A Fairytale of Three Lives
As usual I awoke with dreams still clinging. I was in a meeting with no less a personage than Adolph Hitler. It was a very strange affair and I was not a little anxious how I would be treated. There was no chair for me at the table so I balanced myself rather precariously on a sort of bench against the wall.
As it happened, Hitler was surprisingly polite and correct towards me and handed me the Bristol Evening Post which had been sent to me from England, appearing not to notice how the headline slagged him off. I was quite relieved.
I got up. Fed the Rayburn and cat (not with the same material of course) made a cup of tea and then went back to bed to read last Friday's Times. Three obituaries of very different characters: America's Henry (Heinz) Kissinger, Scotland's Alistair Darling and Ireland's Shane MacGowan - all of whom in their own distinctive way had a huge impact on the world.Our lives would have been very different - whether for better or worse, remains debatable - without them. They lasted respectively for one hundred, seventy and sixty-five years, which in itself is quite a remarkable feat: Kissinger for surviving the Nazis and anti-semitism; Darling for surviving, international financial disaster and Gordon Brown; MacGowan for surviving a life of permanent intoxication from booze and drugs.
In all three cases, the fact that they lasted as long as they did, was something of a miracle. No doubt if they had not lived someone else would have filled their role and acted their part, but there can only be one history, so we must give them their due.
Without Kissinger America may not have extricated itself from the debacle of Vietnam, lessened nuclear tensions with Russia or made better relations with China. Without Darling we might have all seen our bank balances disappear in utter financial chaos. Without MacGowan we would be deprived of the perrennially fresh Pogues' Christmas signature tune, 'Fairytale of New York'.
The song resonates because it somehow captures the tragi-comedic nature of life and the dream-like quality of the past, as a product of memory and imagination, that evaporates with our last breath and our transitory contact with the world.
Three very different characters who we must now do without. Three distinctive legacies that remain.
15.12.2023: Reading your thread is the first thing I do after turning on the computer. (I'm addicted I'm afraid) It's reassuringly banal, full of walks and washing. Glad you enjoyed your Winford bash. Did you feel like Toulouse-Lautrec? Winford is a strange little place isn't it. It always gave me the 'colly-wobbles'. It's where my gmother's family came from, and I have recently discovered my ggrandmother Flower was born before she settled in Publow. However the starkest memory it evokes is going to the Winford Market, straight out of Thomas Hardy. Farmer Sherborne took a shine to me and took me there in his ramshackle Ford van, with a passenger seat that seemed to be unattached to the floor, me clinging on like a fairground ride. I suppose I was about six at the time and felt as if I had been dropped off in refugee camp. It was as much a social occasion as a commercial one. As everywhere else, 'modernising' the market and moving it out of the village later on, was its death knell. Where are animals traded these days. Is it all on E-Bay? Anyway, I have vague memories of him giving me sixpence and telling me to go and get some chips as he went off to the auction or pub. The pens, the animals, the sounds, the smells. Of course for many centuries, Pensford had been the principal weekly market and twice yearly fair location. Can you imagine all of this industry and commotion in the High Street? Oh to be a Time Traveller.
World, O World – Jacob Collier's beautiful new choral piece – Sept. 6, 2023
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