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What We Did On Our Holidays

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If anticipation is the real pleasure then summer is the high I know I will inevitably one day have to come down from. For weeks there is no let up in the heat. Skies are pale blue, occasional clouds wispy and haphazard, spray painted to the far horizon by a device that clearly needs refilling. This close to the ocean there is often a breeze, but even the breeze knows its limits when the mercury hits thirty. Time stops. Without the bustle of school children the streets feel deserted. Even the dogs and their walkers have to conserve their energy. Nights are for not sleeping. The water on the Tamar glistens and reflects back the pale skies, but the tide seems to be out more often than not these days. Last year’s cygnets, now young adults, take up residence near the shoreline of Salt Mill Park. The moult is their summer holiday, rendered flightless for six weeks as they shed and grow new feathers. The pace of their life – or lack of pace – suits a climate where everything is motionle...
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A 27 Year Eclipse

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Germany in high summer – the heat seeping through and stealing all my energy. Church bells an endless cacophony as the early morning unfolds. In the bed next to mine Brian sleeps, oblivious to it all. Twenty seven years have passed. It is summer again. Cornwall. A non-tourist town emptied out for the season. A few local children remain, fishing by the creek or jumping off the harbour walls into the river. Most seem to have gone away with their families. The heat is not central Europe heat, but it is still oppressive in its own way. The grass has been bleached to the colour of straw. A tabby cat sleeps in the shade of a porch. It’s strange moving through these empty streets, surprise when you stumble across a passing car or a young woman hurrying to catch the next train. Then, as now, an eclipse is coming. Twenty seven years apart. I am older. We are all older. The trip to Germany began on a coach from Bristol to Heathrow. The steward on the coach reprimanding me for playing mus...
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The Flying Banana

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The flying banana is a network rail train that is used to check rail lines for hidden faults. It uses scanners and video cameras and other technical equipment to monitor the state of the rails across the network. This train looks in design like any other train you might see on the network, except for the fact that it comes in a bright yellow livery. Hence its nickname. It stands out from the crowd. You can’t miss it. The reason I bring this up is because I spend a lot of time outdoors at the edge of the creek, looking directly across to the Coombe viaduct. (I also spend a lot of time beside or underneath the Coombe viaduct, but that’s not relevant here). You hear the trains from across the water and you see them as they pass over the viaduct. The surrounding scenery is predominantly green – grass and trees and fields. The trees and shrubbery are a deep green, even in a barren summer such as the one we are currently experiencing and the ones we are likely to regularly experience in ...
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The First Song We Ever Wrote

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The first song I ever wrote with my brother was called ‘Not Another Book By Douglas Adams’.   I would’ve been about fifteen years old. For Christmas I’d been given a cheap Casio keyboard. We were upstairs in my bedroom – I can picture the dressing table with drawers of clothes underneath it and a mirror at the back and the keyboard perched on top . I’d have been mashing some random keys and making some vaguely musical sounds while Tim sang the lyrics. Some 45 (rpm) years later I could still sing you the chorus to that song. In fact I could sing you the whole song since the whole song was just that chorus. And the lyrics are all contained in the title. Tim wrote a lot of songs in that vein. There was a famous 82 Downers number called ‘Do The Cake’. It came about because he’d had a doctor’s appointment and the way they’d written out his name on the card made it look like his surname was Cake instead of Lake. I didn’t play on that song, but it did feature the Casio keyboard I’d ...
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The World According To Gary

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Gary was a squat Asian guy who used to work for the same charity organisation as me in Bristol. He started life, as most did in that job, as a telephone fundraiser. I doubt he was the most successful, but I can guarantee he gave it his best shot every day that he came in to work. Over time he got promoted to what was referred to as a call room assistant. That was the natural pathway for anyone that stayed long enough within the organisation. A call room assistant was someone who helped out those making the calls. They would be responsible for a whole group of callers – available if someone needed assistance during a call, helping to keep track of stats during a shift so that a campaign manager would know how the shift was going, who was doing well and who was struggling. They might take orders from callers, so that they’d have tea or coffee waiting for them when it came to a break. People like Gary were the heart of the organisation, but they weren’t making the calls and they weren...
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Always The Quiet One

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I don’t know how you tell the gender of cygnets (you probably can’t by the naked eye, purely as an on land observer), but today mum was down by the creek with one of her babies and dad was away with the other – out patrolling their territory no doubt. I don’t think I’ve witnessed that before and I wondered if it was a dad and son bonding thing going on. The other thing I observed was one of the cygnets carried one of its legs tucked up by its side and was thus lopsided, moving in a slightly comical fashion as it was more spinning than moving forward in a straight line. I don’t think it’s injured, I think swans naturally do that sometimes. I’ll look out for it again, the next time I see them. The cygnets aren’t really babies anymore. They are beginning to lose their baby fuzz and develop feathers. They’ve grown quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. They’ve passed the most dangerous part of their early lives and they have survived. * I was thinking about quiet and loud today...
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So Young

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