Jo Freya’s Musings

Norma Waterson posted very recently Martin had spent the whole night outside a hotel instead of inside it tucked up in bed. Locked out. He was gracious enough to say he hadn’t read his accommodation instructions carefully but even so..what a story that was..and in winter too.

This by contrast is nothing but it is what it reminded me of.

Years and years ago, sometime in the 1980’s, the Fraser Sisters were playing at Chippenham folk festival. At that time we consisted of two sisters, my sister Fi and I and our honorary sister Ralph Jordan. Ralph Jordan, for those of you who don’t know, was a wonderful musician playing guitar, bazouki and concertina. He was exceptionally tall and lanky and I always described him as someone who looked like he had been stretched on a medieval rack. Cruel I know! I can’t quite remember how I ended up working with him but we’d started as a duo and then it seemed logical for Fi to become part of it too….no don’t be daft we weren’t called the Fraser Sisters without Fi. We were just Jo and Ralph but at the point where Fi and I wanted to do an album together it made sense to become the Fraser Sisters and Ralph was very happy about that.

Fi and I had either come from elsewhere, that weekend,  or had been performing with another band at the festival on the same day. Ralph therefore agreed to take control of the accommodation details etc for later on that night. He had been advised that it would make sense to go there first so that he knew exactly where it was and said he would do that.

The problem with that is some of the accommodation, usually hosted rather than business bed and breakfasts or hotels, was quite a way out of Chippenham and Ralphy never quite found the time to go and come back and to a certain degree I find that totally understandable. I wasn’t so forgiving later on!

We finished late and then piled in the car with Ralphy reassuring my sister and I that he knew where we were going. The lanes in the Wiltshire countryside seemed pitch black and, though we had quite detailed instructions, we could not see anything that fitted the description of what was written down on paper. We went backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, walked up a few drives to peer at the houses…nothing and it didn’t help, of course, that all the houses were dark so we were terrified of waking up potentially angry householders who had nothing to do with the festival.

So, there we were. We sat in the car thinking ‘shit’ we’re going to have to spend the entire night in the car. Of course if we hadn’t had a gig the next day there might have been an option of going home and these days, with money being not quite so tight and an understanding that some things are more important than going home with pennies in your pocket, we would have booked into a travel lodge or something. Nope..we just felt stuck.

Then Ralph came up with a plan. It was already, by now 2.30am.

Ralph, despite being easily good enough to be a professional musician, had a day job. he was a sound engineer for the BBC. Predominantly radio, often outside broadcasts but not always. He was well liked amongst his colleagues and loved his job. Due to those connections he had a sudden thought. He had become close with a BBC radio 3 presenter and decided to ring her…at 2.30am…to ask if we could come and stay. I can’t say she was best pleased at being woken up but she did say yes. The problem was that we were in the wilds of Wiltshire and she lived in Reading . It was an hour and twenty minutes away. Ralph felt that that was the only choice and off we went. We arrived at just gone 3.30am . The poor woman, in her night clothes, answered the door, barely managed to grunt to point our where everybody was sleeping and went back to bed. We had a brief discussion about what time we needed to leave and because of the programming the next day realised we’d need to be up by 8am at the latest and off by 8.30am. I think I finally dropped off at about 4.30am.

I’d like to be able to say I didn’t blame Ralph but I did. I blamed him, not because we couldn’t find it, but because, on deciding not to go there earlier, he had promised that it would all be OK and he would find it. Of course he’s forgiven now because the wonderful thing about particularly some of the adverse things that happen in life is that they create memories that never leave you. Now that dear old Ralph is no longer with us that memory becomes even more precious. I have that, ‘ah silly old sod’ feeling these days when I think about it.

So that is really quite a light weight story when you realise that poor old Martin Carthy, in the story alluded to at the start of the blog, having been dropped off at his Hotel and left, had neither a car to sleep in or a means of going anywhere else. Brrrrr….when I first read that I felt cold and I still do.

I’m sitting here thinking about all this and realise that not only did Martin and Norma start this blog but there is also another connection. We made two CDs as the Fraser Sisters and they were both recording in Robin Hoods Bay. Oliver Knight, Lal Waterson’s son, was the engineer and John Tams produced both albums. Lal’s house was just around the corner from Norma and Martins and we stayed with them. I do believe on one of the covers (I can’t remember if it’s the first or second Cd) there’s a photo of someone standing at a sink with their back to the camera in a night shirt with little bears all over it and slippers, doing the washing up. That was Martin.

(photo above is an insert and doesn’t thank Ralph specifically as he is noted elsewhere as a member of the Fraser Sisters. If you look through his discography you’ll see he wasn’t one for having his photo taken often…not an excuse, just an explanation).

The relationship mum had with the sailor didn’t last fortunately for us. The lasting legacy is that my sister and I still hate tinned peaches and boiled fish. If you’re made to sit in front of these things often enough, having said you don’t like them, but still being made to sit there until you eat them or the adult in question finally gives up, then you’d hate them too! I know kids can be arsy about food and change their mind on a daily basis but sometimes they are telling the truth and do need to be listened to not punished for genuinely disliking something. That’s like forcing someone to always attend Richard Clayderman concerts despite having an aversion to kitch piano recitals! Enough to drive you mad.

So it fell apart and mum had a dilemma. We were fostered originally because she had no money and no qualifications and didn’t want to drag us up through abject poverty. The sailor had meant that she could have us back sooner than anticipated (still four years though) because he was solvent and had a house and she could continue building her own earning power. So, now what!

Probably from my mother’s point of view there was only one solution and one that would have galled her deeply to admit to and then do. Grandmother! My mother had a difficult relationship with her mother. In fact my grandmother had a difficult relationship with her older two children but had mellowed a little when the youngest one came along. The result of this was that mum left home at sixteen and barely communicated with her parents. My grandfather was described as ‘ineffectual’ meaning that what my grandmother said was what happened and he never seemed to intervene. If he didn’t agree we’ll never know. My impression…and please bear in mind that this is my impression not the written views of his children, was that he was pretty much ‘hands off’ when it came to parenting. My mother, as you now know, was pregnant at nineteen and not married. The shot gun wedding was not attended by my grandparents as a protest and fairly typical of that time. There must have been some relenting however because mum always tells this story of my grandfather arriving at the hospital when my sister was born and demanding to see, ‘the wrinkled prune’. On first glance he melted instantly and went all soppy. Who wouldn’t? It was my lovely sister after all. There are no such stories around my birth.

So given that history my mother had to swallow a lot of pride and ask her parents to give  a home, all be it temporary, to herself and two small girls. They said yes.

Baring in mind we all re-write our own history’s I am relying on my memory and family stories for some of this and my sister, mother etc may remember things differently. I think my grandparents lived in quite a large house in Birmingham. I remember my youngest uncle being around quite a lot but whether he was living there I am not sure. I am guessing I was about 6 or 7 so he would only have been 16 or 17 and therefore ,I think, still at home. There was also a dog, Eve. My uncle said the dog’s name was actually short for ‘Evil Stench’ being a small dulux type dog and smelly when damp. He also said she bit him once so he bit her back and she never bit anyone again. The dog was famous for taking whoever put the lead on her for a walk. It was definitely that way round and as a small child I certainly wouldn’t have been able to control her on my own but would have had to run at her pace or land flat on my face…I have no doubt that happened on more than one occasion and I would have been watched with a careful eye if allowed to take ‘the reins’ at all. I vaguely remember mum saying that my grandfather and uncle had been sent out with strict instructions on what type of dog my grandmother wanted and it wasn’t that one! They’d seen her and fallen in love.

My grandmother was American. The story I was first told about her was that my grandfather was stationed in America for part of the second world war. He’d gone to an event or something and seen a mass of beautiful auburn hair. He, supposedly, said, “if the front half is as beautiful as the back I’m going to marry that woman’ and did. Sadly the marriage was not to be as romantic as the story.

I remember that she had a soft American accent which you could particularly hear when she said ‘darling’. She was a very practical woman who made a lot out of very little. There was a dressing table in one of the bedrooms and this was made out of old fruit boxes. Two side bits and a plank or what ever across the top and then material cast off’s that she tacked over the boxes to  make it look nice, painted the plank..etc etc. A very nice job. There were also some hexagonal place mats that looked hand made with a lady in a long dress with bustle and hat painted on it that I am sure she made too. I still have one of those.

On the wall in the hallway were three photo’s. I got upset about them because I couldn’t understand why she’d have a photo of my sister on the wall and not one of me. It was explained to my small brain that it wasn’t a picture of my sister it was my mum. Amazing hey!

My grandfather played quite a big part in my memories of that time. I know this happens in other families too..that my grandparents were actually much better at being grandparents than they were at being parents. more relaxed. not feeling the responsibility so much and able to just enjoy these little people who were adorable…Obviously!!! Like quite a few small people we were early risers. breakfast was laid out by my grandmother the night before. I remember she pretty much always did this. There would be a bowl for your cereal and then a cold liver oil capsule under the rim. God how we hated those. Repeated on you for hours. Grandfather  knew that. He would be up when he knew we were and because he was on dog walking duties. He seemed to have a never ending supply of Cheesy Watsits and we’d have a bag each to help the medicine go down. Maybe that’s where I got my savoury tooth from because I still like savoury things more than sugar. Then off we’d pop armed with Watsits, grandfather and dog and still be back in plenty of time to go to school.

Mum told me that I used to like to go down to the Evangelical church on a Sunday because I liked the singing. She used to walk me down, pop me in at the back and collect me later. It didn’t make me religious but wow, the singing was fab.

I remember very little else about that stay or exactly how long it was. I don’t think it was more than a year and a half and not long after we left my grandfather died. He had cancer having been a smoker all his life. I am so glad we had that time with him because if my mother’s circumstances hadn’t changed I don’t think we would have got to know him at all.

His name was funny, ‘grandfather’. I think it was, again, a rule my grandmother insisted on. There was no grandpa or grandma etc but always grandfather and grandmother. I remembered the importance of this so well that when I came to do the death certificate for my grandmother many many years later they asked me my grandfathers name. I had no idea….I remember shrugging and repeating the word ‘grandfather’ again hoping that that night be enough. But it wasn’t. I had to return to my grandmothers residence, go through her documents and find it…yes, none of her children were there when she died. Only me…but that’s another story….and not for a good while yet.

I realise I had  promised tales of morris dancing infiltrators. Well that happens next…if I didn’t get distracted by a musical event and relate story.

It’s Wednesday blog day and I normally do this in the evening but this evening I am going down to see mum. Fi and I try and make sure we do that at least once a month. We help with a spot of cleaning and then have a meal together. This isn’t something mum asks us to do but something I instigated because it makes sure I go and it makes me feel useful. For those of you who see your parents regularly that may sound strange but as mum has lived abroad for much of our lives we don’t have one of those…’must see you weekly’ arrangements . We speak often enough and email too and occasionally mum even pops up on facebook.

I have little memory of returning to mum after being fostered other than  recalling her collecting us. I was sat in the back of the car, probably deeply concerned that I was going to be ill as I suffered terribly from travel sickness as a child, and she said something along the lines of ,’ Don’t call me Aunty Ruth anymore I’m your mother and you’re coming to live with me’….obviously shocking and significant enough to stay with me!

I’ve mentioned before we then went on to live with her sailor partner and he wasn’t too ‘nice’ either to her or us. So I won’t go over that again.

We moved a lot and so I don’t always remember where we were or which house was associated with which of my mothers partners until we finally settled in Cheltenham when I was about 8. So that was only 3 years from when mum collected us. One house had a steep slopping drive and was a modern semi detached. I think that was the one where we were with the sailor. Apart from what he was like I do remember how I got the scar that is in the middle of my forehead. I was learning to ride a bike and came up the road and down the drive. The drive scared me and so I slammed on the front brake. Oops! With that gradient the front stopped dead the back wheel flew up and I went sailing over the handle bars straight into a corner of the wall head first. Now I think about it ti probably explains a lot about me! I presumably howled and mum came running out. She had been a nurse for many years by then and said, once she’d checked me out and cleaned me up, “no, we don’t need to go to the hospital for that cut. Stitches will leave a bigger scar than a butterfly plaster that will draw the cut together and let it heal naturally”. So that’s what she did. I have a little, barely visible, scar.

I don’t think the photo above is from that house. I think this is a different house that I have no memory of what so ever but I do remember mum in that outfit because I thought mum looked like a movie star. I expect some of you remember the time of mini’s and maxi’s both in skirts and cars! I am the one on the right and Fi is the one on the left. Whilst I have no clear idea of being fashion conscious at the time I know I didn’t want to wear a frock. We were off to a wedding. Fi’s dress I remember. She loved the pink and the grey and it was an off the shelf purchase. Mum’s, button down front, maxi and matching hat were made by a friend. I can safely say that with all confidence as my mother has never been good with anything other than medical needles. I imagine I must have put up a fuss about not wanting to wear a dress and so the little outfit, mad with some nice and cheap off cuts was run up by the same person and I loved it. It’s funny that I still only really wear dresses in summer and have, over my life time, fallen in and out of love with them on a regular basis. I was also never happy in high heals. The photo makes me smile because despite the fostering and all that there is no doubt that that little Jo thought her mum looked absolutely amazing.

My memory of that wedding was that it was fun and I spent quite a lot of time playing with other children under the tables while the adults finished eating.

My other memories of weddings with mum aren’t quite so happy. One was in Wales and on the way back we hit black ice and the car spun out of control and got crunched. No-one was injured but it did damage the car and it took a long while to sort out and get home. The other was a wedding in the big hotel in the promenade in Cheltenham. We were late, otherwise I assume we would have walked. Mum saw a space and thought she was going to squeeze into it whatever. The fact that she took a chunk of a Rolls Royce was neither here nor there as we rushed into the weeding and totally forgot about that bit…well in terms of telling anyone..as far as I remember. No-one came in to find out who the battered old van belonged too either.

I think in the next blog I’ll talk about the next section when we ,moved away from Cheltenham the first time and up to Halesowen..before returning to Cheltenham for my senior school years. It was an interesting time and one where we were infiltrated by morris dancers who later brain washed my mother into becoming one…ha ha.

Firstly an immediate apology to who ever took the photo. It didn’t say on facebook but it did let me download it. Let me know who you are if you see this and I will amend.

I can’t move through today without thinking of Roy Bailey, Bill Caddick and others besides. My last blog was following my relationship with friend, Peter Uhlmann..also a luminary in terms of being someone who made things happen musically. But this one will concentrate on the two musical luminaries named above.

October/November is proving hard and if people would stop dying I would truly appreciate it. That’s not flippant but genuine. Winter seems to take a grip on those who are fragile and send them on their way. I, and many others I am sure, wish it wasn’t so.

At home in my teens, whenever we bought an album they were played and played and played. That doesn’t seem to happen in the same way anymore. Occasionally a Cd takes grip or happens to be the one sat in the car but I don’t listen as ‘religiously’ as I used to. I also don’t make the effort to support live music as much as I ought and if I don’t then how the hell can I expect others to do that for me. So, I make a pledge. I will go out…even on cold winter nights and support things locally when I am free and healthy enough to do so. Live music is so important and had it not been there I would never have had access to those albums that we played and played and played. I think also we had so much less money then that these were precious items. Does having more money make you value someones hard worked little jewel less? I hope not. I think with me it’s time and brain space.

The Bill Caddick play list was an album called ‘Rough Music’. I loved it all but it had two stand out things for me. One that touched me at the time and one that had a link much later in life. There was a track with a chorus like this,

“Pity me poor pig condemned to die

For butchering a beggars baby

They’ll take me out this cold cold morn

and hang-ed I will be” Bill Caddick

It was the story behind the song that grabbed me. This was true to history and I couldn’t believe that humans could be like this but we were. The story was that a feral pig had attacked a baby and consequently the pig was captured and  put on trial. Not only was the pig put on trial but it was dressed up as much like a human as they could manage. It was then found guilty and hanged. There is also so much unsaid just in the words ‘a beggars baby’ thus making it far more tragic. It allowed a baying mob to have justice for a tragedy that no-one was able to stop. I assume the pig was hungry. I also assume the crowd ate the pig afterwards.

The other reason this album always comes to mind was that I quite often do community music projects in Lincolnshire. Whilst researching one of those I came across the reference to rough justice and the bands of people banging pots and kettles who would stand outside the house of someone they believed to have done a misdemeanour in their community…adultery etc and make a huge raucous din which let the occupant to know, in no uncertain terms, that they were being watched and their antics would not be tolerated. You only hoped that where this kind of justice was metered out that people had their facts right as we know what whispers and rumours can do in a modern society and I’m sure it was no different then. So Bill…a man who made me think about history and people and culture and how culture developed etc Telling the stories that were already there but that many of us didn’t know existed.

“Communities used “rough music” to express their disapproval of different types of violation of community norms. For example, they might target marriages of which they disapproved such as a union between an older widower and much younger woman, or the too early remarriage by a widow or widower. Villages also used charivari in cases of adulterous relationships, against wife beaters, and unmarried mothers. It was also used as a form of shaming upon husbands who were beaten by their wives and had not stood up for themselves.^[2] In some cases, the community disapproved of any remarriage by older widows or widowers.

rough music. Parades were of three types. In the first, and generally most violent form, a wrongdoer or wrongdoers might be dragged from their home or place of work and paraded by force through a community. In the process they were subject to the derision of the crowd, they might be pelted and frequently a victim or victims were ducked^[vague] at the end of the proceedings. A safer form involved a neighbour of the wrongdoer impersonating the victim whilst being carried through the streets. The impersonator was obviously not himself punished and he often cried out or sang ribald verses mocking the wrongdoer. In the common form an effigy was employed instead, abused and often burnt at the end of the proceedings”.^[1]Wikipedia

Roy Bailey. Ah the lovely Roy. Aways up for a cuddle… at least from me and I assume most other people. I wrote him an email a couple of weeks before he died reminiscing about a particular concert of his that is forever tattoo’ed  onto my brain. It was Towersey – where else. Roy became a patron of that festival and was often there but this may have been well before that time. There was, even then, something about a Towersey audience and Roy. The term ‘eating out of the palm of his hand’ comes to mind.

This was probably the last number in a set. On to the stage came a whole bunch of people that included, as far as I remember, Val Bailey, Kit Bailey, John and Sue Kirkpatrick (shows how long ago this was) and more. He did the song about the witches being burnt, ‘Burning Times’ by Charlie Murphy. It was so powerful especially with this large body of people chanting in harmony the names of the Goddesses. The audience sang their lungs out too it built and built and built and built.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inana…”

It’s an amazing song. I may start singing it again myself. Here is the man himself singing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXoLYj89qWY  glorious, chilling, powerful. everything it should be…and probably part of my obsession with the wrongs done in the name of religion. Hence why I sing XTC’s ‘Dear God’, William Blakes ‘Garden of Love” and more.

The above song coincided with my awareness of sexism and heterosexism and the prejudice and hate of many against those who do not fit in with the societal norms. Sadly, though some things have changed we all know that much hasn’t and right wing backlashes coincide with economic depressions etc. I’m not going into that here but it is yet another deep concern of mine. The statistic, in the song, of the number of women burnt for witch craft is eye watering…. have a listen and you’ll hear.

Then we come on to the deaths of those not famous in their own right who, out of respect for the family privacy, I won’t name as they are not figures in the public domain but several friends have all lost a parent recently. Roy, above. is the father of one of my friends and favourite people, Kit. I have my own relationship with Kit and my own with Roy. Not just as Kit’s dad I mean.  But these other parents, gone recently, I knew for differing reasons. Sometimes they had been around when I was young too, others I’d met because they supported the creative endeavours of their children etc. All wonderful people and all adding to my sense of loss but more pressingly to my bleeding soul that is weeping for the pain of people I love who are left behind. The fact that life goes on is so unhelpful really to those close to these losses and it’s immediate and intermediate effects. Of course it does and often, especially where death comes late in life, we can reflect happily on the long life they’ve lived and all they’ve done but for others there is the shock when there has been no time to prepare or even where they have had time to prepare, the pain is still great. As a friend of mine said recently, ‘nothing prepares you for this’ especially in a modern society where too many of us are too scared to even talk about it let alone face it head on whether that be the death of those we love or indeed our own mortality.

So, what shall I do to lift my gloom hey? There is no doubt that I am doubly unsettled by work being done in the house so nothing is quite where it should be and dust is everywhere it shouldn’t be. This means my haven is not the haven it should be. So I think I will go out and place myself in company and listen to music. I don’t much feel like it and if I had the option instead of going dancing I might have chosen that but I think it will do me good to be amongst people and live music is such a thought provoking connector of people, times places and emotions.

Thank you to Roy and Bill for the thought provoking songs you sang. Roy bringing the songs of others to our attention and Bill writing his. I am so glad I love music as it speaks volumes and fires the imagination. Thanks also to those parents for at very very least – bringing some particularly gorgeous humans into the world that I am happy to call my friends.

An odd blog I know…but I never said it wouldn’t be…is that a double negative?

I think the second or third time we went to East Germany the wall had officially just come down but things hadn’t changed much.  There were things I noticed though. Suddenly, for instance , pornography was visibly on sale at the railway station. That shocked me and made me think..well western democracy’s not all good then! Other things have slipped my mind since but it reminds me of the second time I went to Russia after the wall came down. One of the first things that was proudly announced was that a Macdonalds had opened on the outskirts of Moscow. You may remember the news reports where it stated that people would spend the equivalent of a weeks wages on one burger…progress had arrived. I saw that Macdonalds for myself and there were queues.

The other thing that was deeply disturbing were the derogatory comments from some West Germans about the East Germans. Terrible stereotypes and quite personal attacks unfortunately some of that still exists today. We got to hear some of that because we usually did west German concerts on our way there and on the way back.

One time I remember we had had the most fabulous time with audiences going wild to our music in a way that you might associate with Italians, say, rather than Germans. Yelling for more, stomping on the floor etc. On leaving we were next due to play in a small folk club in the west. We set up and did the gig and it was like playing to wall paper. I don’t know what was wrong that night but it felt like such hard work and I was absolutely convinced they hated us and disliked the music. When we finally finished playing audience member after audience member came up and said things like, “That is the best music I have ever heard” !!!!!!! You wonder if it really was as bad as it felt or whether the cultural contrast was just so vast it felt like that.

So, that time after the wall had come down, we visited Peter and Christine and there was excitement in the air. They were going to be able to travel to the west. They planned to take the boys to an English folk festival and maybe other things too., visit friends etc etc I talked to them about how it had been in the build up to the wall falling. They said they both went on demonstrations but never together. They couldn’t risk both of them being imprisoned and disappearing as the boys would need at least one parent to carry on. Nobody knew if the demonstrations would succeed or not. Imagine even having to take that into account now, here! Unthinkable.

Previous to our last visit any of the band who hadn’t managed to spend their East German marks gave them away……at least that’s what we thought we had done. Not so, on arrival I was handed an envelope by Christine. In it were West German marks. They had taken what I had left and exchanged it as the government allowed, kept it for me and then handed it back. Extraordinary.

I have a feeling that Peter and Christine were part of Leipzig morris dancers originally. Again an amazing thing to even think about existing. Peter’s knowledge of folk music from the Uk was extensive and he wasn’t the only one. Before the wall came down I remember talking to one of the young morris dancers who was in love with an English woman. He had applied to leave the GDR and was waiting to see if his exit would be approved. If that didn’t feel major enough I remember him saying that if it was approved and he went he would never be allowed back in. Wow…I know there were visits across the boarder particularly in Berlin as families had been split but they weren’t often and there seemed to be a real suspicion of anyone who expressed a wish to leave even if it was only for a short time.

About a year later I was invited to Berlin to do some dance workshops. I was collected at the airport and driven to this beautiful area in the East of Berlin. Lovely old buildings and a magnificent hall. On getting into the hall a workshop was in full flow. Who ever was leading it stopped in mid flow and said, “Ladies and gentleman the Tanz meister from England has arrived – Jo Freya” and the whole hall erupted into cheers and a huge round of applause. Amazing to have such a reputation.

At the end of the weekend Christine was in tears. I asked her what ever was the matter and she was distraught because someones purse had been stolen. It had been left at the side while someone was dancing. ‘This,” she told me,”had never happened at any of the events they had run before the wall came down”. Yet more progress. Fascinating.

It’s with great sadness that I may be telling some of you who don’t know yet that Peter Uhlmann has passed away. For those of you who never had the pleasure of meeting him  let me tell you about this man and how he relates to my life.

There were basically two British folk bands who went into East Germany before the wall came down, Blowzabella and The Oyster Band. It’s remarkable, if you think about it, that they knew about us at all and that there was an audience for us. It wasn’t just an audience either it was a very very excited and enthusiastic audience. We were invited to go and do some workshops and a dance in Leipzig.

I have a very clear image of the hall. A sort of modern 1970’s prefabricated building. Very inauspicious and yet it became something. There are photographs somewhere of Dave Shepherd and I teaching Bourrées and on meeting another friend from that time recently I was told, “I dance my bourrées like this because of you’…we’re talking a long time ago as that first visit was in the second half of the 1980’s. Anyway, I digress.

At that time all travels felt exciting. Just as well really as we were in and out of the country like a yoyo, travelling many hundreds of miles round the continent, coming home and then doing it all again. We’d done a west german tour, I think that was organised by a man called Jurgan Smit and then this East German thing happened. On a practical note we knew we wouldn’t make money because they couldn’t pay in western currency and you couldn’t take East Marks out of the country. Can you imagine turning down an opportunity like that for the simple reason of money..no well we couldn’t. Also, I seem to remember that, all westerners had to change a minimum amount of western currency as part of the rules for being allowed in. We were helped with some travel costs and documentation by the British Council.

The border itself impressed me greatly. It must have been about a mile wide. It felt quite nerve wracking too as there was always the chance something might go wrong with the documentation and they’d turn you away. We’d have to drive up to one office thing, hand over papers, wait, eventually they would be stamped and then you went on to another office a bit further into the border…same thing. It seemed to take a long time but eventually we were through. Hoorah and on the road to Leipzig. The road was a phenomenon in it’s own right. A motorway yes but cobbled. It caused so much vibration that the little screws on the saxophones had started working their way out by the time we arrived. Lucky we spotted that really.

I can’t remember if we went to the hotel first or the gig but I remember both. The Hotel was a huge thing opposite the Haut Bahn Hoff. I have a clear memory of making a phone call back home which you could only do from the Hotel lobby and it had to be booked for a specific time .There was an echo and delay on the line that gave you the distinct impression you were being listened to.

We played this amazing gig and others played too. I have no details in my head but I do know we met the family Ulhmann. This was Peter, Christine and their two young sons Johannes and Andreas. We were invited to their apartment for tea. This in itself was extraordinary as it wasn’t strictly speaking allowed and each block of flats had someone resident responsible for reporting misdemeanours to the authorities . This didn’t stop Peter and Christine. They were determined. I fell in love with the family. The boys, Johannes and Andreas played violin and melodeon at the time and at the dance, right at the end, they wanted to play for Dave Shepherd. It was very late and they had school work to do the next day. They played the most perfect rendition of his beautiful tune ‘The Rose Of Raby’ and it was gob smacking. Two part harmony that they had picked out from listening to the track. Language was a barrier to a large degree because, as I mentioned in a previous blog, the East Germans tended to learn Russian rather than English but Christine worked as a translator. She specialised, I think, in business English. This meant that we could talk to everyone but mostly through Christine.

They lived in a block on an estate. All the blocks looked the same and what was more alarming was most of the cars looked the same. They were all Trabant or the very occasional Lada and there was little variation on colour. Powder blue or fawn. Apparently it took years to get one too. We laughed as we couldn’t imagine finding your car in these large car parks where all the cars looked the same. the apartment was upstairs and nice. Not huge by any means and absolutely crammed full of instruments and books. We visited them another time we were there too. It was because of those visits I was told that we all, that is all of Blowzabella, ended up with a Stasi file each. Obviously checking if we were a threat to security. Apparently this became known once the wall came down.

Those early visits were incredibly precious and they had an intensity about them that still means many of those people we met feel like firm and good friends and have a special place in my heart. I would go so far as to say I love many of them and it thrills me whenever I get to see them again. Special people in a very special time.

I can’t remember if I mentioned before but I’ll say it again anyway. Because we couldn’t spend the marks we took a whole load of people out to dinner and it still didn’t dint the money. We worked out that it had cost us the equivalent of about 45p each. Some people bought Pentax cameras, most of us bought kites and I bought a saxophone mouth price for my tenor sax which is still in a box that says GDR.

I’m going to stop there for this week as it’s already late but I’ll continue with this next week.

I do want to say that this story is as far as I remember and all humans have the ability to re-write their own history so I apologise for any inaccuracies they are not deliberate. More next week.

 

I promised Sandie, who reads these blogs to do one about food. I thought it would make sense to talk about my relationship with food since my childhood. I have no recollection of food in my first four years.  My fostered years. I do know I had a reputation for flinging food around and there’s a little feeling deep down that that was related to the joy of eating. I think I’ve always liked food in principle and I don’t think I’ve ever been difficult to feed.

My pet hates were probably not uncommon to most children and some were to do with things being poorly cooked. I wasn’t fond of root vegetables like Swede, parsnip and turnip and strong flavoured brassica like certain cabbages and cauliflower. The poor cooking related to the brassica, often over cooked so that the smell reached you way before you actually got to eat it. Grey, grey food. Things have changed in that I like Swede mashed with butter and pepper, I like small crunchy turnips and I like all brassica although my least favourite one cooked is white cabbage and I am ambivalent about sprouts. I adore cauliflower and spring cabbages particularly and one of my all time favourites is broccoli but I have no memory of eating that as a child. Another dislike as a child was string beans and that again was all about preparation. My mother never seemed to manage to get rid of the string and I found the choking effect most unpleasant.

I may have mentioned before that we had open house in Cheltenham throughout my senior school years. This meant that morris dancers, in what felt like millions, turned up, ate ad slept over…all over the floor. Mum had a speciality that she could roll out easily and extend for the masses and this was a version of macaroni cheese. Yes it had macaroni in and yes it had cheese but it also had onions, peppers, mushrooms and….a tin of tomatoes. To my mind there was so much not to like about this dish. I ate it but way too often to actually like it although my mum still maintains today that it was popular with the visitors. What did I dislike about it..apart from almost everything..well to my mind mushrooms don’t go with cheese sauce and the peppers weren’t cooked fully. Then the fact that it was pink did not fill me with joy. Peppers were another food that I was ambivalent about. I still don’t like them raw at all and pick them religiously out of salads etc but I adore them roasted and like them well cooked in ratatouille etc. The end result of mums speciality is I’ve arrived at a bizarre almost phobia where I like pasta in long thin lines or flat but will not choose  a pasta dish that is made of shapes. Oh and I don’t mind the little pasta things that look like rice. I’ve forgotten their name momentarily. I will eat those things but I would like to choose not to. In my head, ridiculous as it might seem, the shapes taste differently. But my worst phobia is parsnips. Nothing has ever made me like them and as I’ve matured I laugh at the number of people who try to tell me it’s because I haven’t tried them in a certain favourite way. WHY WOULD I? THEY’RE STILL PARSNIPS! Right glad we got that sorted.

Things at home weren’t all awful. I had favourites that still in my head are related to comfort food. Faggots, peas and mash, devilled kidneys, sausage and mash and roast chicken to name a few but may of those were only on the menu if we could afford them. Cheap cuts. Skirt was cheap…I think that was beaf stomach lining that was quite fate and you could roll it like a swiss roll stuffed with stuffing. It wasn’t bad actually. Mum was a master at making very little go very far and finding a bargain. Woolworths used to have a cheese and meat counter and on it was a tray of bacon ends and cheese ends ..you know the slightly gnarly bit near the rind. Mum would buy a bag of both and off we’d go. So one favourite dish was a bacon and cheesy mash bake. Cooked up bacon and onion that was stirred through mashed potatoes. Then the grated cheese was stirred through and then it was finished off in the oven. We loved it served up with baked beans.

On one occasion she’d heard that they were selling off tins of luncheon meat cheap. She brought a tray load part of which came on a trip. Mum had a biker boyfriend at the time called Dennis and he thought it would be fun for us to go round europe in a van for the school holidays. Mum had the van. It was my first experience of going abroad and was not to be repeated for many years. Some of that luncheon meat came with us because I remember mum invented a dish called Lake Orta. We were camping by the lake and mum used the luncheon meat, onions and tinned tomatoes to do her own take on spaghetti Bolognese. Probably a great insult to the Italians when you bear in mind that’s where we were. I wasn’t averse to a luncheon meat sandwich from time to time but it was never good cooked…remember spam fritters  at school. Yuck, yuck and yuck.

There were other memories from that trip like seeing mum naked vomiting in the lake..wine was involved. Little bare arsed to the moon…or mooning to the…no that doesn’t work. Funny really because she has never been a drinker. She was always a vomiter though as she was a migraine sufferer. That doesn’t seem to happen to her now thank God. But we also visited some friends of Dennis’ who were an Italian family and I remember water melon being part of that. A little boy, about 2 years old was part of the family, they cut him a huge slice, put a bib round him, placed the melon slice on the coffee table and he put his little arms behind his back and then munched the melon from one end to the other no hands or utensils were used and his little face was covered in juice, much to everyone’s hilarity.

Most of my memories were not of culinary delights but experiences I hadn’t liked. We never ate out. Couldn’t afford it. I think fish and chips were had from time to time but basically it was home catering on a shoe string. It included going to the skips at the back of Sainsburies to get out the bruised but often edible oranges. She also made pastry crumble in advance to make pastry more quickly when she needed it. You basically made the pastry mix, froze it and then when you needed pastry, got the crumbly stuff out in the morning and then rolled it out at night. She also made sweet crumble mix in the same way for the same reason. Sadly she didn’t always label it properly and we had the infamous chicken pie that had been made with an actual sweet crumble mix instead of a normal pastry one. She’d pulled out the wrong one. I can tell you that sweet pastry does not go with chicken pie.

There was a solicitor who had a bit of a crush on mum and he took us to lunch in a hotel somewhere. the place was very stuffy and some kind of soup was served up with huge silver spoons. I didn’t like the silver spoons. They made my teeth feel funny.

So things could only improve really and they did. Firstly my youngest uncle, John had married my aunt..a Breton and I had been to Brittany for Christmas when I was about fifteen. My memory of that was good fresh produce like goats cheese and french bread, rabbit pate made freshly on the premises and also the goose cooked for Christmas. At home, Fi and I had decided we could cook and that helped to. One of the great things about mum was that she did come out with this stock phrase, “If you can read, you can cook”. Not something she ever applied to herself but something my sister and I took to heart and it paid off.

After Fi left home at 16, mum had a little more disposable income and we used to go to a little Greek restaurant around the corner . I always ate Moussaka with rice and salad. it was lovely.

The Old Swan Band was also responsible for widening my horizons, first curries etc. It involved travelling and that sometimes meant London. A lot of the crowd from The Empress Of Russia Folk Club used to go down to the Sultan’s Armit or Armpit, as we used to call it, for kebabs etc. I seem to remember a hot dish of sliced lamb kebab meat and chunks of pita bread in a tomato sauce served up with yogurt and everyone ate humus and taramasalata.  This was always late at night. I simply can’t eat that late now.

But it was the early 80’s where I began to learn to cook. Firstly I had been an au-pair in France for a year. This cemented what I had seen in Brittany which was that fresh was best and you could make most things yourself. It helped that the gentleman of the family was a trained chef originally. Then, on return I had to turn some of those new thoughts into meals but back on a very limited budget. I turned out to be reasonably good at it and often better than my college friends who had rarely catered for themselves. That and living with or catering for vegetarians and vegans stretched me further. Yes even on the early 1980’s may of the people I already new were vegan or vegetarian. So it was necessary to develop tasty vegetarian recipes that were colourful and nice to eat. My cookery book collection started to grow too.

One recipe that stays with me from that time is a vegetarian lasagne. I like it more than a meat one if truth be known. You sweat spinach until it wilts (basically I just wash it and then pop it in a pan and heat it. You don’t need to add any more water) and then squeeze as much water out of it as you can and you make a ratatouille in the normal way. Delia’s standard stove top recipe works best for me. Then layer up you lasagne either one layer of spinach and then one layer of ratatouille or a couple of each depending on how deep you’re going. Cover with your cheese sauce and grated cheese over the top. Pop in the oven with enough time to cook the dried pasta through. Yummy. The other nice thing about this is the Ratatouille can be made in batches to be used as a vegetable accompaniment to chicken for instance, used as a pasta sauce in it’s own right or here in a lasagne. That way you don’t need to worry about making quite a lot of ti and it freezes well.

More food soon.

There were a few years when things went quiet. Not silent. Just the odd brief letter every now and then but not as many as there had been.  Then Max wrote to me about something that was happening. He was very excited. He had done a lot of work on Herz and there was Russian interest in it etc. Consequently he had been going backwards and forwards to Russia and working with one specific translator on his theories and documents and also on the original Herz documents. That was Lucy. (Lyudmila) He said how much he liked her and that they got on very well and in a matter of months he told me he’d asked her to marry him.

He was infuriated that the British authorities would not believe it was  a genuine love match and initially wouldn’t allow him to bring Lucy to England even if he did marry her. Eventually his perseverance and persistence brought results and they married and Lucy moved to the Uk.

I have to come clean here and state that I too was sceptical. It wasn’t just the British immigration authorities who felt this was fast and therefore suspect. Whist I desperately wanted Max to take his focus off me and find the real love I felt he deserved as a kind and caring individual I too had my doubts that this was the real thing. .

One of the things I had done over the years to supliment my income as a musician was work for an organisation called ‘The Centre for Social Action’ based out of Leicester as part of De Montford University. They specialised in training. Interactive training that was qualitative rather than quantitative. For example rather than going into a run down area and asking people whether they would like more security camera’s around,  The Centre for Social Action’s approach was to go into the area and ask what people liked or didn’t like about living where they lived. This gave much more information and wasn’t a numbers game. It was time consuming and detailed. In terms of training my expertise was in Equal Opportunities issues and interactive training programs that allowed for in depth discussion and learning. This had been a knock on effect from my ‘Public Administration’ degree which essential turned out Civil Servants and the fact that I’d ended up as a policy writer, for two years, in an Equal Opportunites unit at Nottingham City Council. The whole team specialised in interactive training styles which I learnt and became part of including ‘Assertiveness Training’ amongst other things.

During that time we’d done quite a lot of work in Russia in the 1990’s, not long after the wall came down, in the new burgeoning voluntary sector. The Russians were keen to set up charities but wanted to find ways of avoiding patronising Victorian philanthropy and that was where we came in. We worked with a translator..Tania. Tania lived in a typical Russian apartment which was effectively one room with a tiny kitchen space to one side and a shower cubicle. Her main space was a living room that turned into a bedroom at night. Tania was in her 40’s and this was a normal living space although better than  some people’s places. There were still many blocks that existed where several families shared a bathroom on each floor. This usually involved a well designed rota to ensure everyone could get through the bathroom and to work on time. So Tania’s apartment, with it’s own shower, was relatively luxurious. It soon makes you conscious of just how lucky most of us are to have the amount of space we have and that it is not necessary to have a huge amount of space or heaps of things in order to live a decent existence. Having said that Tania wanted out of Russia. This was mostly because she found Russian men old fashioned and misogynistic  and, as she felt time was running away from her, she wanted a relationship but a better one that seemed possibly in Russia. She was already vilified to a certain extent because she was in her forties and had never married. There are other stories of my time in Russia but the point of telling you about Tania was that she eventually found a prospective partner on line. This was  a Swedish man who she married and moved in with, leaving Russia behind as she had wanted.. As far as I am aware they are still together. So this history with this woman I knew well and the story she’d told me made me very aware that there were some people who would do almost anything to get out of Russia and women in particular. Hence my scepticism about Lucy.

But love prevailed and Max and Lucy wed. I was not invited. That didn’t surprise me as it was a small registry office affair with only the required number of witnesses present.

Things went quiet again for a while and I began to hope all was well and my anxieties were totally unfounded. Then I got a phone call. Max wanted to talk to me about music. He said Lucy was writing songs and would I come and talk to them about how to protect things etc etc. I had the time and up to Lancaster I went. This time there was no open door with the Old Swan band blaring out but I got to meet Lucy, who, despite the fact I was only there over lunch had provided enough food for an army. Plate upon plate of Russian fare, salads, meats, potatoes and more. I did my best but when we’d all finished eating there didn’t seem to be any less on the table. Then we talked. Max seemed quite on edge but he was always a bit awkward around me and having the two most important women in his life  in the same room must have been stressful. At one point Lucy left the room and Max said to me, “You’re still my pin up girl you know”. I sighed and told him a) I was hardly a pin up girl at 53 and b) he shouldn’t say things like that he was married. He did manage to say the same thing twice.

They had written one song…when I say they, Lucy had written the words and Max had tried to help by writing a tune. They’s been to see a solicitor who had charged them £50 to copyright the song….that’s right £50 for one song. I said, ‘Max you don’t need to do that, you can record your songs and then send them to yourself in a registered envelope and that way you have proof they are yours and when you wrote them. This would give you recourse to the law if someone takes them and uses them. During all this I was bursting with curiosity of course but highly sceptical that these songs were going to be so good that anyone would want to steal them. It turned out that as well as being a translator Lucy had done some research work in Russia which someone else had stolen and put their name to and this made her completely paranoid about her work being stolen. The reason they wanted to see me wasn’t just for advice. They wanted me to record the songs as demo’s for them to then be able to sell or tote around. They genuinely thought they had merit and that they would be popular particularly in Russia.

There was one particular song they wanted me to record. Lucy had written the words and Max hadn’t ‘written’ the tune because he didn’t know how to but he could play it with one finger on a little casio keyboard he had. “How much would I charge to do this for them”?. I said, “No No. I’ll just do it for you but I’ll have to fit it around the other things I do”. “No we want to pay you” came the forceful retort. I didn’t say any more about it but took the words and a recording of Max’s one finger tune and home I went. It took me a little while but I did the demo for them and Max said they would come down to hear it. The thing was the words were absolutely terribly. I mean really terrible. I wished she’d write in Russian. I would have happily learnt how to pronounce it and was sure lyrically it would have been better in Russian than the in English (and I wouldn’t have understood what they said anyway0 but she wouldn’t hear of it. No it had to be in English as it would be more popular. It was wishy washy rubbish…I can’t really give you an accurate version as this is only from memory but it was something like:

Young Russian maid

Was walking through fields

Missing her home.

…and even that is better than her’s because hers read like someone who didn’t speak English. Max’s little tune, by contrast, was simple but effective and easy to put some nice chords to.

After I finished the demo they drove down to hear it. They were very excited and pleased with the result. ‘How could they get it heard”. I said,” at the moment unsigned artists tend to put their material on Myspace” (shows how long ago that was) . They were worried about protection and I did try to say, in the nicest possible way that no-one was going to steal it. They said they would copyright that one too for another £50. They wouldn’t listen to reason but they did let me set up their Myspace page and load up the track for them. Max insisted on giving me £50 for the work I had done and said there would be more songs coming in the post…and there was. The problem was I didn’t want to take their money and I didn’t really have much time to spare. They wanted to pay to make sure I did it. It was stalemate really as I stalled and stalled, mostly due to a very full diary and Lucy eventually lost it. I received a message from Max saying that Lucy was very angry and now accused me of trying to steal her songs. I was to send everything back and remove and destroy the recording from my systems and get rid of the MySpace page! Jesus Christ what paranoia. Lucy wouldn’t listen to reason and Max wouldn’t argue with her . I did as they asked and that was that.

Anytime after that when I tried to contact Max he said he couldn’t speak to me. One time we’d arranged a phone call but it was basically a chance for Max to say that I couldn’t ring because Lucy went ballistic. I couldn’t write because she would know and throw the letter’s in the bin and the final straw…I couldn’t email because she read all his emails. Unbelievable . I even tried ringing him at the University but he became convinced she would know.

It was like we had suddenly gone from A to Z with nothing in-between. The only thing that I felt could have contributed to Lucy’s anger was the knowledge that I had, that he still viewed me as his pin up girl….not nice for a wife. But he hadn’t married me he’d married her and I was just a fantastical musician in his imagination and a pretty ordinary real person that he was obsessed with. I had to let it go.

A couple of years ago Andy Cutting and I were staying with his in-laws and, as his father in Law is in the physics world I mentioned Max in the conversation. He looked him up on line and said,”I’m sorry to tell you he died two years ago”. God – I felt angry at not knowing but with no communication I suppose I wasn’t surprised that Lucy didn’t tell me. Why would she?

It was a sad end to someone who had been a constant in my life for 30 years and more. I was glad I went to Germany with his and learnt to understand him better and I hope that he was happy really. My impression sadly was that he was brow beaten and scared. I hope I’m wrong about that.

Thank you Max for being an extraordinary, infuriating, kind and generous individual. R.I.P.

The request came in the form of a letter. That’s to be expected that’s how we communicated on the whole although we had had the odd telephone call from time to time. Odd in both senses of the word.

Max was a Professor of physics and as part of that he supervised PHD students. He’d got on particularly well with one of them who was a young German man from Heidelberg. On more than one occasion the student and invited Max to visit him ad his parents but Max couldn’t quite pluck up the courage to go. It turned out that as he progressed through life he didn’t do international travel that much and was slightly anxious about it and about meeting the students parents. For some reason he thought that this would all be better if I went with him……and that’s what the letter asked me to do. He said he would pay for all the travel etc and do all the driving but he just wanted company for the trip.

I looked in my diary and bizarrely for me I had the time free. So I thought about it and thought. He has done so much for me over the years (by this time he’d also bought me a bass clarinet mostly because he wanted to see me play one. The one I own is the ‘son of’ that one as the one he originally bought for me was stolen from an instrument lock up at a festival – but that’s another story) that I thought Ok I can do this for him why not.

He had it all planned out, where we would stop on route, how long it would take us to get there and back, how long we would actually stay with the family etc. All I had to do was pack and wait for collection.

One thing I have forgotten to do up to this point was mention a couple of Max’s little quirks. You remember the old style computer paper that was slightly lined, quite wide and had little holes all down the sides, well when I first met him he used to cover his non occupied car seats in computer paper to stop them being damaged by the sun. He also used to get in his car with his coat, hat and gloves on and rarely put on the car heating. Not a problem in summer but in winter…brrrrr.  I used to tease him about that a lot

So arrive he did. Te car was less covered in computer paper because of the various things he’d packed for the trip including copious amounts of sandwiches. I wasn’t sure whether this was because he didn’t trust food abroad or whether he didn’t see any reason to pay for it when you could provide it yourself.

I mention the computer paper because as the trip unfolded and there were things to be paid for  like fuel etc and I became more and more aware that Max was OCD. All the coins he had with him were in plastic bank bags in the glove compartment. This was a cleanliness issue. That’s how he explained it to me. It kept them cleaner. His hands had been so scrubbed on so many occasions that his skin looked very dry, red and about to crack but he washed them obsessively.

We managed the trip Ok and we arrived in Heidelberg. The family were welcoming although a little stiff. I got the impression that they were quite conservative and certainly didn’t appear to drink. A bit of a shame as I could have murdered a beer on arrival but most of all, of course, they had no idea what to make of me! The relationship between us was not really explained or explainable. I was 20 years younger than Max, not an academic and not his girl friend? We were friends in their eyes but an odd pairing especially as Max liked, when out ,to have his photo taken with me, with his arm around my shoulders. he sang my praises constantly and had even given them some of my music. They probably thought I was a kind of gold digger . who knows.

I don’t remember much about the trip itself. I remember that we did a tour a round Heidelberg, up various towers , looking at the views etc. it was a very pretty place. I even think I remember eating ice-cream.’.ice spaghettiI’ I remember the awkwardness of being in their house as their guest when I had never met any of them before, not even the student, and most of all I remember that my increasing awareness of Max and his OCD made me like him more. It seems a strange thing to say but it actually endeared me to him more. Some how over those four or five days I felt like I knew and understood him better and that made me more relaxed.

I always felt an increased fondness for him from that time.

One time, on his return from Sidmouth, he had a near death experience caused by a pasty. I kid you not. He told me he’d bought the pasty before leaving Sidmouth and ate it at some point on the journey home…a hell of  journey…Sidmouth to Lancaster. Then shortly after he felt unwell and vomiting ensued etc. This apparently was so violent that he passed out and on coming round realised there was blood in his vomit. He could barely move and banged on his wall until his neighbour came. He was then rushed to hospital. It turns out that in order to calm the griping pain caused , presumably, by food poisoning he’d taken an aspirin. A whole one! This was my first realisation that there were different types of intelligence in the world and that even though he had a massive brain and was a highly respected physicist there were some things he simply didn’t know. He’d heard on a radio program that aspirin thinned your blood and therefore was a good way of preventing blood clots. i said Max…or more like “””MAAAAX -HOW MANY HAVE YOU BEEN TAKING? “””He’d been taking a full aspirin a day for a long time weakening the lining of his stomach and the dose he took on Pasty day caused internal bleeding. i did point out to him that the recommended dose, if you actually need them at all, is only a quarter to half a tablet, not a whole one. Anyway, I was so worried I thoroughly told him off. It did make me realise that he was quite vulnerable as an individual. So innocent in may ways. He really didn’t have a social life. His whole life was bound up in the university, his work and his students and when he was home he was home alone. rarely asked out to dinner and only going to the odd concert every now and then.

I became increasingly worried about this aspect of his life  feeling, after 30 years a sense of responsibility for his well being…….and then a miracle happened. He met someone. But was it the blessing it seemed to be?

The next blog will be the final instalment .

After the transfer of money to my account of money from my music patron I purchased the car and I also bought a washing machine as that had died too. One thing I remember is that not long after getting my lovely blue car I was trying to park it in a tight spot in a multi storey car park and got so close to a pillar that I ended up pushing a panel in on the passenger door. I was so upset. Easy enough to get sorted but not what you want with a new acquisition such as this especially when it was bought with someone else’s money. I think I’d had it three days. Groan. I wasn’t used to it for sure but I have a vague recollection that I was also slightly hung over on the morning. Oops!

I felt that I ought to visit Max to say thank him for this amazing gift at a time when I needed it so badly and proposed that I would drive up, stop over and come back the next day. I was a little anxious about it mostly because I was conscious that Max was quite obsessed with me.  He had always behaved like a perfect gentleman though. I suppose I decided to put my observations and trust to the test. I had by that time known him for for nearly ten years.

I told him my estimated time of arrival and off I drove up to Lancashire.

When I drove into his cul-de-sac he was waiting with the door open. He must have been nervously staring out of the window every few minutes….for hours probably. He flung his door wide and I could hear that he had The Old Swan Band on his stereo system full blast as a form of welcoming committee . He must have been planning this welcome and pressed play at exactly the moment he wanted to to hopefully create the right effect!

His house was a 1950’s modern semi detached house with garden. Inside it was relatively austere with few home comforts. Practical, clean but not ‘lovely’. Definitely what I would have termed a bachelor pad.

We talked – what else were we going to do? I thought it would be nice to find out something about him as I realised I knew nothing really other than the fact he was a physics lecturer .

First he cooked dinner. Boil in the bag roast beaf with gravy, tinned potatoes and some frozen peas. It’s funny the details we remember but then I have always been quite food orientated.

He said he believed he wasn’t the real child of his parents as he was so different from them and his siblings who were all money grubbers. He knew he was Jewish and believed he’d come to England on the ‘kinder’ (child) trains in the war but had never been able to find any documentation to prove it. For some reason the Jewish connection with my family mattered to him. He knew that we were Jewish by decent and said that this made him feel close to my mother, sister and I.

As a development of the conversation I asked him if he had a partner..there were no obvious signs of one. No, no partner and in fact he said he’s never had one.  I found this astonishing and so we talked more. He said he was a virgin. At that time I’m guessing he was about 50. He said that he’d had a girl friend once who had undressed in front of him but wouldn’t allow him to touch her. Jesus Christ what was that about! I actually felt both alarmed and very sorry for him. God knows how we’d gotten into such an intimate conversation but it didn’t stop there. He eventually confessed that really he wanted to marry me and lose his virginity with me.

I felt angry and frustrated but mostly with myself. Not Max. I was concerned that somehow my behaviour over the years had given him some kind of hope that that fantasy might become reality . In hindsight I realise now that nothing I could have done other than remove all contact or punch him in the face, would ever have convinced him that I wasn’t the woman for him. He was convinced like an evangelist . None of those dreams were based on reality. I felt cruel having to say to him that my marrying him or having any kind of intimate relationship with him was never ever, ever going to happen .  The bit of anger I did feel towards him made me cruel telling him if he wanted to ‘lose his virginity’ there were other ways of sorting that out! He was horrified and it was obvious at that point that if it wasn’t me it wouldn’t happen for him. This wasn’t like some urge that he hoped I’d sort…hence my anger as it made me feel cheap and wonder if he thought he had ‘bought’ me! No this was about an extension of his obsession – or love in his head. Naive love from a very inexperienced man. Off we went to bed and I spent a very restless night . Not because I felt unsafe but just uncomfortable after his confession and knowing he was only a few feet away. Max my Strange, quirky and social misfit fan.

Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest thing to have gone but on the other hand, as I keep saying, awkward he might have been but I had never felt threatened. Some of my friends even thought he was creepy. I often ended up standing up for him principally because at certain points in my life I have felt like a social outcast for one reason or another. I always thought he was ‘harmless’ whilst being kind and generous and I had wanted to say thank you for his incredible gift which I still think was amazing to this day.

Our relationship rolled on in the same vein as before. A reunion at Sidmouth once a year and two or three letters in-between with a birthday card and cheque from Max in December each year. in return I sent him every new CD release I was on.

Then one day Max made a bold suggestion. He asked me to do something for him. I’ll tell you about that next week.