In about 1974 we moved back to a village, this time one called East Cowton in North Yorkshire, and into a modern 4 bed house in a small street full of other modern 4 bed houses (modern for that era anyway). There was more of a garden, and fields all around where I got up to any bother I could with all the other kids from the street.
My Gran still lived with us for a while in this house (until she had to go into a care home, I think) but now both my brothers were absent most of the time (most of the 6 of us went to some kind of quaker boarding school for secondary education). When the brothers came home all they seemed to do was eat and so my Mum specialised in mountainous meaty meals and ample puddings.
I had German measles in this house (or measles, there was some disagreement between my Mum and the doctor on this). It meant lying in a darkened room for a couple of weeks – it wasn’t exactly Robert Louis Stevenson levels of childhood illness but I do have strong memories of it. No-one I knew had TVs in their bedrooms in those days so it really was just lying there in the dark feeling weird.
Again, I’m not sure why we moved from this house but we did after just a couple of years. There were a few tragedies in the street so that may have contributed as my Mum had already had more than her share of tragedy (widowed twice and other stories). Also, she wasn’t really a suburban street kind of person so maybe that was a factor (the village wasn’t technically a suburb but our street looked and acted a bit like one). I remember being excited, not sad, to move. I guess by this point I just expected to move every few years.
This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.
After my Dad died, my Mum, one brother and I moved into the nearby town of Darlington and into a new house on a small estate (this was in 1973, I think, but it might have been a little later). It was one of those tall, skinny houses that have been quite fashionable in recent years (though it was a simpler version than the 21st century ones). I loved it at first as I quickly made a friend who lived over the road and we could just open our windows and shout to each other in the evenings. Her Dad did not like me (can’t think why…) and after one particular afternoon when we ‘ran away’ (not very far) I was banned from seeing her altogether. Theirs was a very tidy home and the Dad was very much in charge (something I wasn't used to). We were a very different operation partly because my Mum had had a very restricted (and miserable) second part of her childhood and so was all for children having as much freedom and pleasure as possible. She was a trained children’s social worker who really believed children were the most important thing in the world. I’m not sure this helped me impress other children’s parents.
I had a strong memory of watching a TV programme that spooked me in this house (an episode of the detective show McCloud featuring, bizarrely, Dracula) but when I looked the show up recently that one wasn’t shown till 1977 so I must have got either my homes or my episodes mixed up on this one. We did always watch a lot of cop/detective shows (like most people) in the 1970s. There was so little TV for kids then – people complain about kids and video games these days but really much of my (bizarre) education was via Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, Target, Cannon etc. There’s a lot less murder on CBBC.
At some point my Mum’s Mum came to live with us in this house (at least I think she did – I certainly remember her being there a lot). This Gran was the only grandparent I ever really knew and she developed dementia in the 1970s. She was quite the character, married and widowed 4 times. Looking back my Mum was dealing with a whole lot of issues when we lived in this house. As a 7 year old, however, I was largely concerned with the pop charts, sweets, pets and TV. I don’t know why we moved from this house but we did move out of town fairly quickly (maybe in 1974?) and back into another village so maybe it was something to do with my Mum wanting more green in her life. Or maybe the neighbours got up a petition to get rid of us…
This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.
And if you’re interested, here’s a little background on my first home (my memories are not necessarily accurate so other memories are welcome too):
I was born in one of the bedrooms of this first address in 1967. My Dad was a village GP (though it was a midwife who assisted at the birth) and his surgery was part of the house too (downstairs with a separate entrance at the back). Both my parents had been married once before and widowed. They both had children from those first marriages (my Dad three daughters, my Mum one son) but as they are all a good bit older than me none of them lived at home much in my lifetime. My parents adopted one more child together in the mid 1960s (my closest sibling in age) and then I was a … late addition.
This home was, I think, an Edwardian house in a large village just outside the town of Darlington in the north of England. It looked very different to the smart place you see in the photo/video (these both use Google Street View so are fairly recent images). I remember it as a bit more chaotic and even ramshackle than that – in my time one room was kept tidy (and hardly used) but the rest was very lived in. I remember learning to ride one of my brother’s old bikes on that drive (gravel then, not the easiest surface) and I think I even remember a brother running alongside/behind as I learned, as parents more often do. The setting was all fields, what seemed then like a mighty river (the Tees) further down the village and a corner shop (where I remember spending my last old pennies before decimalisation in 1971). It is true what they say about most kids having more freedom in those times. I really did wander around the village on my own at about 5 years old (at least that’s how I remember it) and I went exploring with friends of a similar age too (building sites, riverbanks). We were lucky, I suppose, in that the roads were quiet and none of those adventures had sad endings.
I wasn’t aware of it at the time but my Dad had mental health problems for most of my childhood so I hardly saw or knew him at all (and that, no doubt, contributed to the feeling of chaos in the house). He died in 1973 (more on that in later posts) and we moved house not long after.
This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). In January 2020 I wrote a 31-word poem and posted a drawing to illustrate a word of it every day for a month (more info here). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.
So, here we are into the seasons of long dark hours. I've been trying to keep the mind distracted – listening to radio shows, reading quite a bit (I spent October on the 1000 or so pages of Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman, for example). I probably wouldn't have stuck to it without lockdowns (too much else to distract the brain and it’s a fiddly read, most of it just one sentence…) but with the limited options available I did plough my way through it (every word, including all the “the fact that”s). It is an amazing achievement as a piece of writing, but I’d have to say I preferred the (shorter) sections about the mountain lion to all the lengthy meanderings of the human woman’s mind (too close to home perhaps...). Her mind is like all the bins combined (here we have food caddy, paper and cardboard - blue, other recycling - burgundy, garden - brown, other waste - grey and we take bottles to bottle banks ourselves), except the contents of her mind are: old movies, baking, 4 kids, US politics, her small baking business, her childhood, her parents, chickens, her 2 husbands, local people, illness, history…
Now in November I’m reading a few things that couldn’t be more different to the (carefully structured) rambling of Ducks. One is Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights (beautiful, precise, poetry without the line breaks) and Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist (a very special book, written about and during the year when the author went from 14 to 15 years old, and covering birds, insects, school, moving house, family life and much, much more). Once we’re adults I think maybe we become too keen on the idea that children and teenagers can’t know much when often they know (and appreciate and understand) a lot more than we care to consider (even if some, unlike this particular young naturalist, don’t have the language, confidence or even desire to communicate that to the rest of us).
All of which reminds me of a theory I was introduced to (in a training session…) back in about 2001 when I was working as an English GCSE tutor for a local authority project in West Yorkshire. The theory was about different kinds of intelligence (something like this I think) and as someone who falls mainly into the linguistic-verbal group (and therefore found it fairly easy to do well in our education systems) it was quite an eye-opener. I learned how for some sitting in classrooms is a lovely, easy way to learn but for so many others it is a kind of temporary prison (some learn better outside, hands in the mud, we learned; others learn better if they can be active and just run around as regularly as possible). Dara writes about this very well (“I think of all the technical advances humankind has made over the last hundred years, yet the way we’re educated has stayed more or less the same. With rows of bodies sat rigidly behind desks. Sitting still.”). He writes about how challenging school is with autism but the different types of intelligence theory suggests there are other issues at play here too. Any young people who connect better with the outside natural world than the human indoors one will learn better out in nature and should be allowed out there as much as possible.
All of which reminds me of another great spokesperson for kids and the outdoors. Author Michael Morpurgo set up the charity Farms for City Children in 1976 and it’s still going strong (though needing support right now, like so many people and organisations…) and one of my current favourite listens just now is Michael Morpurgo’s Folk Journeys (all 4 episodes on the BBC iPlayer now). In it he looks at the traditions of four types of subject in song (war, protest, love and home/migration). Contributions come from, amongst others, Scotland’s mighty Karine Polwart (another keen naturalist and part of the brilliant Spell Songs project). KP manages to have more of a foot in the pop world than some folkies (her Scottish Songbook album, for example, covered a great selection of Scottish pop songs from different eras) and her views on love songs in this series were especially interesting. My other favourite radio listen just now is actor Cillian Murphy’s current Limited Edition show on BBC 6 Music. I love many shows on that station but Cillian’s is such a treat (particularly good on headphones if you can’t sleep). His taste in music is great and his presenting style (from his basement) is very low key and friendly.
I opened this post with the intention of starting to write about my own next project ideas (hence the photo at the top, that’s me in 1970, aged 3) and finally here is a paragraph about it. I intend to take part in the Fun A Day Dundee art project (FADD) again in January and I have been homing in on a direction for that in recent weeks. Last January I wrote a 31-word poem and illustrated a word a day (round-up here) but this time I have other plans. Many of us have spent a lot more time than usual in our homes this year (if we are lucky enough to have one) and I realised that I have lived in 31 different places/homes in my life and that coincidence kept nagging away to be used. So, my plan is to write 31 poems (1 for and about each home/place I’ve lived) and there will be some kind of visuals to go with them. I started looking at old photos (hence the one at the top of this post – that’s me on the steps of the first place I lived in Middleton-St-George near Darlington in England). I was actually born upstairs in that house in 1967 and we lived there until Dad died in 1973. The building also housed Dad’s GP surgery (in the days when it was only one doctor per surgery, certainly in areas like ours, though there was another surgery and doctor over the road as it was a big village). There will be some natural history content to the poems (I think the opening one is going to be called First nest) but it will be mixed in with a lot of whatever I can remember about the people, fixtures, fittings, emotions, smells and sounds of each home experience too. I’m not sure how much ‘fun’ it will be (for me or anyone else) but they don't disqualify you for not being fun in this group. So far I have rough drafts for the first 8 poems - I plan to do drafts now and then fine tune the words and incorporate the visuals each day in January. I think the whole thing will be called 31 Postcodes. I really enjoyed being part of the FADD group last year, seeing all the work online (mainly Instagram) and even meeting a few of the folk before the Lockdown Age began. This winter those of us not actively involved in saving lives need creativity and activity and music and nature more than ever to keep us out of trouble (internal and external). Don’t you think?
I started writing this on holiday in Argyll in September. I was sitting by the Firth of Clyde, in a garden, playing a Stevie Wonder song on my phone (quietly, not disturbing anyone, no headphones to hand...) and the resident robin came to see what on earth was going on (the same robin that made it into a poem in the previous post too). I particularly love the song (Love’sin need of love today from Songs in the Key of Life).
In January this year I took part in the Fun A Day Dundee art project by producing a piece of art every day for 31 days and posting a photo of it online (mainly to Instagram and Twitter). This week there are online events to celebrate the project (which has been running in Dundee since 2011) so here are some more details about my contributions, specifically information about all the musical references. This is my idea of fun... I did used to be a DJ and music reviewer in a previous life after all.
Step 1
At the end of December 2019 I wrote a poem with 31 words and no word repeated. You can read the poem back here (or square by square on Instagram or further down this post).
Step 2
I did an illustration every day for January 2020 with a word from the poem at the centre and all kinds of references to songs/musicians. I posted one illustration every day to Instagram and Twitter. I have done very, very little drawing and illustrating in my life so this was really something new for me. If I had realised in January that I was going to use a 7 inch single format to display them I would have made my squares that size in the first place (I didn't, I randomly went for 15 cm squares instead).
Step 3
I started getting ready for the Fun A Day exhibition, got little record sleeves and was planning to display the illustrations (a) on the wall (as you see records displayed in record shops) and (b) in a little record box so you could flick through them (also like in record shops). I had some slightly enlarged versions of the illustrations printed by Urban Print so they would fit the record sleeve display idea better.
Step 4
The on-wall exhibition was cancelled due to you-know-what and this weekend there is an online exhibition instead (see samples of all the participants' work here). My new contribution is a video of me and the poem filmed yesterday (apologies to Mr Dylan):
And here is a pic of all the illustrations together (on the floor, they haven't made it to a wall yet...):
And here are notes on the musical references for each one:
Start (1st Jan)
Just one musical link here – ‘Start’ by The Jam (released 1980). This has always been one of my favourite Jam songs. It makes me feel like a teenager (I was 13 in 1980).
with (2nd Jan)
Not much drawing on this one but wordy references (round the edge of the square) to songs by Hot Chocolate (‘It started with a kiss’, 1982), U2 (‘With or without you’, 1987), Stardust (‘Music sounds better with you’, 1998), Dusty Springfield/The Tourists/lots of others (‘I only want to be with you’ 1963/1979 and others), Stealers Wheel (‘Stuck in the middle with you’, 1972) and The Beatles (‘With a little help from my friends’, 1967).
fun (3rd Jan)
This has one reference – ‘Big Fun’ by Inner City (1989). I was a career raver between 1989 and about 1997 so had to get some house music into this (note the wee hoose in the corner). ‘Dance the night away’ comes from the track (and I did, many, many times).
and (4th Jan)
Here we have ‘And the beat goes on’ by The Whispers (1979). 10 million views on the YouTube video of this track so evidently it is still going on (and on and on). I got a tiny bit more adventurous with my drawings here (all with ‘beat’ or ‘whispering’ links).
make (5th Jan)
Suddenly my illustrating ambitions went up a level for this Motown record label-inspired drawing and link to ‘I’m gonna make you love me’ (various versions but best known Motown one by Diana Ross and the Supremes & the Temptations in 1968). This reminds me of teenage big fun sitting with a friend in her room in a Middlesbrough suburb in the 1980s, listening to her older sister’s soul records and singing along REALLY LOUD.
a (6th Jan)
The Jackson 5 and ‘ABC’ (1970) for this one. Also the little heart in the corner is a reference to Amy Winehouse as it is one of her tattoos (the easiest one to draw by some distance…).
I loved En Vogue’s ‘Hold on’ when it came out in 1990 and remember hearing it played regularly on Leeds pirate radio stations like WYBC. The suitcase and the glass are just things you can hold… but the waves reference a song called ‘Hold back the tide’ by Northumberland musician Johnny Dickinson (on his album ‘English Summer’ 2005). I saw Johnny a couple of times at the folk club in Montrose and he was an amazing singer and guitarist and I still listen to his music regularly (I even have his ‘Hear me calling’ as my mobile ringtone). Sadly he died in 2019 after a long illness.
your (9th Jan)
Somehow friends and I ended up singing Hazel O’Connor’s ‘Will You’ (1981) on Hogmanay 2019. So luckily this gave me an idea for ‘your’ (‘You drink your coffee and I sip my tea…). ‘Breaking Glass’ (the film) was a big deal in the UK in 1980 (so I remember).
nerve (10th Jan)
I suspect the daughter (who loves musicals) helped me with this idea (‘if I only had the nerve’, Cowardly Lion, The Wizard of Oz, movie, 1939). She even wrote about lions and musicals recently (see here).
As a teenage rocker with two older brothers (both big into rock music) the first thing that came into my head for this was Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Don’t fear the reaper’ (1976… but played long after that in our house). Not the most cheerful illustration for this one, I’m afraid! I did try to give the reaper a face but it wasn’t working so I went with moody and mysterious instead.
the (13th Jan)
I have a real soft spot for the song ‘The man that got way’ as sung by Judy Garland in ‘A star is born’ (1954). So when I needed a ‘the’ I went for a line from that song (‘the night is bitter’). My Mum and daughter were both partial to the ‘winning parts in musicals shows’ of the noughties (‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ etc.) so I watched them even though they weren’t really my thing. In the ‘Oliver’ themed one (‘I’d do anything’) the now very well-known actress Jessie Buckley sang this song as her big number (and did a fantastic job). She’s a star, that’s for sure. And she’s in the biopic ‘Judy’ (2019) though not playing the lead. Everything comes back to Oz one way or another.
dark (14th Jan)
‘The lights come on…’ is from ‘Blackout’ (1989) by Lil’ Louis (he of ‘French Kiss’ fame). ‘Dancing in the dark’ (1984) is another boss (Bruce Springsteen). I wasn’t a fan of Springsteen growing up but I have come round to him, bit by bit.
open (15th Jan)
I adore Corinne Bailey Rae’s first two albums and the line here (‘my heart’s an open door’) is from ‘I’d do it all again’ (2010) from the album ‘The sea’. I’m not really sure where the caravan came in (Isley Brothers link maybe…).
boxes (16th Jan)
I knew ‘Little boxes’ was a Pete Seeger song (1963) but I didn’t know it was written by someone else – Malvina Reynolds (in 1962). For the illustration I went for record boxes (and record sun) because I was a club/radio DJs for some years in my 20s. The Teletubby colours are from another period in my life I think (childrearing in my 30s and 40s).
turn (17th Jan)
This word turns up in lots of songs and I named one of my publications ‘Turn’ so I went through a lot of possibles for this one. In the end I went for a song I really don’t like (though it has been around for much of my life) – ‘Total eclipse of the heart’ (1983) by Bonnie Tyler – mainly because I was ending up with lots of circles in my illustrations and I liked the idea of an eye from the lyric ‘Turn around, bright eyes’ (it’s green because I have green eyes). This song was written by Jim Steinman (he of the Meatloaf songs) and I certainly did like them (in the late 70s/early ‘80s anyway) and still know most of the words. They seem very musical theatre in retrospect and there is indeed a ‘Bat out of hell’ musical out there somewhere (fairly recent I think).
up (18th Jan)
Two song links in this one. The first is an old song ‘Up, up and away’ (1967) by the 5th Dimension which is another of those that has, literally in this case, been around my whole life. The second is newer - ‘Cranes in the sky’(2016) by Solange (lyric ‘I ran my credit card bill up’). I suppose the balloon is also a little reference to the film ‘Up’ (2009).
proud (19th Jan)
So why is Mary Poppins on that skateboard you ask? Because she’s ‘rollin’, rollin, rollin’ like a river.’ ‘Proud Mary’ is a Creedence Clearwater Revival track from 1969 and then there were various other versions including Ike and Tina Turner’s in 1971 (though it is now mostly associated with Tina Turner). It crops up all over the place (wii Just Dance anyone? Quite the workout). There are little nods to other Marys in the illustration too – Mary Quant top left and Mary J Blige bottom right.
burn (20th Jan)
After venturing into vaguely figurative art I moved from magical nannies to Scottish poets with this illustration featuring Rabbie Burns in a disco suit (influenced by the Trammps ‘Disco Inferno’, 1976 and its ‘Burn baby burn’). The witch’s hat in the corner is a nod to ‘Burn the witch’ by Radiohead from their album ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ (2016). I didn’t love Radiohead in the early days but I live with a fan and I have come to appreciate them. Way back I wrote a poem called ‘Not tonight, Radiohead’ that even mentions disco so that’s an odd link for me too.
down (21st Jan)
Two musical links on here – one to ELO’s ‘Don’t bring me down’ (1979) and one to ‘3 miles down’ (1978), a song about miners by one of my longtime favourites Gil Scott-Heron. The latter isn’t one of GSH’s better known tracks but the live version is particularly good.
sadness (22nd Jan)
Watch out! Here comes Van Morrison and some links to his song ‘Have I told you lately that I love you’ (1989, lyric ‘Fill my heart with gladness, take away my sadness’). It’s a gloomy (if cheeky) picture but it’s probably one of my favourites in this pack.
play (23rd Jan)
I had something else in mind for this but then I heard ‘Play the game’ (1980) by Queen on the radio at some point in January and ended up working around that instead (Freddie Mercury and Brian May on a playing card). There are a few little unspecified nods to playing games and playing music on there too.
out (24th Jan)
I first heard Michael Marra play, speak and sing in Montrose in 2006 (I think) but he was from Dundee (where I live now) and I heard him perfrom live here too (as well as a few more times in Montrose). He was such a great performer and songwriter that I struggle to put it into words. He died in 2012, which seems an incredibly long time ago already and I can’t believe he’s been gone that long. I had to get one of his songs in here somewhere and ‘Take me out drinking tonight/When these shoes were new’ (1980) was the one that seemed to fit. The little portrait (top left) doesn’t look much like him (only the headgear…) but the pub theme also reminds me of some of his other songs that mention pubs. He lovingly painted musical portraits of all Dundee life. For me he is up there (in both senses) with some of my faves (Nina Simone, Gil Scott-Heron...).
loud (25th Jan)
Mainly the musical link here is Kate Bush and ‘Snowflake’ (2011) but also a little bit of Stevie Wonder and ‘Do I do’ (1982, ’Your love talks to me so loud…’). I had to get Stevie in somewhere.
help (26th Jan)
It’s the Beatles. And they need help (look at them, their faces have disappeared...).
is (27th Jan)
Again I wanted to get David Bowie in somewhere and I managed it here. I did really love ‘Space Oddity’ (was fascinated by the visuals on Top of the Pops in 1975 when it was rereleased and went to number one) and I squeezed it in here (and you will notice I had had enough of trying to draw faces by this point…).
art (28th Jan)
I spent ages trying to choose a song I liked for this one. In the end I went for ‘Mona Lisa’ – best known as a Nat King Cole song from 1950. It was first written for a film (‘Captain Carey, USA’) and I probably know it best from another film (‘Mona Lisa’, 1986) which was popular in the ’80s but I haven’t seen since.
just (29th Jan)
I needed to have a Nina Simone song in the set too and one of my favourites is the live version of ‘Just in time’ (1962) that’s used at the end of the film ‘Before Sunset’ (2004). The song was written by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green and first showed up in the musical ‘Bells are Ringing’ in 1956 (musicals get everywhere!). Just to be fussy I set the clock in the illustration to the time of sunset in Paris on 29th January 2020 (because ‘Before Sunset’ is set in Paris).
take (30th Jan)
More circles in the illustration here… and a very vague link to ‘Don’t take away the music’ (Tavares, 1976) and ‘You are my sunshine’ (‘don’t take my sunshine away…’, numerous versions). And the radio? I’ve listened to so much music radio in my life (cheesy commercial radio in my teens and then later pirate radio, folk shows, 6 music…) that I had to get a radio in there too. Radio is a door to so much music.
part (31st Jan)
This is another one that took a while to choose. Mostly this refers to ‘The Parting Glass’ which I have heard various people sing at folk clubs and concerts (and there is lovely version on Cara Dillon’s 2008 album ‘Hill of thieves’). The song ends ‘good night and joy be with you all’ and it seemed a good way to end the run. Other musical references on the illustration are to Ian Dury and the Blockheads (Reasons to be cheerful part 3 – ‘why don’t you get back into bed’ and ‘summer buddy holly’), Joy Division (‘Love will tear us apart) and Fergie ‘A little party never killed nobody’. Oh and the curtains are parted. Ah ha!
If you got this far thanks for reading and come and join in the fun in 2021! I really enjoyed taking part and it is a great, friendly group.
