Berberis' World

Saturday, 11th December 2004, St Mary’s Church, Lewisham.

This concert opened with the standard Once in royal David’s city, before the main feature Ottorino Respighi’s Lauda per la Nativita del Signore.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Ottorino Respighi was old. Renaissance old, rather than chronologically. Perhaps it’s the name. But no. Maestro Respighi was born in 1879 and died, somewhat earlier than he might have wanted, in 1936. Positively modern.

It’s much more to do with the fact that the depth and breadth of my musical knowledge is woefully inadequate. The most basic research reveals that Respighi was deeply interested in music from the 16th and 17th century, and it sounds like it, too.

I don’t mean that in a disparaging way; it’s actually a very lovely piece. We were accompanied by The Aurelian Woodwind Ensemble, using the original instrumentation.

Also on the menu: O come, O come, Emmanuel – Adam lay ybounden – I sing of a maiden – Of the Father’s Heart begotten – Nativity Carol – Myn lyking – Run, Shepherds, Run! & The Three Kings by Jonathan Dove – O come, all ye faithful – Sir Christemas

Soloists for the Respighi were Rosalind Waters (soprano), Kate Mapp (mezzo-soprano), Vernon Kirk (tenor). Katrine Reimers and Robert Hunter played the piano, and Andrew Dutson the organ.

Saturday, 14th November 2004, Broadway Theatre, Catford.

I learned to read music in the same manner that I learned German; (a) because I had to and, subsequently, (b) without a great deal of enthusiasm. Therefore, as I struggled to learn this new and strange language which was the choral movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, at break-neck speed, it became increasingly obvious that I should have paid more attention in lessons. The text I could do – the little dots on sticks were far more daunting.

Chorus Director Stefan Reid instructed, cajoled, and encouraged us to infuse our performance with the zeal Beethoven heard in his head. To be fair, poor old Ludwig could only hear it in his head, being almost totally deaf when he composed it. I think it shows; lots of high As for the sops (which he may have been able to hear) and not much of interest for anyone else. As a mezzo soprano (a.k.a. contralto or, incorrectly but most commonly, alto) the 9th is pretty dull.

However, when you’re on stage, one small step from a four-foot drop into the orchestra’s brass section, large bright lights shining in your eyes, in front of a live audience who’ve actually paid to be there, it becomes the most terrifying roller-coaster ride since the Corkscrew at Alton Towers.

Under the energetic baton of Robert Trory, it was over almost before I realised, and I found myself standing with a huge and stupid grin on my face as the audience expressed their approval in the time-honoured but bizarre tradition of slapping your palms loudly together. It was hugely exhilarating and instantly addictive. I came off stage wanting to sing the whole thing again immediately.

I’d like to thank the Academy… no. I want to thank my GP who, when I was suffering from chronic depression, referred me to a project designed to get the chronically depressed doing something they enjoyed. I enrolled on an acapella singing course run by a smiling lady with a guitar who, every Monday between 10 and 12, taught us new songs and old songs and, crucially, that it is possible to perform solo in front of an audience (albeit a very small one) and not die from the gut-roiling, heart-pounding, skin-crawling, sweaty palmed terror. Thanks, Dr P and Annie.

“It’s all bollocks, all of it; astrology, numerology, palm reading, tarot, iridology… All total crap. Don’t believe a word of any of it.”

“You are so cynical! Not even in a slight, could-be-persuaded kind of way, just plain old sceptical through and through.”

“That’s me… don’t believe in any of it.”

“Is it the randomness of it that bothers you? The ‘how can this apply to so many people’ kind of thing?”

“Well, it’s that with the astrology. I mean, how many people are there in the world? Ten billion? Ok, let’s assume it’s six billion for argument’s sake. Now, six billion people, who are all born in an even spread over the twelve months of the year, so we’ve got half a billion people who are born under the sign of … oh, let’s say Aries, just to pick one.”

“And because you’re one.”

“Maybe, don’t interrupt. So, there are half a billion people born under the same sign, all of whom are supposed to have the same personality traits, the same behavioural characteristics. The same physical shape and stuff like that. Are you telling me that if you were to read the daily forecast in the Sun or the Mirror or the Daily Star or whatever rag you read, then every single one of those half a billion people are going to be facing the same kind of day? I think not.”

“Yeah, but the things are so vague that they could apply to any one of them and, depending on how you interpret them, they could apply to all of the six or ten billion people in the world.”

“Your point?”

“Just because it doesn’t apply to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to some of those half a billion. It depends on your interpretation.”

“Which is why they can’t possibly be accurate, because if they were anywhere near the truth they’d have to be about three pages long and cover every single birthday in that month.”

“You’ve had too much to drink and you’re rambling.”

“I’m stuffed. I think we should have stuck at two. Eyes bigger etcetera. Never happened before…”

“Oh, of course not. Like the beers have never happened.”

“Quite. And I think we should avoid the pub on the way home and not go in and drink several more pints of lager.”

“And them we should not go home drunk and put a film on and finish the contents of our drinks cabinet.”

“We don’t have a drinks cabinet.”

“I know that. Perhaps we should have. A pink and green luminous cocktail cabinet, maybe. Filled with the most revolting drinks we can think of.”

“Eggnog and ouzo. Brandy and… oh, let’s see, washing up liquid…”

“You’re disgusting. Can you imagine what that would taste like? Eeeeewww.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have to wash the glass afterwards, would you?”

“Well, on that basis you could have red wine and meths. Or white wine and white spirit. No need to clean the glasses there, either.”

“Exactly. Besides, after two or three of them you wouldn’t actually be able to find the glasses to clean them.”

“Or give a fuck.”

“Or give a fuck indeed. Shall we have some more tea?”

“Yeah, and a couple of fortune cookies. I feel in the need for some papery sugary stuff.”

“Which stabs you in the mouth when you bite into it.”

“Of course. The taste of blood combines so well with the cookie itself.”

“A pleasurable eating experience all round, then.”

“You could say that.”

“I just did.”

“I know. Don’t be so only child.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“You do that only child thing. Whenever I make some off-hand comment about anything you have to analyse it to death and somehow the fun goes out of being sarcastic.”

“Ooooh! Excu-use me.”

“I should think so too. Taking everything so literally. It’s not normal.”

“Well that me, not normal. You’ve met my mother. How can I possibly be normal?”

“Hmm. You said it.”

“Which means that you can’t be normal ’cause you’re here having dinner with me.”

“Good God, so I am! How the fuck did that happen?”

“I got you drunk and got you on a bus.”

“You filthy old sod.”

“Do they have cameras on the upstairs of buses?”

“Chances are, knowing our luck, yes they do. And they are, as we speak, editing the film down for Police Camera Action, or whatever is currently showing the nation how fucking stupid people really are.”

“Police Camera Bollocks, more like. Some of those people on those videos should be sterilised to prevent them breeding.”

“I didn’t have you down for a eugeneticistic.”

“A what? How much have you had?”

“I’d like to know what they put in this tea…”

“It’s gunpowder green.”

“So, gunpowder them. That’s nice. Tastes lovely. Yum yum.”

“Let’s have some more.”

“Okay. Make mine a double.”

“Are you going to finish that duck?”

“Fuck a duck.”

“No thanks. Can I have it?

“You can indeed. It’s out of luck. It’s a fucked duck.”

“Stop it, they’re watching us. We’ll get kicked out.”

“We’re their best customers at this time of day, on this particular day.”

“For eating crispy fucked duck, we are.”

“Here, can we have some more of this?”

“You could say please.”

“Pleeeeeeeease?”

“You’ve embarrassed her now. Poor girl. I’m sorry about him, he’s an idiot.”

“Ah, but you love me.”

“According to our star signs we should be hideously incompatible.”

“We are.”

“Shut up. Now let’s see what that fortune cookie has in store for us. ‘Your destiny lies with a short man with green teeth.'”

“‘Made in China’.”

“Oh right. Like it’s not been brought in from Birmingham or somewhere. Why import these from China?”

“They get a good deal?”

“With the cost of sending them from Birmingham they probably do. I reckon it would cost them less to fly them from China than to send them down the M6.”

“And they’d get here quicker.”

“Of course.”

“So, you still think astrology is crap?”

“I do, and I’d be willing to stake my reputation on it.”

“What reputation? You don’t have one.”

“I could have. I could have a reputation as… ooh, the biggest twat in the world.”

“No you haven’t. I’ve seen it.”

“Gah! Stop that. Maybe I’m the nicest person in Poundstretcher on a Friday afternoon.”

“How hard would that be?”

“That’s unfair. Some of them are alright.”

“Your destiny is to be the most coherent person in the pub in about half an hour’s time.”

“We can soon put a stop to that.”

“As we ought to. You’re brilliant when you’re pissed.”

“You don’t half talk rubbish. How brilliant is anyone when they’re pissed?”

“You get all chatty and flirty and sexy. I like that.”

“You’re just a pervert.”

“Your point?”

“No, don’t have one.”

“Open that bloody cookie then. Let’s have a look. A lookie. A lookie in your cookie.”

“It says…. ‘Made in China’…. no it doesn’t. It says, ‘Made in Brumigham’… no! It actually says… ‘Help, I’m trapped in a fortune cookie!’…”

“No it bloody doesn’t. Don’t piss about. Gimme…”

“Oh go on. Give me that one.”

“Pig.”

“Oink.”

“It says… ‘Donkey’s lips do not fit onto a horse’s mouth.'”

“Eh? Now what the fuck does that mean?”

“It means a donkey won’t kiss a horse.”

“Like bollocks it does. I reckon it means that you can’t… you shouldn’t have botox injections. Or Angelina Jolie’s lips would look stupid on Jeremy Clarkson.”

“Well duh. She’s got nice lips, mind.”

“She’s gorgeous. I’d have her lips. She should give them to me.”

“Then her face would fray. Ugh. Let’s see what this one says… ‘No wind, no waves.'”

“No wind, no bad smell under the duvet.”

“Hmmm. Let’s have a handful more.”

“‘Vicious as a tigress can be, she never eats her own cubs.'”

“Lions do, y’know. If a lion finds some other lion cubs in his pride, he’ll kill them. Did you know that?”

“I know everything.”

“Then why isn’t your brain the size of a planet?”

“It is. Just a very small planet.”

“Liar.”

“I know.”

“What does that one say?”

“‘He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.'”

“It depends what you ask, I would think.”

“How about ‘Can we have some more tea’? or ‘Another portion of crispy duck, please’?”

“Would you like me to be sick over the table?”

“That’s not one.”

“Might well as be.”

“Eh?”

“Might as well be, I meant.”

“Fair enough. Here’s one. ‘To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.'”

“Very deep.”

“I liked that fool one, kind of reminds me of something.”

“Oh? What?”

“I wanted to ask you… will you marry me?”

“Where does it say that? Gimme that…”

“It doesn’t. I’m asking you. Will you marry me?”

“Umm… are you serious? Is this the drink talking? Or the duck? Quaack…”

“No, it’s me asking you if you will marry me. Trust you to take the piss…”

“You’re serious. Fuck!”

“Not here. But yes, I’m serious.”

“This one says ‘Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.'”

“Yes, but what do you say?”

“Yes.”

“So there is something in this astrology lark then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’ve made a decision based on the contents of a sugary papery thing. Some rationalist you are.”

“I never mentioned fortune cookies. I believe in them…”

“That’s fortunate.”

“No, that’s fortune, cookie.”

“That is so bad.”

“But you love me.”

“I do indeed.”

“Shall we toast our good fortune?”

“I thought you’d said yes…”

“Very funny.”

“More tea?”

“No, let’s go to the pub and get really drunk.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Cookie. I like that. I’m going to call you that from now on.”

“You dare.”

“You pay and I’ll take a pee. Meet you downstairs?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Fuck off.”

“Duck off. Duck’s off.”

“That’s why I feel ill.”

“You do?”

“Don’t be so only child again.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I’ll live with it.”

“Hopefully.”

“I’ve said yes, haven’t I?”

“The fortune cookie said yes. You just agreed with it.”

“I’m bursting. We’ll continue this in the pub.”

“Take your knickers off too.”

“Bollocks.”

My September song is ‘Message In A Bottle’ by The Police.

I can remember where I was the moment I first heard it; in the back room of the house where I lived in Bristol, trying desperately to find an excuse to not revise for my O levels. I was sitting in the bay window which looked out over a courtyard of perhaps fifteen foot by twenty, now paved in cream and pink tiles – quite as awful as it sounds – where there was once a patch of worn turf. Certainly not enough on which to play football, or tennis, or any other sport interesting to a teenager. Tennis was mine. I couldn’t play that in such a confined space, either.

(Just a castaway, an island lost at sea-o…)

We’d moved to the house partly because we needed more space. Three adults and three children in a chalet bungalow was proving claustrophobic, and when one of those adults was keen to relocate in order to avoid village gossip, the excuse of needing more space was the one which was quoted to those who asked why we were leaving behind our 200′ garden with its two pears trees, two plum trees and an apple tree, its vegetable patch and its laburnum, and its seemingly endless privet hedges.

(Anuzzer lonely day, with no one here but me-o…)

Don’t get me wrong; we were in no way rich. We were lucky to have such a marvellous garden, although, as with much that you have and take for granted, you don’t miss it, really miss it with a part of you that never forgets and never quite forgives, until you look out of the bay window and see a cream and pink paved courtyard with no space for even a bonsai tree, let alone a full sized specimen. Small gardens breed pots. Usually plastic and garish, and in no way an adequate substitute for a double-dug bed stuffed with rhubarb. Small gardens have no time for compost heaps, the festering, rotting, multicoloured pile of potato peelings and carrot tops and pea shells and grass clippings  They do not accommodate swings and heavy iron rollers and miles and miles of washing line for the Widow Twankee amount of laundry done every Monday, as regular as clockwork.

(More loneliness than any man could bear…)

Courtyards require washing to be hung high, on display to all who care to look out of their back windows and purse their lips at yet another load of jeans and tee-shirts and sheets and pillowcases. Where other households dried their washing was a mystery. Perhaps they all took it up to the launderette. Courtyards are no place for bicycles and motorbikes and dustbins, there is no room for sheds and workbenches and other things that a large garden can hide in its lush foliage, or conceal behind tree trunks and bushes.

(Rescue me before I fall in to despair-o…)

At that time, Radio 1 ended transmission at 5.45 pm, following a fifteen minute news programme called ‘Newsbeat’. The DJ for the final show before this, in September 1979, was ‘Kid’ Jensen. I don’t remember his first name, but he was called ‘Kid’ because he was young. He came from Canada, and his was an exotic voice on what was still a RP-filled station. I’d heard the song before but not really taken much notice of it, not the way I do now with songs that catch my ear. Then, if it sounded good, the words didn’t really matter. Now, the words matter more than the tune and even the most perfectly structured melody in the universe will not redeem lyrics which speak of anger and violence and abuse.

(I’ll send an S.O.S to the world…)

I don’t really know what it was about this particular day, about this particular time it was played, but something in the lyrics, something in the tune, touched a nerve and I can see still the old sofa bed – dark green and rough-textured – that stood under the bay window, cushions which didn’t match it or each other arranged, diamond-like, along its back. It was the same sofa that had stood in the front room of our old house, against the wall opposite the window, the heavy, clunking, hard sofa which was used by my father whilst my mother took the bed in the back room.

(I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle…)

Anyone who really knows me will know me now. I’m not sure if I’m still on that island, lonely, sending out an S.O.S, my message in a bottle, hoping to be rescued before I fall into despair. I like to think that I’m not, that my message was received and understood. There are times, though, as the days grow shorter and the leaves begin to turn and the air carries with it the unmistakeable chill of autumn, that my September song comes to mind and I’m back in that room, looking out onto that courtyard and seeing, in my mind’s eye, 200′ of grass and green and fruit trees.

And I send out another S.O.S. Just in case no one was listening the first time.

I wouldn’t have hurt him. Ask anyone. I’m really good with little ‘uns. I can cuddle them and smooth their little heads and they go all quiet and sleepy and I wouldn’t have hurt him, I swear.

I didn’t mean to hurt her. Ask anyone. But she left him alone and he was lonely and upset and crying and all and I just wanted to make him stop. And I did. And then I thought he wanted to go for a walk so I took him for a walk. He was good. I was good. I pressed the buttons on the thing and waited for the green man before I walked across the road, and I made sure he was warm and not too tired and I talked to him all the time.

And I didn’t hurt him, did I? Ask anyone. I left her the other one. That was fair, wasn’t it? She had two and I had none and I wanted one, so I took him. I would have taken the two of them but someone would have noticed me with one in each arm, someone would have stopped me. No one stops anyone with just one, do they? One is normal. Two is not.

I had two, a long time ago. It seems like a long time ago now. I was very young and it scared me each time, so they decided to take them away, each time.

My babies. I’d had two. I wanted two again, and I would have taken both of them. She left them alone and crying and I would have taken them both. But I know how it is to have two and then have none. So I took one when I wanted two. And I’m sorry.