Facebook has a way of popping up friendship reminders. They have no real relation to true friendships in the sense that it will say for example , “you’ve been friends for 5 years – congratulations”. Whereas , if they are really friends they will probably have been in your life a lot longer than that. You know all that anyway but one of them popped up this week and got me thinking. It was Ian Anderson, he of Southern Rag, Folk Roots and also then the now sadly no longer, Froots. He is also a musician and singer. I’m not exactly clear how my people were connected to his people in relation to this specific story but it was definitely due to pre existing connections that we met. The mutually connected people were Rod and Danny Stradling and therefore my being in The Old Swan Band.
Ian lived in a flat in Farnham as far as I remember. It was up one floor and he shared with his partner Maggie Holland , also a musician and singer. I remember several types of soft toy versions of Vultures, like cartoon ones rather than life like ones, dotted about the flat and this fitted in with the fact that their duo was called ‘Hot Vultures’. I still have one of their albums on vinyl somewhere….Probably in France.
Normally you can tell by the people you were with at the time, in any one story, who you were performing with. This one escapes me slightly . What I do remember clearly was that Ian , at the very least, was at home and then there was my sister, Fi Fraser, Martin Carthy and myself. Not a band I’ve ever been in …but perhaps thought for the future ha ha ! There may we’ll have been a Farnham Maltings festival or something. However , there weren’t any other ‘Old Swans’ around in my memory and as Fi and I didn’t drive at the time that part of my memory has baffled me. The flat had a huge front room and Fi, Martin and I were all billeted on separate mattresses in the nearly separated around the space . It’s what you did at the time ..stayed with friends or friendly people and bunked in with others where necessary but now I confess to hating sharing rooms with any body else except my partner.
I remember nothing about the gig or post gig wind down etc but I do remember I was to sleep on the mattress nearest the window where all the plants were. Once the three of us were ready I think we all bid each other good night and ‘uncle Marty Carty’ , as Fi and I affectionately call him, probably turned off the light and what was presumably hoping for a peaceful nights rest.
Sadly that was not to be. As I said I was under the window near quite a lot of house plants. One of those was an amaryllis…those brightly coloured things that when in full bloom, on the top of a very substantial stork, have four trumpet like flowers facing outwards in separate directions. Unbeknown to me it was closer than I thought and presumably I knocked it whilst turning over. Knocked it enough to create a large wobble which I was unaware of until the moment one of the trumpet flowers landed on top of my nose and mouth, right over my nose and mouth and I woke up yelling. It was obviously trying to kill me !! It reminded me of a very old ‘Doctor Who’ episode where, whoever was trying to take over the world, had put special cut daffodils everywhere. As soon as someone picked one up the trumpet flower turned and squirted a film like substance over the nose and mouth of the person holding it. They collapsed and then the substance evaporated clean away so nobody knew what was going on and why people were dying. Well…I got the full trumpet instead of the suffocating film.
My squeal of alarm set my sister and Martin dashing for the light . Once that was on, we sorted things out calmed down and tried to go to sleep again. No real harm done except some raised pulse rates and earth from the potted plant on the floor which we knew we could clean up in the morning.
We dropped off to sleep again and then …..the next yell was my sister. She was writhing around in bed with cramp in her calf. Lights on again and lovely Martin massaged her calf until the pain was gone and we all …..eventually went back to sleep.
We were maybe a little later up in the morning than expected. Who knows. I can’t remember. But I do remember that night . Poor Martin. He never shared a room with us again. Who can blame him but we have been under his roof from time to time….several rooms away usually …..for safety I presume!
Jo Freya’s Musings 