157. All quiet on the Brown front

Every now and then I notice Dennis trying to drag me back to his reality which is not mine. Mine is: there’s always going to be a chance of recurrence. Don’t let it creep into your mind. Just live with it. Den’s reality is: three times I’ve feared I’ve nearly lost my wife and I’m struggling to deal with that. I don't get how she can be so bloody laid back about something so important. I have to keep checking.

I am 100% sure Dennis would deny this but that’s how it feels. This morning I didn’t feel great. Nothing I could put my finger on but sufficiently ‘not right’ to cancel my acupuncture. The moment I conveyed this to him, his face fell and the third degree began. What’s wrong? What’s different from yesterday? If you’re cancelling acupuncture, it must be bad (unspoken, but knowing looks). Before cancer, The most I got was a shrug! And he keeps popping his head round the door, checking on me when I’m happily having a duvet day, watching Goliath on Prime TV and knitting while my vit C does its trick and protects me from a would-be cold.

Anyway, I thought I’d move on to music, having just made a purchase on Discogs on behalf of my easily-deterred husband: the Shirelles’ Greatest Hits, an album he gave away in his early days and which has left a gaping hole in his collection.

Which instrument do you play? I don’t, much to my regret. I yearn to be a virtuoso on the piano. I can’t think of any piano music I don’t enjoy, and that includes jazz which I’ve never understood and therefore never appreciated. Thanks to a grammar school education, I know my symphonies from my concertos and I’ve a wide range of composers, some of which turn me to jelly, others which leave me unmoved. In hospital, I plugged into my Chopin and Beethoven, my Shostakovich and Mozart, my... all well known, nothing esoteric. I remember, in the days before the internet, taking weeks to identify Beethoven’s 7th Symphony after I’d heard the third movement as background in a TV drama (yes, I’m a pleb and proud of it). So powerful.

Which is your favourite instrument? Goes without saying, the piano. But I do love a good clarinet/cor anglais/oboe ie wind instruments lower than a flute and higher than a bassoon. I include the saxophone too, tho I know it’s brass, not wind. Oh and I love deep drums like those Japanese drummers and the bodhran; anything that gets into your bones. I bought a bodhran in my 30s but, as I found when I tried the drums once at Youth Club, I just don’t have that kind of rhythm. I can’t forget that scene with Father Dougal and his youth group doing Riverdance to the bodhran when the caravan started shaking (Father Ted, C4). But no, I couldn’t even manage that level. I might have managed the triangle perhaps.

Which is your least favourite instrument? This is a battle (silent I hope) between the recorder and a badly-played violin. In fact, most violins unless they are an integral part of an orchestra. Maybe I’m scarred by my brother’s talentless efforts when he started grammar school to play? Violin solos set my teeth on edge. Violins that know their place are a joy to hear. I think of them as comparable to me singing in the school choir at Guildford Cathedral: not good on my own but contributing to some amazing sounds like Handel’s Messiah.

What’s your favourite song? Since I recognise it from its first note, it has to be Marvin Gaye singing I Heard It Through the Grapevine. For decades, those introductory notes have made my toes curl and a swell of emotion leads to a smile.

Me and Hilary standing outside The Angel, Godalming, after a dance. Both shivering in our outrageous minidresses and, of course, no coats. Not a great memory when analysed but I always smile: she asked me to watch her bag while she nipped to the loo. A few police cars had just driven up. They searched a few of the boys, ignored me, then left. Out came Hilary, telling me ’that was a close one.’ She opened her handbag to reveal a bag of pills (the uppers and downers, as we called amphetamines and tranquillisers in 1969, that she and most of the crowd took. I never did. Honest). The gravity of what she’d done didn't hit me for years, not till I was teaching about the nature of friendship and used that as an example. The police would never have believed I knew nothing about it. They probably would have taken me off in the car along with two handbags, one of which was NOT mine - but how to prove it without dropping a friend in it? It was a shitty thing to do to an innocent like me but very Hilary - and I still loved her for her (on the surface) devil-may-care attitude. Back to the music - why were we standing outside The Angel? Well, I was desperate for a glimpse of Mick Clay. I had a burning and hopeless passion for him that only I knew about and when I hear Grapevine, I think of Mick Clay (who emigrated to Australia a couple of years later and is now an Old Man). We both wanted a lift back to Guildford too. That wasn’t ‘back to the music’ was it? Suffice to say, first notes and I’m back there.

But there are some close calls. I love Green Tea by The Green Pajamas  https://youtu.be/bb_8zp1vFmM  ; The Cars’ Drive; Jackie Wilson’s Higher ‘n’ Higher; Kenny Rodgers and Dolly Parton singing Islands in the Stream; The Poynter Sisters’ Slow Hand; Aretha Franklin’s Little Prayer, Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters (dare I admit to The BeeGees’ How Deep is Your Love and You Win Again? The drums again) They all have a memory attached.

When it comes to classical, it has to be Faure’s Requiem in D minor, In Paradisum (and didn’t I have fun tracing that to its source!). https://youtu.be/6-i1ESIRKdA. It doesn’t feel morbid, just glorious, and makes me wish I could sing.

Who is your favourite performer? This is an interesting one because each time we’ve managed to make it to a live gig, it’s been the support act we’ve enjoyed more - the Smoke Fairies, Bear’s Den. It’s also interesting because hormones need removing.

Otherwise, it would be a simple PAUL RODGERS. Watching Free in the Riley Smith, mesmerised by Paul Rodgers strutting that stage in his loons and tossing back his black curls, marks the point where I understood the nature of pure lust for the first time! The music was great too. However, I remember being blown away by the sheer energy and mesmeric showmanship of Annie Lennox in her Eurythmics days on TV and I’ve never seen Bryan Ferry perform badly on stage, even now when his voice isn’t so strong - he surrounds himself with top class musicians and the whole package is magic. So much so that I can forgive and forget the embarrassingly seedy and dated earlier days of Roxy Music.

What’s your favourite album? I’ve carried Sgt Pepper with me wherever I’ve gone since its release but I don’t think it’s that great. I’d probably pick from (in no order):
1. Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood
2. R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
3. U2 - The Joshua Tree
4. Taj Mahal - The Natch’l Blues
1. A pupil offered to lend it to me over one weekend. Early days of teaching when such friendly relationships were encouraged and you could talk music in a History lesson! I was hooked. My passion for Mr Ferry began and I still play at least three tracks regularly.
2. When I was ill and attending Malham House Day Hospital, I remember playing 2 tracks repeatedly when I did my homeworks- Everybody Hurts (of course) and Find The River https://youtu.be/KIJGlTu5sEI which I find haunting. Michael Stipe is a genius, for all his weird eye make-up.
3. Again, when I was ill and fighting back against the agoraphobia, I’d play this really loud in the car and sing my head off to distract myself from the creeping fingers of fear. They got me along that Ring Road, one set of lights or one roundabout further each time. There isn’t a weak track on the album, even today.
4. When I went to France, Easter 1969, with some boys from Charterhouse, Simon was the coolest (if anyone from Charterhouse could be cool in my eyes, blinded as they were by Mr Cool Clay and his button-down shirts). I remember visiting him where he was en famille in Lyons; he’d just bought this and played it to me. I’d never heard stuff like it.https://youtu.be/kGcGBmJTnKc I was hooked. I saved and saved for that album from my Saturday job wages. And I joined the Blues Club as soon as I started at Leeds.

Is there any music you don’t like? Having been with a record collector for 50 years, there’s bound to be. In terms of Dennis’ collections, it has to be between Richard Thompson’s She Twists the Knife Again, anything by Alex Chiltern (except Thirteen by Big Star, so I can forgive him for existing in the musical world) and a track by Stephen Fellowes called Life’s Too Long, which Dennis used to play almost every morning. He stopped playing music when I was ill, which made me sad, and hasn’t yet played this again. I shall loathe it but I so want him to get back to his music routine.

I’m afraid I broke my promise to myself as a youngish teacher that I would always stay on top of young people’s music and I have little idea of what’s around except stuff that catches my attention like Lewis Capaldi (love his self-deprecating tv ads for his album) and Billie Eilish and her binaural beats. Dennis downloads stuff I fancy like Adele, Rag n Bone Man, Coldplay... I think I stopped when Rap started. I didn’t know House from Acid from Dubbing and now my mind just switches off as soon as anyone starts talking in a song. And what’s this ‘feat.’ thing?? It’s like no one can perform on their own any more. As for what I consider the crime of grand larceny: R n B. Come on. R’n’B was Ray Charles and B.B.King, not people shouting at each other. I am musically ANCIENT.

And I got through this without including a picture of my beloved Bryan ;)