gin-nurtered time waster.
©Elsie Anderton,
The Babylon Lane Tales 2012
The Babylon Tales
Promote your Page too
the almost award winning blog from Manchester
Typically yesterday should've been a down day. It's that time of month and year when the taxman beckons; VAT and corporation tax have had to be paid. Astonishingly two small highs overshadowed the taxman lows. These things actually gave me a cliched warm, fuzzy feeling.
Dani Church on Woman's Hour was one such fuzzy. Dani Church is the current ferry woman on the Southwold to Walberswick Ferry. There has been a ferry crossing at this point since the 13th century and Dani is the fifth generation of her family to take the helm, taking the position from her father before her. Dani refuses to use a motorised craft, prefering to maintain the tradition and peacefulness of her role in local life (she rows locals and tourists across the River Blyth). Dani has written a book (dedicated to her father) about the 800 year history of the Walberswick ferry (The Story of the Southwold to Walberswick Ferry). If the book evokes even a fraction of the images her interview did, then it will be a pure joy to read.
The second high was the result of an errand from my daughter's piano teacher. I was sent to the Forsyth Brothers' shop on Deansgate. Off I toddled (in too high shoes for walking in my lunch break), repeating the title of the piano book in my head like a mantra (I'd forgotten to write it down). As I wobbled and chanted, I wondered if I will be able to endure small fingers stumbling over and hammering out Christmas tunes for the next two months. All thoughts of Christmas-based frustration vanished when I stepped over the threshold of Forsyths. It is truly something to behold.
Forsyths sells everything musical: all manner of instruments and sheet music. It's cluttered and bustling, with a smell I couldn't identify. Is it 150 years of dust? The smell of cumulative musical ability? The fragrance of musical scores stacked further than the eye can see? Perhaps something they wax pianos with? Who knows, I certainly don't. I am something of a musical neophyte. In fact, I'm lower than that I have no musical ability whatsoever. Any musical future was swiftly put to bed by a school report in the early 1980s,
"Elsie is not coping well with Recorder Club, more practice is needed to get her fingers going at the same time as everyone elses"My musical ignorance completely explains my wonder. It's a different world. A world where I don't understand the language, the culture or the traditions. Customers and staff were busily absorbed by their talent. The granddad treating the granddaughter to new music ("choose something you really love, my treat"). The bearded man with furrowed brow absorbed in the trumpet section. The pink haired student, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a cello case and piles of scores. Multi-cultural, multi-aged, multi-musical. Very different people drawn by their mutual love and skill to a musical Utopia. A bustle of people. A bustle? No, that's not the collective noun for musicians. A clatter? A muddle? A squawk? A clanger? I know, I know it's a score. But it was like a bustle of musicians in a wonderful emporium. An emporium of things I don't understand and am not part of. It's a whole different world in there. I loved it.Read the previous post: Objects of Desire
gin-nurtered time waster.
©Elsie Anderton,
The Babylon Lane Tales 2012
The Babylon Tales
Promote your Page too
gin-nurtered time waster.
©Elsie Anderton,
The Babylon Lane Tales 2012
The Babylon Tales
Promote your Page too
Theme created for Posterous by Obox
