Midweek Update 37: The Glass is Half Full edition
A Good Friday, a Saturday Awayday, a Singing Sunday, and almost no mention of Beyoncé
Thank you for taking the time to read this latest Midweek Update, which alternates with a longer weekend read, the occasional archive from the interview vaults, and the Crossed Channels podcast. If you know of someone you feel would also enjoy Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith, please do pass this along.
I am highly grateful for all the responses received to my Good Friday/Birthday post on the occasion of my mother’s 90th Birthday: She is 90. I’m A Boy. I started receiving sympathetic and supportive e-mails and private messages, along with comments both on Substack and via my Facebook link, almost as soon as the article was put online. This was only partly from people who know/knew my mother personally, and was otherwise testimony to the love we should all have for our mothers. But, especially, there was an almost universal understanding of how dementia robs us off our loved ones even when they are seated right next to us. I think it is probably fair to say that nobody who has reached middle age has survived untouched by the effects of dementia, and many of them so much worse than myself.
As such, I’m happy to report that we had a wonderful 90th birthday celebration. It didn’t seem it was going to work out that way when we received a morning e-mail alerting us that our mother had had a fall that very morning while trying to seat herself for breakfast, and when my brother and I, along with my partner Paula, showed up at the Care Home shortly thereafter, Ruth was clearly not herself. Not only was she unable to identify her sons even as people she knows vaguely or recognizes as friendly faces, but she kept asking “Where am I? What is this?” as she looked around her bedroom that normally provides familiarity. The few friends who were coming a planned celebration in the “Bistro” on a neutral floor would have fully understood if Ruth could not have joined them, but fortunately, after I spent fifteen minutes or so alone with her, she came around, began to smile in recognition, and when she asked for a cup of tea, she provided the perfect opportunity for me to suggest we go downstairs and have one.
As five friends, including one cousin from my father’s side of the family who by complete coincidence also lives in Beverley, rolled in one by one, one of them bringing a home-made Easter Bonnet, Ruth continued to brighten, eventually holding court as she always used to, albeit that these days the torrent of words make only vague sense, and even then only to those who had heard the details in days gone by. Nonetheless, she claimed to recognize the melody to “I’m A Boy” when I played her the cover version Paula and I released under our Hudson Palace guise that same day, March 29th and when one friend played her a recording of herself singing “The Sound of Iona” a decade or so back, at a point her voice was still intact even as her memory was not, she again followed along, of sorts, forming words as clearly as she ever can these days.
It was much the same story when, with considerable but not insurmountable effort, the three of us helped get her to the incredible architectural triumph that is the Beverley Minster for Easter Sunday Holy Communion. I am a devout atheist, but I recognize the importance of faith and am always happy to bring her to the Minster when possible, not least because the Parish has modernized beyond belief, has a creche for children in the pews, employs a folk band with grand piano, and has incorporated sermons in recent years with props ranging from a light saber to this year’s empty box (“What happened to time?” asked the Vicar about the lost hour from the clocks going forwards as a hopeful segue into the, um, parable of Jesus being resurrected from the grave.) At the end of the service, during which our mother, remaining seated throughout, echoed the melodies though not the words of every one of the interminable number of hymns, a woman came forwards from two rows behind to congratulate her on her singing voice. As I noted in the Good Friday birthday post, Ruth sang in established choirs from her teens to her 80th years, and even as memory fades further and cognitive and mobility decline accelerates with it, her voice is golden. I should be so lucky.
Later on Sunday evening, exhausted by piecing through sodden travel diaries and ruined photos, Paula and I took a walk to the Monk’s Walk, easily one of the best pubs in all of Great Britain, conveniently located almost right opposite the house I was born in. There, as per every Sunday, a group of local musicians gathered for a Sunday evening “ceilidh” or simple jam, highlighted by another Scottish song, Dougie MacLean’s more recent “Talking With My Father,” something I was sadly unable to do. The gathering is open to all but usually left alone by the beer-drinking socials, and so it was not a surprise that the musicians recognized me from exactly a year earlier, when I attended with my two sons. You may notice that the table in the clip below includes a full pint, an empty pint, and a half-full pint. One of those provides my outlook on life and this Midweek Update’s title.
Theoretically, this past week was a vacation, a chance to show Paula my England, hence the multiple stops in four different locations. In reality, I am not good with vacations, and the week felt a little more like a backpacking adventure designed for 20-year-old Gap students! While I can cope with my own schedule, I was so grateful that Paula was able to match it, and though this Substack account is not intended as a personal diary or journal, I have a couple of columns in mind that will expand on some of our activities, especially our Saturday at the magnificent City Ground watching Nottingham Forest host our team Crystal Palace, as photographed below before kick-off. I saw Paula laugh and smile a lot during this first ever excursion to the British Isles, but probably no day more frequently than our Awayday for the footie, which will form the basis of my forthcoming long weekend read when Saturday comes.
My younger nephew Adam has come to stay in Beverley for this week, just as Paula has headed back to resume work as a high school teacher, a noble profession and the one my mother pursued also. Adam is a highly talented musician, but has swapped out notions of a professional career to learn medicine with the intent of working in the refugee field, an equally noble calling; it was more than mere nepotism that saw me host him on this episode of my One Step Beyond podcast.
Over an Indian meal just the night before writing this, Adam lamented Pitchfork’s demise as his go-to source for music recommendations. And the “death of the music press” remains very much a topic of ongoing media debate. A perusal of the shelves at the local WH Smiths, however, would appear instead to demonstrate the continued validity of that well-worn Mark Twain phrase, as there are literally dozens of monthly and special one-off glossy mags that would not be hogging all this valuable space if there wasn’t a demand for them. All the same, I offer this carefully calibrated photo of various front covers to ask for your own observation:
Which magazine(s) is(are) the odd ones(s) out – and why?
A few different answers all come to my own mind, and indeed, there are no wrong responses. I would genuinely welcome your input in the comments below.
With all this travel and social activity, my music and podcast listening has taken a back seat for the week, other than the Sunday evening ceilidh and the occasional Palace pod. I was vaguely hoping this might produce a similar effect on my tinnitus, but not so: it’s present whenever there is what otherwise might be considered silence. A celebration birthday dinner for a Beverley friend of a friend found that people you wouldn’t automatically peg as sufferers nonetheless got hit with the product of too many loud rock shows in their youth, one of them besieged by the “swishing” sounds of low bass notes, the other having gone the expensive route of the £4000 hearing aids that “mask” the worst of their tinnitus and are, truly, invisible even to the person sitting next to them at an Indian “restaurant.” As noted in my own previous articles on the subject, I was hoping to get these aids on insurance but narrowly failed – ultimately my hearing is not bad enough – though I am not adverse to biting the bullet down the line if I truly think they will make that substantial of a difference. In the meantime, I am again grateful that my tinnitus does not stop me sleeping, and I am also looking forward to sharing some exciting news coming down the pipe about tinnitus research. No, it’s not a cure. At least not yet.
Sunday evening’s Ceilidh aside, the lack of personal musical input for a week means I may be one of the few people on the planet who is yet to comment on the new Beyoncé album despite being eminently unqualified to do so. And I would happily continue in my ignorance, at least for a few more days, but
of this Parish (it’s a British thing, it means he’s another Substacker) was sufficiently impressed by the Hudson Palace cover of “I’m A Boy” as to include it in his own weekly Gems Playlist – alongside three other covers including Cosmic Spin’s self-recorded mash-up of Elton’s “Rocket Man” with the Floyd’s “Breathe,” Jean-Michel Jarre’s 1972 take on “Popcorn” that was outdone in the charts by Hot Butter (the version of which I still own), and, yes, Beyoncé’s take on “Blackbird” which, frankly, is wonderful. Paula and I are more than proud to be considered worthy of such illustrious company, and I will end as I started, grateful for what we all have, as opposed to what gets lost, misplaced or never secured in the first place along life’s rich journey.In closing out: from among the detritus of the leak that has ruined many other photographs, I managed to rescue, in near pristine shape, this Polaroid of myself at the Jamming! office at Nomis, on Sinclair Road in West London, which I haven’t seen in… forever. It was clearly taken in 1982 and my guess, given that I most certainly didn’t own a Polaroid, is that a professional photographer on assignment to accompany an article about Jamming! took it as a “test” before switching to the pro camera. I share it in part to prove that I was indeed always on the phone on my teens - but also because that music sweater brought back fond memories. In fact, I ended up buying one for my girlfriend of the time (hi Wendy, wherever you are!) and my mother. On certain embarrassing occasions, all three of us would be seen together wearing our different colours, as if members of a weird family singing group.
Feel free to share this post, comment, and please subscribe if you have not done so already. Paid subscribers not only receive fringe benefits, but they keep me inspired to roll out of bed at 6am and write. Cheers!
Glad to hear the 90th celebrations went well ! Nice to see a pic of the City ground too (my hometown!). Cheers!
Correct. B side is ‘At the Movies’