Part II (I still believe in…)

 

So when we last parted company I said I’d tell you how I was going to bookmark the end of my year. This event has passed so here we are!

I adore reading the lyrics to peoples songs. I love stumbling across that one that seems to relate directly to my own life. I often talk about living life ‘lyrically’ – certain moments, experiences and people trigger the play button on one of the many songs I have stored up in my head. I particularly love lyrics that stand alone, without the music, like beautiful prose. Elbow are masters at this (if you haven’t already, then look up ‘Great Expectations’). If we’re talking lyrics, another of my favourites are the band Hope and Social. ‘Ripples Rock My Boat’ would be one of my desert island disc records.

I still believe in the lovers entwined
I still believe in the nursery rhyme
I still believe in the appeal on TV
I still believe in the ministry

I still believe in the power of a kiss
I still believe in the birthday wish
I still believe in the birds on the breeze
I still believe in you and me

But every now and again the ripples rock my boat
I just throw up my arms and we get soaked
Throw this clutter overboard
Throw reasons not to out the door
We'll count our blessings and lucky stars
They'll soon outweigh these heavy hearts

After a really rough patch, I still believe that things will be ok. I still believe in love. Probably more than I ever have before. My boat has been rocked but I have plenty of blessings to count.

Almost a year after the Hope and Social Snowball (for that was, indeed, the event described in the previous post – Hell’s Angels and all!) I found myself stood at the front of the Brudenell Social club wearing a gold cape, beside me were 3 men dressed a bit like the rat pack and a slightly intoxicated Elvis. Hope and Social had planned yet another amazing event – Shit Vegas was full of brilliant memories for me. They didn’t perform ‘Ripples Rock My Boat’, however they did play something I’d never heard them do live before. The bit of the gig that stuck in my head the most was the ending of ‘Eurospin’. The crowd carrying on the refrain of ‘hold your chin up high’. That feeling like they might possibly have been singing to me. I needed to hear it right then.

So this is how I will bookmark the end of my year. With another Hope and Social gig. We started with the Snowball last year and we end with this years Winter Warmer. A magical night, where it was really hammered home to me how privileged we are to watch these boys - because more than any band I’ve ever seen, they play for the audience. You’re as much a part of it as them, all in on their journey. It’s special and I can’t recommend it highly enough. We saw out the evening, singing along to that same, uplifting refrain. Hold your chin up high. To be in the company of someone you love, belting out something that brings you such hope. That is how I chose to ring in my new year.

 

Happy New Year xxx

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Postscript

Not because my best friend talked me into it ;) (www.jamiefletcher.co.uk) although he made the choice far easier!

Not because it features lyrics from a song by one of my favourite bands of all time (www.hopeandsocial.com) although I LOVE that it does. I hope they don’t mind. In fact it started with ‘Hold Your Head Up High’ by one of my friends bands – a very different song indeed! But if you read the above you’ll know why I changed my mind.

Not because it features a cute little bird that was inspired by the very talented Rob Ryan (www.misterrob.co.uk)

Not because it was based on a design by someone I’m more than a little fond of (www.simonwiffen.co.uk) although it will inevitably remind me of them by default. That’s ok with me.

But because I need reminding that even in the darkest hour, even when it’s all crashing down on me, when it all gets too much…it’ll be ok.

Part I (How do you measure….)

Have you seen the musical, Rent? It’s not the…jolliest of plots. It centres around a group of ‘artists’ dealing with, drugs, AIDS, death (I wont go into too much detail on the chance I put you off – it is a classic - honestly). However, there are a couple of moments that are less depressing and more about the wonderful nature of the human spirit. In the song ‘Seasons of Love’ the question is posed ‘How do you measure a year?’.

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?
How about love? Measure in love!
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?
In truths that she learned or in times that he cried.
In bridges he burned or the way that she died.

A year is a funny thing – where do you start? A year in your life starts with your birthday, so maybe my year goes on till April. Or maybe you go to school – chances are you often start your ‘year’ in September. For most of us we simply refer to our diary – a year rolls from January to January. From one new years eve to the next.

This time I’m bookmarking my year with Decembers. With specific events in December actually. This ‘year’ really started for me with a silly blue hat, some good friends, some new faces, a hells angel wedding and a curry. Up until that day I was doing just fine. I mean, I had everything you really need. I was optimistic about what the new year would bring. The day marked the start of my Christmas festivities, my favourite time of year.

Friends were plentiful, gifts were exchanged, there was a tree and stockings and singing.

And it was perfect.

The year that has followed it, however, has been…less than. Within a couple of months I had handed in my notice at my job, and by April the 1st I was out of love with my vocation and left in a cloud of depression. Bad times tend to travel in herds don’t they? So these months were also dotted with illness, financial worries, funerals, unemployment, followed closely by massive upheavals in my home life.

The specifics don’t really matter. Time passes – shit happens. Life goes on.

Here is the first thing I have learnt: However your year pans out, don’t mark your year by misfortunes and misery. Measure in the good things that happen to you. In the people in your life that make you smile. In the moments you’ve held your breath, stepped off the edge and taken a risk. The people that live long and happy lives are the people that know how to celebrate the little victories.

As for how the rest of the year panned out (and to find out how I'll bookmark the other end!) I'll let you know in Part 2 in a couple of weeks…

In the mean time, how was your year?

How not to go birdwatching.

I bet your Dad has a penknife.

Penknives are a very ‘Dad' sort of thing. A very, “You have a stone in your horses hoof? Stand back, I can handle this!” sort of thing. Dads like fixing things, and they like gadgets. The Swiss army knife is the epitome of all fathers hold dear.

My Dad has two penknives (greedy eh?!). One is a beautiful object d’art, a piece of polished bone and steel, handed down to him by his own father. The other is large, red, crammed to the brim with stabby, pointy, choppy, snippy features. And a tooth pick. There is nothing this knife can’t do. That is why, when packing for a walking holiday, it was the first thing he would reach for.

Family holidays followed a familiar pattern for many of my formative years. We spend weeks packing suitcases with clothes for ‘every eventuality’. My mother unpacks them and then packs them again. She also cleverly reduces my Dad’s clothing allowance by half and her shoe allowance doubles. Rucksacks are filled with books, toys, games and walkmans (yes cassettes) to occupy the children.

The day of the holiday arrives. I say ‘day’. It’s 5am in the morning. We’re awoken. Splash a cold flannel across our faces and bleary eyed make our way into the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen. The instruction is to whisper so as not to disturb the neighbours. A loud cough is met with stern disproval. We fall out of the front door and carefully make our way, in the dark, to the car. My Dad has already attached the roof box the night before and has been up for hours carefully filling it with all our luggage like a slightly mental version of the krypton factor.

We are driving to Scotland, hence the very early start. It will take a LOT of hours and there will be a number of toilet stops. If we don’t set off at stupid o’clock we won’t get there till tea time. When my brother and I were little, the back of the car was like a den. We’d be surrounded by books, comics, pens and pencils. At first I liked to listen to audio books, when I was older it was music, I had a teacher who sang in a funk cover band and for one of the holidays theirs was the only album I would listen to. I still know all the words to ‘Hard to Handle’ and the spoken bits from ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’.

When we eventually arrive at our destination, the car is unpacked – this is much quicker than the packing part. Sometimes my brother and I are sharing a room. This isn’t always to our liking and we fight, a lot, but there are occasional moments of beautiful friendship. As a child I was an avid reader. I used to devour books like bags of sweets – reading two or three a day. I had to pack a small bookcase worth to sustain the habit over a fortnights holiday. One holiday (a rainy one, in Scotland) my brother and I played libraries. I’d somehow packed about 20 books. Adding my mum, dads and brothers holiday reading, plus some new ones I’d bought with my spending money – we ended up with closer to 40 books. We made each one a ticket, alphabetised them, developed a shelving system and issued lending cards to our parents. Being the industrious types, we actually profited with a very strict fining policy for late books. I’m smiling because I know for a fact we spent all the profits on Spiras and bubble gum.

I remember going on the ‘big walks’. These were walking boot, waterproof jacket,
packed lunch kind of walks. We used to save our toast crusts at breakfast (even as I’m typing this I can’t believe we fell for it) to use as a ‘high energy’ snack to sustain us. Mum, Dad, if you’re reading this, why couldn’t we have just had a Mars bar? We would drive to our starting point of choice, on with the specially chosen, thermally intelligent (honestly) socks, lace ourselves into our boots and file, grimly, towards the start of the footpath. At this point my brother and I had developed a tactic. We didn’t feel the need to take in the scenery so we would stride out, leaving the olds to dawdle along behind us. Our thinking was, the sooner we got to the top of the hill the sooner we could sit down and have our lunch. We used the walk as a time to perfect our double act, we’d make up funny songs, recreate TV shows, invent little skits. These moments were golden. I’m glad we didn’t have phone cameras and youtube to preserve them – because now they exist just for us, in our memories.

When my parents join us at the summit of the walk, we cram our lunch in and immediately begin the decent. I love this. We spend hours getting to the top, and what for? To come back down again. Beautiful. This is the way of the ‘big walk’ and so it continues for years. Until one year my Dad changes things up a bit. He’s bought some binoculars and we use these to, at regular intervals, stop and look at birds. Oh yes. They are mostly the same birds every time.* The odd Red Kite or Heron adding a little excitement. We have joined the RSPB and I am even a member of the YOC. ** As members of the RSPB we know all the best places in Scotland to go bird watching. Great!

So, during one of our self catering, Scottish, summer walking holidays , we choose one of the recommended birding haunts for a ‘big walk’. The walk itself is unremarkable enough, it follows the same pattern. My brother and I have invented a song called left and right. It’s sung to the tune of ‘Saved by the Bell’ and is basically about our feet. We’re pretty cool. Halfway through the walk we come to a reservoir. On the edge of the water is, what’s essentially, a small wooden shed. I later learn this is called a ‘hide’. It has long, narrow, rectangular windows, high up along the side facing the reservoir. There is no glass in these windows, instead they have wooden flaps that you unhook and open so you can see out. The point of this? You can go inside the shed and watch the birds without disturbing them. Brilliant…if you like that kind of thing. Out come the binoculars. “Oh look there’s a duck!” Do I tell my Dad we see these at home….all the time? “Oh look, a Great Tit!” Snigger.

What feels like hours later, we’re still ‘spotting’ birds. We’ve consumed our picnic, my mum has tried to rally us by spotting a very rare water bird, it’s another duck. It’s time to go. In reality it’s been time to go since we arrived. We pack up our stuff and my Dad reaches for the door handle. Seconds pass but we’ve still not left the shed. I look to my father, my hero, my guide, our expedition leader, whose hand is still on the door handle. Only the door handle isn’t attached to the door any more. My dad has, somehow, pulled the handle clear off the door.
Bugger.

My mum says a word which I think may have been ‘shit’ but could easily have been ‘tit’ (as in naming the bird, clearly).

“it’s ok, it’s ok, we can still open it if we can get hold of the….oh”
“What is it Dad?”
“Well the bit we need to…turn….has kind of….fallen out…..the other side….it’s outside”

This time I know my mum’s not naming birds.

My little brother is crying, you would be too if you thought you had to stay in a 6 foot by 4 foot wooden, bird-watchers shed for the rest of your life.

We’re smart people – we’ve read a lot of adventure books – although the plan we eventually form is more Enid Blyton than John Le Care. We need to get someone out of the window, either to fetch help or somehow wrestle the door open. My eyes scan the team to weigh up our best option. My brother is little – but probably too little – he’d easily fit through the window but he’d struggle to get safely to the floor outside. My mum, well, she doesn’t do that kind of thing. My Dad is tallest, but he’s also a big guy. There’s no way he can squeeze through that window. All eyes turn to me. I’m not very…coordinated. I never have been. I’m definitely not the climbing type. However, before I have chance to think of an excuse, my parents have grabbed me, their precious, only daughter, and are trying to stuff me through a window which is about 6 feet off the ground. This bit is not so bad. It’s a squeeze but I fit. The problem comes when I’m halfway out of the window, my entire top half is in the great outdoors. I make my first error and look down. The hut is situated on a steep bank. The drop to the floor is about 10 feet. My parents are cramming me out of a window to my bone breaking doom!

Because my head (and neck and upper body) are outside, my parents can’t hear my slightly terrified yelps so I brace myself for landing, something about tucking and rolling flashes into my head but then I realise I don’t really know what that means. In the end I perform an entirely, ungraceful nose dive/belly flop, taking most of the skin off my legs against the window frame on the way down.

I scramble to my feet, brush the mud from my clothes and limp round to the door of the shed. The handle is in bits. We may have been too quick to blame my father for this one. Even he couldn’t have so completely destroyed the door handle, not from the inside. The turny bit won’t go back into its hole. I look at the bits of the mechanism still attached to the door – it’s only held on by 3 big screws – I reckon if I can take out the screws I can remove the whole lot and the door will swing open. Gingerly I potter down the footpath to try and find someone to assist my rescue mission. I’ve not got very long legs, and the ones I do have are quite sore, and when I look at my watch I see I’ve been gone half an hour. There’s nobody about and I don’t dare wonder too much further.

The feeling of failure weighing heavy, I turn and begin to make my way back to the shed. Eventually I see its familiar wooden form. I walk around the side and shout up to the window. “There’s nobody around! I just need a screwdriver and I’d be able to get you out of there!” I hear a whining noise, my brother wants a wee. There’s a shout of “heads” and a thump on the grass next to me. I look down and there, lying in the grass is my father’s Swiss army knife. It’s a thing of beauty, its red handle glowing in the dwindling afternoon sunlight. Relief floods through me.

An hour after we began our exit the Marsden family finally leave the RSPB recommended bird hide.

The walk back to the car, and the journey home, pass slowly. Nobody is talking. We’re cross, tired, stressed.

That night, we’re sat warming ourselves by the fire, yes it’s August but we’re in Scotland remember. As my mother gently applies salvon and plasters to my bruised and battered legs, and my father browses a national trust leaflet sizing up the next ‘big walk’, my brother is playing quietly with some toy cars in the corner of the room. Nobody has really spoken since the incident, so when Phil pipes up we all shoot him a curious look.

“Daaaad?”
“....Yes?”
“You know before…when we were stuck…and you pushed Heather out of a window?”
“……Yes?”
“Well……was your Swiss Army Knife……..in your bag the whole time?”
“Erm…..yes….”
“Daaaaaaad?..........Couldn’t you have just unscrewed it from the inside?”

This time my mother is definitely not naming birds.

*I once saw an eagle. An actual, feathery, huge eagle. Nobody believed me and Dad wouldn’t get the binoculars out to look. Their loss.
** This is the Young Ornithologists Club. I went to meetings and Bill Oddie was there once. Through this I got 4 penpals and a stalker but that’s a different story.