"Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day" - John Donne (1620)
David Sylvian - 'September' (1987)
Gorgeous. Thank you. (And that's just for the Donne quotation).
ReplyDeleteOh, god, I love this song. Truly evocative of summer's end. One of the truly great short songs.
ReplyDeleteThanks you for the feedback! Your blog is wonderful as well -- me have verrrry similar tastes...will link to you as wll.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
ReplyDeleteClose bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell. [Keats, 'To Autumn']
Lovely song too, Davy, again, first time I've heard it. Short and very sweet.
Thanks Beth - John Donne rocks!
ReplyDeleteC&B - so true. And THERE'S a good pub/blog list game - 'Your Top Twenty Truly Great Short Songs'...
Vinyl - thanks for linking.
Steve - good old JK; like his later stuff especially. Nice photo!
Ahh Davy .. all this vivid early September stuff reminds me ...
ReplyDelete- That 1st Day At School Feeling -
It was early September 1966. England had just won the World Cup and we all lived in a Yellow Submarine. We'd had more than one Sunny Afternoon with The Kinks that summer.
The industrial landscape was grey and the streets cobbled, but for me, the skies had been blue and our cheeks had been rosy since time began.
My father resembled an Irish James Dean and my mother was a double for Petula Clark. I was Robin to my brother's Batman, or he was a Cowboy and I was an Indian (tied to a tree). We sat in a tin bath in front of the fire and I believed him when he told me that Eleanor Rigby had just moved in next door to the sweet-shop on the corner.
The schoolyard. Aged 4. Short pants. Tarmac, trepidation and snot. I remember the obligatory boy with the white patch of sticking plaster over one eye. His hideous black-framed NHS spectacles sat upon his wart-infected ears.
My new shoes were rubbing already. The older kids in the corner mischievously sang that summer's bizarre novelty hit, "They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haa!" Mum had cut my hair around a basin and I had a lop-sided fringe. I smelled of camomile lotion following the recent spotty Chicken Pox affair. 2 lemon bon-bons gathered lint in my pocket.
The teachers looked about 55; looking back, they were probably 25. 'Maybe they'll teach me how to become a real Thunderbird?' (I had imagination - what more would I need in life?) Oh, and the girls. Lots of girls. Mostly pig-tailed, missing their front teeth and ugly as sin; but 1 or 2 were pretty. Handstands against the wall with knickers on display. It was all too much! I'd never considered that girls existed before. I had football, a dog and a tortoise - girls had never been necessary.
The bell clanged. This was it. ''You're a big boy now. These are the best days of your life''. (Had I known about God then, I'd have asked him to help me). I desparately wanted to cry when my mother said goodbye. That wretched stomach through a mangle feeling. She spat on a handkerchief and wiped my grubby face one last time and she was gone.
I noticed a pile of freshly steaming sick was being covered by a man with a shovel and a bucket of sawdust. Some boys were still sobbing into their mothers' aprons. My bottom lip wobbled precariously - but I must've somehow realised that future playground pecking order and classroom kudos could not be gained by wailing like a 'puff'. Besides, I'd previously learnt how to be 'mummy's brave soldier' when TV's Andy Pandy show ended, and the heart-wrenching signature tune had played .. ''Time to go home, time to go home .. Andy is waving goodbye''.
On that very first morning in September 1966, I remember learning 2 important things:
Lesson 1 - 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands'. Lesson 2: Don't sit next to the boy who's shit himself.
Love DickVanDyke
Superb DVD, just superb...It is as if we were there...'freshly steaming sick' indeed.
ReplyDeleteDo any other readers have first day at school stories? There's a Blue Peter badge for all those we receive*.
(*er, not actually true)
How’s this for an early school memory? Our teacher told us to draw a rainbow, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. What does that tell you about my childhood? In my experience kids love rainbows. I had two parents and four brothers and sisters and nobody ever said to me “Look at that lovely rainbow, Michael”. I did the sensible thing and looked at what the kid next to me was doing: “Oh, I get it, I just have to draw different colour semi-circles” I thought. Trouble is I used totally inappropriate colours and ended up with a rainbow with black in it. Of COURSE I was going to end up listening to Joy Division and other gloom merchants 15 years later. What chance did I have?
ReplyDelete