Locked down with my Ukulele 8

These are strange times and I can’t help thinking about last year. In the months preceding the spring, in the area I live, the utilities were carrying out extensive works around the village. Acres of verges and pathways were dug up. The works created a bit of a dead lock and several extra minutes were needed on even the shortest journey. However, the following spring the display of wild flowers was spectacular. I listened to a documentary on the war and poppies like disturbed ground, which is why the battlefields of Europe were covered in them when the guns fell silent.

In the spring the verges around the whole area where filed with bright red poppies and other wild flowers that I don’t know the names of. I kept thinking I must get my camera and take a picture. Suddenly before I knew it weeks had gone past and the moment is gone. The flowers seeded and the summer was here. The rich carpet of colour disappeared and was replaced by golden brown seeded grasses.

This year the display is not as spectacular as last but there are areas where the wild flowers are creating a wild garden. I was driving past an area that was littered with flowers. I decided in that moment to stop! Last year I was so intent on getting around I forgot to take a bite of life.

Lockdown has not slowed down the world for me. I’ve been busy all the way through. But I have been able to listen to the expressions of others through TV and Zoom. In the moment I drove past I decided it was time to take the time and smell the roses, or in this case the poppies

Every now and then life holds out a break moment. I had one of these when I first heard Faiths song by Amy Wadge.

Faiths Song

I was listening to radio 2 on Sunday lunchtime and just got onto the estate where I live. Michael Balls show was on and he introduced Faiths song, which was associated with a TV Drama on the BBC. The beautiful tones of Amy’s sweet voice coupled with the first line “gave you all that you needed”. I was feeling quite low at the time and sometimes when your mind takes you to that place, you feel like you’re the only one in the world that feels like that. ”And although I’m broken I am still breathing”. Some times the rightly worded well presented tones of a song can be like a good friend taking your shoulder and saying “It’ll be ok in the end you know.”

I heard Amy interviewed some time later and didn’t realise that she had written quite extensively with Ed Sheeran. She said that she writes a song a day but only a few make the cut. She maintained her productively percentages are very low. Early in lockdown, at one point Gareth Malone (the choir guy) said there wasn’t a musician employed in the country. I’ve also heard, in normal times, musicians say that they hadn’t had time to write because they’d been constantly touring. Touring is where the potential to make money is.

I taught a guy who was the drummer in a successful heavy rock band. He showed me an interview he and his band did on MTV. I asked why he was training in another trade. He said in the 70’s and 80’s they could sell records and the band would “be minted”. With digital technology you had to play big gig’s to be able to make a living.

I assume that with a load of talented musicians locked in at home with their instruments for a number of weeks once the guns of Covid-19 fall silent we should stop and listen to their poppies. That’s if they haven’t been too busy arranging concerts by zoom.

Stay safe.