StringFing's ChristmasFing

YAY!! It’s Christmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas!!


StringFing’s ChristmasFing
Wednesday December 14th
Holy Inadequate, Etruria

with guests
Lynda Fox, percussion, and blooz boys
Pete Latham & Chris Bingham

8.30pm start. Bring yourself along. You deserve it!

***
Hey, hey, go merrily on your way,

Terry

***

AREN'T LIBRARIES BRILLIANT?!!

Jimmy Saville is dead.

I met him just once, back in the 60s. Saville was on the upward curve of his rainbow then. I was playing a gig with the New Vaudeville Band in Manchester (Belle Vue?) where he was how’s-about-that’ing on the turntables and being ultra-enthusiastic about the utter crap he was playing – much the same as I was on the piano.

A local story about your man Saville is that he was the guest celebrity who officially opened Mow Cop and Mount Pleasant Village Hall on 20th May 1965. This is the version of events that was passed on to me:

Saville had been a wrestler and wrestled on the same circuit as a wrestler resident of Mow. When it came to discussions about the official opening of the village hall, the good-natured Mow dood said, ‘I’ll see if I can get my mate Jimmy Saville to do it for us.’ Brilliant! Saville was big time and would do the occasion proud and, it was hoped, for free.

When it came to the day, Saville allegedly charged them a fee of £200 (evidently his agent had insisted). Two-hundred notes! - and they were notes then - a whopping amount of money in those days. To give you an idea of how much: Lynda and I bought a house around the corner from the village hall five years later and paid £950. It’d had taken the Village Hall committee six years of hard work to raise the £1500 for the hall. That’s a rate of £250 a year . . .

The Village Hall Committee was naturally disappointed, not to say financially embarrassed. ‘Never mind,’ Saville allegedly said, pausing to drag on a cigar the size of a toddler’s arm, ‘I’ll send you the latest Top Twenty records for you to play on your social nights.’ The Committee waited eagerly for the records to arrive.

They’ve been waiting forty-six years. They’ll never get them now.

***

The Right On! night at Congleton library was ace. Mike Drew staged an excellent show of poetry and song - voices speaking out against political exploitation, injustice and persecution.

The poetry was the absolute business, with contributions from The Nomads, Phil Williams and that shining star of the Cheshire Poet Laureate Scheme, John Lindley.

The songs were provided by yours truly, Dave Wedgebury, Dave Dove, Andy Stubbs and Phil Maddocks. As Phil remarked after the early evening sound check, it’s amazing how five singer/acoustic guitarists, inspired by the same coterie of predecessors, can come together on the same night and play songs on the same theme and be so different one from the other:

Dave Wedgebury with his Bob Marley-influenced high tenor voice; Dave Dove with his smooth West Coast approach, Andy Stubbs with his in-your-face Anglo-American proto punk, high-energy vibe; Phil Maddocks with his sophisticated English balladeer approach and me . . . er . . . whatever, I don’t know, none of the above, I suppose . . . me with my bag of rough n ready homemade songs, erratically performed.

The audience was up for it and receptive to the cause and to the individual offerings.

'Twas Right On! right enough.

***

I was on Red Shift Radio on Tuesday promoting the Poetry Party taking place at the Alsager Library on Friday December 9th with Angus Varley the library manager.

We were interviewed by Simon Newbury whose is a fine photographer with his other hat on. It was a good interview. I read: Homage to Cheshire, Talking Blues and Heathery Weathery Hill.

Angus read a couple of monkey poems written by his brother. I mean, they were about monkeys. I’m not suggesting Angus' brother is a monkey. Though, on the other hand, we are all brother and sister monkeys according to Mr. Monkey Darwin, ain’t we?

Simon liked the imagery of my Homage to Cheshire and asked if he could use it for a series of new photographs. I was quick to agree to the collaboration. Delighted actually. Simon is so good in the old art of light and shade malarky and I’m looking forward what he comes up with. I’ll keep you posted.

Why not come along to the poetry party? It’s a sort of open mic night for poets. I’m hosting it and I know that we have some very exciting poets coming along. There’ll be lots of lovely stuff for the poetry fan and there will be refreshments too.

Libraries are shaping up to be the most happening of places. Make sure you support your local library.

Those in government, local and national, who propose the closing down of public libraries (how stupid, how sinister a suggestion that is) ought give up their own private libraries by way of example.

And yes, David Cameron, that means both your books, even the one you haven't finished colouring in.

***

I’m going off for a swing in my rubber tyre now.

Hope to see you at the Alsager Library Poetry Party on the 9th.

Please take care of yourselves and everyone you meet,

Terry

***

WRITERS BLOG

I do understand the whole blogging bag, really I do. You’re suppose to blog up gigs and stuff you’re about to do, aren’t you? - so people can come along if they want to. Soz.

BUT blimey, mates! blogging is taking time out and I get so busy doing stuff I have little time left to post anything, and no mistake.

My last blog was on August 9th. It seems like I were only a bit of a lad back then in those olden times. A callow youth with an optimistic smile on his spotty face, blissfully unaware of the cruelties of human existence that lay in wait for him . . .

. . . like finding out there are people who go around calling themselves poets when they clearly don’t know what a poem is and who should be prosecuted under the trades description act. I can’t name names for legal and social reasons and, sadly, they’ve no idea who they are.

I do write blogs in my head, though. And that’s where they stay most of the time. It ain’t my fault that communications technology is so ill-advanced that we still have to use computers and phones and things instead of being able to think stuff out to people.

The necessity is there, so get inventing mother . . .

***

WARNING: This posting will be long and rambling cuz, like the man said, I haven’t got time to write a shorter one.

***

WTF?

Not previously given much thought to my initials. They were just the first letter of each of my given names, that’s all. Then the glorious short-handing of cell phone texting came along and re-invented their meaning altogether. I now like them very much indeed, not only as my initials, but also as my waking thought for each day.

***

PASSING ON THE KNOWLEDGE

I’m back teaching again at MMU Cheshire and loving it. Some triffick students this year.

On the down side, the whole uni vibe has changed to become a more-muted, more-restrained, more calculated gig since fees were introduced.

Fees!! What liberty that is!! Undergraduates, in my view, are academic apprentices and should be paid for studying just like any trade apprentice.

Tuition fees have turned the whole uni Creative Writing experience into an extension of compulsory education with classes getting more and more prescriptive.

A digital wedge is being driven between teaching staff and students with the increasing use of computerised interaction – paving the way, it seems, for turning the whole thing into a correspondence course.

Anyhow what ain’t changed is the students are ace and it’s a pleasure to be working with them.

***

HEYMAKER TAPES

This in reply to Phil, one of the founder members of the Danger Mouse Rally Club, who kindly got in touch with me in search of recordings of Heymaker:

There are some out there Phil. Unfortunately, I don't have any as I tend not to keep hold of any of my past stuff. Rightly or wrongly, I suppose I see it as merely leading up to what I am currently doing. I am obsessive, but I am not a hoarder, and people borrow stuff from me and I don't get it back or I probably haven't bothered to get a copy for myself in the first place.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to hear some of my old tracks. When I occasionally do, though, I'm disappointed and immediately want to do it again only better.

Can anyone help Phil? Please let me know.

***

MOW COP – LIVING ON THE HILL

Philip K. Leese’s book of the above title is out now, and jolly good it is too! You’ll find it on sale all around Kidsgrove. I couldn’t get along to the book launch so picked up a copy from Bargain Booze in the Rookery.

Among his glorious, painstakingly-researched anecdotes and facts of life on ‘The Hill’, Philip has kindly quoted from my Village Verse collection. It’s curious, ain’t it, how a writer becomes part of the history of what they write about?

Philip and I have both approached our writing of Mow Cop in a celebratory way. The indigenous people of Mow are a rare breed. People are, after all, products of their landscape. Mow Cop is a unique place.

Philip is kind enough to express regret in his writing that he did not have enough space to print my Heathery Weathery Hill, so here tis folks:

HEATHERY WEATHERY HILL

Are you never quiet and still
Heathery Weathery Hill
Where leaves riot in the thrush-loud wood
And seeds burst green where the hay bales stood
And out of the byre cattle spill
Heathery Weathery Hill?

Are you never quiet and still
Heathery Weathery Hill
Where the sun beats in the lark-loud sky
And the hyssop bows as bees hymn by
And moths at dusk dance at the sill,
Heathery Weathery Hill?

Are you never quiet and still
Heathery Weathery Hill
Where the Ferguson ploughs a gull-loud rut
And old leaves slop in the gutter’s glut
And the waters rush to Moreton Mill
Heathery Weathery Hill?

Are you never quiet and still
Heathery Weathery Hill
Where the fox trots in the owl-loud night
And lanes are lost in drifts of white
And the wind through the castle tower blows shrill
Heathery Weathery Hill?

***

STRINGFING

StringFing is having some excellent nights at the Holy Inadequate on the second Wednesday of each month. We’re there this Wednesday (9th Nov). Come along. It’s a great pub. We’re working on a Christmas Special too for December 14th.

***

KPA

I played a cool gig at Keele University’s Postgraduate Society bistro in September. Spike Crossley, the incomparable manager of said venue who’s revolutionised the place and brought it out of the 1950s into the 21st Century, staged his first beer festival there.

He brought in shelf upon shelf of firkins of guest ales – firkin marvellous! (well, you were all thinking that, weren’t you?).

The place was crowded and I was jammed up in a corner with my SM 58 and my J-45 going through my Marshall AS50, having a great time knocking out the songs.

The noise of happy real ale drinkers was awesome. Half way though my first song, I thought no one was listening and that I was in for an introspective evening. Not a bit of it, doods. The response was more than gratifying and I ended up having the best time and extending my set by half an hour.

***

Talking of the AS50 Marshall acoustic guitar amplifier, when I was carrying it out of the KPA I noticed the handle stitching was coming away. I phoned Marshall to get the price of a replacement: £21.76 plus postage plus fitting.

That strikes me as relatively a touch expensive for a handle that clearly is a design weak point since the amp’s fairly new and I’m needing a replacement already. I told the Marshall sales person, ‘I really need this handle, but I’m going to have to sell the amp to afford it. I’ll get back to you.’ Well, it amused me, anyway.

***

SEAN CANNON & POTTERIES FOLK CLUB

Jason Hill – folk legend – phoned me: would I support that wonderful Irish singer and member of the Dubliners, Sean Cannon, at the Potteries Folk Club on Friday 28th October.

Who wouldn’t want to do that? Ah, but I was scheduled to have a practice of some Alf-Alfa Ceili Band tunes with blues maestro and mandolin picker Pete Latham on the same night.

Why don’t me and Pete do the gig together? Excellent! And excellent it was. Sean was his usual self. In other words: top drawer, effortlessly beautiful singing of a whole range of traditional and contemporary folk songs sewn together with Sean’s humorous introductions.

Here’s one of Sean’s jokes:

A consultant was showing a new intern around a ward where there was a whole lot of mumbling and talking going on. The consultant led the young doctor over to the first bed where the patient was lying with his eyes closed mumbling: ‘Wee sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what panic’s in they breastie . . .’ The consultant looked at the patient’s chart and moved on.

In the next bed a patient was anxiously declaiming: ‘Ye banks and braes and streams around the castle o’ Montgomery! Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, your waters never drumlie . . .’ The consultant looked at the patients chart and moved on.

In the third bed, its occupant was practically screaming, ‘How lang and dreary is the night when I am frae my dearie . . .’ The consultant looked at the patient’s chart and moved on. For bed after bed the patterned was repeated.

When they came out of the ward, the young doctor asked, ‘What on earth is going on in there?’

‘Oh,’ the consultant replied, ‘that’s the serious Burns unit.’

Me and Pete went up together and took turns with our offerings. A bottle necking blues from him, a homemade song from me, and so on, turn and turn about. It worked well. We were a nice counterpoint to each other. I wouldn’t mind doing a whole night with Pete like that.

***

Goodness me, is that the time? I’ve got to sort out some material for my new class. I’ve been given a second year Culture and Popular Music class to teach in addition to my Creative Writing classes. We’re currently working on the origins of the blues. Celtic music is scheduled for our attention after the blues assignment. Culture and Popular Music, eh? - what a brilliant subject to be lecturing in, doods. I’m a lucky geezer, to be sure.

***

RIGHT ON!

Just got time to tell you about another upcoming gig:

Congleton Library’s Mike Drew is presenting an evening of live music and poetry celebrating the right to speak out ‘featuring Phil Maddocks, WT Fox, Dave Dove, Dave Wedgebury, John Lindley, Andy Stubbs and others’ on Wednesday 16th November, 7:30pm – 10:00pm. There’s a bar on and tickets are £6.50 or £5.50 with a library card. It’s going be right on right enough.

Gotta go. Tra-ra. Keep safe,

Terry

LYIN' POLITICIAN BLUES

Hi blog buddies, we were having a bit of a sing song round our gaff the other night and Rob got his camera out for this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwm4WlIQjsk

Seeya later,

Terry

MICK SOFTLEY

StringFing had a good time at the New Inn last night. Not so many people came along this month as schools have broken up and we’re into the big holiday season, but there was well enough for a good time.

Many of you will be aware of the name of legendary singer/songwriter Mick Softley.

Back in the days of the St. Albans beatnik music scene of the early 60s - a motley and loosely assembled crew consisting of the likes of Mac Macleod, Pops Kerr, Henri Harrison, Donovan, yours truly, Maddy Prior and a dozen other guitar strumming (piano strumming in my case) musos coming and going – Mick Softley was the guv’nor; the godfather; the standard to reach for.

His rambling ways and roving eye, his biting politically aware songs, his anarchic attitude were the bench mark.

The main model behind the music was perhaps Jesse Fuller, an American one man band who played guitar alongside a large homemade bass guitar type instrument played with his right foot and a lo hat played with his left foot. On a neck harness he carried a mouth harp and a kazoo. Have a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM62iL_Gh2g

Fuller’s San Francisco Bay Blues, a one-time favourite of Mick’s, spawned a lot of new and similar songs from the St. Albans ravers.

Mick, though, was our local role model: a terrific singer, guitar picker and writer, an accessible dood who was living the life.

After the Cops and Robbers had brought about Donovan’s fame (and not in the fanciful, self-aggrandising way Don likes to tell it), Donovan recorded a couple of Mick’s songs (from memory they were: Gold Watch Blues and War Drags On), but, in my view he didn’t pay him the dues he should have done.

Anyway that was then and this is now. And now, Mick lies in a bed in a Northern Ireland hospital recovering from a severe stroke.

I had a phone call last week from Gladys, the lovely lady who is looking after him. Gladys says Mick is doing well, but it’s a long hard road he’s travelling on.

While I was thinking about him, I thought of how, in the days I remember him best, he would have relished the latest political shenanigans and how he might have responded to them in song.

So, I came up with one myself: Lyin’ Politican Blues. StringFing played it last night. Twice, by request, in fact.

It’s a rocky bluesy jazzy 12-bar vamp in the key of F. The audience joined in on percussion and singing. It was a joy to be a part of.

We did it to try to send a good vibe across the water to NI to speed Mick’s recovery.

Here’s the song:

LYIN’ POLITICIAN BLUES

Woke up this morning switched on the news
Gotta tell ya people I got the blues –
If it doesn’t make ya larf, gonna to make ya cry
Why does every politician think they got permission to lie?

It really doesn’t matter which way ya vote
Conservative or labour, or even if ya float
When ya cross is on the paper, God knows why
Every politician thinks they got permission to lie

Black is white, they say without a smile
Half a millimetre, it’s a country mile
Stick em in a pot an’ boil the friggin lot, say I
Why does every politician think they got permission to lie?

There’s a house on the river, a den of thieves
Their lyin’ ways bringing Britain to its knees
They wouldn’t know the truth if it punched them in the eye
Why does every politician think they got permission to lie?

I saw a politician, his face all creased
From living in the pocket of the chief of police
Polish on his lips from licking Murdoch’s shoes
Yeah, an’ that’s why I got these Lyin’ Politician Blues.

***

I hope it worked. Get well soon, Michael.

I’ll blog off now and catch you later. I've got a form to fill in.

Terry

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TWIZZLEBIRD

Twizzlebird Creative, the Chester-based web design and branding partnership completed their first year of business on July 8th 2011.

CONGRATULATIONS AMY AND DAVE!!

And what a year it has been for them! Their talent and capacity for creative work is awesome.

They moved up from Bristol to settle in the beautiful Chester, launched their business and hit the road running with their empathetic attention to their client’s needs and up-to-the-minute grasp of contemporary design and technology.

They have been gathering speed ever since, leaving a continuing succession of very happy clients in their wake.

A vested interest has to be declared here: Amy is our lovely, lovely daughter and Dave is her lovely, lovely partner. Two nicer people have never walked the earth and they are both unfeasibly gifted. They have integrity too – a rare combination.

Talking about Amy like this recalls what Jackie Turpin once said to me about his daughter, Gina: ‘I know I shouldn’t boast about her,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help it cuz she really is great!’

Keep flying high Twizzlebird. Here’s to your second year. XXX

***

StringFing is playing at Keele University Postgraduate Association Club this Sunday afternoon as part of a grand reunion day for past students.

Fingers crossed for the weather as we hope to be playing outside. People are coming from all corners to be there. Can’t wait.

Travel safe, one and all,

Terry

MAKING HEY WHILE THE SUN SHINES

For your barn dance, for your wedding, for your ceili or social get-together, book The Woodlanders:

The Woodlanders Country Dance Band - locally produced, matured over a great number of years. The farmer’s choice.

What a fabulous time we’ve been having, mates!!

We were down in Chebsey, a small village near Cheadle, on Saturday night to play for a wedding ceili: great people, beyootiful setting.

Steve Share called the dances for us – triffick job as always – and started off appropriately with Lover’s Knot and took the wedding guests through his pantheon of moves: the like Nervous Breakdown, the Cumberland Long Eight, and the Holmfirth Square. Yee-ha!

The Woodlanders came storming southern-slow and rocking: Speed the Plough, Curly-Headed Ploughboy, Jumping Joan, Bacca Pipes Jig, Salmon Tails Up In the Water, Winster Gallup, Harvest Home . . .

Have a long and happy life together Jenny and Chris.

***

Late night, early morning cos, next day The Woodlanders was the band in the street at Congleton Food and Drink Festival.

It was Jo Money and her Congleton Community Projects team who set up this celebration of victuals various and delightful. Jo’s events always have a tang of party and Rio about them, a vibe reinforced this time round by glorious Brazilian-type weather.

Congleton High Street was closed to traffic and lined with stalls selling cheeses and ciders and wines and breads, ice-creams, the soon-to-be-side-lined-back-to-kids-parties-cuz-the-market’s-been-saturated-and-it-was-only-a-fad-anyway cup cakes and other assorted tongue teasers.

The aromas of korma curries cooking and Gloucester Old Spot sausages getting sizzed in family-size frying pans wafted past the music tent where us four happy trad musos were laying it down in the shade.

We played sets from 11am through to 4.30pm and had more enquiries for future bookings than we could possibly play.

***

Off with the corduroys and oak leaf hat, and on with the suit and tie: Monday was the finals of the SG World National Poetry Competition for Schools.

This competition is in support of Whizz-Kidz, the charity that supplies wheelchairs for disabled kids to give them the opportunity of more independence.

As Cheshire’s longest-serving poet laureate, I was invited to be the poetry judge and charged with selecting the nine worthy finalists from the post bag of hundreds and hundreds of poems.

This is the second year running that I have had the privilege of being involved. It’s the hardest kind of work for a poet geezer to do, I reckon, to make judgements on the work of young writers. Having said that, it is also immensely rewarding. The decisions to be made are many and complex.

The event was held at the Manchester United Football ground at Old Trafford, Manchester.

The theme of the competition this year was: Our Wonderful World. The winning poems are posted on the SG World website. I’ll give the link later on in this blog.

Steve Floodgate of SG World and his team organised the event with immense skill and imagination. He’s a really warm and amusing presenter too.

Steve recruited Sam and Mark of childrens’ TV fame to assist with the presentation. Nice guys. The kids loved them.

What prizes the young writers were given too!: X-Boxes for each of the finalists and flat-screen TVs for the winner in each of three categories.

The judging panel consisted of Arnold Haase CEO of SG World, myself, Ash from Whizz-Kidz, and Sam and Mark.

One young finalist (he’s five) didn’t end up winning, but I wanted to give his poem special attention here. His parents were pleased to give me permission. I’m showing you Josh's work for its utter visual charm and because it’s a great illustration of how an unconscious non-standard use of English can regenerate the meaning of a word and recreate a sense of discovery and wonder.

The young poet’s name is Josh, and here is his poem called Our Wonderful World:

In our wonderful world I can see
Leydeybords is spotty.
In our wonderful world I can hear
Birds sigig.
In our wonderful world I can smell
Fish and chips. meyk me hungry.
In our wonderful world I can feel
Leaves are spotty.
In our wonderful world I can taste
Ice scream is joosey.

***

SG World do a wonderful job raising the profile of poetry among young writers. It is a privilege for me to be invited to work with them on these projects. I am grateful to them.

Here’s the promised link to the SG World website where you can see a scan of Josh’s poem and those of all the other competition finalists.

http://www.sgworld.com/

I had to say a few words to the young writers and their assembled schoolmates and parents and teachers. SG World commissioned a poem from me too. It’s site-specific and occasion-specific and a bit of a performance poem so it might not come off the screen as well as it could, but here it is anyway:


WHEN I WAS NINE AND TEN AND MORE

When I was nine and ten and more,
The thing I spent time longing for
Was to be the hero of a football cup:
To be hugged and kissed and lifted up,

And, swaying and bobbing proud,
Be run around the football ground
On the shoulders of my team,
Each one his eyes agleam,

Shouting, ‘AIN’T HE G-REAT!’
He’s not scored one, he’s scored eight!!
This magic, gifted demigod’s fate
Was to hand us victory on a plate.

     No one’s ever seen such play!
     History has been made today.’

Will they never cease, this fevered crowd,
From chanting long and chanting loud,
From terrace and director’s box,
‘There’s only one Terry Fox’ . . .?

An odd, odd dream, I must confess,
For a boy whose sports prowess,
Was little less than,
Well . . . a mess.

When I kicked a ball, it made no sound,
But slowly rolled along the ground
And stopped, a mere spit away,
Till Mr. Rolf felt bound to say:

     ‘The beautiful game’s not for you.
     Find another thing to do.’

I now play games inside my head,
Kicking words around instead.
The goals are different, to be sure,
But the thrill’s the same if you score:

Tackling stanzas, knocking them clear;
Bending them like Shakespeare;
Running them from the half-way line,
To a perfect finish at full time.

As all you young poets know,
There’s glory in a phrase’s flow.
Some folk are born with a life all set
For putting ‘em in the back of the net.

     At the end of the day, I’m excited,
     By the nouns and verbs of Words United.

***

Here's the Woodies at Congleton Food and Drink Festival 2011:

Keep smiling and piling on the sun bloc,

Terry

GOD BLESS ELVIS PRESLEY

Anyone calling at the New Inn in Derby Street Hanley will immediately gather that the landlord, Les, is an Elvis Presley fan.

There are more pictures of the legendary American yodelling dood on the walls of the New Inn’s back room than I have ever seen outside of books on Elvis Presley.

StringFing played that room last night as one of its regular 3rd Thursday of the month gigs there.

After StringFing had set up, we were having a drink and I was looking at the Elvis-covered walls and thinking, ‘I bet this is exactly what the inside of Les’s mind looks like,’ when who should walk through the door but . . . John Lindley.

Soz to all those of you who thought it was going to be Elvis, but he really is dead, you know.

John Lindley has a permanent open invitation to come along on StringFing nights to read for us - he’d be welcome anyway, of course. But, until last night, he hadn’t been able to get there. He’s a busy guy, John; much in demand. He would be. He’s more than a little bit good at what he does.

After StringFing's first set, in which we included a version of Matty Groves - we like to include one traditional song each time out - John did just one poem for us. And John being John, it was exactly the right poem in exactly the right place at exactly the right time: a new poem of his, a long, long poem: God Bless Elvis Presley.

I haven’t checked the title so, for all I know, John might call it something different, but that’ll do for me. That is certainly the refrain of the piece and, I tell you, it is a tour de force of writing; a magnificent, secular hymn to life and love; to earthly struggles and to triumphs of the spirit. John’s reading of it was inspired and inspiring. Breath-taking stuff.

Our audiences have been fewer these last couple of times at the New Inn. We’ve been hammering it a bit locally, and it’s start of the holiday season and those factors have had an effect on attendance. Those of you who didn’t show up, though, missed a treat, several treats, in fact.

We were one lucky bunch of doods gathered in that room.

Next up, Pete Latham played for us.

I’ve heard Pete a lot of times over the years and I don’t do the blues thing myself anymore, but when I did do it, I lived and breathed it as a self-taught blues and boogie piano player, there at the birth of the British blues.

I cut my musical teeth at the feet of its founding fathers: Alexis Korner, Cyril Davis. I’ve played with British blues legends such Tony McPhee, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall as well as some of the world’s greatest exponents like Screaming Jay Hawkins, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker. I know what I am listening to. I know the difference between the phoney and the phoned. Pete's always good, but last night, Pete Latham played beautifully; BEA-U-TIFULLY.

Pete’s laid-back rendition of How Long Blues, was the tenderest, most soulful exploration of the riches of that song since Leroy Carr recorded his version of it on Vocalion Records in 1928 with Scrapper Blackwell. I take my fedora off to you Pete.

As if all of that was nay enough, my Lynda had contacted a mouth harp player, Purcy, via FaceBook and he came down to the New Inn as well.

Our great friend, wine expert/bluesman/singer-songwriter and all-round thoroughly lovely bloke, Jimmy Gillespie, invited Lynda and I to his recent birthday party at the Leopard in Burslem. There was much music making. There always is around Jimmy. Purcy was amongst several mighty fine harp players there. It was good to see him again.

Purcy is a sharp-dressed fella and a mean, mean harp player. He and Pete had an immediate blues-brotherly rapport and knocked us out with some of the finest blues wailing ever blues wailed round these ‘ere parts.

I can’t leave out Adam and Emily either. They were at the top of their game. They always are outstanding, ain't they? They are recognised as having raised the bar for the playing of Anglo-Celtic traditional music and its off spring.

For the record, to correct what I sometimes hear said, and sometimes see in print, Adam Fenn is neither my mandolin player nor is Emily Tellwright my cello player. They are both their own people in their own independent right with complex musical lives of their own. I am fortunate that they both agree to include me in their continuing musical adventures.

My thanks to Adam and Emily. My thanks to Pete and Purcy. My thanks to John. My thanks to Les and Yvonne of the New Inn. My thanks to everyone who came along to listen last night.

Uh, huh, may your gods bless you each and all, and to paraphrase a line of John’s poem: God bless Elvis Presley, and God bless God too if God exists.

Till next time, travel safe.

Terry

ADOPTION MATTERS SONG

I've been asked to post in my blog the song I wrote for Adoption Matters North West. Toebrt filmed this in my writing room for YouTube. Hopefully StringFing will record a version of this later in the year. We will definitely be performing it tonight at the Holy Inadequate, Etruria. Come along and sing along. Tra-ra. Terry

OBEY NO CLOCKS

When Dean posted his kind comment on my previous blog – thanks for that, Dean - I was reminded once again of how lucky I was to have taught Creative Writing at the MMU.

At my graduation in 1997, John Singleton (RIP), then head of Writing, asked me to come back in the new academic year and take some classes for him. I remained a part-time member of the MMU Writing team for the following dozen years.

I was happily employed by Keele university too, on and off, but my heart is in the Manchester based institution where I spent my own student days.

The money the two unis paid me was well enough to pay the bills and the hours were such as to give me time for my own writing. Sorted.

As a student, my eyes had been opened to a million new ideas as well as confirming, to my great relief and vindication (and with all the necessary back up data), conclusions I had already drawn that were out of step with the people I had been surrounded by up until I took my place at that hallowed seat of learning.

‘My’ students were a constant, life-affirming inspiration to me. You simply cannot be around such bright, gifted, funny, profound, kindly, enthused younger people for any length of time without being immensely rewarded.

In all those years I can count on the fingers of two fingers, the students I’d rather not have met – that precise number of fingers being appropriate, you will agree.

The two exceptions were both equally talented and equally obnoxious people. I haven’t troubled to follow their subsequent careers, but no doubt, in the way things often are, they have done well for themselves.

Apart from those two fading shadows, I am immensely grateful to each one of the thousands of students I have had the good fortune to work with in all those years. Thank you each, severally and all.

***

On the music front: StringFing is playing the Etruria Canals Festival on Saturday 4th June between 12 noon and 5pm.

We are delighted to be sharing the gig with multi-instrumentalist and top performer Andy Casserley. Andy specialises in music hall songs. Right up my street, doods.

My old grandfather, William Theodore Palin, could knock out a music hall song or ten on the old Joanna.

He never had a music lesson in his entire life, my old Bampa. For him, rules were for fools in schools. He demonstrated that there are other kinds of music from the music schools of hard knocks whose pupils obey no clocks and follow the sounds of their own worlds and the rhythms of their own hearts.

Picture me old granddad in our best room, sat at my mum’s creaking Broadwood upright with the bad yellow grin, jacket off, waistcoat buttoned all the way; watch chain hung with rugby medals glinting in the light from the candles in the brass sconces on the mother-of pearl inlaid front board of the piano; silver armbands holding his shirt sleeves away from his pounding fingers: bass and chord/bass and chord/bass and chord/twiddly bit . . .

‘I’m going to sing a song for you this evening
I’ve been a lovely singer since me berf
And when you hear my lov-e-ly notes aringing
You’ll say I got the finest voice on erf

Before the king I once appeared and when I sang, he loudly cheered
He said to me, ‘You really are a marvel, of singing you have really got the knack’
And from his scarf he took a diamond tie pin
Smiled at me . . . and then he put it back.’

That’s a fragment of the first song I recall hearing him singing at the ol’ ivories. I don’t even know what the proper title of the song is, and what’s written above is all I can remember of the lyric. Maybe some of it’s misremembered. I can’t say for sure.

What I can say for sure is something that I will never ever misremember, and that is the sheer human joy of his performances; their cavalier rawness and audacity; his indomitable don’tletthebastardsgrindyoudown sense of humour. His whisky and tea breath. How I loved that man.

Hey if anyone does happen to know that song, please let me know.

***

StringFing is starting a new regular monthly gig at the Holy Inadequate, Etruria – 1st Sunday of each month – on 5th June.

StringFing will be playing its existing regular gig at The New Inn, Derby Street, Hanley, on the 16th of June

The Woodlanders are down in Chebsey on 25th June and the main band at Congleton’s Food and Drink Festival on the 26th June.

Alf-Alfa is out on 3rd June.

I have the pleasure of helping to judge the SG World Schools National Poetry Competition Finals later on in June, on a date to be arranged. I am preparing my short list from hundreds of entries – more than ever this year. A hard slog, but hugely interesting and entertaining.

Lynda and I have been invited to a couple of parties as well.

Festivals, pub gigs, barn dances, poetry competitions and parties, June is, as they say, busting out all over.

Have a good one.

Terry

TALKING OF RELIGION

What a beautiful month April has been! Spring has fulfilled its promise. May is usually my most favourite month of the year, but it really will have to go some this time round to beat April.

Lynda, Phil Johnson and I are going along to play a few tunes at the annual Seed Swap at Astbury Mere on the afternoon of the 8th of May. I love this event. The planting of seeds is such an optimistic life-affirming gesture. It’s comforting to think that there are some people left who believe in respecting and nurturing the earth instead of putting it under concrete and tarmac and paving blocks and hideous housing.

Talking of the earth and growing things, The Woodlanders played a great Young Farmers gig last night. It just don’t get much better than a farm barn dance with great people, a great repertoire of traditional English tunes, an ace caller (Steve Share is among the best in the business), and a band of mates – me, Lynda, Phil Johnson and Neil Hulse.

And talking of religion which we weren’t, but we are now: me and Lynda went to Barthomley to have a look at the church there and have a jar in the White Lion. The church is dedicated to an 8th century saint, Saint Bertoline. History has it that during the civil war, 17 local people took refuge in the bell tower, but were smoked out by the Kings Men and slaughtered on the spot. They cut the throat of a minor (under 21), John Fowler, inside the church on the bell tower floor. Also in the church are brass plaques commemorating the local dead of the 1st and 2nd world wars. This collection of facts and artefacts begged an obvious question, and a walk around the graveyard prompted the following song:

WHERE WERE YOU, ST. BERTOLINE?

Where were you, St. Bertoline
In their needful hour -
The seventeen, St. Bertoline
Driven from the tower?
Where was: the bolt of thunder
To bring the King’s Men to their knees
When John Fowler bled under
The bells of Barthomley?

And where were you, St. Bertoline
At Ypres and the Somme
For Joe and George, St. Bertoline
For Harry Jenkinson?
Where was: the angels gathered round
Singing ‘Peace be unto thee’
When the rattling guns were mowing down
The boys from Barthomley?

And where were you, St. Bertoline
For Edwin Farrington
For Reg Holland, St. Bertoline -
Plunged into death so young?
Where was: the hand born of your will
To pluck them mercif’ly
From Hitler’s rage, to this green hill
To age in Barthomley?

Where are you now St. Bertoline
At this thoughtful hour -
By the stream, St. Bertoline?
In the breeze that blows the flower?
Do you nightly stalk the nave
Your head hung ashamedly
For all you never did to save
The boys of Barthomley?

Where will you be, St. Bertoline
When the new war comes -
When buckles gleam, St. Bertoline
At the thumping of the drums?
Ah, let me guess! – same as before:
With this useless company
When the next cruel war comes begging for
The blood of Barthomley.

***

Adam Fenn says I only write miserable songs. He’s quite wrong, of course. It’s only just that they mainly are.

Happy May days,

Terry

HEYMAKER AT BINGLEY HALL

Chris Ellis, our old buddy, ex-Radio Stoke DJ and Etruria Garden Festival musicians' manager has requested stories from Stoke bands for a publication he's editing. Lynda asked me to tell him about Magnum's PA at Bingley Hall. I thought I'd post it here too. As I was writing it I thought of a much more interesting thing that happened that day which I will post in a few days or so when I have more time.

By the way, StringFing is on Radio Shropshire (96FM) on Sunday 17th April on Genevieve Tudor's rather excellent 2-hour folk programme.
Here's the Magnum story:

Heymaker (me, Lynda, our Jack, Phil Johnson and Mickey Gibson) was booked to play at Bingley Hall, Stafford as part of a 12-hour rock extravaganza staged by the Motorcycle Riders Association, Top of the bill was Magnum with Wishbone Ash snapping at their heels and a whole host of biker-proven, biker-approved below them. Bingley Hall is a big venue, and by that I mean B-I-I-I-I-I-I-G. Magnum had ordered a 32K PA which was to be used by each band in turn.

Just to give you an idea of the unusual magnitude of that number of Ks: If you were staging a gig on the moon and wanted the people of Mow Cop to be able to dance along with the music, you would probably go for a 31K PA. In other words, the 32K ordered by Magnum was more than slightly overkill even for Bingley Hall.

When we did our sound check in the afternoon, I walked on stage, plugged in, drew the bow across my fiddle and it seemed the whole of the London Philharmonic Orchestra struck up with me. It was awesome, my doods, awesome.

Heymaker went on fairly early in the day by arrangement as we had a gig to play that night as well and had to get on the road in time. We played our half-hour set (hey, went down a storm too), drew our money and went off to our next gig. Job done.

We were, I'm told, one of the few bands to actually get paid out. I forget what the problem with the money was, but I know it was nothing to do with the MRA itself.

I’ll always remember, though, what a massive, massive a sound we got that afternoon of rocking pleasure. However, when Magnum turned up to do their sound check, they said, ‘What the f***’s this? This ain’t no 32K!’ Their people checked the rig and the jolly rockers were right. It was only a mere 30K (!) Magnum refused to play until the 2 missing Ks had been brought in.

I never had a chance to meet the band as we had to leave for our next gig. So, if you ever meet Magnum, ask them for me why they felt the need for such a huge PA. Mind you, you’ll probably have to use sign language.

Gotta rush orf now to a poetry seminar.

Tootle pip.

SAM PLANK: DIAMOND GEEZER

At four minutes past midday on Monday 21st February 2011, there took place, at the Swan Bank Methodist Church in Stoke on Trent’s mother town of Burslem, the farewell to the local radio icon Sam Plank.

Sam, less commonly known by his given name of Terry Hilton, was an old friend of mine – an old friend of so many people, in fact, that the Swan Bank church was cram packed full. You had to be on the family’s guest list to get inside.

Loudspeakers were set up to relay the service to the crowd of people that the church, large as it is, wasn’t big enough to hold. Potteries folk had lined the streets to pay their respects to Sam as the cortege wound its way from Hanley along the streets to Burslem.

One of Sam’s trade marks was that he had worn a red scarf when he was out and about his outside broadcast work and it was one of his requests was that everybody attending the church should wear something red. So, suited in a dark blue double-breasted pinstripe, I booted up in my red doc’ers and stuck a red silk handkerchief in my top pocket for good measure.

Sam’s son wore Sam’s actual red scarf; pastor Ashley Cooper, the minister conducting the service, wore a set of red trainers (I have to say this was a sight reminiscent of Tony Blair wearing those getting-down-with-the-kids jeans); there were women and girls with red roses in their hair; some mourners wore red scarves similar to Sam’s; Joan Walley (MP, Labour, Stoke North) wore a string of red beads.

Joan gave a speech that struck absolutely the right tone being both amusing and very moving.

The one hymn, How Great Thou Art! was chokingly emotional even to this non-believer.

You know, in truth, I didn’t know Sam that well at all. We had bumped into each other professionally several times over the years and he had interviewed me for his Radio Stoke and Signal Radio programmes. But, such was Sam’s sincerity, charm and charisma he immediately made you feel that you were not only a friend of his, but a special one at that.

I was Sam’s last interviewee an Signal Radio. The topic was my book Battling Jack. Sam asked proper good questions and read out parts of the book beautifully. He had incredible empathy.

To me and many others the hugely popular Sam Plank was the voice of Stoke on Trent. But, through his programmes he also gave a voice to many, many other people who otherwise would have remained unheard.

He took up their issues with councils and corporations and more often than not won the day for them. It is well known that having Sam on your side was at least half the battle in resolving a problem. There was love in the room on Monday right enough.

Sam fought his illness with great bravery and without self-pity. Huge condolences to Verity and her family. Lynda and I are thinking of you.

What can be said when some one like Sam Plank is lost to us?

Well from me, I reckon the very least Sam deserves is the highest personal accolade I as a southerner can give him:

PLANKY, MATE, YOU WERE ONE DIAMOND GEEZER.

PITY THE POOR POOR PIG!!

Hey, BIG GREETINGS either and several; eachly, both, one and all.

As usual I’ve been up to too much to get a new blog written earlier. I’ll try to catch up a little bit even though life's still hectic. I wanted to post the true history of the The Canalsiders Ceili Band too, but that’ll have to wait till later.

StringFing did an unusual gig, back in early January, at Gorton Monastery for Adoption Matters North West. The event was the grand finals of a poetry competition on the theme of ‘Belonging’. There were a huge number of entries. Some good uns an’ all.

The judges were: Joy Winkler, John Lindley, Jim Bennett, Copland Smith, Gill McEvoy, Carol Fenlon, Elizabeth Burns, Sarah Hymas and yours truly. We had poems from Joy, John, Jim, Copland and Carol. All excellent wordsmiths.

I was the link person for the event – introducing everybody and stuff. StringFing played a few English traditional dance tunes while the folks got seated.

The short-listed poems were read by the guest poets and the winners announced. I presented the top scribblers in each region with their prizes.

I was commissioned to write a song for the event on the theme of ‘Belonging’ Here’s the lyric:

WE BELONG TOGETHER

All across the world
In every land is heard
Voices of dissent and division
Whoever it is you serve
However your heart is stirred
Whatever your race or religion:

You and me, we’re family
We belong together
You and me, let’s all agree
We belong together

You may not be free
They may call you enemy
And use their guns to defeat you
Such bigotry fails to see
We are linked inextricably
From pole to pole, through and through

You and me, we’re family
We belong together
You and me, let’s all agree
We belong together

You’re stumbling along your rugged road
With your pockets full of stones
You’re hitting the wall; you’re ready to fall
You’ve never felt more alone . . .

When you’ve been hurt by love
You may think the worst of love
You may think love pure invention
When we’ve been cursed by love
In our thirst for love
Remember our true connection:

You and me, we’re family
We belong together
You and me, let’s all agree
We belong together.

© W. Terry Fox

If you want to hear the tune I came up with too, there’s a rough version of me playing it on me Jack Jones in our back bedroom via this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZG3-KOgaIw

Now you can see why I have Adam and Emily making music with me. On the day, StringFing did the song twice and the whole audience sang along to it. I love it when people join in.

The event was master-minded by deWinter PR and Marketing of Chester. If you ever get a chance to work with them, do so. They are a dream to work with.

I’ve got a photo for you: StringFing playing Pity the Poor Poor Pig at our Xmas do at the New Inn, sent in by our buddy Chris Malkin:

Where’s Emily? you may well ask. Chris couldn’t get her in the shot cuz of the crowd at the front, so here’s Emily playing the tune on a long-previous occasion:

We usually play this instrumental piece after we have handed percussion instruments out to our long-suffering and highly rhythmic audiences. And, of course, as well as putting them to work on tambourines, bells and shakers, we get them yelling out the refrain:

‘PITY THE POOR POOR PIG!!’

‘What is that all about then?’ I’m commonly asked by the uninitiated - that is to say that I am asked often. I’m not inferring that the people who ask me the question come from a inferior class than wot I does for I doubt there is one. If so, it’s probable they have't learnt to walk upright yet.

Which reminds me: The great Charlie Mingus (RIP), jazz bassist and composer extraordinaire wrote an autobiography with a classic, unbeatable, down-trodden class reference in its title: Beneath the Underdog. How about that?! Awesome.

Which Mingus reference reminds me: Hey Anna, thanks for posting your comment and for your good wishes. It goes both ways, mate. I really miss teaching at the MMU.

Which in turn reminds me: I heard Jo Bell’s jacked in my old job already. One term, Jo? What the hell can the students be like this year? They seemed harmless enough when I met the new intake briefly on Mow Day. You never can tell though, with students, eh? Come to think of it, hmmm, there does happen to be a fire extinguisher in every room . . .

Which reminds me – the student ‘riots’ (should it be ‘police or state riots’?) which seem so long ago now thanks to my fecklessness over blog writing: I reckon that young geezer - as senselessly reckless as his fire-extinguisher-over-the-balcony action was - is now paying the price for everybody who dared to dissent.

Be warned, next time, my protesting students and friends of equal opportunity and education for all, behave impeccably, max up your numbers and pile on the political pressure. Governments are like spoilt kids. You’ve got to handle them with care before you can get them under control, otherwise they just kick off in tantrums and manage to sidetrack the masses from the real issue being contested. Hand in hand with their close friends of the print media, of course.

An example of how to do it might be Egypt. We’ll have to see how that turns out.

Back to Pity the Poor Poor Pig: I wrote it when I was idling around on a guitar in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. I got so into the licks I had to reboil the kettle a few times before I’d got the tune nailed and could reward myself with a cup of Rosie Lee.

The resulting tune is a kind of boogie, but then again it has a kind of shuffle beat. It mostly feels like a Cajun groove to me, and when ever I think of Cajun music I think of a woodland glade with a row of musos (the word row has an interesting ambiguity in this context) sitting along the trunk of a felled tree going diddy-diddy-diddy-diddy on squeeze boxes with someone beating out 'dinner’s ready' on a big triangle. In the right hand corner of this mind picture, a sacrificial pig, slaughtered and gutted, shaved and impaled in the prime of its fat pigging life, is slowly rotating on a spit over an open fire.

The hog roast is a cliché of Louisiana swamp music along with dungarees, baseball caps, moody splay-toothed alligators, mango trees, and a kind of French nobody bothers to speak anymore.

Plusly, Cajun music has an infectious, hypnotic beat. Great to dance to, but, hey, what a shame a piggywig has to die every time the two-steppers put on their tartan shirts for a shindig.

My Lynda is a vegetarian. I am as well, a bit. Hey, I wonder if they have swine bars down there in Cajun country for the upwardly mobile?

StringFing has done its first New Inn gig of the year. Lots of our lovely StringFing mates were there so it was a good audience in spite of a number of people kept away by the freezing fog. We were fortunate to have as a guest muso the one-and-only Chris Bingham on mouth harp. Most people know Chris as an outstanding jazz funk bass player he is. Not so many know that he is a fine blues harp player too.

Sharing a couple of numbers with us also was our inimitable blues bro Pete Latham. If there’s anyone who spends more time thinking about music than Pete, it’s someone who never goes to sleep. Pete is a wonderful musician. He has eclectic tastes and a vast knowledge of blues and folk history.

Me and Pete go back a long way, but we lost contact for a few years (I think of this period of time as Pete’s wilderness years lol). We’ve been sessioning a few Alf-Alfa tunes together recently – him on mandolin, me scraping the fiddle.

Check out Pete via this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_nHYoFIdiE

Good ain’t he?

Right, I’ve got other stuff to get up to now.

Ta-ra.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS

Hey, Xmas have been an gorn. Hope yours was a happy one, and while we are about it, a very happy and peaceful 2011 to you an yours, my ducks.

We had our Jack to dinner on Christmas Eve, went over to Amy and Dave’s for dinner on Christmas day, and had Marion, Jane, Graham and Katy over for drinks an stuff on Boxing Day. Oh the lovely yuletide mulled wine warmth of it all.

My Christmas poetry gig with the Congleton Choral Society was cancelled ‘due to bad weather’. Ironically, they forgot to let me know and I found out when I arrived smoothly and on time at the venue for the afternoon rehearsal. Wha? Bad weather? But, I’ve got here all right. How do you explain that then? They graciously gave me my fee, but missing the gig gave me a, ‘Now where have I put that drink I was half-way through?’ feeling that I couldn’t shake off for days.

On Christmas Day we had our jolly seasonal telephone call from Cyril Lawton, The mighty bearded one of the golden days of the Bridge Street Arts Centre.

Cyril and I have a chequered history – we had a fight soon after we first met. My fault really. Cyril is a sly mover and after a sophisticated ‘play dead’ ploy by him, I came a rapid second best (I’m crap at the noble art anyway) and had to have a gash over my left eye stitched up at Hartshill A&E.

That Friday night at the A&E unit was a vision of hell: lads by the score with broken limbs, slashed faces, some with axes and bottles sticking out of their heads, and all with Madam Alcohol to thank for it. My newly-humbled self included. Ah, the sad sad wreckage of that woman's followers.

The nurse reckoned I was at least the 500th person that night to have sustained their injuries ‘falling down the stairs’.

As I say, I’m useless at fighting, to which my blacked eyes, split lips and six stitches clearly bore testimony. But, strangely, those injuries gained me something of a reputation for being a hard nut. Huh? Thankfully this reputation was short-lived for I’d be completely unable to live up to it.
Since those misguided drunken fisticuffs, and in the course of hundreds of gigs, Cyril and my family became firm friends. It was great to hear from him on Christmas Day. Cyril asked me if I had seen Robbie Williams on TV recently when the ol’ Stokie songbird mentioned Bridge Street?

Robbie reckoned, in his teens, Bridge Street was a source of top and inspirational music for him. This cleared up a small mystery for me: Lynda was chatting to Robbie in the Mill Hill Tavern one night and Heymaker came up in the conversation. ‘I used to go and see you at Bridge Street,‘ Robbie told her.
‘Gerroff,’ Lynda said. ‘You’d have only been about 14!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Robert cheerfully.

There seemed to be a ring of truth about it: he knew exactly what the Heymaker line-up was and the sort of stuff we played then, but it was hard to credit that he was down Bridge Street at such a young age. I suspected a wind-up. In Robbie's parlance: you're joking me.

‘He was a good kid,’ Cyril told me. ‘I used to let him sit in a corner and watch the bands. Heymaker was number one band there and he saw you a lot.’

We didn’t become mates with Robbie until the early days of Take That. Our Amy was in their target age group and was totally captivated by them as were her mates.

In the dim and smoky past, I had worked in bands on the same bill as Robbie’s comedian dad, Pete (aka Pete Conway), in various working mens clubs and later had been hired by him to play gigs for his staff when he was at the Valiant’s Social Club.

Lynda’s memories of Pete are of when he was in the same short-hand and typing class as her, both studying for their future careers – Lynda’s as a secretary and Pete’s as a policeman. Yes, a policeman. Lynda said Pete cracked jokes the whole time and had them all falling about laughing. He never did wear the blue helmet. That is to say, he never became a policeman.

We did the pub quiz at the Tavern with Robbie one night. There were a dozen or so teams and we came second – second from last, that is. Rob knew more about 60s music than I did and I was there at the time. Then, again, that’s what they say about the 60s, ain’t it?

You have to give your quiz team a name. Robbie chose ‘The Nomads’. He’d just come back from a social trip to Glastonbury with M People and was full of inspiration for the gypsy life. He was to storm Glastonbury with his own gig not long after. And then he stormed in the wilderness for a bit, and now he’s gone full circle, singing with Take That again. Amy’s over you now Robbie. Sorry dood.

We’re off to play the Stoke Hornpipe with Greg and Kate’s team at the Glebe tonight.

Be of good cheer,

Terry

HEYMAKER

The voluminous misinformation floating in the ether about various bands I have been in or have co-founded over the years never ceases to amuse me. I often prefer the mythological accounts to the actual happenings. However, I thought I would do a few brief real histories just for the record, starting with the above named and moving on to Cops n Robbers, Oatcake Billy’s Ideal Band, Boneshaker, et al in later postings.

Here we go then: Once upon a time me, Lynda and Jack moved into an old cottage by the Trent and Mersey canal at Church Lawton. Lynda and I had bought the place from Paul Atterbury – he of the Antiques Roadshow.

Up the dirt track from that little house and across the main road stands Red Bull, or ‘Bottom Bull’ as it was then known locally, there being another Red Bull higher up the same road. The Bottom Bull being the closest boozer to us became my local and I went across for a swift pint of Robinson’s most nights of the week.

In those days the Bull was run by an Irish guy called Colin Meany who provided it with a great juke box which was particularly well-fed on Friday nights by the perfumed and sharply-dressed hoards who were downing a few cheap uns priming themselves for their forays into the night clubs of Hanley and Sandbach. I first heard ‘Sultans of Swing’ on Colin’s juke box so I reckon that’d place these events circa 1979.

Soon after we arrived, The Bull was taken over by an ex-policeman from Manchester, John Higham. A right character and no mistake, enraged or chummy by turns of an inner switch that few understood the workings of. John, in a friendly mood, put a jazz band on in the upstairs function room on Friday nights and switched off the juke box.

Around this time, Lynda bought half a pony. No, no, no, she’s vegetarian. The pony was very alive and, unfortunately, very kicking. Its other half (which I preferred to think of as the back half) was owned for by our sister-in-law Marion.

No sooner had this palomino yearling with the golden body and white flashing mane been installed in the field we rented that ran alongside our garden, than Lynda discovered, to our great delight, that she was pregnant. But, this meant that I was now in charge of her half of the pony. Ooops.

You see, I have a cattle phobia. No really. This is to say that in snnnn pite of my first two jobs being labouring on farms, one of which was a dairy farm on which I helped with the daily milking, I have a cattle phobia.

Yeah, OK, I know horses aren’t much like cows in many ways, but sadly my cattle phobia was generous enough to embrace the family of the noble steed too. Needless to say embracing a horse was absolutely the last thing wanted to do however pretty our prancing little ‘Sunny’ might have happened to be. And deceptively cute he was too.

Oddly enough, me and Sunny got along all right. I learnt as much as I could about horses from books and from horse people and, of course, from Sunny. I broke him to the bit, lunged him, drove him in long reins around the field and along the road. We had a great time, man and horse. I could back him up for as long as I wished just by putting one finger on his nose and gently telling him, ‘Back up. Back up.’ I was no longer afraid of horses.

Then the cute little prancing b*****d broke my shoulder blade. But that’s another story.

In the evenings after tea, the extended family would share in the training and grooming of the pony. Finally, I’d put a hay net up in his stable for him and swan over to the Red Bull for my customary jar. I had my own pot behind the bar which the bar man would pull a pint into as soon as he saw me crossing the road.

Landlord John Higham was suspicious of me at first. Well, I did go over there very obviously having had recent dealings with a horse. I was told later that he asked Ken, one of his regulars, about me. Ken said, ‘Terry? He’s a bit of a gypo, but he’s all right.’ which is one of the best reviews I’ve ever had.

Not only did John allow me to carry on drinking in his pub, but he also picked me up most days from Kidsgrove station in his beautiful, royal blue, old-style Rolls Royce. OK, more accurately, he picked his daughter up at the end of her school day from Kidsgrove station and if I happened to be on the same train as her he’d give me a lift too.

On one such occasion we were purring along the Congleton Road when John asked me, ‘Know of any good folk bands?’
‘Why? What have you got in mind?’
‘That jazz band I’ve got is taking the piss, he said. ‘They’re turning up later and later and they keep asking for more money.’
‘What, exactly you looking for with a folk band then?’
‘I dunno, something like a four or five-piece group to knock out a few tunes and a few songs. I’ll give ‘em a fiver each and free beer.’

I told Lynda about John’s enquiry as soon as I got in. Should we put something together for him? Lynda was well up it and suggested we brought in Adrian and Sheila Crosbie, our mates from Oatcake Billy’s Ideal Band. A perfect choice. I’d been playing the fiddle for a few months and Adrian had been showing me how to go on with it.

The plan became this: Croz and me on fiddles – master and apprentice - Lynda doing her magic tambourine and percussion, Sheila playing sparkling hammered dulcimer. We would play tunes from the English fiddling tradition interspersed with traditional English folk songs for 3 x 30 min sets every Friday night upstairs at the Bull. Sorted.

We asked our Jack if was interested, but he was playing lead guitar in a punk band at the time and said, ‘Nah. Sorry.’ He did agree, though, to play with us until we could get a replacement rhythm player.

Having a juggling with countryside names and morris dancing terms, I came up with the name ‘Heymaker’. I went over the Bull and told John I’d found him just the right band for his job. We started there on the following Friday.

We had Jack turn the treble right up on his guitar to get it to sound more like an acoustic banjo and away we went. Lynda did most of the singing. I did a couple of songs and so did Sheila.

Talk about an instant success! Blimey, we ended up pulling such crowds that John thought he might have overdone it. We loved it. A hassle-free gig in our own locale. I have to say it’s the only gig I have ever had where I transported the gear to it and from it by wheelbarrow. Happy days, doods.

Things never stand still do they? In time we added a bass player and a drummer and got a bit louder and more electric. A predominance of bikers began showing up in our audiences – something about our particular take on music had caught their imagination. John Higham, however, wasn’t happy with this new clientele and would insist they took off their leather jackets if they wanted to come in to see us. Neither they nor we were happy with that.

One New Years Eve at the Red Bull, John hired Heymaker to play for their annual ticket-only Fancy Dress Party. The turn out was a-mazing. Everybody took the fancy dress theme seriously, including grumpy Old Harry next door who decided to come dressed as an angel complete with large wire-and-net-curtain wings. 1981 it was.

Our Amy had been born early on in the year before. I’m her dad and I’m bound to think this, I suppose, but she was the most wonderful little person ever to grace our planet and still is. She was barely two years old and sat there with her eyes wide open with wonder and a great big smile lighting up her face watching Micky Mouse dance with Lady Godiva; a cavemen dancing with a fairy princesses and Old Harry the angel lurching around with a pint in his hand and his halo slipping of his head.

Lynda was doing fewer vocals now as her time was monopolised by looking after our Amy who, for the first year of her life wanted only her mother and nothing but her mother. Lynda was terrific with her too. But it meant that the majority of the vocals were being done by me. Not my original intention. I’m no singer so I thought I’d better write a few songs that I could handle reasonably well: If Yer Working Class, Nellie, Justice For the Lads – that kind of thing.

Heymaker rapidly went all-electric. Our previous New Orleans-style and superb drummer, Cyrano Slater, left because he didn’t want the burden of having to remember the arrangements we were now dreaming up and we replaced him at Jack’s suggestion with the equally wonderful rock drummer Kevin Thompkinson. We brought in Tufty, one of my workmates at Simon-Hartley’s on bass guitar.

Croz and Sheila had bowed out during these changes preferring to continue along their acoustic path. Our Jack had opted to stay with us now that Kev was on the drummer’s stool and we were playing rockier material.

Jack and I set about writing some new material together. Our first writing collaboration was Sunshade Smiling Friday. I wrote the lyric and Jack come up with an appropriate chord sequence and Heymaker collectively hammered out an arrangement.

I hate doing recordings. I’m too erratic to be able to play though a whole piece without one error or another, but I do have an old tape recording of an early version of this song and Jack’s lead playing on it is awesome.

Anyway, back to the New Years Eve gig: I joined in with the fancy dress taking the easiest way out by going as tramp (being half way there already in those days). I stuck an old top hat on my head to complete my ‘Gentleman of the Road’ image and went across the Bull to front the band. When our mate Pete Carter saw me, he gave me some instant advice, ‘You should wear that top hat all the time, Terry. People’ll know not to take you seriously when you're wearing that.’ (!) I took his advice and my top hat became a Heymaker trademark.

Heymaker and John Higham had a amicable parting of the ways. Me and Lynda continued to do a bit of acoustic stuff for him and we brought in Eoghan O’Riley to play melodeon and tin whistle with us, but Heymaker was now homeless.

I called in to the Bridge Arts Centre in Newcastle under Lyme one evening - then run by a big friend of the local folk scene: Cyril Lawton. I asked Cytil, ‘Got any spare nights?’
‘You can have Mondays,’ he said. Simple as that, doods. And thus Heymaker found a new home at the Bridge Street Arts Centre. Monday nights, Heymaker nights, became Bridge Street’s biggest night of the week. More happy days.

Soon after moving to Bridge Street we had that little bit of luck that all bands need: Two biker friends from the Red Bull, Jackie and Bill, were getting married and called round to our cottage to ask if Heymaker would play for their nuptial celebs.

On their wedding day it turned out that the girlfriend of Bill’s best man was a journalist for the biker mag Back Street Heroes. She raved about Heymaker and wrote a short review bigging us along with a photo and published it in the mag.

Before you could say, 'flog my hard-tailed hog', Bridge Street was awash with bikers and Heymaker became bike rally favourites along with Chrome Molly, Engine, Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts and other such distinguished biker bands. Happy happy days.

In honour of our new friends I wrote the song Back Street Heroes:

Knights of the MyWay code,
Famous in the back rows
Back Street Heroes

Lords of the high roads
Kings of the gypoes
Back Street Heroes

Doctors of Philosophy
Wizards of metallurgy
Back Street Heroes

Defy the law of gravity
Ride the wheels of destiny
Back Street Heroes

Back street hero and heroine
May your wheels forever spin
May you ride ever free
May you live this life righteously

Who is there who would not be
Among such nobility?

Do you know, apart from the DangerMouse RC John Clucas Memorial Gig we played in 2007 after a long period of inactivity, I can’t remember how Heymaker ended?

Heymaker just slowly disintegrated, I suppose, having served its time. That happens with bands sometimes. Everybody gradually drifts off into other things.

Heymaker’s line-up for the John Clucas gig was:

Me, vocals, electric fiddle
Neil Hulse, telecaster
Phil Johnson, bass guitar, backing vocals
Mickey Gibson, drums, backing vocals

Heymaker’s most-gigging and most-enduring line-up was:

Me – vocals, electric fiddle, tin whistle
Lynda Fox – vocals, keyboards, tambourine, bodhran
Jack Fox – rhythm/lead guitar, backing vocals
Phil Johnson – bass guitar, backing vocals
Micky Gibson – drums, backing vocals

We were best when aided and abetted by Winky who provided us with great off-stage sound mixing and awesome lighting.

Heymaker’s drummers have been:

Cyrano Slater
Reg Banks
Avron White
Kevin Thompkinson
Pete Coppard
John Carol
Micky Gibson

Our bass guitarists have been:

Tufty from Simon-Hartley
Trevor Pinson
Phil Johnson
Steve West
Steve from Stone
Jack Fox
Sam Mawby

Other regulars have been:

Eoghan O’Riley – melodeon, tin whistle
Adam Fenn - electric mandolin, tin whistle
Geoff Walton - electric bouzouki, electric guitar

Backing vocalists (dubbed "the Heyettes" by fans) have been:

Jane Woolley
Eve Woolley
Lisa Nicklass
Sue Shepherd

Biker Simon Billings (R.I.P) joined us on keyboards for a series of gigs when Lynda was not able to be with us.

***

So that’s how it was folks: Heymaker was co-founded by Lynda and me way back in 1979 and lasted – with short and long gaps – until 2007.

Our most requested and best-remembered songs have proved to be Jack’s and my collaborations: Rhythmic Habits, and Sunshade Smiling Friday and my songs You’ve Got It All, Be My Violin and Back Street Heroes.

The story is told, o readers, the story is told.

We got the sad news today of the passing away of our one-time bass player and backing vocalist Steve West. Steve went on to find success as solo singer/comedian Steve Chicane. Rest in peace, mate.

Here's thanks to all Heymaker friends and fans throughout its history. It was righteous, wasn't it? The band is gone, but the songs live on in StringFing.

Travel safe,

Terry

CARYL PHILLIPS - THE FINAL INSULT?

One of my students has just sent me a message:

Look who's coming to the MMU. Caryl Phillips
22 October, 2010, MMU, Geoff Manton Building, Manchester
Novelist and Yale University professor Caryl Phillips. Talk and questions.

***

Having gratuitously decreed (in spite of protests from more forward-thinking minds than theirs) that I'm too old to any longer be a member of their teaching staff, the MMU have added insult to injury by following this up with the hiring Prof. C. Phillips to come to the MMU in Manchester as a special celebrity writer and academic.

***
For those of you new to this blog, Caryl Phillips is the bloke who (shall we say) leaned so heavily – without acknowledgement - on my book Battling Jack for the text to the Made in Wales section of his book Foreigners that I thought his publishers, Random House, would be as shocked and disgusted as I was when the similarities were pointed out to them.

I truly thought that they might panic when they concluded that if Caryl Phillips had done produced his writing in this way on this occasion, then perhaps this was the way he had always worked. ‘Wow!’ I thought they would think, ‘This puts the whole canon of Phillips’s work into question!’

NOT A BIT OF IT, me old chinas. NOT A BIT OF IT

In the course of my protestations, Phillips’s legal representative at Random House actually warned me that I was making statements ‘injurious to Mr. Phillips’. 'Hmmm,' I thought at the time, 'that ain’t quite the same as saying the statements I'm making are untrue though, is it?

The upcoming MMU event is so close on the heels of dear old Jack Turpin’s funeral that it is especially upsetting to his family just as it is to me.

FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACADEMIC ENQUIRY ONLY I’ll give you an example of the textual similarities which have caused the upset.

Please note that BlogSpot though perfectly fine for blogging has certain limitations of presentation which prevent me from laying out the following text in the precise positions they hold in their publications. The statue inscriptions, for instance, are centred in the books. You would be advised to look at the published books to get the full weight of similarity.

Here is my text, in Jack’s voice, from Battling Jack published in 2005:

“. . . There was me brother, middleweight champion of the world, the man who’d brought about the twentieth century’s biggest upset in boxing, in his moment of triumph, standing 8 ft 6 in. tall, on a 5-ft stone plinth. On the bronze plaque below his feet:

In Palace, Pub, And Parlour,
The Whole Of Britain Held Its Breath

I thought to meself, ‘You’ve done a marvellous job there, Terry. That’s just right.’
Underneath that it’s got:

Celer Et Audax.

Latin for ‘Swift and Bold’ – the motto of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps who me dad fought with for the freedom of all British people, . . .”

*

Here is Phillips’s text in the Made in Wales section of his book Foreigners published two years later in 2007:

“. . . In 2001, exactly fifty years after Turpin shocked the world and defeated Sugar Ray Robinson, an imposing 8’6” statue of Randolph Turpin in boxing pose, on a five feet high stone plinth, was unveiled in the centre of Warwick. On the bronze plaque below his feet are inscribed the words:

In Palace, Pub, And Parlour The Whole of (sic) Britain
Held Its Breath.

And beneath this ‘Celer Et Audax’ – Latin for ‘Swift and Bold’ – the motto of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps with whom Turpin’s father served during the First World War . . .’

*

To me, that not only sounds similar, it looks similar too.

This posting by someone called Dave appeared on the Leamington Guide website on 19th October 2008, 12:37 am:

‘. . . i (sic) went to my local library to see what this "Battling Jack" was about... where in this book does it state that it's "non-fiction"? there is a book by Caryl Phillips titled "Foreigners" that she (the ‘she’ Dave refers here to is Jack’s granddaughter Lydia) should read as there are passages identical to that in Batttling Jack so who copied who? . . .”

I think you’ve got your answer, Dave.

Now then, I wrote Battling Jack in Jack’s voice because not only are Jack’s life and Jack’s life stories his own intellectual property, but my aim and intention was to recreate for the reader what it was like, in my experience, to spend time with Jack as his audience, friend and confidante.

Here's something for Mr. Phillips, his researcher, his Random House editor and his Random House legal team:

When I asked Jack what he thought were the proportions of Randolph’s statue, his estimate was that the bronze figure was 20-ft high and stood on a ten foot plinth.

It was clear to me that his perceived exaggeration of the size of the tribute to the brother he loved was a psychological measure of the huge love and esteem he held his brother in.

Jack straightway realised his own fairly wild over-estimate of Carl Payne’s creation and modified it to, ‘Well, no, I should say it’s about 8’ 6” for Randolph and 5 foot for the plinth.’

I left it at that.

My belief is that a reader of Battling Jack with any empathy and intelligence at all will quickly catch on to Jack’s vibe and instinctively know when Jack is exaggerating and when he is not. Just like you would do if you had actually met up with him for a chat (which Prof. Phillips has not).

Mr. Phillips is apparently not such a reader as Mr. Phillips is repeating Jack’s exaggerations as if they are fact and is repeating them in his own voice - the voice of a sober academic, a now Professor of Yale University. Doh!

The real measurement of Carl Payne’s bronze stature is: 6' 7" from the top of the stone plinth to the top of Randolph’s head. The plinth is 4-ft high at the front and 4 ft 2" at the back.

These proportions have long been known to me. Carl is a family friend. I was in at the beginning of his statue commission and followed it all the way through. It is through my involvement with Carl's commission that I met Jackie Turpin.

Adrian Bush, President of the Randolph Turpin Memorial Fund, decent fellow that he is, climbed up on the Warwick statue on a rainy day recently to verify these measurements, so: Doh! again Professor.

Ah, but there are many other examples of similarity between the two texts that I will not bore you with here.

During the course of my written exchange with Prof. Phillips, he claimed that Randolph’s two elder daughters are happy with his Made in Wales section of Foreigners.

I spoke to them both at Jack’s funeral – and wonderful women they are too, Randolph would have been really proud of them – and told them I had been in communication with a friend of theirs, Caryl Phillips.

‘He is no friend of ours,’ I was quickly told by the first daughter in tones that left me in absolutely no doubt of her sincerity. The second daughter came in with, ‘In fact we are very cross with Mr. Phillips.’

They went on to describe how Caryl Phillips had published things they had told him only in confidence and did so even after they had secured a promise from him that he would remove them from his final text. Doh! yet again Prof.

So, Prof., if you are reading this, and I hope you are, have a good gig at the MMU on the 22nd. You will easily recognise the Geoff Manton Building: It’s 4,078’ 9 ½” high standing on some 867-foot stone steps. Mind how you go.

***

The inscription on Carl Payne’s statue of Randolph, by the way, is a line taken from my song, Champion of the World, my personal tribute to Randolph’s great achievement in 1951. Come along to a StringFing gig. We often include that one.

***

Got to shoot off now. I promise a happier posting next time about an old mate of Lynda's and mine showing up at my National Poetry Day gig.

Tra a bit,

Terry

X-FACTOR: EX-FACTOR

Hooray! I’ve finally been cured of my need to watch X-Factor! Hooray, hoorah, and hooray again!

I had been compelled by its magnetic ugliness for far too long.

X-Factor is staged with the sole aim of producing a TV show with money-makingly high ratings and hugely profitable spin-off merchandising opportunities.

Its participants are pawns in a giant game of chess. On one side of the table are the ever-hungry Mr. Cowell and his cohorts, and on the other side is the ever-hungry British TV-viewing public.

As every chess player knows, you have to sacrifice a few pawns in the pursuit of every win (and occasionally a queen, Lynda suggested when she read this).

Some of those taking part in X-Factor Chess might happen to receive benefit – even great benefit - from occupying the board, but, make no mistake, that is NOT the point of play. The point is, of course, the cheque, mate.

Embarrassingly, a couple of X-Factor victims have been students of mine from the MMU (you know who you are, M and D. Well no, sadly, you don’t, do you? You wouldn’t have done the X-Factor in the first place if you did).

But, ha!! No more shall I succumb to its guilt-inducing shows that have had me chuckling at its exploitation of the mentally ill.

No longer shall I have to hang my head in shame after finding myself laughing along with the bullyboy’s gang as the spotlight is turned on the next deluded one to be shoved out to croak and squirm under the hot, panting breath of the judges, and the cold, unforgiving eye of TV cameras.

Never again shall I have to witness the false bonhomie of the X-Factor's unenviable pontificating panel to whom fame and money are never enough; to whom the prospect of getting old is so terrifying they have themselves surgically disguised as younger people.

CUE: StringFing playing the intro to Somewhere in the Night

ENTER: The GRIM REAPER. He speaks from deep within his hood.

“Ah, but inside yourselves, my starry-starry doods, inside yourselves you are older than ever before, and so it goes on and on and on and on like that until you are mine.”

Curtains close as the skeletons in the cupboards of past X-Factor contestants sing: ‘Somewhere in the night violins are playing / The melody lingers, but it won’t be staying’.

If you can’t live with death, you can’t live with life, I say (Oooops! There wasn’t a faintly pleading quality to my voice just then, was there?).

How has this cure of mine been so dramatically accomplished?

How have I, apparently magically, been released from enslavement to my hideous and boorish tippex-toothed master?

I’ll tell you how:

he has brought Sharon Osbourne back in,

that’s how.

Once glimpse of her, one note of her voice was the combined emetic and enema this patient needed. A single moment of chain-shattering (yes, the resonance is intentional), unutterable horror, then: CURED! Wonderful!

Now then, I wonder if there are any crane flies handy that need their legs pulling off?

Tra-abit,

Terry

Jo Bell. Have a Go Jo, Come and Have a Go . . .

Hey ho doods, turns out that they have finally given the Year 1 poetry strand of my old MMU job to Jo Bell. It’s Jo’s first venture into higher ed tutoring, apparently, so all good wishes to her from me. I’ve met Jo a few times and she looks young enough not to have to tread in fear of the MMUC's ageist policy – for a year or two anyway :-)

ON A NEW YEARS DAY

People have been asking for the lyric to this song of mine about the Sneyd Colliery Explosion in 1942.

This event, although belonging to what feels like an entirely different world, is still in living memory. I recently met a fella who was a 17-year-old lad at the time of it and remembers it well as well he might. He escaped the tragedy as he worked a different shift to the victims.

I know I told the story of the Sneyd disaster in an earlier blog, but did not (in so far as I can remember and I'm feeling far too idle right now to check it out) actually post the words, so here they are:

ON A NEW YEARS DAY

He who dares cut the coal, old pitmen say,
On a New Years Day
Has a wife make his snappin’, a widow take his pay
On a New Years Day

Bomber planes are flying, back to work it is
On a New Years Day
Sally stop your crying, give me one more kiss
On a New Years Day

The winding wheel is turning, the cage at the drift
On a New Years Day
Collier lads and Bevin Boys start their morning shift
On a New Years Day

At the Banbury Crut jig a rope begins to fray
On a New Years Day
The air is choked with powdered coal, the coal tubs runaway
On a New Years Day

The first down-coming tub scrapes up a spark
On a New Years Day
A coal dust blast rips apart the dark
On a New Years Day

At the pithead wives are waiting in sorrow and in grief
On a New Years Day
Their silence only broken by words of disbelief
On a New Years Day

Collier wives and Bevin Boys and boys in soldier suits
On a New Years Day
When bells ring out for war, we are all recruits
On a New Years Day

When the names are numbered, the roll of honour called
On a New Years Day
To the spoil heaps of the battlefields add fifty-seven more
On a New Years Day


© W. Terry Fox


If you want to actually hear this song sung, come to see StringFing at the New Inn, Derby Street, Hanley, on the evening of Thursday, October 21st. I have promised to put OANYD into our programme. Come down anyway even if you don’t want to hear it sung. You’ll be among some of the finest people walking this whole round earth – excluding the band of course.

May your steps be light and lead you along the road to happiness,

Terry

NATIONAL POETRY DAY

Hey, like I said before, on NATIONAL POETRY DAY – Thursday October 7th 2010 – I will be giving a reading at NANTWICH LIBRARY on this year’s theme of HOME.

This means I will be reading poems of my nearest and dearest, and reading from Village Verse my collection of poems about my beloved Mow Cop.

The event will begin at 2pm and extend for about an hour.

You will be made most welcome and I am looking forward to a good time there.

I just wanted to remind you to come along.

***
Each year for the past five years, on the Friday of Fresher’s Week, along with my Writing colleagues at MMU Cheshire, I have had the joy of taking the new intake of Writing undergraduates to Mow Cop and Mount Pleasant Village Hall to give a short talk on the history Mow Cop and to read them some of my Mow Cop poems.

We then all troop up to the top of Mow to have a look at the places the poems have been about. The students take notes and then we all pile off back to the village hall for them to do some writing of their own.

It’s all to do with having a larf, facilitating them getting to know each other, and to remind all us writers of the importance of a sense of place in our writing. It is always a pleasure and good fun to boot and this year's do (Friday 24th September) was no exception.

It was a particularly poignant occasion for me seeing as ‘ow I’ve been forbidden any teaching on campus any more. This year’s students are a great bunch – more of them than usual too – and I really really envy my colleagues teaching them.

Only me and Julie could make it up there this year. I managed to seriously mis-direct the coach driver by taking him up the wrong road for a coach and getting us stuck. The driver was a top human being – stoic and patient – and with great skill, managed to bale us out of the predicament I had placed us in with a 1,000 point turn and a bit of pavement scraping.

The photo was taken on an earlier Mow Cop expedition by my friend and colleague Heather. One of the figures is known locally as: The Old Man of Mow.

***
So get along to Nantwich Library on National Poetry Day if you possibly can.

In the meantime, may all your roads be smooth, well-lit, safe and wide enough; may all your loads be light.

Terry