Those musical memories can bring a tear, or a smile
Being confined to home has had ANTON RIPPON dusting off his musical favourites, stirring memories of times and people from his past
HOW to spend these dreary winter days, when the most severe lockdown yet prevents us from breaking the monotony? The pubs aren’t open, so a lunchtime pint is out of the question, and beauty spots should be left to those lucky enough to live in them.
The advice is easy enough to understand – stay at home, or at least in the immediate neighbourhood. Use common sense. You shouldn’t need a map reference to tell you how far abroad you may wander. I don’t blame the police force for intervening. It was just a pity that they unwittingly made unlikely media stars out of people who could presumably have exercised just as easily in their own county. Rescinding those fines sent the wrong message. An apology wasn’t necessary.
Ever since the original lockdown conditions were eased, we still haven’t strayed beyond what was introduced back in March. Apart from necessary visits to the opticians, I’ve not been in the city centre for getting on for a year now.
Even when the number of deaths and the infection rate were dramatically reduced, it seemed sensible to carry on until the allclear is finally sounded.
Yes, I know, I’m fortunate. Family already in situ and a nice garden to enjoy. Food and medication delivered. It must be rotten for people on their own, perhaps living in a flat. But needs must, and if we are ever to return to a nearly normal life, then everyone has to do their bit. That not everyone did when restrictions were eased in late summer is pretty much why we are back here now. Those scenes of hundreds of people dancing and drinking in the street were shocking.
Boris might have offered to bung everyone a tenner to go out for a pub lunch, but now hospitality has had to close again, and, this time, probably for longer than would have been necessary if we’d stuck it out first time around.
So, how to pass the time? I’ve worked from home for the past 20 years, so nothing has changed in that regard. But these late afternoons when you’ve done all you need to do? A crossword a day helps, but music is the greatest escape. And what memories a whole range of it can evoke.
My mother was a lover of Italian opera and Neapolitan songs. Sit me down with E lucevan le stelle from Puccini’s Tosca – preferably the Beniamino Gigli version – and I’m back in Gerard Street, just home from junior school, wondering what’s for tea.
I’m no highbrow, though. I Never Felt More Like Singing The Blues has me walking home from grammar school, down Stockbrook Street on an unseasonably hot autumn afternoon as the strains of the Guy Mitchell number are wafting through the open window of a terraced house opposite St Luke’s Church.
Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In The Night whisks me away with the future Mrs R to a nightclub in Ostend in the mid-1960s, and Pasadena puts me on the Redfern Athletic team bus, coming back from Manchester around the same era. The late, much-lamented Trevor McCandless interrupts the Temperance Seven’s greatest hit with his maudlin version of Old Shep, much to the annoyance of another dear pal alas no longer with us, Snowy Haywood, who is trying to conduct the back-seat chorus performing the original song.
All the above, especially if accompanied by a glass of decent red, will induce a tear because they are, as A.E. Houseman wrote, “the happy highways where I went. And cannot go again”.
The cursed pandemic has robbed all of us of more than a year of our lives – and, of course, robbed tens of thousands of their very lives themselves – so please, let’s all follow the advice this time. Stay local.
I have to end on a cheerful note. How about Happy Go Lucky Me? George Formby and his ukulele always make me smile.
Anton Rippon’s local books are available from www. northbridgepublishing.co.uk