“Now there’s more to do
Than watch my sailboat glide
And everyday can be my magic carpet ride
And I can play hide and seek with my fears
And live my days instead of counting my years”
(Gerry Goffin and Carole King – Goin’ Back (1966))
Looking back at times in my childhood,
…a lot of the happy memories are drawn from family holidays.
For us who didn’t have big money trees at the bottom of our garden, that meant a couple of weeks down on the South Coast somewhere.
Newquay was one, Butlins in Bognor Regis was another, but the majority of them were on the Isle of Wight.
Those 2 weeks out of the year when we’d be packed onto a train, going on a journey to a different place and way of life instead of school (or in my Dad’s case, being a postman) were magical, exciting and a relief to get away from the normal.
From getting to Walton on Thames train station, either by foot, Taxi or a neighbour who could give us a lift, to standing on the platform waiting for our train to arrive, we’d be entertained (or in my case scared witless but excited) by the roar of the fast trains speeding past direct from Waterloo on their way to Portsmouth before our slower stopping service would arrive and we’d all clamber on and settle down in one of the carriages.
That journey itself was part of the holiday.
Eventually, the buildings would fade away and the countryside would take its place .
The sky seemed to get bigger and eventually the faint salty smell would announce that the sea wasn’t too far away.
At last the train would sidle into Portsmouth Harbour Train Station where, along with many other families that had been picked up along the way, we’d step onto the wooden platform and make our way to the next part of the journey.
Hearing the sound of sloshing water underneath, I remember looking down through the planks of wood and seeing water down there.
Now off the platform we waited again before walking up the wooden gangplank and onto the ferry. Once on there we’d be back in the fresh sea air again. And there it was , the new outside world. The sea and the skyline of Portsmouth.
If we could (weather permitting), we stayed on deck outside and, as the ferry passed out of the harbour gates, we were met with that busy stretch of water called the Solent.
And then, appearing in the distance but getting ever closer, was our destination.
It always seemed a place where you found happiness.
The other life had been left on the train to go back to your normal home town. For now, you were free of it.
Later on in my life…
…when I was living on the opposite side of the Solent at Southsea, and especially through some of my darker periods of my life, I’d gaze out at that little island and know somehow that I’d be living there one day.
And then somehow, it just happened.
I’ve now lived on the Isle of Wight for a little while now, right down there at the south of England, UK, although I wasn’t born there – which in the locals eyes, that classes me as an Overner and not an Islander.
Have you ever seen the film Jaws? It’s basically the same problem Ellen, the wife of Martin Brody, the Chief of Police, has when she’s chatting on Amity beach.
But for now, I’m going to go back to the very start, to see how I got there.
When I arrived earth side…
…way back on the 20th February 1972 it was at St. Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey, North West Surrey, England.
Living with my Mum, my Dad, and two older sisters, I was brought up in the village of Hersham in Surrey, the very same Hersham which Jimmy Pursey and Sham 69 sang about in the late seventies, and it’s Hersham where my passion for records and music started.
I remember our house…
…dark green on the outside (later I’d jokingly call it the Greenhouse), with a big bay window which my Dad had a hand in constructing (the only one of its kind down our road).
Inside with the colourful wallpaper, the faux leather armed black and grey furniture with the long spindly legs, the coal fireplace which I remember my Mum sweeping out and the big imposing floor standing lamp over the other side in the living room. The patterned deep red carpets in the Dining room, the kitchen just off that and then the downstairs bathroom which my Dad built almost by himself after I’d come along.
Going back through to the steep Edwardian stairs (the house was built at the turn of the 20th Century) up the top would be my parents room to the right.
To the left was my sisters’ bedroom with it’s Disney Snow White wallpaper.
Beyond that was where the bathroom used to be. This was now getting refurbished and would become a third bedroom.
And once I’d left my cot (and stopped sticking my hand out of it to peel the wallpaper) in my parents room, I would then move into the bigger girls room and take the place of my eldest sister who would then get her own room at the back of the house for a while.
I was too young to take in the building work going on and only remember my sister having to go through her old room to get to her new one.
Back downstairs and out the back of the house, with a patio and a swing, there were a couple of steps up to the main garden. My dad made a “Slope” which would cover the steps so we could ride anything with wheels up and down it.
At the back of the garden stood my Dad’s shed. A constant work in progress. Always evolving.
Beyond the shed was a back gate…
…which led to an alleyway and across from there, a gateway to the Rec. A huge park which stretched as far as the bowling green and beyond that, the old factory in the distance.
At one end, our end, was the play area with the swings and slides and roundabouts, a brick wall housed concrete blue painted paddling pool which the council filled with water in the summer holiday season and, across from that, tennis courts.
Beyond that was a huge tree lined field which went off to the other side of the world in my head. With huge trees which, in the Autumn, I’d collect Acorns and Conkers. Over time and into another generation, that hill in the distance would be nicknamed Teletubby Hill by my eldest daughter.
I’m glad I can just about remember that “Rec” (as we, and the locals used to call it) as it was, because by the time I got to 2 the local council decided to carve a dual carriageway straight through the middle of it which became the Hersham bypass, cutting the park off from the bowling green forever and providing the sound of constant distant traffic to our back garden ever since.
Another development, not long after I came along was my Dad changing career…
…to become a postman and my Mum looked after the children in the family home.
My parents also never learnt to drive, and so we walked or cycled everywhere we needed to go.
As I mentioned earlier, I also had 2 sisters…
…who’d already arrived way before I did. The eldest during the heavy winter of 1962/63 (apparently when the ambulance came to pick up my very expectant Mother, showing the first , but sure signs of labour, it needed chains around the tyres to get there.
My second sister (Home-Birthed in our house, the only one of us that ever was) met my big sister in the summer of 1965.
Then, there was a gap of 6 1/2 years before I showed up.
Four and a half years after me, came my little sister, and the family was complete.
As the years passed, I came to think of our family as two seperate units, due to the big gap between my eldest two sisters and me and my little sis.
Also in those first few years between witnessing the arguments, not just between my parents but also between my two elder sisters such as “Get out of the bathroom”!! Or “She’s nicked my Hairdryer “!!!, you would usually find my Big Sis upstairs in her bedroom, along with the pictures of David Cassidy and the Osmonds, listening to the radio.
We would also know if they were going out to see friends as the sound of the shoes coming down the stairs would signal their departure with my Mum asking where they were going and my Dad calling for the to be careful.
Those shoes were basically wooden bricks strapped to their feet. I mean solid wood. It really isn’t an exaggeration.
One bonus of having older sisters also meant that every Thursday evening, the TV would switch to ‘Top Of The Pops’ and I’d watch too.
I couldn’t get my head round the fact that some of the singers who shut their eyes when they were singing with a bit of feeling, especially the one’s singing the slow songs, never fell off the stage. Such was my young mind at the time.
During the daytime when the girls were in school, Mum always had the radio on in the kitchen, and so from the very beginning I was listening to music.
During the day, I used to think when my Mum had the radio on, the actual singers and bands were being carted in to the studio and then back out again, a bit like on ‘Top of the Pops’
And that was why the DJ’s spent so much time chatting to themselves on air – it was because some artists spent longer setting up.
I never realized the DJ’s on the radio were playing records.
When the old Bakelite radio in the kitchen wasn’t on…
…my mum had one of those record players with the long spindle (the type you could put about 4 or 5 different records all stacked on top of each other) and all covered with a big plastic lid to keep the dust off. This was in the dining room, just off from the Kitchen.
I was fascinated by the sight and the sound (tika-tika-tika) of the mechanism, of how the record would drop down, and the needle would glide over and lower onto the lead-in groove precisely, every time, before the music would begin and the music would emanate from the stereo speakers. And I would just watch the record go round, hypnotized.
Eventually, I would get my own record player and for hours sit alone with it just playing records, then in later years a double cassette deck would be added, and I’d be experimenting with mix-tapes.
Through the next few years I would be riding around with my personal stereo, then a few years later into adulthood, driving around with the CD player on loud through the night, to bringing it up to now, streaming music through my Bluetooth earbuds.
The technology has all evolved , but the end result has stayed the same. And I still prefer a record deck.
There have been other moments where the power of music has helped me get through tougher times…
Anxiety. That bugger has always seemed to be there almost from the beginning. At times it’s felt like the more dominant controlling partner in our relationship. Much later in life and on quite a few occasions, it would also bring their friend along called Depression. And when they got together I may as well forget about getting anything done due to all the loud partying they’re getting on with at my mental health’s expense.
There have also been times when I’ve wanted to walkout of the whole damned party called Life. It’s probably those times when the world around me is the most silent. Without any music.
However, somehow, the deafening silence gets broken down and sound comes back to me again.
For the first 50 years, especially the latter 25 years of that time, they both appeared more frequently and more powerfully. It took me until after I’d completed year 51 and was halfway to completing my 52nd that I was finally gifted of a reason for all of this, and it’s a discovery which has given a validated reason for my first 50 years, and a new legitimized journey of self discovery, fulfillment and redemption I never expected, and new way of looking at my life as it not only reveals itself in my future, but also gives me a new angle on certain aspects of my past too.
Something else that has been gifted to me…
…is a disorder of the eye called Keratoconus.
Although it sounds like a creature from the prehistoric age, it is in fact a disease which distorts and misshapes my corneas and therefore my vision (a nifty pair of prescribed rigid contact lenses corrects this issue and gives me my sight back). The effects of this degenerative issue came along when I was around 19 years old and I was given the happy news that there was no known cure and it would get progressively worse over time.
It became apparent quite quickly that if I didn’t have my contact lenses in, then I couldn’t really see anything. Just a big heavy foggy blur.
At two different stages of my life, roughly 10 years apart, the inside of my eye finally buckled enough for a shot of grey goo to hit the inside of my already distorted cornea, and disable me blind in that eye for a while. A process which is known as Hydrops.
Fortunately, some amazing work was carried out on those separate occasions by a wonderfully skilled eye surgeon who took off my own permanently damaged corneas and grafted healthy replacements, to gift me my sight back again. First with the left eye, and then, ten years later, to my right.
It therefore emphasised the need, especially in those times, for audio-books or dramas when I would have read books before.
Now, thanks to the magnificent surgical work carried out on those occasions, I can now choose to read once again.
When I have the lenses in, I’ve got my normal vision back. But it brings home the simple satisfaction of watching music videos or the ritual of putting an album on and admiring the sleeve artwork and reading the lyrics.
Or just sitting there watching the record go round and round.
Yes, music has been there throughout my journey…
…be it good, or not so good. Whether despairingly uncomfortable, or uncontrollably out of this world amazing.
So, I’m going back to those sounds that played alongside me from my first ever years until eventually I ’ll be right back to where I am now. Somewhere which I’m still discovering.
I’ll just be that little bit further along.
(Adrian – Wednesday, the 18th of January 2023)
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