I walked into the small pharmacy. An elderly man wearing khaki joggers and a big grey padded jacket was being served. He spoke kindly to the assistant wishing her a good day as he shuffled out of the door. Was this the only human contact he had that day?
I asked for prescriptions for two people – myself and my wife. Two large bags of medication are brought to the counter and handed over. I showed my wife’s exemption card and left the shop with the meds. No fuss, no issues, no charge!
We are so fortunate in the UK – this should not be taken for granted. Over 60, or an underlying health condition and no payment is required. We do not have to think about saving money by skipping on important medication. In most cases we don’t need to think – eat or medicate? We generally don’t have to worry about shortages or supply issues, although this is another thing we shouldn’t take for granted. We go onto the health app, tick the medicines required from the repeats list and click the order button – as simple and as straight forward as that. Then wait for a text from the pharmacy to say that the prescription is ready to collect before driving over to physically collect.
Okay, it could be argued that we are only getting what we are entitled to and after all many of us have paid a working lifes worth of National Insurance contributions, but I will never take any of this for granted particularly when I hear about people in other countries where they have to pay high prices for things such as diabetes meds. No – we are very lucky in this country – I for one will always be grateful for the National Health Service (NHS).
We were out on our daily thirty minute walk in the winter sunshine. The time of the afternoon we squinted, dazzled as we were heading into the low sun. But I would rather be blinded by the sun than to not see the blue sky or any brightness at all. There is a freshness to the air when the day is clear at this time of the year and it filled me with positivity and hope.
When the green is all around and blue high above
I walk with a smile and the girl I love
Dangling catkins, the first primroses of the year
Nature is awakening and the birds we hear
are happy for the season ahead
When all that in winter sleep can rise and leave their bed.
It was so good to see the early primroses and dangling above them the wiggling little lambs tails. Surely a sign that spring is just around the corner even though we were still only half way through the winter. I knew there would be further stings in winter’s tail to come but for for that point in time I remained happy to see nature awakening and hoped that it continued to do so. I then looked ahead to the colours, smells and textures of spring returning for all to see and enjoy.
Am I ever going to get round to reading them all? Sad to say, but probably not. Then why are more and more of them purchased, downloaded, and borrowed? Why are books so difficult to resist? I guess many book lovers feel the same. Books are simply irresistible objects. We are unable to pass by a book shop without entering, even if it is just to take in the intoxicating booky aroma that smacks you in the face when you step inside; especially if it is one of those, usually compact, indie bookstores. A precaution would be to go in without a wallet – although that is unlikely.
Books in our humble abode are around us. Sat on the bookcase shelves in the living room collecting dust, in the cubes behind me in the study, in the bookcase in the bedroom and on the bedside tables. Oh, and I forgot to add – they are also in the kindle library. Apart from the bathroom and the kitchen – no, hang on a minute, there are cook books in the kitchen, mustn’t forget about those.
So in our small flat books are by far the dominant feature. We wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s obvious we are never going to have enough time to read them all. But it’s fun looking through our collection though, when it’s time to choose a new one to read.
Hmmm, I wonder. If I didn’t buy any more books in any format and I read around thirty a year and I lived for another twenty-five years, would I finish all the books in my collection? That would be seven hundred and fifty books to be read. Next job? Count up all the books I own. With the kindle collection I am guessing I have more than a thousand! I think I had better increase my reading speed.
With space becoming a real issue here, thank goodness we are now, and have been for a while, making good use of our local library.
And that one Beatles song that for me is the best is… Well, before the song, some more scene setting.
This is the image in my mind that the song often returns me to. A weekday morning at some point in 1967. It must have been a school holiday as me and my brother were not at school and dad was at work. In those days we had a duffle bag full of toy cars – matchbox cars, dinky toys, all sorts of motor vehicles, all shapes and sizes and many of them scratched and with buckled wheels. Newer cars were kept out of the duffle bag until their newness had worn off. The entire bag was tipped out onto the living room floor. My brother and I would position ourselves, him at one end of the room, and me at the other. In my memory I was seeing beyond my brother the large living-room window that looked out onto the front garden. We would line our chosen cars up and then push the cars to each other. The aim of the game was for the cars not to politely pass each other on their journey to the other end but to crash into each other – the more spectacular the crash the better. We could spend hours playing this game and had such fun. While we were chipping the paint off our already bashed and battered cars mum was in the kitchen. I have no idea what she was doing – cooking, baking, laundry or a number of other chores that had to be done. But the one thing I do remember is that while she did whatever she was doing she was also listening to the radio. And the one song I remember hearing on that school holiday morning was…
…Penny Lane.
I love the tune, the words, the brass, the change of key. The song just makes me feel so nostalgic. I am listening to it now as I write. The thought of a clean, gleaming fire engine makes me smile because I know that would have been the sort of image that would have captured my imagination as a five year old. There are so many Beatles songs to choose from, to enjoy, to savour, to take nostalgic trips on – and Penny Lane is the one for me.
I can hear the song coming through to the living room from the kitchen wireless as mum worked at her chores. As the barber, the banker and the poppy seller did their thing, so did me and my brother do ours. And as our toy cars clattered onto the carpet…
‘Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes’
As we took it in turns choosing an army of Matchbox motors…
‘On the corner is banker with a motor car’
Our cars faced each other at distance, revving their engines, counting down…
‘Penny Lane, there is a fireman with an hourglass’
None of our worn and scratched vehicles were as presentable as the fireman’s…
In previous posts this week I talked about how the smell of freshly cut grass transports me back to a more carefree time – to the summers of the 1960’s and 70’s, and how those memories also bring my parents to mind. Today I am again… reminiscing.
I have recently been listening to, and finished, a podcast series about the songs of Paul McCartney. Every episode covered a specific song each of which provided me a nugget or two about those songs that I was unaware of previously. But rather than talk about what I have learnt I want to talk about how, in the same way as the sweet smell of freshly cut grass can transport us, so can the sound of a song.
I will begin by setting the scene. I was fortunate to live my early years in the 1960’s. Admittedly this was only my first eight years but it was enough – enough to hear the music of the Beatles first hand, when they were together, still a band, rather than hear it following their acrimonious split.
Although hearing music at that time was only about how the song or the piece of music sounded – it was unimportant to me who was singing the song or playing the tune, who had written it or what the story was. It was all about the sound. For example, the music for the Royal Fireworks and the Water Music for me was all about the wonderful sound I was hearing during a primary school assembly one morning. It was irrelevant to me that this music was written by a composer called Handel – that name probably made me laugh as a child, or the history behind the music. The rousing tunes, the wonderful melodies stuck in my mind enough for me to tell my dad about them as soon as he walked in from work that evening. A short while later dad presented me with an vinyl LP of the Royal Fireworks and the Water Music. I was so proud of what was probably my first ever album. I recall vividly the photograph on the album cover of a colourful burst of fireworks exploding into the black sky over the river Thames in London. I have enjoyed a wide variety of classical music to this day.
But back to the Beatles. All these decades later I feel a sense of privilege to be able to remember certain songs of the Beatles when they were released as singles – almost a sense of I remember because I was there sort of thing. A couple of examples are, Yellow Submarine that was played many times on the weekend morning UK radio show Junior Choice hosted by the late Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart. Other songs I remember from the time are Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Strawberry Fields and Michelle, all songs that have memorable melodies and catchy choruses, also snippets of lyrics that stuck in the mind at the time – ‘Michelle, my belle’ and ‘Let me take you down…Strawberry fields forever.’ For me those and many other songs sound as good today as they did in my early years, but they have more meaning today when I listen to the music of the 60’s while I am in my 60’s.
But there is one song in particular that is probably my favourite Beatles song of all of them. I will talk about this one in my next post…
From Bristol to Brighton & Bach 