A Headful of Travel Memories

First holiday memory?
Holidays in Scarborough during the late 70's and early 80's. A self-catering flat in the North Bay, rowing boats by day and brightly coloured lights at dusk at Peasholm Park. The little train at Scalby Mills. Swimming at the open-air baths. The chair-lift. Waffles from the waffle shop. Being taken to see Star Wars at The Futurist with my Dad in 1977. My mother setting fire to the chops and the fire brigade being called out and the flat smelling and tasting of smoke for the remainder of the holiday.

Favourite place in the British Isles?
The Highlands of Scotland. I love their drama and mystery and their sheer jaw-dropping beauty.

Best holiday?
My first holiday without my parents is one I remember fondly. Two weeks with a couple of friends in a tent on a campsite near St Tropez, in the South of France.

Cuba was also a country that fascinated me. It was hard-work at times, but the people, the sights, the music, the politics and all the curious contradictions in between is something that's stayed with me in the years since my visit.

But probably my best holiday was the three month trip I took in 2012.

What have you learnt from your travels?
People's need to communicate and connect with other people is universal. The world is not as big as we might think. There is beauty and wonder in the most unlikely places. And there appears to be an Irish pub in practically every country in the world!

Ideal travelling companion?
Someone practically minded, organised and easy-going, who wouldn’t be offended if I wanted to go off on my own for a few hours. Someone who finds wonder in the smallest of things and is content to just 'be'.

Beach bum, culture vulture or adrenalin junkie?
Culture vulture, without a doubt. I love the sights, smells and tastes of a new place as well as the history, architecture, art galleries and museums. Much more interesting to me than lying on a beach or flinging myself off something big and scary.

Greatest travel luxury?
Apart from unlimited time and resources to be able to travel, my greatest luxury would be an iPad Mini. I travelled round SE Asia, Australia and New Zealand planning and booking everything with my iPhone. My eyesight isn’t what it was, so a bigger screen would come in handy.

Holiday reading?
I took Anna Karenina on my three month trip. It took me practically the entire trip to finish it. Otherwise, something with a bit of intrigue, a thriller or a mystery perhaps.

Where has seduced you?
Cambodia and Laos utterly utterly seduced me when I went there in 2012. Cambodia, despite its horrific history, has a dignity and grace that is reflected in the gentle smiles and kindly disposition of her people. And Laos is just a breathtaking country with beautiful people.

Better to travel or to arrive?
I enjoy both. I enjoy the anticipation of the journey and the planning leading up to it, but I also enjoy arriving and being able to finally explore your destination.

Best hotel?
Hotel Icon, Kowloon, Hong Kong. An oasis of style and calm at the end of a three month trip, with stunning views over Victoria Harbour.

Best meal abroad?
A traditional Vietnamese 'clay pot' meal I had in Nha Trang, Vietnam was beyond description, but the meal I had in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a simple vegetarian 'Khmer' potato curry, was outstanding.

Favourite city?

Dublin. My spiritual home. I also like New York.

Where next?
Iceland and South America.

A death in the family

A relative dies during the opening few days of January.

Although terminally ill, their death is no less shocking or devastating.

You can see the effect it is having on your loved ones but feel powerless to do anything. 

You're surprised by your own reaction to the death and the tears you're shedding for someone who, though you were close to as a child, had been something of a ghost-like presence in your life over the past few years.

The long sighs, the staring off into the distance. The sadness etched on a sibling's face.

That he died alone, with very little to leave the world, adds an extra layer of sadness.

That the confusion he left behind and its lingering impact leaves you frustrated you can't do more.

Being reunited with family who these days you only see at funerals.  They looker older; shorter; greyer; have less hair; are thinner; are fatter.

The coffin and a single flower arrangement. 

The regression to your childhood as you stand in your relative's house and remember all the family gatherings and the laughs and smiles that you've enjoyed in this room.

You promise to keep in touch, to plan a visit but acknowledge that probably the next time you all meet will be at the next funeral. You look around and wonder who, of those in the room, it might be.

Your heart breaks a little more.

Music in the 80's

While I write, I'm listening to Southern Sun by Boy & Bear, a tune I heard on BBC 6Music about five minutes ago and subsequently downloaded to my iPod. By comparison, in 1985, there was a song I'd heard on an episode of 'Moonlighting', the American detective show starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. I wasn't too sure what it was so I wrote a letter to Annie Nightingale who had a request show on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday evenings and I tried to describe as best I could what the song sounded like. A week or two later, she read out my letter on the show and played me said song. Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones. That was how I discovered music in the 80's.

It is not overstating the case to say how important Annie Nightingale's show was to me in the 80's.  It was my ritual every Sunday night, once the chart show was over, to lay on my bed, usually in semi or pitch darkness, with the glow of the tuner on my hi-fi the only light in the room, listening to her playing music that opened up my mind to the possibilities of other worlds and sounds beyond what was played on Top Of The Pops or Radio 1. Don't get me wrong, I was a regular and avid watcher of TOTP, but to hear artists like The Cocteau Twins, Joni Mitchell and Led Zeppelin being played, well it was too exciting for words.

TV also had a big part to play in my discovery of music. In 1982, Channel 4 was launched and with it a music programme featuring presenters who, to an impressionable teenager like me, were unbelievably cool because they tripped over their words and swore on live television. The Tube, broadcast live on Friday evenings from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne was ground-breaking television and paved the way for shows of a similar ilk, such as The Word. Jools Holland, Paula Yates and Muriel Gray were witty, stylish and cool. Then there was The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2 with presenters like Bob Harris, John Peel and Mark Ellen. Not as cool perhaps, but no less important.  And I was always deeply envious that I didn't live in the North West so I could watch Tony Wilson on Granada Tonight. Another ground-breaker.

Television continues to produce shows profiling new music. Later with Jools Holland is a great show to discover some amazing new artists. And Channel 4 and BBC4 produce some quality late-night output. But it's fair to say that television's role in launching new music is not as vital as it once was.

Because now we have the internet.

It has never been easier to gain access to an incredible stockpile of music than it is now. Anyone born after say, 1985, doesn't know what it was to try to find music that was a bit more interesting than the normal chart fodder. Now it is literally at your fingertips with sites like MySpace, Spotify, LastFM, iTunes, Facebook, Bandcamp etc. The list is pretty endless.  And then there are the thousands of digital and internet radio stations out there.

These days, I find most of my music through BBC 6Music and Twitter. 6Music is my new Annie Nightingale.  The DJ's care about the music they play, a vast majority of them are or were musicians themselves. You can hear the joy in their voices when they play a song they love or when they share a new album with their listeners.

Twitter is also an amazing resource for discovering new music. There are people I follow who are musicians, who work in the industry, who write about music and then there are those who just love music in all its forms and with whom I can have great conversations and share recommendations. You can even talk to (or stalk) your favourite bands and DJs about music.

You can also just wave your smartphone in the general direction of a piece of music and an app will tell you what the song is!  How incredible is that?

A Centenary

My grandmother was born on 12 February, 1913.  Had she lived, 2013 would have been her 100th birthday. Born in Bury, Lancashire to Richard and Clara Royles, Grandma, also called Clara but known as Clare, was the youngest of eight children. She died in 1988, two days after her 75th birthday and her death had a profound, shattering effect on my life. I still miss her. 

I remember going to Lancashire on holiday during the hot summer of 1976 to visit my relatives, Grandma’s brothers and sisters, who were, by then, quite advanced in years. There was the formidable Aunty Florrie, an Amazonian woman with the temperament to match, married to the mild-mannered Uncle Billy, who wore leather driving gloves and drove an Austin Maxi; the gentle and sweet-natured Aunty Emily, with her little round glasses and kindly, smiling face; and the mysterious Uncle George who I met only once before he died. He was bed-ridden and I was ushered into his room to see him in hushed silence and told not to disturb him. There is a photo of me somewhere, standing in front of Uncle Billy’s car in white knee socks and a sun-dress my mother had made, my long, blonde hair tied with ribbons and my eyes squinting against the sun. 

I spent most Friday nights at my Grandma’s, sleeping over in a big double bed with cold, cotton sheets filled with hot-water bottles that would burn your feet, in a house with no central heating. In the winter, ice would form on the inside of the windows and the pipes would freeze. I had a grey, overnight case I used to pack with my nightie and slippers and Bruin, my polar bear, a gift from Grandma and Granddad’s trip to Norway.  On Saturdays we caught the double-decker bus into town and went for lunch in one of my Grandma’s favourite restaurants; either Crombie’s for fish and chips, served with bread and butter and a pot of tea, or The Blue Lagoon where my Grandma would have moussaka and I’d have liver and bacon. Grandma would leave a coin under the saucer as a tip. It made me feel terribly grown-up.

There are little things I remember. The way the skin on the back of her hands use to crinkle like fine tissue paper. The way she called her corset her ‘stays’ and would ask me to help ‘button her up’.  I loved the way she brought out her best cups when the insurance man came and served him Mellow Birds coffee and Abbey Crunch biscuits. I loved her freshly baked scones hot from the oven dripping in melted butter, and her Yorkshire puddings that seemed to defy gravity. She kept the butter in a dish by the fire that would melt into a golden pool.

I loved bringing out her jewellery and playing with it. She had button box I used to love playing with. I’d sink my hand into the mounds of buttons and spend hours sorting them into colours and sizes.

I loved climbing into bed with her on a Saturday morning to keep warm before heading downstairs to light the temperamental grill on the gas oven to grill the bacon for sandwiches.

I loved her black and white television set with the buttons you had to press really hard to change channels and the uncomfortable 1950s sofa with the lumps in. I loved the roaring coal fire in the living room, the heat of which would burn your shins and turn your face pink, and the brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece where she used to hide my pocket money - 50p a week.  Such lovely memories. Happy 100th birthday, Grandma.

Songs that make you cry...

Following the recent revelation by Nick Clegg in The Guardian that there are songs that make him cry, various contributors then went on to list the songs that bring a tear to their eyes. The list included songs by people as diverse as Spiritualized, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Will Young.

This week the public chose the songs that make them cry. Again, the list is quite eclectic, but there are a number of artists that feature more than once. Artists such as Radiohead, The Cure, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, The National, Elbow, Bon Iver and LCD Soundsystem. This is a subject quite close to my heart as I regularly have a good cry over a song. In the article it says, “music needs an extra emotional connection to have a lasting effect. A sad song only becomes poignant when it reminds you of something or someone, else.” I agree with that statement to a greater extent, but sometimes a song doesn’t need to remind me of someone or something. Sometimes just the song alone is enough to set me off.

Songs that remind me of a time, a place or a person are poignant, certainly. Ride On by Christy Moore would fall into that category. It reminds me of a time, a place and a handsome Irish boy, and it gets me every time. There was a Christy Moore session on BBC4 recently that I watched through misty eyes. Maybe it’s the masochist in me, but I fast-forwarded to Ride On, just so I could remember.

Sometimes, though it’s the lyrics that get you. The lyrics to Somebody by Depeche Mode are simple and beautiful. It’s about loving someone and wanting to be loved in return. It reminds me of a summer I spent in America and playing the song quietly on a late-night bus trip home so as not to wake the others. Coles Corner by Richard Hawley is a similarly poignant song about loneliness and wanting to find a connection with someone. It breaks my heart.

Then there are the songs that don’t hold a particularly strong emotional connection for me but nevertheless still have the ability to hit me with a punch. It might be the chord structure, it might be the minor key change, it might be the lyric. Codex by Radiohead is one such song. It floors me. The feeling starts almost from the opening bars of the piano, but it’s the horn section that just sets me off bawling. Most recently on a crowded train.

Another song that packs a punch is Sacrifice by Lisa Gerrard from the album Duality. The song is best listened to on headphones with your eyes closed and with your mind cleared of all distractions. Each time I emerge at the end of the song, I feel drained, purged and oddly euphoric.

I remember shedding quite a few tears at Ray Davies’ Glastonbury set last year as Ray and the choir sang Waterloo Sunset, followed by a spine-tingling rendition of Thank You For The Days, sung as a tribute to a friend who had recently died.

Of all the artists in my record collection though, the ones that have induced most tears is Elbow. At their recent concerts I found myself crying on a number of occasions. Firstly to Lippy Kids, then to Great Expectations. But the song that never fails to hit me with a punch is Friend of Ours from The Seldom Seen Kid album. I played it when someone close to me died and it reminds me of them. The sweeping strings, the horns, the “love ya mate” lyric leading into Craig’s beautiful piano riff just kills me.

There are probably many, many more songs I could mention. A good cry every now and then is something I can recommend. Why not dig into your own record collection and do the same…

Childhood Nostalgia

On Tuesday I rang in sick from work and spent most of the day in bed. Being ill when you’re an adult is nowhere near as much fun as when you’re a child. My abiding memory of being ill as a child is a bottle of Lucozade with the crinkly, orange wrapper and a damp, slightly grey flannel being applied to my feverish brow. An image that could have come straight out of an episode of Life On Mars. The modern adult equivalent of the Lucozade bottle, for me anyway, is the duvet, a pile of magazines and my iPhone.

In between struggling with a throbbing head and a compulsion to vomit, I spent the day snoozing, reading magazine articles and wallowing in nostalgia. One article, describing people’s food memories of home-made chutney and hand-written cookbooks, reminded me of my own childhood food memories, my Grandma’s cooking in particular. Like her mince and Yorkshire puddings, such legendary puddings that rose to perfection and stood towering in proud peaks, something I’ve never been able to replicate. Or the dried peas steeping overnight, ready to be made into mushy peas. The fish and chips we’d have every Friday without fail from the chip shop that is now a Chinese takeaway. Or the bacon sandwiches, such incredible bacon sandwiches. I can still taste them now, which is ironic considering I'm now vegetarian. The bacon sizzling under a hot grill and the sandwiches dripping with butter, that she kept in a dish by the fire. And the cherished monthly visits from the insurance man when the ‘best cups’ would come out with the Mellow Birds coffee and the Abbey Crunch biscuits, laid out on a plate. Or her freshly baked scones, hot and fluffy from the oven, oozing with melted butter.

By comparison, my mother has always been a somewhat reluctant cook. Despite her fascination for programmes on the Good Food channel - The Barefoot Contessa being a particular favourite – my mother is a functional rather than an inspired cook. My childhood memories are of baked cheese pudding on a Saturday night in front of the telly, waiting for The Generation Game to start. Or the shop-bought battenburg cake that I wasn’t that keen on, preferring to peel away at the marzipan coating to get at the pink and yellow sponge squares underneath. Frozen, re-constituted, re-heated, freeze-dried, processed food that defined everybody’s memories of food for anyone who grew up in the seventies. Findus Crispy Pancakes, Arctic Roll, Angel Delight, Dream Topping, Heinz Sandwich Spread, tinned chopped ham and pork with pickle or salad cream on white bread, Smash with baked beans and sausages, Heinz vegetable or oxtail soup. That's what I ate as a child. I tried Angel Delight a while ago, to see if it was how I remembered. It tasted just like 1976.

Usually, the first thing I look at in the magazines I buy is the recipe section. On this occasion, I flicked through the recipe pages looking, without much enthusiasm, at the recipes for ‘lazy lunches’ and ‘simple suppers’.  Forgive me if I sound too much like ‘a Northerner’ but I’ve always been a little bemused by the use of the word ‘supper’. When I was a child, supper meant cream crackers and a piece of cheese or a couple of Digestives on a plate before you went to bed. Not a bunch of rocket on a crab salad with a mango salsa dressing. Let’s keep it simple, people. It’s breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. You know where you are then…