Music - Finding my way back and forward - 3, and back and forward!

Mike3

This week my journey through the music of my life took an unusual turn.  I say that.  In fact it's taken many turns, backwards, forwards and sideways, linking many bits of my life together.  This is something of a long and rambling post the twists and turns of which are almost certainly much more interesting to me than to you, and to help you keep up with all those twists and turns I'm going to put some words in bold. Unless you're familiar with my love life, you'll find you soon need them, in order to get all the different Mike's straight in your mind.  (There have been three of them and all have died.)

Way back in December I was discussing the musician Johnny Coppin with a friend and mentioned that I used to own a cassette of an album of his, "Forest, Vale and High Blue Hill".  It turned out that I had rashly decided to dump all my cassettes prior to moving, including not only this gem but also recordings I'd made of my grandparents reading out loud and other family snippets from the sixties and seventies, all because I was trying to downsize and currently didn't have a cassette player.  So much spilt milk.

I tried to find a copy of the album but came up with nothing, even asking various local contacts who all reported that it seemed to be something that was only released on vinyl and cassette.

My third Mike (in a life partner sort of way), who was in fact Mike2 because I met him second, died in 2023.  He decreed no funeral or ceremony of any kind, believing as I and his elder son did at the time that the two of us would meet over an expensive bottle of wine to lament his passing.  Because of various health issues for both of us this is clearly no longer on the cards, so I'm left without a ritual to mark Mike's passing.  I've recently decided to hold a small memorial ceremony (with a celebrant) here at home and have been researching the music we might listen to.

While searching for music for Mike's memorial a week or so ago I thought I'd have one more go on the Johnny Coppin trail.  I found his website - but not the album title.  As a last step I emailed him to ask if there was a digital version floating out there in the ether somewhere.  And discovered that it had been incorporated in another album with the title "The Gloucestershire Collection".

A couple of phone calls, a bank payment and a short wait for Royal Mail and the CD The Gloucestershire Collection was in my hands.  

Many of the songs on my original album were based on poems by the Dymock Poets.  (You can find out even more about them at Friends of the Dymock Poets and by reading the book by  Sean Street, The Dymock Poets.  In one of the bizarre turns I mentioned up there ^ Sean Street and his wife are friends of mine!  The Dymock poets were from the Forest of Dean, the westermost part of Gloucestershire.

Mike1 (my first husband, who died in 1991) was also a poet and certainly knew about The Dymock Poets.  He had an extensive poetry library (around 700 books, I seem to remember) which I'm sorry to say I have severely culled over the years and although he would almost certainly have owned a copy of Sean's book, I find that I no longer do.  Forest, Vale and High Blue Hill was released in 1983 and that's when I owned a copy on cassette but again, I no longer have it.  Mike1 and I both loved Gloucestershire, although neither of us was native to it, and we frequently used to travel to places near Gloucester to watch the Severn Bore.

Naturally, as soon as the CD arrived I started listening to it and was immediately struck with some regret.  For whatever reason (the most likely  being the mundane one of no longer playing cassettes) I didn't share the Johnny Coppin songs with Mike3 (who died in 2014).  As I listened today I realised how many of them spoke his language.  He was a countryman and a true Cotswold Lad.  (He used to quip, "I'm a Gloucestershire lad, born and bred: strong in the arm and thick in the 'ed".  This last was most certainly untrue!) The poems and the tunes Johnny Coppin set them to were in forms Mike would have appreciated.  Being on the autistic spectrum was, I'm sure, why he liked music to have notable structure and tunes and songs to have verses and choruses.  The Songs of Gloucestershire deliver both in spades.  Mike appreciated the writings of poets who had gone out of fashion, such as Rudyard Kipling (he moved past the possible racism contained in Kipling's poems to appreciate them as having been written of their time.)  He would have loved the Dymock Poets if I'd introduced them to him.

I'm so pleased to be able to listen to these songs once again.  They speak, no, they sing out of  Gloucestershire.  I've lived here for nearly 50 years and spent much of my childhood visiting my grandparents in Bourton-on-the-Hill and now consider myself a Gloucestershire lass.  I should probably think of buying a fresh copy of Sean's book.

New

 

My concept of a new year is not "out with the old, in with the new", it's more "build on the valuable old to create anew".  Nothing is wasted, one hopes.  This photograph of new blooms on my white cyclamen is a case in point.  Year after year I've failed to take photos of white flowers which look anything like what one sees.  I have much experience of what doesn't work!  What I had never tried before was allowing the flash to operate if it liked and he presto! that was the answer.

Our bad experiences happened and I don't believe in denying them.  That way they retain their proper place - bad experiences we have to learn to live with.  Burying things really doesn't help us learn anything.  Some experiences take a lot longer than others to learn to live with.

There is much for me to look forward to in 2022 and a great deal of it involves the new.  I have a sense of not just moving forward, but running forward (if only I were capable of running 😉). I hope to move house and as the autumn went on it dawned on me that I am really downsizing quite a bit.  Initially this was rather daunting but having decided to make a start by aiming to fill my grey bin completely every fortnight it has turned into something of a relief and even a pleasure.  By getting rid of stuff I somehow condense what is left so that it generates so many new ideas.

I am no longer a potter.  I don't think I anticipated this, but for the past two years it's been obvious that this is what I want.  I have fired everything, kept most of the last two firings of pots for myself and am selling everything else as usual.  The kit will also be sold, although I will be keeping tools and lustres and a few decorating colours so I can do some handbuilding work if I want.  I look back on my decades of being a potter with great pleasure, it's just that suddenly it was no longer what I wanted to do.  As an artist, I find myself moving into other things - silver jewellery, photography, mixed media work and of course still textiles.  It's a huge step but somehow so very positive.

The last year there have been many changes in my life because of losing both my parents, my entire family unit, within six weeks at the end of 2020.  What I'm experiencing, as well as the loss and change from what was, is those sudden shards of light which are sparks of ideas of new things on the horizon.  They are exciting.  Some of them have become clearer and are now actual plans, others are still waiting to be unpacked.

The new house (still in Stroud, of course) is a plan: we have exchanged contracts and completion is due mid-March.  Then there will be months of development, planning permission, and finally building and rebuilding and alterations.  As time goes on, the plan takes a clearer shape.

Life is good.  There are bad things in it for sure - somewhat ropey health, illness and problems for some of those close to me, the general situation with the pandemic, to mention a few.  But life is good.

Only one question remains - my alter ego has been known as the Purple Potter for decades.  Should I change it for something else?

O Stroud! Where is thy grit?

I'm sure for many reading this, this picture of a snowy road will look like nothing much.  It's notable, though, because I don't think I've ever seen the road outside our gate in this state.  In fairness to Gloucestershire County Council, I have to say that roads are usually gritted hereabouts. Snow was forecast for this evening here and perhaps that was what led to the problem.  I set out at 11.50 to pick up a friend to take her into Stroud.  It began to snow at about 11.55.  I made my way to my first destination where I was probably for about 10 minutes.  By the time I came out, the roads and pavements in Stroud were covering up with snow and very slippery underfoot so I made my way to Withey's Yard, fired up my mobile and summoned the cavalry.  M and Charlie arrived about 25 minutes later with my Yaktrax.  I was then able to negotiate through Stroud, back to the carpark.

We took J home and then headed for Stroud.  Lots of tail-lights ahead, so we tried a different route.  More tail-lights.  Luckily a helpful chap made his way through the snow to tell us that there was an accident on a junction ahead (accounting for both roads being blocked) and we were near enough to a junction to reverse and find an alternative route.  Having planned a bit of a stock-up, we headed for the supermarket, where the shelves were completely empty of all vegetables except a few potatoes, onions, parsnips and marrows.  Milk was just as low.  Apparently everyone had descended a couple of hours earlier.  We found most things on our list and headed home.

By now most roads were fairly well jammed.  This is one of the delights of Stroud: if one central road has any kind of hold-up, the whole town will grind to a halt within fifteen minutes.  We spotted a likely shortcut, avoiding the queues on the main road and made it home down a slightly snowy road by about 2.00.  Once in the driveway, I need my Yaktrax on again to get from the car to the house.

Just in time.  Barely fifteen minutes later and cars were having problems getting up and down the road.  At least two cars slid backwards into other cars.  Some have been abandoned, as you see here.  Since then cars have gone both up and down the road but often only by snaking from side to side and others have either turned round or abandoned their journey.

I've seen it said somewhere on the web that some people are happy that the UK doesn't spend money preparing for bad weather that would most likely not happen.  They feel it's a waste of resources that could be spent on things which definitely will happen.  I do not share this view.  We are lucky - we got our shopping and all got home without any mishaps and unless there is a power cut, can happily survive at home now for many days.  But many are not so lucky.  There will be people spending the night somewhere other than where they planned to tonight, that's for sure.  There will be others who were planning to shop later who may now not have the supplies they need.  There may be others still who are ill and need medical or other help which is not able to reach them.   I'd prefer that resources were set aside in preparation for bad weather.  If we don't need the grit, surely it will keep till we do?

As I type this (about 4.30) the sound of whining engines and spinning wheels makes its way periodically through the double-glazing.  I can't see things improving in a hurry.