Yes, yes, I know that was last week: bearwith, this post has been a while in the making. But rest assured that over the course of this entry and the next I shall take you seamlessly from chemo to crash, via fascinating forays into bygone days. Or something.)
‘If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb’ Psalm 139:11.
‘Here we are again, happy as can be, all good friends and jolly good compan-‘
Hmmmm. It’s nearly 4 am, meaning that the 3 am wake up that I thought would just be a quick loo break has stretched out rather longer than that… At least I clocked up four or so hours from 11 pm last night, having no trouble actually getting to sleep. I suddenly realise what the issue is, though. I was so tired yesterday morning that I spent most of it in bed writing, but this meant that the lengthy breakfast protocol wasn’t completed until about 1 pm, and I was forced to make myself a token piece of toast at 4 just to get the lunchtime lot of pills down, some of which have to be taken with food. Wait a minute- that included the steroids which are not supposed to be ingested after 2 pm- doing so is akin to feeding Gremlins after dark, and if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know how that pans out…
Shall I fight the sleepnessless or embrace it? Easy one, answered by my rumbling tummy. I pop my dressing gown on, slipping my poison pump carefully into the pocket, and head to the kitchen in search of one of Steve’s wonderful protein bars- which feature an abundant mix of nuts and seeds topped with dark chocolate. Ooh, a midnight feast! (Sort of) This is fun!
I don’t head straight back upstairs to bed, instead making my way to the music room cupboard as there is something I’ve been thinking about and need to find. It occured to me yesterday that this blog should pad out the music side of things next- yesterday was all about my love affair with writing and how that eventually came together with music to form songs and hymns. All of my composing over the last few years has indeed been choral works, as that is where the need and opportunities have arisen: songs for my Knebworth choir, school choirs, whole cantatas for big combined forces. But from teenage years until that point, I focused mainly on instrumental composition and it suddenly hit me yesterday that the first two proper pieces I ever wrote were for flute and piano. Flute- durr! We have of course a pretty good flautist in the house, who would be able to play my compositions pretty much straight off the page, once I had transcribed the 1980s feint pencil scores into my music-writing software Sibelius. How wonderful and special would it be for Isaac and I to record these fledgling pieces, last played when I was 14 and 15?
I needed to make sure that the scores I pictured in my head were safe and accessible: a quick dig into the cupboard soon revealed exactly what I was looking for. The transcribing would take a bit of time, an extra task for today on top of my already-planned to-do list (continuing the projects for the children, and further transcribing into Sibelius of dodgy hand-scrawled scores…)
Ours was only the third ever year group to take GCSEs; the syllabus for most subjects was hugely changed from the old O-level and Music was no exception. For the first time, composition was to be included, forming a third of the overall assessment. My music teacher thus decided to set our 3rd year class (Year 9) a composition task to prepare those of us who would go on to take GCSE. We had to work in pairs- Ali was my immediate choice as she played the flute well and would be more than happy to be my muse and let me do most of the composing, which was of course what I was desperate to do, so very excited that something I was spending so much time doing by myself could now be assessed and showcased.
Apart from some dodgy French in the title- our music teacher immediately commenting that it should be named Le Flueve (The River) rather than La Fleuve (details, details.. who cared?)- the piece was quite lovely, if rather predictable in its harmonies. And looking at it now I am staggered that I had been playing the piano for just over a year yet already had a good, untaught understanding of compositional devices and how to notate what was in my head, give or take a bit of erroneous note-beaming…
Fast forward a few months to the next piece that I composed for flute and piano, which was on another level entirely. Friends in the parallel GCSE group informed me that our teacher, Miss Faulkner, entered their lesson one afternoon in something of a daze, having witnessed me working on my piece at lunchtime and concluding that I was composing like Mozart… The comparison, although of course way too generous, had some truth to it as I still had such limited playing experience and that was dictating my composing style: I was obsessed with Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin at the time and my GCSE compositions reflect this hugely. ‘Waltz and Serenade in F Major’ was rather too long for what it has to say, but it was more than a labour of love to me. I will post a link to our recordings of the pieces when they are done; I’m looking forward to the process very much.
Isaac, at age 10, has already been exposed to a lifetime’s worth of music and knows most major works, having either listened to them on the radio on our many school runs, or played then in orchestras. My experience, of course, was very different. I had not once attended a classical concert and my listening was restricted to the few records we had that didn’t feature songs such as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ (‘A Wimoweh, a Wimoweh…’- remember that?)
I was urged to start learning the oboe the year before A-Level, as in those days two instruments were a pre-requisite for the course. I leant quickly and was soon able to join wind groups and the school orchestra, but my overall knowledge was still far behind those who had grown up immersed in music. On one occasion Miss Faulkner asked me if I would be happy to play the piano in an upcoming performance of The Creation. ‘Whose Creation?’ I wanted to know. ‘Haydn’s, obviously!’ laughed Miss F. ‘You must know that!’ No….
But as I became immersed in the rigorous A-level curriculum with its study of numerous works from Medieval times to the present day, my understanding broadened hugely and I found my own composing style, far away from classical pastiche. We were studying Wuthering Heights in English and I was more than a little obsessed with it, dreaming of turning into an opera. I spent hours in the semi-darkened dining room where the piano was, improvising on themes and writing snippets of scenes but of course a whole opera was never going to materialise… That has been the continuing story of my life as there are two other operas that I have been hugely enthusiastic about writing but the pure scale of them has prevented anything coming to fruition. But back in 1991 I used the Wuthering Heights themes that I had composed to write an overture for the imaginary opera, and this became my A-level submission. It was performed at a school concert, conducted by me. A somewhat elderly audience member commented to me afterwards: ‘Well that was very clever but I didn’t like the sound of it much’! My departure into more experimental styles was clear (however I always, always make sure there are some hummable tunes in my music- she must have missed those bits…)
Music had become more important to me than anything else by then, even English, and I applied to music courses at Universities that specialised in composition. The only one I didn’t get into was unfortunately my top choice of York- clearly my relative inexperience as an instrumental player didn’t quite cut it. And I may have mentioned Andrew Lloyd Webber in the interview- big mistake…
But I settled happily enough on Nottingham and all was arranged- until I read a magazine article about a gap year programme called Au Pair in America. By the time I reached the end of the article, I was sold and applied immediately- Uni could wait, I was going to see the world first (well a bit of it anyway). I was accepted and assigned to a lovely family living in the suburbs of Washington, DC: two lawyers with a little 2 year-old girl. I read up on potty training and packed my bags…
This is how I found myself arriving at Heathrow with not one but two luggage trolleys carrying a full size Yamaha keyboard, my oboe, my whole wardrobe of clothes and pretty much every book I’ve ever owned. It was an interesting first impression to make on the amazing girl that would later become Bridesmaid Becca, with whom I became very close during that crazy, wonderful year. Becca’s host family lived a little further out so when we couldn’t meet up we would talk for hours on the phone, sharing the highs, the lows, the excitement, the stories of our lives back home and inevitable pangs of homesickness.
I was trusted with not only the full time care of little Devon but also let loose on the American roads in the family’s huge Volvo station wagon… I had to pass the Maryland driving test, which was hilariously similar to the the Legoland mini-driving experience- a simple course set up in a school playground, in which a maximum speed of about 5 miles per hour could be achieved. Unsurprisingly, I only dropped one point- this was due to ‘failing to observe other cars’. There weren’t any. Clearly I was supposed to have pretended..
I now had three driving licenses of sorts: my UK one, my Maryland one and an international driving licence that I had obtained after a tip-off, entirely for the purposes of fake ID. In those days, the holder’s date of birth was written in ink on the cardboard licence: a simple ink eraser changed the year et voila, I was 21 and could frequent bars and clubs in the US. I wasn’t a drinker by any means, but when you have been used to going to pubs since the age of 16, a downgrade to such options as bowling or the cinema for a night out would be pretty lame.
It was an incredible year. I grew up in so many ways and totally embraced the American culture. I grew to love little Devon and her parents, Paula and Joe, and even the station wagon…
Through the local au pair network I made the most amazing friends from all over Europe- as well as Becca there was wacky Dennis and bubbly Anja from Denmark, funny, gentle German guy Guido and lovely, down-to-earth Derbyshire girl Ruth. We had constant adventures at the weekends, exploring near and far, sleeping in cars to keep costs down. I felt free, alive, and loved every crazy minute.
It was during my time in the US that I began to develop my own philosophy of life, which I called The Plane Theory. The seeds for this were sown in my last term at school, where my good friend Susie and I decided that running around the school with arms outstretched like a plane (with the dubious addition of cardboard boxes on our heads…) would provide relief from the stress of A-Levels. We were right.
In the U.S., I revealed to my friends how freedom from convention and shallowness of life could be achieved through the Plane Theory. Arms outstretched, we were aeroplanes from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery. I even composed a song to match: ‘O, to be a plane’ was all about flying above the clouds in the blue sky of enlightenment. Yet I didn’t have any idea what that ‘enlightenment’ really was, declaring to my friends that one day I would tell them what the Plane Theory really meant.
I even started to write down initial ideas for book about the theory, in the form of a spider diagram. One section was labelled ‘Doubts’, and these were listed as follows:
1. Entirely focused on this life with no thought of death
2. Too self-oriented
3. What about God? (This one was underlined)
Indeed, my theory suggested that you are God, you are in control. I didn’t know why, but I felt uneasy about this, and never got any further with the plan for the book. Maybe at university I would find the truth I was looking for.
Back to 2024… It is Friday evening now, and we are chugging along the M25 in our 1 litre engine hire car, Steve slip-streaming a van to see how much petrol he can avoid using (we’ve been all-electric for over a year now, and very much resented driving to Tesco’s to fill up..).
But car aside, we are off to Cloud 9, our happy place, for low-key 50th celebrations with the Dorset gang: Chemo Crash is very much imminent and I can feel my strength gradually taking its leave, but come what may I will be donning dress and heels tomorrow evening and raising a glass of champagne.
The car is kind to us and somehow we arrive in good time not long after 9 p.m. Thanks to our amazing housekeeping team, Cloud 9 is spotlessly clean and its calm minimalism is such a wonderful contrast from our hectic family home. I immediately make just a small imposition on the minimalism by popping a couple of 50th decorations up. Woo hoo! Let Birthday Weekend No. 3 commence!
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations’ (Psalm 100:5).
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