Second thing

Second thing.  A skinny Amazon envelope. I hadn’t ordered anything.  I opened it, slowly, with a slight frown. Leonard Cohen’s new album. Old Ideas.  I didn’t even need to look at the note to know who it was from. ‘Lots of love, Horace.’  My oldest dearest friend, Jane.  Horace? Well, that’s another story.

What can I say? I love Leonard Cohen. Deeply. Passionately. Always have. Suspect I always will.

I love music, hate to be without it, but most of my musical loves wax and wane.  But Cohen has been a constant in my life since I was, what?  Eight or nine maybe?  My brother came home with Songs of Leonard Cohen one day and we all fell in love, instantly.  Well, not my father perhaps. 

There was always music in our house when I was a child. All sorts. Shedload of classical in the living room.  Meanwhile, up in our shared room, my teenage sister played singles obsessively as she shimmied from one love to another; a string of boyfriends breaking her heart (rarely) but mainly having theirs broken.  The soundtrack to all this longing: Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, The Beatles, Marianne Faithfull, the Stones. Then she met a guitarist and it was all Hendrix and Clapton, Cream and Yes. And I danced behind, entranced. But throughout, Cohen’s mesmerising guitar and his poetry always plucked at our hearts.

Songs from a Room followed by Songs of Love and Hate. And I wasn’t even out of junior school. Nobody suggested it wasn’t suitable listening for a child. Was it?

Jane and I met in 1971 but we didn’t become friends until quite some years later. After the release of New Skin for the Old Ceremony for sure and in time to be appalled by the radical shift of Death of a Lady’s Man. What was he thinking?  He’d wanted a spare sparse sound for Songs of Leonard Cohen – yes, even more sparse than it already was. So how did he come to be seduced by Spector?  Apparently he (Cohen) called the end result ‘grotesque’. Yeah, right. It’s a shame as the songs themselves are beautiful – but the arrangements are overblown, barbaric. I tried listening again today – and couldn’t bear it. Had to find later arrangements on YouTube.

I took Leonard with me to college; played him in my tiny coffin-shaped attic room, letting his growl of a voice stream out over my balcony into the streets below. Listened to him as I looked across the houses into other people’s lives, the students and the prostitutes.  And went to see him live in Manchester, at the Apollo. My first ‘grown-up’ gig, the first time I’d seen people sit in their seats for a whole set. The first time I’d seen people strike matches or hold up lighters and sway to the music. The audience felt old too – middle-aged women, not students like me. I didn’t care – I still loved him.

He came back to London with me and was there, not played so often maybe, but still a friend for the dark nights of the soul, when the drink and drugs and clubbing didn’t take me far enough away from myself.

We weren’t such close companions during my time in America because, really, there were so many other, new sounds to hear and somehow he didn’t feel right in those big wide open spaces of sea and endless roads and desert and canyon and prairie. But then, every so often, I’d sit by the fire late at night and pull out an album and let his chords pull me back home.

And yes, back to London we went and by now people laughed. ‘Gloomy old Leonard Cohen’ they said. But no, no, no. Not gloomy. Not really. Just so beautiful. I didn’t buy any more albums though, not after the travesty of DoaLM.   My mother stayed faithful though – bought each and every one. But I wouldn’t listen. I stayed with the old.  Until, not so many years ago, when I heard Hallelujah and found myself in floods of tears.  Who the hell sang that, I wondered and found out it was Jeff Buckley. Raced out and bought more of his stuff only to find that, no, he hadn’t written it – the cheater – it was Leonard’s.  Well, of course it was.

I saw him live again, a few years ago, at the O2 stadium, the old Millennium Dome. Jane again. ‘Come and stay, I’ve got tickets for Leonard Cohen,’ she said.  In Manchester I’d been right near the front, close enough to watch his fingers flicker over the frets. But the only tickets left this time were pitched up so high I felt dizzy.  Incredible musicians. Amazing man.  He’d lost the lot by this point, been ripped off, gone bankrupt, had to sing for his supper once more.

Funny thing, I never knew much about his actual life. I don’t read biographies. I rarely read interviews. I don’t even really like music vids (except the most vague and atmospheric) as they colour the music for me. I like to make my own relationship with music; to weave my own stories around it.

And so here I am, all those years on, sitting in a cold room, once again, listening to Cohen. Today I have been through all his albums, one by one.  Some songs wash over me; some catch me in the throat, in the solar plexus, in the heart. Who needs words when you’ve got Cohen, eh?

Favourite album? The new one is growing on me.  Ah hell. Songs of Leonard Cohen has some of my all-time favourite songs.  It’s tight.  Between that and New Skin for the Old Ceremony. Both just plain agonisingly beautiful. Songs? We could be here a long time. Here are just two. One from the first, one from the last. Which would be my middle one? My second thing?  Ah, I wonder.  

My friends

Ah Christmas.  It’s a strange old time of year for me.  I go inwards at Christmas, more and more each year that passes.  Anyhow. It’s crept up again, as I was looking elsewhen.  Usually I splurt out a Christmas Gift Guide on the blog, in memory of the days when I used to trawl the shops for newspaper or magazine guides.  And, actually, I started popping images into a file a while back. Yet, funny thing, as I look in the file this morning, I find they are all of the same thing – friendship bracelets.  Those little strings that started out as childhood or teen tokens of bonding.  And I smiled…

Friends.

What is a friend? How many friends have you got? How many friends do you feel you need?  Does it upset you when a friend leaves you, abandons you, walks away?  I’m not talking about lovers here but friends, just friends. 

In the last week two very different people said pretty much the same thing to me: ‘If you stick with me, you’ll lose your friends.’

And my response?  So be it. Because I know full well that I would never lose the people who really count. As for the rest? Let them walk. Because, see, I truly believe that if you can’t be who you are with people, if they can’t accept your true self, then that friendship is over. I am fiercely loyal to my true friends and I expect no less in return.

I think people come into our lives for reasons; I truly do.  Yeah, even the crappy people (as discussed before).  Friendships however come in many forms and I think that often we mistake the nature of some of them.  Sometimes people come into our lives very briefly, just to give a message. Others stay around for longer; sometimes burning very bright and then vanishing – almost in a puff of smoke.  And others are for life. 

www.reddirect.co.uk 

Recently I thought I’d lost a life friend. And that hurt. I tried to rationalize it. Let’s be honest, I haven’t been an easy-to-be-with friend this last year.  Living half in other worlds, reneging on social niceties, absconding from the usual pleasantries.  And yes, I’ve lost a fair few friends but, to be honest, that was just fine.  It meant I didn’t have to keep justifying myself – why should I? Is that harsh? No, I don't think so. So often we keep up with friendships from habit; from expectation; from social mores, even when they have long passed their sell-by date. We grow out of clothes, we change our hair style, we move houses, we shift jobs - so why on earth should we keep friendships static, in aspic? 

But this friend?  Oh yeah, this one hurt. I could remember the first time we met, so so clearly. I needed a flat-mate and someone at work suggested her. For reasons too complicated to go into, I was expecting to open the door to a seriously trendy black DJ or musician. Instead there stood a small, very conservatively dressed, very small, very white lawyer. We shared a house for years. I screwed up her love life with a spell that backfired quite spectacularly – but she never blamed me. We laughed, we cried together; we mopped one another up after the usual life disasters. We used to joke that, when we were old, we’d share a house again and be mad bad witches again.

www.reddirect.co.uk

But then…silence. Long, long silence. And I figured, hey. Why would she still want to be friends with me?  She was hugely successful; her career trajectory had soared in reverse proportion to my crash.  But so be it.  Anyway, what could I do?  You can’t force people to be your mates, can you?  Sometimes you have to let go...

And then, just a few days ago, when I was at a very low ebb indeed, an email. Oh. And I replied saying, softly, 'I thought I’d lost you.'  And she replied:

“Baby I will always be here. Friendships like ours run so deep that nothing changes that. Nothing.”

And I smiled. And cried. And the world felt a little warmer.

www.chambersandbeau.com

You don’t need tons of friends. I suppose, if one is being brutal, you don't need any. But life is far nicer if you have a few people in the world who *get* you.  Or – and this is the clever bit – you have people who don’t remotely *get* you; who haven’t a clue what you’re about…who shake their heads and mutter “bloody woman is  barking nuts” but love you nonetheless.  And I have a fair few of both varieties, so I am truly blessed.

Will they stay forever? Who knows? If they do, it is meant. If they don’t, it is meant.  But for now, I’m saying ‘thank you’ to those who have stood by me and loved me even when I’ve been a very hard person to love.  You know who you are…no need to name names.  And so here’s my Christmas Gift Guide…a whole line of friendship bracelets. J

My Viking

I woke up this morning thinking about Erik. Like he was in my head, words wanting to spill out.  My second father, the man who adopted me, the man who taught me so much, loved me so much. A crazy mad, ridiculously over-the-top ball of contradictions of a man. 

Life took away my birth father when I was ten, leaving me a broken child, knocking the stuffing out of me.  Then, as if it felt a bit guilty, it gave me Erik in recompense. He met my mother at a party held by parents of my best friend, Clare. Mum fell in love, head over heels, with this wild pirate of a man who drank too much, drove too fast, partied like there was no tomorrow. 

It was a strange time.  My brother and sister were/are ten and twelve years older than me and had left home.  Erik had been through a nasty divorce and didn’t get to see his three daughters too much, which splintered his heart. I was missing a father; he was missing daughters but that equation ain’t ever easy and places can’t be taken; you can’t just plug a person into a gap, no matter how gaping the wound.  I was in the deep dark place and he didn’t barge in, didn’t push it.  He gave me time.  And it took time.  I felt a pressure, even though it never came from him. ‘Be kind,’ my mother would say. ‘He’s lost his daughters.’ His ex-wife had emigrated to Australia, taking the girls. He would never see them again.  ‘But I can’t be his daughters,’ I’d say sadly.  I wasn’t even sure I could be one daughter, let alone three rolled into one.

But slowly I grew to love him, to trust him.  Allowed love to creep back into a heart that had closed off from fear of loss. And he widened my eyes and my guts as well as my heart. For Erik was a reckless man and I was a careful child.   He’d had a business and already lost the lot when we met him.  But he just shrugged and, when I first knew him, he was working as a boiler mechanic for a guy he’d trained, driving a white van.

‘Let’s get lost!’ he’d say and I’d instruct him… ‘turn left, turn right, go straight on’ until I had no idea where we were.  ‘Oh look,’ he’d say. ‘There’s a Chinese restaurant over there. ‘Have you eaten Chinese food?’ And I’d say, ‘No’ and he’d say, ‘Right, let’s go. I’ll teach you how to use chopsticks.’ He’d been in the merchant navy, sailed all over the world, had all kinds of adventures, done all kinds of crazy things. He loved the sea with a passion; had worked as a diving engineer before his lung collapsed, dragging him reluctantly back to land.  He loved; he hated. There was no mid-way ground with Erik.

‘C’mon,’ he said one day. ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’ And we went to an abandoned airfield and he put me behind the wheel of this stupid big powerful car (an Audi maybe) and just said. ‘Go for it.’ My mother was horrified and got me proper driving lessons (with a revolting man who had a permanent bit of spittle on the edge of his mouth like a postule). But it was Erik who really taught me to drive – fast, accurately, decisively. By the time I was eighteen I’d driven pretty well every car going. Cos he loved cars. One day he threw me a keyring and said, ‘Move that round the back, will ya?’ And, by heck, it was an Aston, DB6, bright red. He’d got it from ‘some guy’.  There was always ‘some guy’ and they were usually well dodgy, apart from the Ghurkhas who came, quiet intense men with sad eyes. Though, who knows, maybe they were dodgy too.

He started another business and it took off cos Erik was a born salesman. He could charm the pants off anyone if he wanted.  People loved him but they also envied him his easy charm, his extravagance, his passion.  He made enemies as well as friends.  But, for a short few years in my teens, we lived a pretty good life. From having nothing as a child (people think that if you grow up in suburbia and speak with a South-Eastern (RP) accent, you’re posh which always cracks me up; my mother had malnutrition, for pity’s sake) we were suddenly relatively affluent. I had stuff cos Erik loved buying me stuff.  He bought me gold mainly (such a pirate!) saying. ‘Look, love. If it all goes tits up, you can always sell it.’  He had a mate who was a jeweller and he designed things and had them made up – an ankh, a pendant with my initial, a cross with diamonds).  

It did go tits up, of course, and he lost his second business. Went to prison actually – for non payment of VAT.  Hated himself so deeply. Wouldn’t let us visit.  When he came out I met him at the tube station at Pentonville Road and he looked like a dead man. He just got in the car and he said, ‘Drive, love. Don’t talk to me, not yet.’  And we got to my flat and he went in the shower and stayed there for about an hour.

My mother sold everything. Cleared the lot. The beautiful house with the garden she adored; the jewellery; the antiques; the smart cars. Never looked back, not once. They moved into a rented flat by a railway station and, by heck, he started again. From nothing.  Built up another business.  Bought another house. Bought more stupid crazy cars.   

I think he gave me a basic security. The knowledge that you can lose everything and it won’t be the end of the world; you can start again. That things are just things. They’re nice, for sure, but they’re not essential.  I don’t have the ankh, the cross, the initial (oh the irony – they were all nicked when Mum was selling the house) but I have the memory of them and that’s enough.  He lost that third business as well, of course.  Took his eye off the ball (again). And lost the lot (again).  I remember my mother fighting like fury but it was a lost cause.  Once again we sold everything – but it wasn’t enough.  He didn’t give up. ‘I’ll be a consultant,’ he said and started looking at brochures for big houses. My mother rolled her eyes. 

His spirit never broke but his heart did.  Spectacularly one day, watching the news. He had a massive heart attack and died instantly, collapsed over the phone so my poor mother had to try to shift him off it so she could dial 999. You had to laugh. He weighed a ton; she was like a feather. She said she got so cross she hit him.

I was in London that night, staying with my friend Liz.  When the phone rang at midnight, we frowned.  When I saw her eyes flitting over to me, I knew something terrible had happened.  I couldn’t get back; there were no trains running. I kept it together until she had gone to bed and I lay on her sofa, heaving sobs, the ache in my heart so intense I wondered if I, too, would die.  ‘Don’t cry, little lady. Don’t you cry.’ I heard his voice in my head as clear as if he were sitting next to me.

‘We’ll sprinkle his ashes in the garden,’ my mother said, decisively.  ‘He loved this house.’  There was a touch of bitterness in her voice by then as she reckoned his passion for the house had been a contributing factor in the downfall of business #3.

‘But it’s been sold,’ I said. ‘You won’t be able to visit him.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’

‘But the people who’re buying it are weird; they’ve given you such a tough time.’

‘Exactly!’ she laughed. ‘Maybe he’ll haunt them.’

So we stood in the garden with the urn. Reverently reached in and took out a handful. Sprinkled it on the roses, telling a memory.  And so we went, around the garden, for what seemed like eternity. Remembering, remembering. 

‘By heck, there’s a lot of him,’ said Mum. ‘I kept telling him he should lose weight.’

And we started to laugh. And laugh and laugh.

‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ she said. ‘Just tip him out and be done with it. He wouldn’t be doing with all this.’

‘You’re right,’ I said and up-ended the urn.

‘Let’s have a drink,’ she said. ‘In fact, let’s get rotten drunk.’

‘He’d have liked that,’ I said.

So we did. 

Alas, no photographs. I don't have a scanner.  One day I will get one and put up some pics. But really - he was a Viking. That's all you need to know - you can picture the rest.