So Many People

Cousin Mac

2007-08-15T21:17:00.000+01:00

Mac is the nearest aged cousin to me - 6 months older. He isn't one of the close-in-age girls so may have been missed earlier. We went to visit him last week in Lesmahagow. Barney was taken by how much his lifestyle belies his early rebelliousness. Me? naah. I see a guy who still gets out walking a lot, does stuff that interests him and is generally kind to animals and people etc.

His wife has a collection of glass- mostly beautiful paperweights. He has old albums mainly from late 60s early 70s with those unglazed cornflake packet -type sleeves that don't last well. He gave me a copy of CSN&Y's 4way street which was fine.

In the past Mac was the one who left school and went to be an apprentice welder or something at Vickers but wasn't very keen on making dustbin holders. He was brought up in the Midlands, so moving to Tyneside must have been a bit of a jolt. He smoked a lot of dope too and was a great fan of Family. He stayed keen on Cricket and played a bit of golf, even then.

Now what's different from most of us contemporaries is that he doesn't drink alcohol. He has a good job, 3 grown up kids and still follows the cricket, though no golf now. Still keeps up the sense of humour too. They have 2 dogs: a tiny mini pinscher and a soppy dobermann. lovely. They are good with Anne's Labrador, Kiwi, but she's an astonishingly well-trained dog: love her too.

Child is father to the Man - I believe it, and the past leads into the future, but may veer a bit on the way. Bill, Mac's dad died last year and we all agreed we must meet up when it isn't a funeral. I'm glad we've started. It was a good day.

A Big Idea

2007-03-09T21:07:00.000Z

Looks like a good one to me
a charity book of blogs

all I have to do now is find something funny

http://troubled-diva.com/labels/rednoseday.html

Happy Birthday to People

2007-02-24T21:05:00.000Z

Hey well this blog is a year old

Need s afew bits adding and updating - it takes longer now I'm embracing sound and video though, but It Will Happen

The One minute tribute

2007-02-13T20:46:00.000Z

I nearly got it uploaded for the orange bafta comp, but with different music. Here it is. One day I'll add a comprehensive list of people influenced by Arthur Lee. Or maybe, as he hoped it will continue for a evry long time. I hope so.

Don Van Vliet - hero

2006-10-10T17:54:00.000+01:00

Then there was Captain Beefheart He was another hero, though a very different type of hero. Oh We saw him in Newcastle around this time and Oho he was amazing. I had a completely garbled tho not chemically enhanced conversation with him. Love over Gold, that's what he said.

Arthur Lee, Liverpool June 2002

2006-10-07T22:15:00.000+01:00

Arthur Lee, Liverpool June 2002

The first time I took Barney to see Love, and the start of an adventure that lasted 3 years with Love, love, new and renewed friendships and a whole lot of pure brilliance.

to tube or not to tube

2006-10-06T20:10:00.000+01:00

Arthur Lee in Liverpool, June 2002. It was the second time I saw him live - and the first time with Barney. They searched my bag as I went in, so the video camera wasn't covert.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether to put my sad little grainy dv onto youtube. Is it worthless and therefore OK to publish?

Publish and be damned my adviser says, so I'll probably do just that.

Arthur Lee: died on Thursday

2006-08-04T23:51:00.000+01:00

Oh dear

My hero no longer walks the same planet as I, and unlike others in my life, I have no Beliefs to reconcile me.

Oh he contributed so much to the musical canon that is Rock, and Oh to my life: without him I wouldn't have met up with my 60's/70's noughties partner in crime Tina, or had so much fun in my teens and recently before I got Ill...

Apologies, this one will appear elsewhere while I try to recommence Real Life.

Rock on

2006-07-30T21:59:00.000+01:00

Maybe I didn't say enough about Rock: he came from county Down. Great family he spoke highly of, but they were Achievers, which he wasn't going to be, and he knew it. What he probably didn't know was what a positive effect he had on all of us, and, I'm sure everyone else who knew him. He was just a very positive guy until the drink took hold, but we all just loved him from the moment he walked in - a post graduate hoping we undergards would accept him into our home. The ironic bit was that we only had a vacancy because Jess, who eventually loved him, was leaving.. c'est la vie, but bugger, why is it always like that?

Oh it's always hard to write of someone who'll never be around to answer back, but rock was special, as he would say, "in many ways".

Irish Peat

2006-07-10T20:45:00.000+01:00

Rock was Irish, and he was doing some kind of post-graduate work on cancer. I bought the Easy Rider album from him when he was strapped for cash. He came to live in our shared house in Zetland Road with me, ellen, my bruv and Ronnie after Jess and Sharon left in a lucid moment.

He was a good drinker. The only person I know who was actually stopped by the police and cautioned for being drunk in charge of a bicycle. Bruv and That Ronnie did the old writing on the willie trick on him one afternoon when he crashed out on ron’s bed. He was a great singer and had a guitar for accompaniment. Never a shy bairn, when the house next door was visited by a bunch of bikers who parked up in the cellar, he coolly stood at the window and yelled at the biggest meanest one ‘ you’re a cool fucker’.

Worst thing I did was posted a note asking for the person with type A blood and long dark hair to see to the laundering of my sheets when I came home one night and found my bed less than pristine. I thought it was Ellen – no it was Rock, he’d got lucky and the woman he’d blarneyed into bed was a total beginner.

He was also the best cook of the lot of us. We each put 3 quid into a teapot on Monday then did dinner on a day each. We’d mostly do budget student stuff but Rock had Mondays and we got some great food – then didn’t really mind having bread and drippin for the rest of the week.

His isn’t a story with a happy ending. Apparently he had an accident and damaged his brain a bit. He became depressed later: the books he’d read in the past and could no longer haunted him. Eventually he ended his life. The news was so very upsetting because we thought he’d just gone home to County Down and like others we’d catch up with him again in the future. Sometimes there is no future.

Update on Arthur Lee

2006-07-08T17:12:00.000+01:00

This is what's been on my mind recently.

Last month there were benefit concerts for Arthur in New York and LA.

I've heard he's responding well to treatment. Hope he continues to do so.

Arthur Lee - Rock Legend and My Long Term Hero

2006-03-17T20:57:00.000Z

Long May his music continue…

The story of Me and Arthur starts in late 1966. A group of us at school were already firm Byrds fans, seriously keen on the jingle jangle music and the Dylanesque lyrics. After school we would do the rounds of the Newcastle record shops, rearranging albums in the racks so that our favourites were prominently displayed. We listened to John Peel’s late night Perfumed Garden music show on Radio London when radio reception was good, which mostly it wasn’t. We’d heard some songs by Love, like “Can’t Explain” – a very jingle jangle Byrdy number. It was Mog who spotted their first album in T&G Allan’s record department.

On the back was a photo of the band with their names. They looked brooding, perhaps a bit dangerous. One in particular caught her eye: Bryan Maclean who looked just like Mike Clarke, the Byrds’ drummer. I would love to say it was The Music primarily, right from the beginning, but that was it, Love became one of our bands. I bought that album, played it almost daily for weeks and lent it out to friends for their education. There was a trick to walking down the street with an album under your arm, nonchalantly but displaying the sleeve clearly so that others would marvel at your impeccable taste.

Love was one of the first mixed race bands to come out of America. They also mixed their music: alongside the guitar and harmonies there was urgent R&B, a folksy anti-war ditty, blues harmonica, psychedelic lyrics, and a Bacharach/David song. The lead guitarist Johnny Echols is a master. The bassist, Ken Forssi could hold down a complex line and just underpin a tune, he played on the Turtles’ ‘Happy Together’ (remember that bass line?). Bryan Maclean wrote sensitively and had a sweet voice as well as playing guitar and Snoopy Pfisterer held the drumming together. The line up changed over the years, but Arthur Lee was always the leader. He looked, sounded and was dangerous, right from the start and he was my hero. Mog bought their second album and I took a massive risk in early 1968, ordering the third in advance, just hoping it would be as good as the first two. Forever Changes was more than just good, it was breathtaking, with strings, mariachi horns and other Latin elements. It still appears regularly on Best Album Ever lists.

Love were not an easy band to follow, but we stuck to it over the years.
1n 1968 my cousin and I got up a petition to bring them to England. It was returned.
1970 - They played Lanchester Poly – fortunately I didn’t try to get there, I would have been in Lancashire while they played in Coventry.

1971 – I met a man who already had Forever Changes (reader, I married him).
1975 – I saw Love at the Free trade Hall in Manchester. ‘Not good’ it says in my diary.
1996 – My brother heard Arthur was playing in Leeds. I decided to go, abandoning young children. It didn’t happen. Arthur was in gaol.
2002 – I saw an ad in the National press (Guardian Guide) for ‘Love with Arthur Lee’. The nearest show was Edinburgh, but it was sold out. I got a ticket for Milton Keynes (I was at a meeting in Birmingham that day). I didn’t dare take my husband in case he was crap. He wasn’t, It was great. I drove home all the way to Newcastle, missing Arthur who’d come out to sign stuff. The next day I managed to get 2 tickets for Liverpool and took Barney with me. I wrote a setlist and did some brief DV.
Later that year I took my cousin and our daughters to see him in Edinburgh, my husband to Leeds with Martyn, whom I'd met on a website (aarggh risk taking), then my family to Newcastle.

Between then and Spring 2005, I saw Love and Arthur a lot. I watched him become more assured – remembering the lyrics rather than relying on the excellent band to carry him. He seemed like a rock survivor, gaining numerous awards. Perhaps he was refreshed by the spell in prison. He never stopped being dangerous though, there were some ugly stories, some bad shows. I met him several times and, with my friend Tina was Official Videographer for the 2004 spring tour. It was great. Tina’s blog covers a lot of this in great detail.

Then in summer 2005, just before a UK tour, I became ill and was in hospital. He didn’t make the airport for the flight to London. The band played on brilliantly. Since then I have realised how many good friends I have made through a mutual interest in a great rock legend. That’s not the only way he’s influenced my life though, Arthur made me reflect on Life and The Whole Thing. He opened my mind to a much wider range of music.
I still think in his lyrics.

Arthur never was Mr Nice Guy. What matters is the music, the music. Long may he continue to share it with us.

Defoe

2006-03-08T20:00:00.000Z

We always called him the Groover before we knew his name. Like us he tried to look cool, but of course we thought he tried too hard. He lived round the corner from me so I saw a lot of him. He had a reputation for getting aggressive to his girlfriends – I first really met him through a friend when he started throwing bottles at her mate. He was much better as a friend than as yer lad, and I’m glad he was my friend then. Once, he fell in love with a girl from my year in school. It was pretty tempestuous and I don’t think he ever recovered. She did have The Right Colour Hair.

We both dressed from Jumble sales, as did most of our mates. He once took a T shirt I’d just bought, wore it a few days then reluctantly returned it. The next week he had it back: my brother had swapped it for his grey duffle coat.

Defoe introduced us to his troupe of ‘Lost Boys’. Doors fans to a man, they’d suddenly burst into snatches of songs:
“When I was back there in seminary school, there was a person there who put forth the proposition, that you can petition the lord with prayer, petition the lord with prayer, petition the lord with prayer…”rising to a crescendo. Always got us a seat on the train, if not a whole carriage. They were mostly harmless: good Catholic boys, but none showed any signs of shy or retiring. Most of us lasses took a shine to at least one of the lads, and vice versa.

It was Defoe who had scrawled ‘Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’ on the Mucky Angel. It must have been 1969 or earlier (I have a photo of us protesting about Biafra there), but he didn’t come clean til years later. I called him a liar for months when he claimed to have seen the captain at the ‘gogo in Newcastle. Then I found the ad I’d cut out of the Chronicle (sigh).

When we went away to uni, he took a top floor flat in North Terrace, Newcastle. It was on 2 levels with stairs and railings between them, like an old ship. He called it the Caribbean Jewel and went around dressed in a piratical scarf and earring. I made him some headed notepaper. There were some wild parties on the ship – certainly worth the trip from Manchester.

If it hadn’t been for Defoe, I would never have agreed to go to the Windsor Festival where I met my old man. I wouldn’t have had an alibi for him when he came up to stay (‘he’s Defoe’s friend’) and I wouldn’t listened agog to his primary source account of losing his virginity. Which is a topic for a different blog.

The Expert

2006-03-02T17:26:00.000Z

Bill Lee is a self-made expert and a bit of a maverick. He is very good at identifying what’s going to be important then getting himself onto the centre of it. He becomes the expert in demand: the guy worth paying for his knowledge. He seems to do this through a combination of repeatedly asserting that a concept is very important, convincing others he is at its cutting edge and developing a clear, sexy vision for its implementation. Networking is his key skill: he collects people and he takes care of his relationships with them. There are fundholders in national organisations; academics with research findings; established gurus. Then there are the implementers; reliable and knowledgeable, who get on with the task in hand. I probably met him at a conference somewhere in London.

He finds out what funding is likely to be available and plans how best to ensure he gets his share. He’ll get a big contract and deliver on time through managing his contacts expertly. There are always several concurrent contracts. He may be running courses that pay travel expenses enabling him to plan other meetings around them at zero cost to him or acting as consultant to one team and managing another chasing the same government contract. He takes his laptop everywhere: editing his new book in the group work slot of one of his training courses; running a live spreadsheet as costs are negotiated; or showing off photos of his latest property development.

I’ve had various roles in the web. Sometimes he’d phone for a comment to use in a newspaper feature, for 3 days work preparing materials for a conference or for a detailed industrial case study. I’ve worked directly for him and I’ve worked in teams he’s put together for other organisations, always well remunerated. He’s a good negotiator. Recently I took on a contract of my own on The Other Side, and have seen him less because of it.

Over the 15 years or so I have known him, he has transformed himself from a down at heel divorce with custody of 3 children to a New European with properties abroad and an enviable lifestyle - all through listening to people and making things happen for them. He has always talked himself up brilliantly. He has a bit of a reputation for avoiding bills at times, but I reckon it’s good value. It has been like living alongside a soap opera. When I see mutual acquaintances he is always the first topic of conversation: we need to know What Happens Next.

Bill Lee is living proof that the people you know, work and relax with are very important to who you become and how your life goes. He also reinforces my view that being positive about yourself is essential. It just is. What does the song say? Lah dah dah dah Respect Yourself.

Tina

2006-02-24T12:06:00.000Z

I met Tina on my first day at school in Burradon. Her dad was the headteacher and mine the village policeman. Pillars of Society, as we are now, of course. I moved away to Shiremoor when I was 6 and we lost touch. If I had gone to the nice school by the seaside, we’d have met up again. When I joined the Northumberland Experimental Youth Theatre about 7 years later she was there again and we became firm friends, or possibly partners in crime. In the next few years we developed an abiding passion for Music, a lot of what John Peel played at the time, but mostly the ‘psychedelic rock’ epitomised by Love. We would sit in our bedrooms California dreaming, hoping that one day we’d see Love: see Arthur Lee in Real Life, maybe even meet him. Drinking cider from quart bottles on the swings in the local park we’d make plans and sort the world out.

We managed to keep in touch through university but then events intervened. Tina had her bag stolen, including her address book and when I didn’t hear from her for a while I stopped contacting her – sad eh?

What brought us back together some 20 years later was Love with Arthur Lee. After an eventful career including jail, Arthur got himself a band together and went on tour. I had seen Arthur Lee perform once in 1975 in Manchester. Not a great experience. It broke my heart really. I saw some dates in the paper and went along to a show in Milton Keynes by myself to see whether he was any better. I was amazed. They were so good. During the next few months I went to some great shows in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Leeds and Newcastle. I even took my family, they were that good. Love’s most acclaimed album Forever Changes combined the guitars and drums with an orchestra, and when it was announced that there would be a Forever Changes tour in 2003 with strings and horns I knew I had to go. I wanted to share the New Love with Tina, so I tired sending a list of tour dates inside a Christmas card to her last known address.

Tina got in touch, using her impressive deductive powers and we met up again at the Royal Festival Hall on 15 January 2003. It was a Mojo sponsored event and we met some of their people, I just missed getting into the after show and we caught up on a lot of years over a curry. Since then we’ve had a few adventures, been on life’s old roller coaster and kept in touch. She’s been a great support to me in recent months too.

Which, I think, shows that friends are friends and we all keep their threads running through us, ready to pick up. So, here’s to friendship, may it continue.

Women with Brains

2006-02-24T12:05:00.000Z

or
‘I’m a clever bugger, me’

‘I used to be clever’ is what I told a lot of my school students.
Even now it’s hard to write that I was smarter that the average bear. I find myself trawling through my past for evidence. My mother’s dad was a fisherman and people in the village would attribute the braininess of his children to their diet of fish. All of the cousins were bright: it was normal. Then we started school and Being Different. Policemen move house a lot, so I got to be different 4 times before I was 10. In the end I was in the class above my age and needed pegging back (they said). Which is how I ended up in an all girls’ school in the city rather than a nice mixed comp at the seaside. At least there were others there who were pleased to feel normal at last (and there were those who had been trained to pass the entrance exam – seemed a bit weird to me). I settled in fine, well apart from the school students union and a notice with The F Word on the back of it.

At first I was proud to have got a free place at such a posh school (there were posher ones around town though). I quickly learned that it was best not to wear the (nice, panama) school hat too close to home, and later that not everybody was impressed to hear where I went to school. In a nutshell, nobody wants a clever woman. So I stopped speaking out with strangers for years. With my friends and cousins I was the same person, but with anyone else I was right there shrinking into the wallpaper. I also started the denial – ‘oh my brother’s much cleverer than me’ ‘just lucky in the exam’. It wasn’t until I was 13 when a friend came to stay that I found out about revision. We did exams, it was just that I thought you were supposed to remember stuff. Revision seemed like cheating. I still didn’t do too much though, on the principle that I could be run over by a bus on the morning of an exam and deeply regret missing the previous week’s fun.

Kate, the matriarchal leader of the Gas Order Office where I worked later was holding forth to the team about her 15 year old daughter’s attitude. She’d told the girl straight:
“ put them books down, and let me do your nails. You’ll never find a man with exams”.
She did my nails for my wedding.

Nevertheless I spent years being a closet KB (Klever Bugger). It’s only recently I’ve decided I’m doin’ OK actually. Mind, a lot of the old brain cells are struggling to remember how it goes these days.

Northumberland Experimental Youth Theatre, or NEYT

2006-02-13T10:22:00.000Z

Or ‘The Drama’

I joined The Drama Group by accident. I fancied myself as a potential artist and responded to their call for members on a kind of scenery- painting ticket. Turned out the interview was an audition and I got in.

It was a great experience being in The Drama. A mixed bunch of teenagers, all with pretty strong characters. I learned a lot, mostly though getting pretty uncomfortable with myself (Policeman’s daughter, too clever for my own good, not at a state school). I also became firm friends with Tina, who had been at my first Primary school – but I moved away.

At first we were in the Junior Group which met in Gosforth, we did a lot of improvisation and a bit from the crysalids for a drama festival. The Senior Group did ‘some thoughts on coal’ which involved a lot of people in black tights and leotards slithering over each other and songs about coal products. All I wanted was to move up and join them and after a year or so we did.

We could claim our travelling expenses too– that’s how the Arts was in the North East in the sixties. A lady with claim forms and a money tin would come every week.

One of the really important things I learned in the Drama was that ‘attractive’ is in the eye of the beholder. No matter how much Berry (directing) tried to persuade me that Simon had a great body, I just couldn’t convincingly do the simulated sex scene with him. (Avril told Berry ‘but he’s thick’. It probably had more to do with me never having had a proper snog up to then let alone a shag.) Anyway, a more accommodating young hopeful volunteered. She was much better at it than I could ever hope to be. That was how I realised my future was not in acting.

We also had residentials where we’d stay at Alnwick castle for a week rehearsing a play, and weekend workshops when we’d stay with someone local. The problem for me was that I’d only ever stayed with cousins and really close friends. I was terrified when I had to stay with Karen in Wallsend. Though she was my sister in the play, I was scared to speak to her mam at all. The Glaswegian head boy of the group was staying too. He did his best to make me lighten up, with no real success.
So, I wasn’t going to be a success at networking either.

Nellie - one of the Aunties

2006-02-12T14:52:00.000Z

‘doing a Nellie’ is a family expression meaning making extra washing up by transferring leftovers into smaller clean bowls.

There’s a kind of symmetry in my mum’s family, the 11 children came at 2 year intervals and for the 5 youngest there was always a same sex sibling 12 years older to look out for you and be a role model. In the end, they took care of each other for life. 2 pairs of sisters ended up living in the same estate.

When mam was working and tried having a cleaner it was a disaster. Nellie immediately stepped in and took over. Her main job was cleaning labs at the university. She had been a seamstress and machinist previously and did a lot of sewing and alterations. She made my wedding dress too. I was married in November so she made a lining out of a winceyette sheet to keep me warm. When I went to live in Halls she made me a proggy mat for my room, and she introduced me to Jumble sales. She also won things at the bingo quite often. Mum used to worry about her coming home on the bus with £100 prize money in her bag.

Nellie always had a pot of tea keeping warm on a low gas and when I got the number 47 bus home I’d drop in for a cup on the way. She was allergic to yeast but it didn’t stop her from brewing beer and making wine. Her orange wine could blow your head off nee bother. She had an allotment where she grew all kinds of fruit and veg, and she taught me lots about gardening (sweetcorn has to be planted in rectangles for pollination, save tea dregs for the houseplants…). She never forgot raspberries were my favourite and I always got fresh ones and jam from her.

She was proud of her legs, and wore fine stockings and smart shoes to set them off. She was a dancer too. She didn’t seem to have either the Scott family thighs or Bott.
Nellie married late. Auntie Mary once told us about Old Annie (my granma) muttering on at the bus stop about how our Nellie was daft at her age to get involved with a man. She didn’t need to get married to him did she? We reckoned it was amazing – 45 years old.

Nellie was 12 years older than mam, but her son was 4 years younger than my little brother. She had to go to hospital when he was a toddler so he came to stay with us. We remember potty training him with smarties in eggcups as incentives
“I want smarties for doin’ a poo in an eggcup” kept us amused anyway.

Every week, Nellie and her mother in law went shopping in Newcastle with other relatives. They’d meet up at her house for a cup of tea before they set out. One week they were just about to leave when the old lady said:
“I’ll just sit down, I’m going to die now” and she did.

When Nellie was 61 she divorced her husband. I think it had to do with suddenly you’re both retired and realise that from then on you’re together. For her it wasn’t a tempting prospect. He’d worked a long way away for years and she was so busy with the jobs, the allotment and the bingo. What I remember of him is he: drank her home brew a lot: always asked me if I was courting; and worked on installing the copper roof of the civic centre in Newcastle.

What I learnt from knowing Nellie is we can do it, whatever it is - just find a way and get on with it.

Cousins

2006-02-11T11:55:00.000Z

One thing I have in abundance is cousins. As disbelievers have observed, I always ‘have a cousin who…’ story to contribute. Hats off to my maternal grandmother: Old Annie Scott, matriarch extraordinaire who had 11 children survive her. To boot (as the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe may have remarked):
Florrie
Nellie
Nancy
Joss
George
Bill
Margaret
Barbara
Edith
Frank and
Jack.
Between them, they have given me 22 first cousins. With 3 on the paternal side and others who we called cousins but strictly were the children of my mother’s good friends, that’s a lot. There are about twice as many girls as boys. When you consider my granma was pretty formidable, the aunties are great organisers, stubborn and a force to be reckoned with, what hope is there that we, their female offspring will be nice quiet girlies? None. That’s got that out of the way then.

The Cousins 2

2006-02-10T14:57:00.000Z

The female maternal cousins have some inherited characteristics, for example the Scott Bott, short-sight, interest in science and crap teeth, but we are all canny clever (that sharp you’ll cut yersel she would have said) and most have matured to look increasingly like Old Annie, who was 5 ft tall, weighed 14st and arrived on the back of an uncle’s motorbike. My brother and I are the ginger ones in our generation but quite a few of the cousins have ginger offspring - ha!

Sadly we have mostly been meeting at funerals and sundry family crises these days, but are hoping to get together at a happier event (say a brother’s 50th) and take some photos. In the meantime, the unflattering ones above of 5 of the girls are all I can scramble.

Only 5 of the aunties and uncles survive. 2004 was a really sad year when both the eldest and youngest uncles died. What happens when one of them is ill is that all the others (who are around 80 years old now) rally round and organise visits and hot meals etc. I haven’t been well recently and my mother is there – taking me to hospital, listening to consultants etc. A formidable bunch, them aunties.

Mistaken identity

2006-02-07T17:41:00.000Z

Recently I’ve been having chemotherapy and one side effect has been loss of hair. All I have left now is a few sparse eyebrows and lashes and, of course, plenty on my arms to enhance the experience when they rip away the plasters that hold the chemo needles in place.

I was a bit worried when the consultant said it would happen because, as a Person With the Right Colour Hair (ie Ginger), I feel that my hair is an essential part of who I am. I married someone from London called Barnett. People know me by my hair. They find me in a crowd by seeking out the hair: or perhaps not.

My mother, Barbara, had 5 brothers and 5 sisters. When I was young and we were out and about she often had conversations that started:
“I know you’re one of Joss’s sisters but don’t know which one”;
“Hello Edith, I haven’t seen you for years” “ I’m her sister,Barbara” or
“ Don’t tell me – it’s Margaret”
So when random strangers started greeting me on the bus with “Hello Barbara” I took it in my stride.
“I’m not Barbara, I’m her daughter Liz” I would say to their puzzlement. How was I to know I had a stunt double living nearby with long ginger hair and John Lennon specs? Fortunately Barbara was very nice. She worked in the local newsagents and was generous with the sweets.

Then I nearly became Games Captain at school. Everyone who hoped to go to university was a prefect of some kind. Cath, the true Games Captain, was very sporty and blessed with the Right Colour Hair. I was the Late Prefect, because anyone who arrived after me must be seriously late. One morning as I strolled, in the deputy head grabbed me by the arm and said “Catherine hurry up we’re about to present your Games Captain’s badge in assembly”. Anxious to avoid freezing Saturday morning matches, I put her straight.

When I first went away to UMIST, I came home for Christmas and went to meet my brother in a bar. The new landlady burst out laughing when she saw me and called her husband over. “Who do you think this is?”. He burst out laughing too. Apparently they didn’t think there could be anyone else who looked like George.

Some years later when I’d become a respectable teacher, we had a parents’ evening. One woman came in and stared at me as if she’d seen a ghost. She sat down opposite me. “It’s the eyes” she said “You’re George’s sister”. At least it wasn’t the hair this time, though his has gone a bit brown recently. People ask why he’s called Ginger George.

My daughter was not blessed with the Right Colour Hair. One day she came to school with me, because she was not well. (Save the primary children from the germs, take them into secondary school.) The secretary stopped me in the corridor the following day and asked whether the little girl she’d seen with me was mine. When I said yes, said she could tell by the colour of her hair.

For three-quarters of my life, Arthur Lee has been My Hero. (Arthur Lee - frontman of legendary 1960s psychedelic rock band Love). Recently he’s visited this country several times. The great thing about being older is you can follow a band without having to sneak about hitch-hiking and missing lessons. I caught up with Tina, a friend from my Newcastle past and we hit the tour trail. At Canterbury in 2003 we actually stayed in the same hotel as Mr Lee. (If you’d told me when I was 14 that one day I’d be eating breakfast watching Arthur Lee eat his…). Over the next 6 months we met him, recorded some shows on video for him and eventually one Special Day he greeted us like old friends. He walked straight up to Tina and said:
“ Hello Lizzy”.