I'm at that stage of not writing but thinking about what to do next. I don't write much in December usually because I have so many other things going on, like a final concert I'm singing in on Sunday and other singing events I'm attending. Music and writing are in my blood, but I've been thinking more about music lately because my background is set in music (see what I did there?).
I've just finished reading the book Bermondsey Boy by Tommy Steele. I found this copy in a charity shop recently and I dived on it. Why is this book so important to me? Well, I'll tell you. My maternal granddad was a piano tuner back in the day and he (at least once) tuned Tommy Steele's piano. They were also born in the same area, Bermondsey, if years apart. According to my nana, my granddad maintained that Tommy Steele was friendly and had no airs and graces, unlike some of his other clients who thought a lot of themselves.
My granddad played piano in pubs and the story goes that customers bought him beer and lined the glasses up on top of the piano. Everyday, my granddad would cycle out to houses to tune pianos, whatever the weather. He'd fought in both world wars (the last in the Army Catering Corps - he made lovely brandy snaps!). I was only ten years old when he died. My memories of him are building a greenhouse with my dad and the last days when his bed was brought downstairs to the front room. My dad knocked a hole through the wall to the back room, so the television could be moved in for him and the aerial work! I remember me and my brother sitting on his bed with a sketch pad and a blue box of Rowney crayons. My granddad took to drawing while in bed. He copied pictures that were hanging on the wall. He was good too, and I still have those coloured drawings.
The musical element ran through us as my mum was a good singer and won a certificate a school. Her ambition had been to become an opera singer, but the war put paid to that. She felt thwarted and when I took an interest in music she didn't encourage me due to her own disappointment. So, though my mum could read music and play the piano (though we didn't have a piano), she never taught me. To be fair, I don't think I ever asked, but I did ask why we couldn't have a piano. No room, she said. Later in life she and my dad (ex-choir boy) joined a choral choir where my dad's sister also sang. As kids, me and brother got dragged along to concerts. The only concerts I loved were the Christmas ones.
My own interest in music was a pop with a little classical that I heard at home. Except musicals. I still hate musicals after listening to my mum's Oklahoma and South Pacific LPs so often! I began writing my own lyrics before I owned a guitar. I put simple tunes to them and they stayed in my head. At about 16 or 18, I bought my first guitar and taught myself the easy chords and then taped my songs, adding harmonies (via my brother's cassette player - the main melody playing through my music centre speakers).
At some stage I began writing poetry and then stories. But fourteen years ago I joined a community choir and found out what it was like to perform for the first time. Although I have left that choir, I am now with another. I've always been good at memorising words to songs as I used to play my records until I got them. My head has a filing cabinet full of lyrics I learned! I tried to teach myself to read music and even tried a class, but got lost in the jumble of linking notes. But give me a melody and I can harmonise easily.
But back to the Tommy Steele book. When I was reading I found that his grandfather and father grew up on the most notorious street in London where even the police were afraid to walk, and his grandmother was bookie's runner, which was illegal. The book is full of interesting stories that takes you right up to the time he quit being the rock star he had become. His aunt and uncles lived on the Neckinger Estate in Bermondsey which replaced the hovels on the street where my great granddad grew up. I've been there to look where they lived. There's not much left now, just an old leather factory (my great grandad was a book maker before becoming one of the first electricians!). This is also Oliver Twist country. You can tell I've been doing my family tree!
So, that's a little of my family history and why music is so important to me. I'm not sure where the writing came from, but maybe as a spin-off from lyric writing.
Back to today, my flash piece Everything in this house is edible has been published by Banshee Press. Oh, my name is on their website! I love the cover for this issue, and enjoy the mix of fiction and poetry. So proud of this one.
Until next time, happy reading and writing.
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