writing, not drowning

'Only remembered for what we have done'

So, that was January 2016. It will not be missed, unlike the people whose passing it marked. A strange, dark time, during which we seemed to reel from one unbelievable headline to another. There is nothing unbelievable about death; it is inevitable for each of us - but still we reeled. So many cultural icons felled within so few days. I avoided writing; there were words enough in print and in cyberspace and others, I kept thinking, had already found the right words.

My eldest nephew, now in his mid-fifties, had been a fan of David Bowie from the age of 14; he posted his thoughts on Facebook and his words were as eloquent and as moving as those of any of the professional commentators paid to write a eulogy for the broadsheets and elsewhere. But having lost his younger brother, a sister, and his mother within thirteen months of each other in recent years, my nephew is already acquainted with grief. He has the words. Then there were Bowie's own words, in Archive on 4, David Bowie: Verbatim, with the man himself, laughing, joking, and reminiscing about the Marquee, the Ricky Tick in Hounslow, the Craw Daddy in Richmond, Eel Pie Island, all the places that many of us of a certain age had flocked to in the 1960s  . . . for the music. He had been there too.

On the day that Alan Rickman's death was announced, I called a close friend who had once known him well and who had introduced me to him 40 years ago. (I wrote about that meeting here.) And we talked about the strange, difficult emotional hinterland we must occupy when someone to whom we have once been very close dies. (In that coincidental way, Woman's Hour touched on that very subject later in the week.)

And so the announcements continued until yesterday, the last day of the month when we heard, first about Sir Terry Wogan, then Frank Finlay . . . and suddenly it was 1966 again. I was 18, six months pregnant, and sitting in my Dear Old School Friend's father's mini-van; she driving round and round Parliament Square, trying to find the right traffic lane for Westminster Bridge. The Dear Old School Friend had just passed her driving test and we were on our way to the Old Vic, to see what was to become one of the definitive 20th century stagings of Othello: Laurence Olivier in the title role, Maggie Smith as Desdemona - and Frank Finlay as Iago. We arrived with minutes to spare, she hauled me up seemingly endless flights of stone steps to the gods, and we watched the entire performance sitting on hard wooden benches. (I did wonder whether my memory was playing tricks. had there really been wooden benches at the Old Vic in the 1960s? I checked; there had been, indeed, wooden benches in the 1960s.) I also found this page on Frank Finlay's website and could not agree more with Sir Anthony Sher's words about the exceptional acting that we saw that day. How very lucky we were. I told the Dear Daughter yesterday that, at the time, I had hoped that the experience would have some sort of in utero impact on my unborn baby. It must have worked: she has always loved Shakespeare . . .

By mid-morning, yesterday, I found I could listen to no more words on BBC Radio 4. (It might have been listening to Bill Gates's off-putting voice on Desert Island Discs that did it.) I switched to Radio 3 and the day became brighter at once (it was Folk Connections weekend on Radio 3).  I was adding pieces of music to my BBC Playlister, almost without stopping, until this song, which - in every sense - stopped me in my tracks: Only Remembered, words by John Tams. If you have seen War Horse, the song will be familiar and you can see John Tams performing it with the War Horse cast here. However, the version broadcast was this one, by Coope Boyes and Simpson, which I found on the No Glory website and which is where I discovered that Alan Rickman had been an early signatory to the No Glory letter. Alan Rickman and many others whose work - and words - I admire. Everything is connected. Everything and everyone. And we can remember. We do.

Is it safe to . . .?

. . . step out from behind the curtain, after such a long absence?

Of all the events that might have caused me to scurry back to the laptop, the one that I would not have predicted was the reappearance of someone else - Kate Bush, to be precise.

The Dear Daughter had tried to get tickets for Kate's re-emergence. I tried to get tickets. No joy; sold out in just 15 minutes. We had to settle for the Guardian live-tweeting throughout the opening night and watching old video clips on YouTube. 

And then, a couple of days ago, the DD sent me a link to an eBay page, where someone was selling a poster advertising Kate's first tour in 1979.

'Remember this?' said the DD.

'Would you like it for your birthday?' I asked, in a moment of madness.

'I've already got it,' she replied. And so she had. It had once adorned a wall of her bedroom.

'I think I've got one of these too.' Attached was a copy of a 1978 Christmas card, courtesy of the Kate Bush Fan Club. 

In the 1970s, Kate was a significant presence in our house; well, her voice was, along with various Kate-related stuff.  The DD was a HUGE fan; I was pretty much of a fan too. So we could not possibly miss going to see Kate on that first tour and we did see her - at the London Palladium. No frustrating hours spent endlessly reloading internet pages in those days; it was all very civilised: a phone call or a trip to the box office. And affordable tickets.

We loved every minute and, 35 years later, I was amazed at just how much I could remember of that concert. It was one of the high points of a year during which other things in our world were beginning to unravel.

'I think I've still got my ticket,' said the DD. 'I just have to find my Kate Bush memorabilia . . .'

I spent the rest of the day playing four of Kate's early albums (vinyl, of course). They belong to the DD but live here because I am the only member of the family who still possesses an ancient hifi with a turntable, so that I can play my substantial and much-cherished collection of LPs and 45s, not to mention EPs. I was transported back to our flat in Marylebone, still young(ish) at 31 - which seems very young when one is nearer 70 than 60 - and the mother of a daughter on the cusp of her teenage years. As Sandy Denny once sang, 'Who knows where the time goes?'

But I couldn't find Hounds of Love. I searched everywhere. I could see the cover. I emailed the DD. 

'I think I had it on cassette,' she answered. 'What year was it?'

'1985.'

'Oh yes, I already had a Walkman by then.'

Ah, the refuse heap of technology.

But the disappointment of not bagging any tickets this time round in no way detracts from the wonder of being there the first time and seeing my daughter's face light up when Kate appeared. It was, almost, unbelievable . . . 

There was one final email from the DD, normally a very private woman. 'You can blog about this, if you like.' So I did.

The heart's memory

Today, on the other side of the country, people are gathering to say farewell to someone who was once the centre of my life. But I decided to stay here in Devon and simply light a candle in his memory.

There was a time when we were as close as it is possible for two people to be; we shared so much and music was at the heart of the sharing. Through him I learned to listen to music in a wholly new way, with the heart and the soul. For him, Sinatra was the singer par excellence and through him I came to understand just what made Sinatra's voice so special. Our Concert Sinatra album has been played repeatedly in recent days . . .

The music in us lives on.

Singing in landscape

I had planned to write a bookish sort of blogpost but I was sidetracked after spending the day singing at nearby Coombe Farm: 100 acres of steep-sided, wooded and semi-wild Devon. A rather joyful way to spend a Sunday. 

In the morning, we sang in a circle inside an African tent, while taking occasional glances outside at the intermittent sun, rain, cloud and grey skies. The weather gods were kind to us and the sun came out for our al fresco vegetarian lunch, three delicious courses, all prepared the night before by our choir leader, Claire Anstee. (So talented!)

And the sun stayed out all afternoon, as we walked round the farm

stopping under various ancient trees to sing, taking in views across the Exe Valley en route

and thinking about all the wild creatures who share this land and live here in complete safety: badgers, foxes, Exmoor's red deer and, with a nod in the direction of Edward Thomas, all the birds of Devonshire.

Most visitors and holidaymakers head for Devon's south or north coast but the county's heartland has a quiet, timeless quality, which is perfect for people who want to withdraw from the world, even if only for a short while. For those of us who live here, today was a reminder of what drew us to this place and how fortunate we are to wake up to this landscape each morning.

The highlight of our walk - apart from the singing and the food and the views - was this old beech avenue. Trees planted long before any of us walked the earth and that will outlive us all. Who planted this avenue, we wondered, and why . . . ?

We did our best to tread lightly on the ground . . .

and I began to think how satisfying it would be to run a 'writing in landscape' day in this special place. Maybe, just maybe, next summer?

Suddenly this summer . . .

Three weeks of almost unbroken sunshine and we almost forget that we live in Waterland and that there has been no decent weather to speak of for almost two years. Until the weekend when it changed back to the same old, same old.

Still, those three weeks were quite wonderful, especially for sun-worshippers like me, although it did require a good deal of work juggling  and there was a prolonged absence of  blogging, to ensure maximum outdoors time. But worth it because we never quite know when Helios will favour us again.

There has been much singing (and much rehearsing too) for the Exe Valley Voices, which included taking part with 1000 other singers in Sing for Water West in Bristol on a suitably hot day. It was such an uplifting event, which - when everyone's sponsorship money  and donations from the audience have been counted - will have raised more than £50,000 for WaterAid projects in the Afram plains region of Ghana. And it provided an opportunity to meet up with several friends, who were singing with choirs from Somerset and Gloucestershire. A huge thank you to everyone who sponsored me and in case you would like to know what we sounded like, there is a batch of videos here, the first of which includes two of my favourite songs from the day, Carly Simon's Let the River Run and a Georgian song, Shen Xar Venaxi.

Two days later, we were singing with more lovely people, including choirs from local schools, at the Two Rivers Festival in Tiverton, which marked the official launch of the Tiverton Co-operative Learning Partnership. Tiverton High School made a video of the event and we (as in some of the choir members) are in there somewhere . . . well, half way through and right at the end and very briefly - a fragment of a Xhosa song from South Africa, O Li Lizela.

Last week, we held our annual summer party on a farm in a steeply wooded coombe, just a mile or so from my village. We ate, drank and sang our way into the night, gathered round a fire on a balmy evening, under the stars and an enormous, pale yellow moon. Who needs nightingales in Berkeley Square? Take it from me, there was magic abroad in the air in deepest Devon that night.

And on Friday evening, three of us joined another of Claire Anstee's Devon-based choirs, the Withycombe Warblers, as well as the Woodbury Community Choir, in Exmouth, to take part in a fundraising concert for Exmouth and Lympstone Hospiscare. The town sits between the Exe estuary and the South Devon coast so our voices were accompanied by the cries of seagulls . . .

There is, of course, the other happy aspect of choir life, which is the social side. Lasting friendships are formed and we all enjoy each other's company. Earlier in the month, a group of us trooped off to the second night of the Tiverton Balloon and Music Festival. I have always wanted to be wafted skywards in one of these but, at £145 per person per flight, we decided to stay where we were and simply watch. There is much to be said for the quiet contemplation of balloons drifting up and away into a still sunlit evening sky.

And so to Saturday, when one of the tenors celebrated her 80th birthday with a marvellous party, darlings! Forget any stereotypical notions of what an 80-year-old woman should look like and how she should behave. She is truly amazing, super fit and has more energy and zest for life than many people half her age. She looked phenomenal and was still dancing at midnight . . . 

Most of the music was provided by a local group, all of a certain age, but who have been playing and singing together for years and who went down a storm. And, yes, we all sang all the words to all the songs, from Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild to Fleetwood Mac's Man of the World. There was dancing, of course, and it seems that we all love to dance - a fair bit of flinging ourselves around in gay abandon - and then one of the male tenors, who happens to be an extremely good dancer, whirled me round the dance floor. Yes, proper dancing too! I haven't been whirled round a dance floor in, oh, 35 years and had almost forgotten the sheer delight of it (although you do need a partner who knows what's what - and mine did.) It was also the first time I had danced the night away since the Massive Inconvenience muscled its temporary way into my life three years ago and it seemed long overdue.

The last few weeks have felt just like summer should, the way we like to imagine summers used to be. At a deeper level, for me, the sheer physicality of singing and dancing has helped me to reconnect with and to forgive my own body. A disease like cancer can knock one's confidence in one's physical self but for those of us who are fortunate enough to see the disease sent packing, there is much joy to be had in reclaiming what is ours.