Cowboy Dreams and Singing Cowboys

There's a fashion for major artists to reconnect with their fans by playing small venues. On Thursday 20th March a singer who can fill concert halls in Scandinavia, who supported Tori Amos on a recent US tour, played a support spot at the Ruby Lounge on Communion's tour. Thomas Dybdahl is a Norwegian singer songwriter. I first came across his music nearly ten years ago when my son came back from New York with a few of his songs on his new I-pod. We knew nothing about the singer then, but those songs became part of the soundtrack to our family life, especially Cowboy Dreams. A few years ago we got to see him in Derby, touring solo, playing small venues, chatting to his audience. My younger son added his songs to his busking repertoire. We saw him with his band on a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Green Man Festival in 2011. So when I saw he was playing the Ruby Lounge, I was thrilled but puzzled. Why such a small venue? A small but very enthusiastic audience of fans gathered, some of them fellow Norwegians. They knew he had sold out the concert hall in Oslo the week before. This was a living room experience of a gig, in the Ruby Lounge. Thomas was genuinely surprised at the warmth of the reception. We knew the songs, we knew the words. He has that ability to connect with his audience that makes a performance memorable long after the event. He is charming and chatty . It became a conversation. He asked for requests, inviting the audience to ask him questions . It was cosy. He gave us the back stories to the songs. Life Here is Gold was written in a hot tub in Bahrain. A Love Story was for a film soundtrack. He sang an old favourite, Cecilia, revealing something of his relationship history in the process. It's about the girl he didn't get. He did an acoustic version of Let's Party Like it's 1929. He finished the set with Love is Here to Stay from his latest album.He had dreamt the first chord of this particular song. He had no merchandise, but he talked to people at the bar, posing for photos and chatting in Norwegian and English. It was a very special night. New friends and favourite music. He gets compared to Jeff Buckley and that would be a starting point if you think you might like him, but he is a very distinctive writer and singer. I had intended to post this review on one of the sites I write for, because I want to spread the word about him, but I have no photos to post with it. Tonight,one of my friends reminded me of Arthur Lee and Love's song ' Singing Cowboy'. When we met Thomas in Derby, he told us our favourite song 'Cowboy Dreams' hadn't been released. How did it find its way onto my son's iPod in New York? The lovely Norwegian girls I met at the Ruby Lounge told me that Thomas' Stavanger dialect is very distinctive, and very different to Oslo - more different than our northern and southern accents and dialects! I had no idea. http://www.thomasdybdahl.com/ Sent from my iPad

Farewell, farewell

Yesterday was my last day as an Opening Up Archives trainee with the Greater Manchester Record Office. I saw the advert for this National Archive sponsored scheme in the Guardian over Christmas 2012. I had a full time job in a beautiful place, Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, literally on my doorstep. But I knew if I didn't apply for this one year post in archives, in Manchester, I would regret it for ever. So I threw caution and my fate to the winds and filled in the application. In February I was invited for interview and was offered the job. The Marshall Street location, on the scruffier shore of the Northern Quarter and Ancoats, couldn't have been further from my working surroundings at Haddon. What would it be like to step out of that door on a dark winter's evening? Could I hack a return to Manchester? These concerns became insignificant when snow fell at the end of March 2013, just as I was about to start. Buxton, where I had intended to catch the train, was cut off for days. Snow was still piled high in drifts created by the snow ploughs at the beginning of April. I arranged to travel over to Manchester the day before I started work to be sure of arriving on time. Things settled into a pattern. The commute to work using the Hope Valley line introduced me to old and new friends. The archive collection introduced me to familiar material I had brought into a different archive in the early 1980s. It also allowed me to explore stories from the archives I will never forget.Old friends appeared at every turn. New friends and colleagues added to the enjoyment.Then I got the offer of a base in Manchester for the winter, in a 1930s apartment block I had fantasised about living in for years. New opportunities opened up at every turn. Great connections with Melanie Smith of Mudkiss, leading to writing music reviews . Wonderful rekindled friendships at Hardy's Well. Finally, in the last few weeks, I was caught up in the reopening of Central Library, a building that represents so much that is good about Manchester and means so much to so many generations of people who have called Manchester their home. More on that in another post. Yesterday one aspect of my homecoming came to an end. Tomorrow I will leave the lovely studio flat that has been my second home for the last six months. It has been wonderful to come home to Manchester, to feel so stimulated and yet so relaxed in the city that always had great significance for me in the past. I wasn't sure how we would fit together again this time last year. Now I know that we will never be apart! I don't know what the future will bring, but I'll never doubt my identity as a Mancunian. This mysterious little staircase in Central Library seems to symbolise my mood. I'm not sure where I'm heading, but thanks to my year in Manchester, I know it's going to be intriguing.

Kurt's Karass

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite writers. I like his style. I like his thoughts and ideas. He also gave a name to something I recognise in my own life, the concept of karass. Coincidentally it was someone I have now reconnected with in Manchester who first introduced me to karass back when I was a teenager. Karass is defined as a group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial links are not evident. As a teenager who had been cut off from family and childhood friends when I was sent away from Manchester to boarding school, this was a word that helped give a name to the significant friendships and connections I made as I created my new family of friends to replace the family life I had lost. Coming back to Manchester has made me acutely aware of those connections, some lost in the past, but more than I could have imagined have returned to my present. I was invited to a birthday party this week by Melanie Smith of Mudkiss Photography. We have been doing music reviews together for a couple of months. She takes amazing photos and she had been asked to go and take some party photos. The party was for someone I thought I had no connection with. Aziz Ibrahim was part of The Stone Roses and that era of Manchester's music history isn't mine. I'd moved out of town and was bringing up my family. Then I realised that he'd been part of Simply Red and Asia. Simply Red as a band were good friends and even helped me move house once upon a time. They had a van and needed the money. Geoff Downes of Asia, and the Bugles, was part of my group of friends at university. A couple of us were out for a catch up drink with him the night Bugles went to number one. Listening to Aziz talk about his friends,his schooldays, his family of relatives and musicians, his support and connections, his homecoming to Manchester, I was reminded of the concept of karass. A fiftieth birthday is a good time to reflect on where you come from and where you're going. His support for young musicians was obvious. He gave them a chance to showcase their talents to his guests. He's now part of their karass. I used to live and work in Longsight in the late 1970s. It occurred to me that Aziz might have been one of the teenagers I used to pass on my way to work or the market. I started the evening feeling a bit of a gatecrasher. By the end of the evening I felt like one of the family.

What it's all about

Yesterday I spent the day in Manchester.I don't usually spend Saturdays here, but I had tickets to go and see the Tord Gustaven Ensemble at the Royal Northern College of Music in the evening. I planned to head for the Old Parsonage in Didsbury to see an exhibition and performance by Sarah Coggrave in the afternoon. Before I set off for Withington and Didsbury I went in search of the Nico Ditch in Platt Fields. When I started this new blog, I intended it to be about those things that are close by, still waiting to be discovered. An Anglo Saxon earthwork in Fallowfield is one of them. Later, walking through Withington I recalled the squat where I lived for a short time in the summer of 1973 and met my first husband. Ghost Busters at the Scala cinema with its late night films and audience participation. Hanging out at The Red Lion as a teenager. The Victoria pub, with its amazing elderly lady pianist who could play any tune with Mrs Mills flair. A favourite Italian restaurant where I ate farfalle al salmone for the first time, now a regular home cooked dish. Walking on, I passed the Bridge Club that Omar Sharif was rumoured to visit when he was in town. Houses where friends used to live. Places where I think they still live. My first experience of babysitting. A sudden memory of where an old boyfriend had lived. Bedsit manoeuvres and flats with windows open, Grateful Dead on the air. I took a photograph of the house on Central Rd where my two older children were born, the eldest to the sounds of Vini Reilly's guitar, drifting through from the next door room. On and on. Along Burton Rd, past long vanished shops where I had worked, where I met my second husband. Ghosts and presences. The old Midland Hotel, the new tram stop. The Ape House,Village Green, Northen Grove, Rabid Records. Back and forth across the years. My own stories attached to places I didn't expect to see again. Taller tales told of bombs under drug squad Jaguars. A dog that used to shop lift tins of food from the delicatessen. Ceremonies in the cellar of a green grocers to get rid of the bad luck attached to the shop next door. Vintage clothes and fair isle jumpers. Walking down Barlow Moor Rd, I recalled yoga classes where baby came too at Fielden Park. The Cheese Hamlet is still going strong. Is there a hologram of Carol and Trevor's old shop there behind a new facade? There were houses I recognised and houses I had never noticed before. Edwardian villas, and Victorian cottages, Arts and Crafts family homes and flat conversions. Were they hidden behind hedges, or did I walk round with my eyes closed ? By the time I got to the Old Parsonage I was somewhere else in time and space. Fletcher Moss was where we walked our new dog, our first shared responsibility before children came along. I sat there one sunny Saturday, trying to come to terms with the implications of winning enough money on the pools to continue the homoeopathy course I'd started and thought I couldn't afford to finish. My own sense of history was overwhelming, but I was also curious to know more about the places I hadn't remembered and recognised. Perfect timing for Sarah's exhibition, A House in Didsbury. We had met when she came to the archive where I work to do some research on the owners of the house where she lives. The name of the house led her back into the story of the Armenian community in Manchester, and her exhibition and performance was in response to that. I had no idea how rich my own sense of my past would be in that small area of a South Manchester suburb. Where the Tord Gustavsen concert took me later will have to wait for another day. One last thing. I travelled back to Manchester today from Bakewell on the transpeak bus. There were roadworks and hold ups in Hazel Grove. While we were waiting, I got talking to the couple behind me. He was brought up in Withington, and as he talked about the area, he told me that his elderly mother had played piano at the Victoria pub back in the day, back in my day.

Women's Day

Today, March 8th, is International Women's Day. I have shared, posted and tweeted about it on my work social media platforms. I have also commented on a couple of posts on my personal Facebook pages. This may turn out to be the most personal blog post I have ever written. Even though it may appear that I share some very personal information, I always write with awareness of what I am prepared to make public. I am also very careful not to be critical of people I know. As some of you know, I have three wonderful children. All three were born at home, two in Manchester and the youngest in Bakewell. My second husband is the father of my older two, and that marriage broke up when I met the father of my youngest, who also claimed to have had a vasectomy. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to arrange home births for all three, with fantastic care on the NHS. The midwives who looked after me before, during and after those births were thrilled and excited to be involved. Not everyone wants a home birth, but it was really important to me. I was especially lucky because I was considered an older mother at 30 when I had my first. I officially became a single parent just before my youngest child's third birthday. A few alarm bells, but no real warning signs. My oldest was just about to start secondary school. I had a part time job and worked as a homoeopath and reflexologist on a self employed basis. I had some child care arranged for my youngest, but not enough to cover my work commitments. I had to drop weekend and evening appointments, give up a practice room. I can remember feeling almost hysterical as he drove off, in my car, into the distance. It lasted about ten minutes and then I had to work things out. I know I cried a lot over the next couple of weeks, but that was the shock. My next door neighbour, a very good friend and my mother came and helped, taking it in turns to cover my part time working week. When I read criticism of single parents on benefits, or read about government schemes to get women back to work, I wish they knew what it was like to juggle home, work, children and the rest. It only takes one of the family to be ill or off colour and the whole careful balancing act tumbles. And then there are the school holidays. I found myself helping out friends in the holidays or after school because I had no choice but to be organised for all eventualities. Then my parents moved to Bakewell. Halcyon days. The older two got older. They were an enormous help. Then my parents got older. New worries and concerns. As the years went by I shifted what I did and how I did it to fit round my family commitments. I even did a part time MA. My younger sister took my youngest on holiday with her to give me a long weekend to write up my thesis. That's all it takes sometimes. Last month I went for an interview for a one year, lowly paid post. The interviewer,a woman, asked me if my varied CV indicated a lack of focus. I was too shocked by the question to respond as I would now. I started to explain about the shifts in child care and responsibilities that had taken me from part time and flexible self employed work, to full time but unsocial hours, back to part time and then full time again. What I should have said is that it showed that I was fully focused on balancing my responsibilities to my family and myself. I have had help from unexpected sources and a complete lack of support from some I would have expected it from. I never dreamt in my wildest nightmares that I would bring up a family in this way, with such single minded responsibility. It is a credit to my children that they made it the rewarding and fulfilling experience it has been. The friends and family who have helped along the way have also been a huge part of that. Like the fridge magnet says ' you can't scare me, I have children'.

A City Speaks

' A City Speaks' is the title of a film made in 1947, described as Manchester's Civic Film. Commissioned during the Second World War,it celebrates the achievements and the ambitions for the redevelopment of the city. Housing, health, leisure and culture are all represented. Documentary film maker Paul Rotha took over the production in 1944 and the film premiered at the Odeon in 1947. Every time I travel round Manchester, especially on the bus down through the Oxford Road corridor, past the Universities, or when I wait for the transpeak bus at Chorlton Street coach station, I am both thrilled and amazed at the diversity of the languages I hear. I try and identify the language from snatches of vocabulary. I can manage Italian, Spanish, Polish, German, Japanese, Chinese and of course French. Then there's Urdu and Arabic. I listen out for North African French because it reminds me of living in Morocco. I found myself following an excitable conversation in French last week and then realised that my satisfaction in being able to recognise what they were talking about meant that I was eavesdropping! There's such a mix of nationalities in the city. Some are passing through,students and post graduates.Others are born and brought up here, with Manchester accents and the ability to speak a family language fluently. I don't know why I worry about eavesdropping. People don't usually talk to one another on the bus, but they will have phone conversations about the most personal topics and seem oblivious to the fact that they are sharing those thoughts and feelings with a bus full of strangers! It's a great insight into what the city says.