Locked Down with my Ukulele

Introduction

These are strange times and I started this commentary. I originally intended it as a contribution to a newsletter by my ukulele group. A few weeks into the 2020 Covid 19 lockdown strategy.

I am a member of a ukulele group in Suffolk, England. We’re not a band. Although we have done a few charity gigs. We are a group of people that like to get together and play ukulele to have fun. Since lockdown we had got together as a group virtually a few times thanks to our leader, Judith. In some closing comments, after a few weeks of the news letter, she asked for suggestions on what to put into the news letters.

During a lockdown walk I came up with the idea that everyone has a connection to a song. I know that a tune comes on the radio and I can be transported to a different time and place. Once I was helping a friend and his fiancé to select music for their wedding and a few wedding classics were ruled out because they stirred up recollections of her first wedding. Music is tied to our emotions as well as our memories. At times I’ve felt my stomach crash to my knees when the first few bars of a song comes on the radio.

These whimsical musings are my connections to tunes. They are expressions of my opinion at any one point in time. You may like them, agree with them or find them objectionable. It is only what I think and feel at the point of writing. I realise that some will be better than others. I have written stories or essays that I’ve thought were really good and they have met with a lukewarm response. Other material, that I have thought of as quite plain have been greeted with an enthusiastic response. So it’s in there like it is.

These musings were too long for the letter. I enjoyed the process of getting these stories onto the computer screen and have decided to release them as a blog. I’ll try to keep these down to a single A4 page so they could be “a short toilet read”. Phones and tablets can be easily wiped down. I suspect many of you text from the throne already.

All of the facts stated in each article on people or songs are taken from information in the public domain. TV interviews, published articles, internet searches, etc. I would have loved to have access to the people who wrote or performed the versions of the songs I have noted but I’m just an ordinary guy sat at his dinning room table (occasionally strumming my ukulele) musing over songs that have struck him at any time. Some of the people I’m writing about are no longer with us, it would have been nice to meet them in person. If your one of the people or happen to be or have been close to personalities I’ve written about and some of the facts are less than accurate I apologise.

I have no intention of making a political point or upsetting anyone. It’s a view of the world through the window of my eyes. I’ve read them a few times and hopefully picked up on the grammatical and spelling errors. From experience a few of these might still slip through. For those of you who get frustrated by poor English in published work I also apologise.

Hope you do enjoy them.

Stay safe