set the topic of crushes have led me to a memory flash of my very first crush.
Here’s the story of how the memory flash and that primary crush came about.
Very sadly, my friend and work colleague of more than 25 years, Professor Mike Smith, died suddenly and totally unexpectedly on 12 November. It was Mike who, six years ago, encouraged me to start playing the four-string guitar. Janie and I had formed a bond with Mike and his young family over the years.
On the last day of Lockdown 2.0, we went to Mike’s funeral. We learnt for the first time many things about Mike’s earlier life.
I knew that Mike originally came from Montgomery Alabama and I knew that Mike had very strong views against prejudice. But I didn’t know that, in the late 1960s, pint-sized Mike had tackled the racist bullies at Alabama State University, befriending black people and bravely taking on the segregationists.
I also didn’t know that, as a youngster, Mike had liked the song Red River Valley, which the celebrant at the funeral then duly played to the congregation of mourners.
At the sound of that song, I was transported back to the late 1960s myself, to when I was seven; thoughts of my fourth year primary school teacher, Miss Brown.
I loved her and she was clearly very fond of me. I did extremely well that year in school. Miss Brown introduced me to Tudor history, a subject that has fascinated me since. She encouraged my writing.
By the time you get to your fourth year of primary school, you have got used to the idea that you will move on to a different class with a different teacher the next academic year. But Miss Brown dropped a bombshell towards the end of the summer term that year; she was going to be leaving the school altogether.
I was devastated. I wasn’t merely going to be in another class. I wasn’t going to see her again. I felt abandoned.
That year, I had been given as a present a small collection of remaindered records, known as Beano Records. Most of the records are dramatised stories for children with famous English theatrical performers peppered with classical music to provide additional dramatic frisson to the stories. But one of the records, incongruously, is a collection of Cowboy Songs.
One of those cowboy songs is Red River Valley, which had caught my ear around the time I learnt that Miss Brown was to abandon me. I played that song over and over, wallowing in the sentiment of it. I became determined to learn Red River Valley and sing it to Miss Brown on the last day of school.
Eventually I told mum about my plan. Mum gently dissuaded me from that particular idea. I think she encouraged me instead to take a small gift together with a note of thanks and farewell to Miss Brown. I expect mum maintained strict editorial control over the content of the note.
With the benefit of hindsight, that might have been the one occasion in my life when mum’s intervention in my romantic ideals was unquestionably for the best.
There are many versions of Red River Valley, but one of the most charming verses (absent from the rather corny Beano recording, which you can hear through the sound file below)…
…is an unrequited love lyric, the third verse of the version I’m about to play. Very similar to the Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux unrequited love lyric, written some 500 years earlier.
It’s 50 years since I learnt, but didn’t sing, Red River Valley for Miss Brown.
It is now time.
It’s easy to play on the four string guitar, which Mike Smith encouraged me to play.
So, this rendition is for Miss Brown and for Mike Smith:
Red River Valley
Oh they say from this valley you’re leaving
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
And they say that you’re taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathway a whileWon’t you think of the valley you’re leaving
Oh how lonesome, how sad it will be
And remember the Red River Valley
And the grief that you’re causing to meFor a long time my darling I’ve waited
For the sweet words you never would say
Now at last all my fond hopes have vanished
For they say that you’re going awayCome and sit by my side if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy that loved you so true
Ten of us gathered. Eight contributors, me in my capacity as curator/master of ceremonies, plus Rohan Candappa.
The Part One running order was:
The Part Two running order was:
(The nicknames is a long story. Ask Rohan).
We had a good 30 to 40 minutes after the readings to discuss the contributions and all sorts of other stuff.
From my point of view it was a great evening and I thoroughly enjoyed the role of curator. Not that i would want to curate the evening every time, but my hand is certainly up to curate again.
