Say What Shall My Song Be Tonight?

Many years ago, must be all of thirty or more as we were still living in Richmond Road, Hackney, I thought it would be fun to do a Victorian evening and that was to be its title. I’m reminded of it because I have just finished rereading my autobiography (all 251000 words of it) and hadn’t really thought about just how much music has meant in my life, starting with songs I first heard my mother sing and, occasionally my father who as befits a Welshman had a beautiful tenor voice which unfortunately he was shy of using and had to be coaxed to perform. His favourite song was Somewhere A Voice Is Calling. The Victorians were so full of beautiful song. All right, many of the lyrics were as corny as all get out but the melodies made up for it. Some of George Leybourne’s lyrics makes you wonder how on earth he got away with performing the songs on stage or even for that matter having them published, but the tunes are often extremely catchy, some quite haunting. I think in particular of Ting Ting That’s How The Bell Goes and The Broken-hearted Shepherd which I used in my production of Henry James’s The Innocents at The Wayside Theatre, Virginia. I wondered if Say What Shall My Song Be Tonight would go down well in Crete but somehow I don’t think so. It’s not karaoke for starters and most of the ex-pats here would more than likely consider it old-fashioned and boring. The evening wasn’t to be all song but included spoken humour, bits and pieces and extracts from various magazine articles of interest or, at least, what I thought would be of interest. Somewhere lying around there is still a folder with the heading and a few scraps of paper inside and ideas for which songs to consider using to make a balanced evening. We have a huge collection of sheet music, some songs beautifully bound in albums, others loose, others in published books, especially where folksong is concerned.

Alas, there is so much on the go, I fear What Shall My Song Be Tonight simply will never happen. Chris and Douglas have got themselves involved in theatre again – this time in Athens – and the future for them looks very busy. As for me I will sit here and write and, when the weather gets cooler, get back into the jungle that is the garden. To work there at the moment is impossible. By eight in the morning you are already in a muckle sweat and anyway I was never an early riser though I have to admit, when I have got myself out there with the fart of the first sparrow it has been a very good time. But there you go, let the sparrows have it.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

So wrote Dylan Thomas who, I presume, did exactly that when his time came. Hortense isn’t raging but she’s putting up a terrific battle in a war she cannot win. For the pasts five days she has been alternately sleeping (or in a coma?) and struggling on ever weakening legs the few yards from one place to the next. She has had little in he way of nourishment, forcefully fed some vitamin paste and every now and again a few, very few, licks at a mixture of yoghourt and evaporated milk. Her weight must be counted in ounces and I expect the breathing, so shallow as to be hardly noticeable, to stop at any moment. She doesn’t appear to be in any pain and I am sure she will go gently and peacefully into that good night, though every now and again I get accusing looks from those deep sunken eyes as much as to say, this is all your fault, whatever it is that’s happening to me.

Talk about the winds of Crete: we’ve had four days of force nine gales or certainly what feels like force nine gales even if they aren’t. Fortunately the winds are coming from the north and are cool, unlike those we get from Colonel Gaddafi that bring half the Sahara with them when the sky turns orange and everything, buildings, plants, cars, are layered with yellow sand or, if it comes at the same time as rain, yellow mud.

Last night watched the movie, Archangel and came up with the universal cry of not as good as the book. Well, the first part was because it stuck pretty close to the book but in the second part it went off the rails somewhat. I still maintain though, much as I enjoyed reading the book, that there is an enormous flaw in the story. What I can’t understand is why Beria, as soon as he found out about the child’s existence, and with all the resources of the fearsome NKVD at his command, didn’t set out to have it killed then and there, no matter how closely guarded it was. There was also a real humdinger in the train when the notebook was suddenly reintroduced – this after our hero had swum in freezing waters (which surely would have killed him), never got dried off as far as I could see, purchased a coat from a local fisherman to keep himself warm, (still dripping wet?) and the girl had come out of prison and didn’t appear to be full of the necessities. So as soon as the red folder was produced I heard myself saying, “Where did that suddenly come from?” Does the word colander spring to mind?

It’s coming up for a quarter past eleven and there is no point in going to bed, not to sleep anyway as a trio is playing traditional Cretan music up at the village square which is some distance away. It’s amazing how sound travels here. It’s amazing how the Greeks have taken to amplification like it’s a gift from the gods. The motto is obviously the louder the better. Like mobile phones it’s everywhere. Crete has so many wonderful musicians available for all social functions and they all believe in multiple decibels. Once a year we go to a celebration at the village of Litsarda which is three kilometres away and, on arriving back in Vamos we can still hear the musicians playing. I have no doubt tonight’s music will continue till the early hours And what I wonder did the priests do in church before they were given the use of the microphone? So, if I’m to listen to music for the next hour or so I could always carry on reading, my bedside book at the moment being A World To Build by David Kynaston, subtitles, no surtitled rather, Austerity Britain 1945-48. I usually have at least three books on the go: a bedside book, a loo book, usually a thriller or novel, and another for the avli or breakfast room. Don’t really now what to call that part of the house. Breakfast room is wrong because it’s also lunch and dining room. Originally the property consisted of two separate buildings and Douglas joined them up with what we refer to as the avli, or courtyard, even though it’s roofed, with plastic and is full of exotic plants including an enormous weeping fig that has grown out of all proportion so it’s really a conservatory of a kind I suppose. A recent loo book was Beloved Boy by Henry James, his letters to the Norwegian/American sculptor Hendrik Anderson. I got it because somebody lent me a novel The Master which was based on James’s life so, when I saw Beloved Boy was published I got that. I also only got halfway through it when I gave up as all the letters carry virtually the same message and it got a bit boring. I could of course carry on rereading my autobiography for any corrections as hopefully it will be published later this year. It already has an IBSN number so I had better get on with. It is of course, wouldn’t you know, titled No Official Umbrella.

A blog a day keeps the blues at bay – I should co-co! This blog will be of absolutely no interest to anyone who has never loved and lost a pet. For the past five or six days this house has been what the Victorians I suppose might have called a vale of tears. We knew it was inevitable but it doesn’t help, looking into those sad eyes and wondering what was going on behind them. Was she aware that her end was near? Michael, the vet, told us she would be in no pain and she gave no indication of being in any but it must have been more than a little uncomfortable carrying that weighty burden of liver cancer around. Her belly was like a football and as hard and she had lost all flesh so that every bone in her body could be felt. It was like a skeleton with skin and fur on and she had become a caricature of her once pretty self. And she was pretty. People would stop in the street to admire her. He gave her six months at the most and she lasted four? In fact when he saw the results of her blood test he marvelled at the time that she was still alive. The last three days she couldn’t eat so yesterday Douglas called Michael to arrange for us to take her in this morning to be put to sleep but, when we finally went to bed last night, she was on the snuggle, either asleep or in a coma, and when I went out just after six this morning she was under the mandarin tree, having died in the night. I went back to my bedroom to have a cup of tea and when I came out again she had gone. A weeping Douglas was already down the bottom of the garden and he dug her grave so that we put her in it about six-thirty. It is becoming a regular pet’s cemetery down there but no matter how many well loved animals you bury it doesn’t get any easier.

Unfortunately we think two more will go before the year is out. Hortense the cat is 22 and weighs no more than a feather. She can no longer clean herself so her fur is all in matted clumps and she gets very bolshie if you try to do anything with it. She relieves herself wherever she feels like it but fortunately most floors here are tiles so easily mopped. Sweeney, the dog, is fourteen, and her degeneration took me completely by surprise and caused much anguish. One day we were in the garden with her chasing her ball all over the place as usual, even though her sight was going and she had to eventually find it by smell, and then suddenly she never went in the garden again. She is deaf and almost blind and losing most of her fur in the heat. These are the last two animals we brought out from England, Bridget the cat and Candide the dog having gone before.

Looking into her eyes (was it human imagination or were they really so sad?), stroking her, holding her, I cried a few times while she was still with us but I managed to hold it in this morning until I phoned Michael to say we weren’t coming in, and as soon as I said, “She died last night” the floodgates opened and I howled and there was no holding back. I apologised through my sobs and put down the phone.

Michael is very good and very sympathetic. He’s heard me howl a couple of times before. This time I wonder the whole neighbourhood didn’t hear me

We will miss her, dear little thing, only eight years old. Good-bye Puccini, known as Pooch, much loved little dog. I’m so sorry.

I have to admit to a slight depression today thanks to the mail. The Union Castle Line book that Douglas in the kindness of his heart ordered for me from Amazon is I am afraid of not much use. Very interesting history of the line but I am interested in only one ship, RMS Pretoria Castle and the routines involved in sailing her and about her passengers, especially on her maiden voyage in 1948, so it’s back to the internet to see what I can find. The reason why the book is of so little use is that it is a collection of company postcards with hardly any interiors and certainly no interiors of the Pretoria. If my memory were better I could use my experience as a crew member on the Braemar Castle but it was more than fifty years ago and my memories are all of work. Still, it’s a nice little book to have so thank you, Douglas.

A nice cheque from the BBC, Doctor Who – The Sontaran Experiment - (UK Income Tax taken off at source at 20%) but the second reason for the depression was a cheque from Raider for all of £5 plus for the sale of two copies of DEAD ON TIME. Whoopee! What does one have to do to bring prospective readers’ attention to this book? I suppose 120000 to 1 in any one year of English publication are pretty long odds but we have tried to get reviews in the UK, USA, South Africa, Greece, all to no avail. As DEAD ON TIME is the first of three books featuring the private eye Thornton King and his sidekick Holly and is meant to be a fun read if nothing else, and the following two already written and waiting, I could wish with all my heart that readers would take it up. It’s had good readers’ reviews on Amazon and through my website but it is still an unknown quantity out in the big wide world. We read somewhere that you shouldn’t try to sell your book through your blog so this isn’t trying to sell it, no no, just thinking of ways and means of putting out the news that it is a great little old read!

Ceri, my sister, has asked me the meaning of “Blog” or how it came about but neither Douglas nor I know the answer. Perhaps someone out there can enlighten us? It’s a really weird word to begin with. Is it an acronym maybe?

Poor Puccini, usually just called Pooch – our youngest dog – was diagnosed a while back with cancer of the liver and is not the pretty little creature she once was but has a midriff like a solid football and no meat on her bones, all of which protrude horribly so that the entire skeleton can be felt. Her whole face has changed in consequence with a pointy snout that was never there before.. Our vet, Michael, was amazed when he saw the results of her blood test, that she was actually still alive and gave her six months, most of which is up but except for occasional moments of languor, she seems as sprightly as ever. Has lost her appetite though but will forage in other animal’s dishes to see what’s there, and allowing other animals to eat out of hers, very undoglike. Fortunately she appears to be in no pain which is strange because I was always led to believe that cancer is painful. I think of Douglas’s dad, William, who died last year of pancreatic cancer and who, in the hospital eventually said, “That’s enough of this,” pulled out all his tubes, fell into a coma and died. I remember our dog Isolde back in London who developed a growth (on the pituitary gland I think it was) and she was definitely in pain. She would come to me for comfort and me, in my ignorance and not realising it, would brush her impatiently aside and I still feel bad about that. Then one morning she appeared with her left front leg looking like an elephant’s foot and of course was rushed to the vet but, alas, too late. Such a beautiful, gentle creature. As Ceri has said, you get a puppy, or a kitten, and you are buying future heartache. So now we have three animals ailing; Pooch, Sweeny who is fourteen years old, and the cat, Hortense who is 22. Our last one died at 25 much to the amazement of our Cretan friends, the average life of a cat here evidently being about three years.

So I ask myself, if animals get sick and die, and even plants get sick and die, and even rocks can get sick, what was Mary Baker Eddy on about? And why does the church she founded have such a following of believers when it is obviously based on a false supposition? No worse I suppose than film stars who believe in the writing of a certain science fiction writer of dubious … ah, well, let’s leave it at that.

Interesting that Pooch’s blood test cost 130 euro and Douglas’s two day stay in hospital with all that entailed cost 161.48.