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.

Why I love Christmas, by an atheist

 This isn't really a sad poem, or at least it isn't meant to be.  It's a poem that comes the nearest to explaining why I, as an atheist, still love Christmas and even the religious bits.

Christmas Eve

Travelling, I made sure to arrive by the start
of nine lessons and carols on Radio 4,
Dad poised to prepare sprouts, painstakingly
as a military man would,
Mum doing something not requiring machinery
and in earlier years, Aunt Jane
talking over all the quiet, meaningful moments
for all she was worth.

This Christian service for a Christian festival
still holds meaning for an atheist of forty years,
linking me to generations of family believers
and to others, non-believers, alike.

Now I build my own collection
of seasonal traditions: trifle for one;
roast turkey with trimmings
for one, or more if anyone cares to join me;
holly and ivy and red ribbons and candles;
cards posted expensively to friends;
extra phone calls, gifts, tree, fairy lights;
Jacqui Lawson advent calendar;
Terry’s milk chocolate orange in memory of Dad,
who had one every year and
I slip into the past again
all of us singing along to the carols we knew,
Mum’s clear soprano, my alto
and Dad managing the descant still
here I am, listening, and weeping
for them, and for lovers and friends

human connections
which, like the number 42, hold
the answer to life, the universe and everything
tears heralding grief
and hope
and the start of it all.

Unstable

Unstable

UN-stabul as Mum used to say it
in her own invented
language and pronunciation
like raddy-otta-meez.
And why not.
 
“English also spoken here”
Dad said there should be a sign
on the front door
when they were first married
but he became bilingual.
 
So today I know I am living
through a time when things are
un-stabul for me,  unstabul
without my mum and my dad
and my Mike
 
who saw “breaded plaice” as
bearded plaice, which it fast
became with parents, carers
and now still me. 
They never met
 
but on the phone discussed how
a single grain of rice was a rouce:
Mum thought not but
Mike was adamant
about his invention.
 
My new house-to-be is full of labradors
and other tradesmen.
The architrave fades into less significance
compared to the builder, Jason, and
all his argonauts
 
and I am tossed around in an unstable
world, missing all three of them
feeling out of touch with my
linguistic roots and routes
through the maze of decisions
 
being uprooted myself just enough
so I am now unstable
ready to be blown down in the wind
or washed away in a rainstorm
or undermined by something small.

Leslie Wynne Prescot

28/05/1927 - 16/10/2020

Anthea Warwick Prescot

07/07/1928 - 28/11/2020

Mike Hitchens

07/12/1943 - 11/07/2023

New work

 I have updated my website at last.  clothandclay.co.uk

The composite picture which is on the homepage is not new work, of course, but nevertheless it is a new picture and I hope conveys the several directions in which my work is going.
I have simplified the website greatly to reflect the simpler life I now have; the previous site was written ten years ago and updates were mostly additions rather then reductions.

I do have a mailing list, which these days is by email only.  If you are not on the mailing list and would like to be, please email me and I will add you.  I don't send out mails very often; they are more occasional newsletters, but I do send out to notify you of events such as exhibitions and open studios.  I have been quiet with my work lately, as most of us have with the pandemic, but hope to be a little noisier in future!

I'm taking part in a group exhibition in Lower Slaughter 20th - 26th April so am now busy making some new work.  The updated website was part one of that.  I'll be showing textiles, silver, other jewellery and greetings cards and am now working on new pieces within those categories.  More details will follow, on my website.

In other news, completion on my new house was quicker than expected but the work will take much longer, partly because builders are booked up until next year.  However, the house is still an exciting new project for me.  Planning with the architects, showing friends and relatives round the existing house and getting started on clearing unwanted trees from a boundary wall are the current stages.

I feel energised by needing to make new work to a deadline.  

It may be summer

It may be summer; my garden says so.  In this weirdest of times, though, I don't always feel that it is.  There was a short period at the end of April when it was lovely and much sitting out was done, by me and by visitors.  Since then, though, I'm not so sure.  May's weather was truly dire.  June has begun better and things are coming into flower ...

But what about me? 

I have post-viral fatigue and have had for the past two years.  It's not quite ME but it could turn into that.  Fatigue and brain fog are the main symptoms in my case.  On the face of it, flare-ups are unpredictable but when I consider that stress is a trigger and look for one, there always is one.  It's often something small, but related to the underlying stress, e.g. currently grief.  When it hits, if I don't notice and do too much, it can get significantly worse but it's very minor compared with ME and I want to keep things that way.  

Most people seem unaware that for two years after a major bereavement your immune system doesn't work as well as it should.  This includes it being much more likely that PVF will flare up.  I am now really taking that on board and trying to be positive and know that the difficulties I'm having at this particular time will fade.  I need patience (not a trait Aries people are known for!)  Gradually my friends and relatives are understanding where I'm at. 

So it may be summer.  The grief hit really hard in the middle of May, but now I think I'm coming out of the worst now.  But in the garden the summer-flowering plants are competing with spring things, like wallflowers, which shouldn't be around any more.  In my life PVF is flaring up badly from time to time, along with other, minor, ailments.  I'm hoping the warmth and light provided by summer - and people - will give me the patience to continue moving forwards.   

 

Dolly and Holly and Molly

This is Dolly.  My mum made Dolly when I was probably a little less than two years old. Apparently mum propped her up on the sofa and when I came in I went straight up to her and said "Jane's dolly!" so it's just as well she was. Her dress and hat (a little moth-eaten now, I see) were made from remnants of Mum's coat material. Mum always made her own and my clothes and I'm sure I get my connection to textiles from her.  She says now she doesn't think Dolly was ever washed, so she's done pretty well.  The greyish patch on the forehead is as much worn as grubby.  

 

I wouldn't go anywhere without Dolly for many years.  I suppose she was in effect my teddy or comfort blanket.  Later I had first a baby doll and then a girl doll, both of whom I liked to dress in different outfits but Dolly is stitched into her clothes like rag dolls often are.

I wanted to make a rag doll for Holly, our granddaughter, but when I looked for patterns I came across one for a proper doll that really appealed to me, not least because the website told me that clothes for an 18" "American Girl" doll would fit her.  It seemed a little early for a proper doll for Holly but I thought I could make the doll while off work and then she would be ready for when she was needed.  In the mean time, though, Holly took a fancy to another child's doll's pram and now has one of her own and her mum decided she might well be ready for the doll earlier than we'd thought.

So I made Molly.  It was a really therapeutic project, something I really wanted to do and had plenty of time to spare for because I couldn't work.  I love miniaturised things anyway so had great fun making the clothes and eventually the shoes.  To my great surprise, Molly stands up on her own in her shoes.  And here she is:

And here are Holly and Molly meeting for the first time. 

I am so pleased to learn that Holly and Molly are already getting on really well.  Holly can do her own shoes up now so she also takes Molly's shoes off and puts them back on.  She wheels her round and round the garden in her pram and goes and holds her hand when she is standing up. 

I had such fun being inventive about the clothes - did you know that one pair of adult socks makes one pair of tights or one t-shirt for an 18" doll?  Or that a child's vest is exactly right to make proper pants for a doll?  No, I thought not.  Here is Molly in her authentic-fabric pants and the rest of her outfit laid out in front of her.  You can imagine that I am already planning her next outfit.

Pooh

I unearthed this poem about my maternal grandmother a couple of weeks ago. I think I wrote it about 4 years ago, but it could be more and certainly I'd forgotten I'd written it. I sent it to my parents, who then sent it on to a couple of friends who had known Pooh, and all seem really taken with it. I must say I think it's one of my best because even after several years, it still seems to say exactly what I wanted and, even for me, brings back a vivid picture of my grandmother.

Pooh

Called Pooh by her six-year-old daughter,
she uniquely dispensed with the difficulties of naming.
So my other granny could be Granny, in-laws and others
could avoid the awkward choice of Mrs Jones or Marjorie.
When other children asked "why is she called Poo" I knew
they left off the 'h', and felt she'd been insulted.
"She just is."

Pooh scored points off Granny by allowing raspberry-blowing
and rudenesses like "silly old Pooh" and no church.
I don't think she spoke to God since widowhood in 1940
but I went church silver-cleaning with her
and church magazine delivering on the green
letting her do the ones with fierce dogs
and smelly old people.

Weekends with Pooh had Juke Box Jury and Dixon of Dock Green
and a bottle of Cherryade and cheese and pickle cracker sandwiches
for breakfast if I wanted. I shared her bedroom,
discovered the growling bear in the night was her snoring,
joined in her toe-touching "sizers" in the morning
and drank orange-juice in bed.

In her eighties and my thirties "how's your love life?" she'd ask,
knowing neither of us had one,
but after her stroke, when her "Do men come here?" brought a yes she said "Good" and she waited to see me safely married before she died.