Remnants

This Saturday I will be at the Old House Museum in Bakewell, celebrating a night at the museum and collaborating with a group of talented people known as the IAC, art for art's sake. There will be photos from Jools Sewell and Billy Bye, and art from Debra Stone and Keith How. I'll be taking my yellow typewriter to encourage visitors to type their thoughts and reactions. The theme is REMNANTS and I know there's been some great explorations of this topic, already shared as teasers on Facebook . I'd thought of landscape and geology, extinct volcanoes, healing wells and springs, blue john and crinoid limestone. I thought of writing about these remnants of past ages, past times. However a couple of weeks ago I was handed an old Asda carrier bag full of papers, maps, envelopes full of old typewritten stories and sheets of paper covered with my once neat handwriting dating back to the 70s and 80s. In spite of my efforts to clear all the cupboards in my house before I sold it, I had overlooked this bag, found at the back of a cupboard. Remnants of my own life. I'll be displaying and talking about them on Saturday night. Most of it relates to local history and folklore, so it will be perfect for a night at the museum. Some of it relates to past work teaching English, something I am hoping to revisit in the next few months.

Arabian Nights

I have already mentioned the way in which books re-present themselves on the shelves when you move house. I keep rediscovering old favourites and I feel justified in hanging on to the books I brought with me, even though it seemed too many at the time. (I know, you can never have too many books!) In the last week I have read Tahir Shah's books about Casablanca again. 'The Caliph's House' is his story of buying a house in Casablanca and the process of making it his family home. It's in a part of Casablanca I can picture, even though he's writing nearly 30 years later. He describes a small rocky island at one end of the beach, accessible by wading across at high tide. It's covered in low white washed buildings. I walked across to it in the first week I spent in Casa, realising that I was out of place and in uncharted territory, but fascinated nevertheless. Apparently the sorceresses live there. You can see film of it on Tahir Shah's youtube posts. He also takes you round his amazing home and shares some of the wonderful French architecture in the centre of the city. I know parts of it must have changed beyond recognition, but there's plenty in the books and the films that is familiar. It seems that living in Morocco, and especially French influenced Morocco, is still the fascinating and disorientating experience I had. It really is like living in four or five centuries simultaneously. High fashion and donkey carts, djinns and nightclubs, art deco architecture and shanty towns. Tahir Shah is the son of Idries Shah, whose collections of Sufi stories were favourite reading when I first discovered them in my twenties. Tahir went looking for his own story, the story in his heart, which led him on a quest for traditional storytellers in Morocco. Once I'd read 'In Arabian Nights' again, I spotted another book about storytelling in Morocco, 'The Last Storyteller' by Richard Hamilton, a BBC correspondent in Marrakesh. Then as often happens, synchronicity struck. As I finished this intense bout of reading, Radio 4 broadcast Moroccan stories each weeknight at 7.45pm. They can be found if you search Open Art on the website. Ben Rivers, an artist, was commissioned to work with Artangel to produce a body of work based on Morocco and storytelling traditions. He's been working on it since 2013. There's a film, The Sky Trembles And The Earth is Afraid And The Eyes Are Not Brothers, and a multimedia installation at BBC Television Centre. There are also these five audio pieces for Radio 4. He uses Mohammed Mrabet's stories, read by Youssef Kerkour. Mrabet was Paul Bowles' muse. Bowles transcribed and translated his stories, publishing them as collections, Harmless Poisons Blameless Sins and M'Hashish. There's a mosaic of Moroccan sounds to accompany the readings. It's evocative and magical to listen to them. They transport you on a magic carpet ride. I'd been so disappointed when the trip I had planned to make to Morocco in April didn't go ahead. This has been a consolation prize.

Body image

Since moving to Sheffield I have met up with a lovely group of young talented musicians, mostly thanks to friendships forged with my youngest son when he moved here. One of them, the lovely and very talented Fran, has set up a Facebook group, inspired by Movember and Dry January, called MAY, I Love My Body. She has invited friends to share and contribute positive messages and thoughts about self image and body awareness. She started sharing with a wonderful song by India Arie. 'Sometimes I shave my legs, sometimes I don't'. What a great line. The song continues to be such a positive and uplifting message about being yourself, not always easy in any circumstances, but especially tricky in the music business. I thought I'd enjoy the posts over the month of May, but wasn't sure about contributing. At the age of 62, I have seen fashions come and go. Not just fashions in clothes and dress, but fashions in looks, body shape, hair type, facial features - you name it. I thought I had reached a point where I truly believe that anything goes, that there are many ways to express yourself, to look good and that as an individual you can take confidence from that. Comparisons don't work. The phrase 'Comparisons are odious' was first recorded in use in the 15th century. Van Morrison wrote the line 'All the girls walk by dressed up for each other' in his song 'Wild Night'. Of course it isn't only girls who judge themselves against their contemporaries. I find the vogue for plastic surgery horrifying, as much because of my fear of needles, stitches and hospitals. I watched the TV adaptation of Fay Weldon's Life and Loves of a She Devil and it had a lasting effect. I also grew up in the sixties when an apparently effortless natural look was chic. Think Jean Shrimpton and Julie Christie. So Fran got me thinking. I've been lucky. My weight doesn't change much. I feel healthy and eat well. It's easy for me to find fashionable clothes and small sizes often end up in charity shops too. My hair grows and I have never had to colour it. It's turning silver rather than gold, but it's an easy look to maintain. My teeth are my own. My toe nails aren't so good but a bit of polish sorts that in the summer. However I am aware that it could have gone another way. Boarding school created some strange eating habits. I hated the school food, especially as I disliked meat. I lived on cereal, cakes and biscuits. There was a tuck shop and we could buy extras, so I think most of my friends could eat a whole cake or a whole packet of biscuits at a sitting. In the late 60s I had never heard of anorexia or bulimia but that didn't mean it didn't exist. Looking back on schooldays I can identify friends who suffered from one or the other - or both. I was Twiggy style and could eat as much sweet stuff as I wanted. I probably weighed about 7 stone. But I do remember a skinnier friend's brother describing me as 'stocky'.Luckily I didn't take it too seriously, though the fact that I remember it all these years later means it struck home. His sylph like sister did go on to be a photographic model in those stick thin days. Noone ever told me I was nice looking or pretty or anything like that through my teens. My parents were on the other side of the world and I don't think it occurred to them that my sisters and I might need a bit of encouragement. As I get older I also realise that my mother had (and still has!) her own issues around ageing, weight and image. Some of my friends were encouraging and kind but I never really got it about looks. Being brought up by nuns didn't help either. Vanity was considered a sin. So I find myself at an age when I can accept who I am and what I look like without any worries . I sometimes look at photos of myself when I was younger and regret that I didn't know what I had back then. It would have been nice to have been proud occasionally! So to those of you reading this as part of MAY, I Love My Body, just do it.

Carfree

After nearly 25 years of essential car ownership I have just made the leap to become carless!I didn't learn to drive until I was thirty and then had access to the family car once I did. I have an ambivalent attitude to driving, especially having waited so long to learn. It's complicated and I do trace it back to my own mother's lack of navigation skills when she had to learn to drive because my father was working abroad.I was designated navigator and at the age of nine it was sometimes traumatic.I like public transport and the chance meetings and interactions that result in bus and train journeys. I'm not a car person, though I do regret that I no longer have the VW Karmann Ghia my former husband and I owned back in the 70s. In the last few months I have found myself unintentionally jobless and homeless, fortunately not for long. That wasn't part of the moving back to the city plan. But thinking about managing without a car was and yesterday I took the plunge. It was tempting to keep it for emergencies,or to trade it in for another secondhand car, but the truth is I wasn't using it and didn't need it. I get free bus travel to work, I live near to the shops I need and it's a short walk and an even shorter bus journey into town. I get trains if I'm going any distance. I am finally well connected. I realised when I worked in Manchester that people were managing work and bringing up a family without a car. A social life was possible and entertainment was accessible without one. In Bakewell a car was necessary for access to work, to shops and to enable my children to have friendships and interests. I could get to concerts and gigs in Sheffield or Buxton by bus, but I couldn't get home. The nearest railway station was a car journey away, with bus links to it cut in the last few years. I remember signing up for the doctor's surgery in Eyam when I first moved to Bakewell. They were happy to supervise the home birth of my youngest. Only a few miles from Bakewell, I assumed there'd be a local bus service for my appointments when I didn't have the car. Once a fortnight on a Monday! That's one bus there and one back. I don't think even that exists any more. Community transport initiatives took up some of the slack for special groups, but not for the general public. Time of course was a factor. The school and playgroup runs before and after work, the dashing about to manage it all. So now when my time is more my own, I can factor in the choice of walk or bus journey, or even a taxi. It's an experiment. I don't expect to be carless for ever, but I do want to be convinced I need one before I go looking. I am also in the fortunate position of being able to borrow one occasionally if I need to. I'm told there's a car club in Sheffield and I'd like to find out more about that too. But for now I'm car free and carefree. Bye little Smart Car. It's been fun!

Love will tear us apart

I have just woken up from a dream which involved me saving Martin Hannett from a heroin overdose. I was successful. The dream had a positive feel to it. This is not as surreal as it might sound. I know what sparked memories of Martin and it's not surprising that in a short week when we have lost Victoria Wood, Prince, Papa Wemba and Billy Paul my thoughts turn to mortality. The memories of Martin were sparked by going to see a play about Joy Division and Manchester, New Dawn Fades. I've written a review which will be shared on Pennyblackmusic's pages soon. But I am aware that I am having a very personal response to the play as the days go by. I had wanted to see the play since I first saw Shay Rowan's fantastic publicity photos posted on Facebook. There's always a risk in seeing people and events you knew portrayed on film, on stage and in books. I have never been disappointed by the depictions of the Factory family. 24 Hour Party People, book and film, Control, Deborah Curtis' Touching From a Distance, Mick Middles and Peter Hook's accounts,Colin Sharp's Who Killed Martin Hannett?,I've followed the retellings over the years as I have gone through the process of recognising my own past and the influence of those formative years. I've written before about not being able to access the memory of where I was when I heard about Ian Curtis' suicide. But I do remember the phone call from a friend when Martin died. What a waste. I couldn't face going to the funeral because it was a year to the day of another close friend's. In those days my children were very young and I didn't get much opportunity to go over to Manchester. To only go to attend funerals was deeply depressing.Tony's illness and death were well publicised. I was out of his loop by then and didn't get one of the Savile designed perspex invitations, though I knew the church, the Hidden Gem, really well. Bizarrely Rob Gretton's death was one I remember most clearly because two personal worlds collided. I was with a group of work colleagues, heading for a team trip to Kew Gardens as we were all part of a government nature conservation organisation. On the tube I saw a full page obituary in a stranger's copy of the Guardian, and couldn't help my surprised reaction. It was a real blast from my past. The newspaper reader was impressed and sympathetic. My colleagues had no idea who or what I was talking about! As the decades have passed,the stories have become myths, the characters have become legends and it's sometimes hard to keep it real. But I did share a house with Martin in my late teens. The room where I found him in the dream, was the room I was familiar with. Heroin wasn't part of the picture in those days. Our friendship survived for a few more years and eventually faded out after a difficult incident which alerted me to his changing drug and alcohol use. New Dawn Fades is both entertaining and intense. There are some fantastic individual performances but the cast work together as a team in the same way a band does.There's such a sense of loss and waste at the end, especially when photos of those who have passed are projected onto a screen as the audience leaves the venue. Victoria Wood's death was announced on the Wednesday, Prince's on the Thursday and I saw the play on the Friday. No wonder I'm dreaming of mortality.

Based on an idea by Tony Warren

On Monday night I took part in a First Draft cabaret evening at the Castle Hotel in Manchester. Back in early March, coincidentally on the day Tony Warren's death was announced, I saw a Facebook post from Archives+. The North West Sound Archive has found a new home with them, moved from its attic eyrie at Clitheroe Castle. It's an amazing resource and the Archives+ team, and my one time mentor, David Govier are exploring ways of making these sound archives come to life as a source of inspiration. A selection were put on Sound Cloud and we were invited to respond, taking an interview or recording as a starting point.It was an inspired and inspiring evening. I was beyond nervous at the beginning but so pleased to have done it. I was taken by the interview with Violet Carson, better known as Ena Sharples. What follows is basically what I wrote and read on Monday night. What I neglected to mention is that my amazing Granpa, Dr Garlick, looked exactly like old Steptoe! The Street: Based on an idea by Tony Warren Listening to Violet Carson’s story of how she took on and developed her role as Ena Sharples in Coronation Street took me back to my childhood. Both my parents came from an area of Salford known as Pendleton. My father’s family were in textiles. My grandfather was on the Cotton Exchange. My mother’s grandfather was head teacher at Langworthy Road school. My mother’s father was a GP based in the heart of the Salford Slums, Hankinson Park, better known as Hanky Park. He was born in 1880 and was practising as a doctor in the early years of the twentieth century. I remember going to his surgery also on Langworthy Road. Percy Garlick was an old grandfather. He had 10 children, 7 girls and 3 boys. I have been told that he sat on the Poor Law Board, and that he introduced mid morning milk to schools in Salford. He delivered Alistair Cooke, who never liked to admit he was a Salford lad, choosing Blackpool as a more refined place of birth. He was ahead of his years, fast tracked through his medical training. He’d worked as a ship’s surgeon. He looked after his patients before the National Health Service, some giving him what they could, and not always cash, to pay for their care. As a child I got used to being stopped in the street by people who saw the family resemblance between me and my sisters and my aunts, who wanted to talk about Dr Garlick. Years later, giving a local history talk in Eccles, a lady told me how as a child she had delivered the weekly sixpence to the house on Broad Street, an early form of health insurance. I tell you this because I need you to realise that my family were in the heart of Salford and Salford was in our hearts. But as the city became synonymous with slums and poverty, I know my mother found it increasingly difficult to admit to her origins. It’s a terrible thing to be a convent educated doctor’s daughter from Salford, especially if you are a bit of a snob. Listening to Violet Carson’s cutglass accent, I’m reminded that we had elocution lessons at school. Woe betide if your roots were identifiable by a Salford accent. To our amazement, even as children, when we were precociously aware of the shame of Salford, my mother became a huge fan of Coronation Street. She watched it from the beginning. We were allowed to stay up on Mondays and Wednesdays to watch it with her. It became our treat too. As the story lines and the characters developed my sister and I were caught up in Lucille Hewitt’s crush on Dennis Tanner and the scandal of her compass and ink tattoo of his name. Lucille’s mother was called Conceptua and one of my friend’s mothers had the same unmistakably catholic name. My father worked for a firm of civil engineers called Leonard Fairclough. My best friend’s father was an extra, appearing regularly in the public bar of the Rovers Return. We wrote plays and did drawings on scrap scripts he brought home. Another neighbour was a cameraman on the programme and his children were the envy of the road because they had been taken to the cinema by the actress who played Irma Ogden, Stan and Hilda’s daughter. My piano teacher was a friend of Violet Carson. I hated the lessons, but loved getting Miss Hayes to tell stories of her childhood and her friends. On retirement my grandparents moved to the rural splendour of Little Hayfield. Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner, lived there, and I believe Tony Warren wrote episodes in the Lantern Pike pub. Violet Carson played the organ at the Ambassador Cinema on Langworthy Road, whilst Ena Sharples played it in the Gospel Hall. Did you know there was a bible of characters and storylines for scriptwriters who joined the team? So fact and fiction wove in and out of the programme, in the names, the locations, the plots and the people. As I grew older I realised what a ground breaking series it was, in its depiction of essentially working class life at the start of the swinging sixties. It was affectionate and funny, but didn’t avoid difficult storylines. Violet Carson’s role as Ena Sharples combined with Martha Longhurst and Minnie Caudwell harked back to Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Three witches, three fates, providing a traditional and moral interpretation of the changes in society that everyone could recognise. They may have drunk milk stout but there wasn’t much milk of human kindness in the Rovers’ snug. Old values met new fangled ways in Weatherfield. No wonder it was such a success and has become the longest running TV soap opera. It validated a world that my parents, especially my mother, was very familiar with, even though she may not have felt a part of it. It changed the image of Salford. Salford is now Media City and the Lads Club, the Lowry and the Imperial War Museum. The Coronation Street visitor experience is geographically placed there. At the start of the series it could have been set in any run down area of Manchester or Salford, before sixties redevelopment took hold. It’s a remarkable survival in fiction. John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford, made it on to the English exam syllabus. A far cry from my school elocution lessons. My mother continues to watch Coronation Street. Before clever televisions, you wouldn’t dare to phone her in that sacrosanct half hour. The fictional Street has helped her deal with family crises over the years. I started to write this piece on the day that Tony Warren’s death was announced, March 2nd. About thirty years ago a neighbour’s daughter invited me to a party. She had been a script writer on the programme and I was thrilled to meet Tony Warren there. And more recently an old schoolfriend had a small part as a social worker on the programme. The Street continues to connect.

Songs they never play on the radio

Moving house means moving books. I started the process of clearing the shelves and deciding which ones to keep as soon as I thought about putting the house on the market. I knew I couldn't keep them all. I bought boxes and boxes of them to the local specialist charity book shop round the corner from where I am now living. It wasn't difficult to pass them on, mainly because I have kept so many. I asked myself if I would read it again, and if the answer was yes, I kept it. I had a fantasy that I would tidy and categorise my personal library - after all I have worked in libraries and archives. The reality was that books got packed in boxes room by room, but were unpacked randomly when all sense of order was thrown to the winds as I raced against the clock to unpack boxes and get my new home habitable. So the books on the shelves are even more random than they were at the old house. I have multiple copies of some - I Capture the Castle, Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, Children of Green Knowe and oddly Mick Middles book on Joy Division and New Order to name a few. I'm still discovering others. Books jump out at me from unfamiliar arrangements in familiar places. Most weeks I have a day of train travel and waiting. I find it hard to concentrate, so I choose a book that I think I can read in a day, an old friend off the shelf, self contained and comforting in its familiarity. A couple of weeks ago someone mentioned James Young's book about Nico, Songs They Never Play On The Radio, saying it should be reissued with a new foreword . I bought my copy at a friend's bookshop in Bakewell many years ago, when it had been remaindered by the publisher. You can see by the price label. I came very close to giving it away to Antony Hegarty some years later, knowing he was a huge Nico fan, as a thank you for putting me on his guest list. I was torn, because I wanted to keep the book, but I knew how much he would appreciate it. Fate intervened literally the day before I saw him, when a single copy turned up on an otherwise empty outdoor display shelf at a cut price bookshop in rural Derbyshire. Spooky. So I kept my copy. I must have read it back in the mid nineties. I may even have read it more than once. It was only when I read it again last week that I realised it was more fact than fiction, and that I was being introduced to a darker side of people known to me. Some were people I'd see out and about at gigs, others I'd worked with, even had my hair cut by. I felt more sensitive and vulnerable to this darker version of Mancunian history and Nico's part in it.I felt shocked and I felt guilty for passing it on to Antony, possibly shattering his illusions about Nico. I realised that while I had admired her over the years, I had never mythologised her, because I'd seen some of the reality of her time in Manchester. Reading a book in a day is an intense experience and this is a great read.