Eulogy for Mum - Daphne Bernadette Egan (nee Hickey) - 30 March 1934 to 18 December 2019

It’s tricky for me to write something about my Mum as a person, as someone who lived their own life with their own dreams and plans, their own youthful scrapes and grown-up mistakes, long before I was a remote possibility. In some ways, Cath, John and I knew Mum in a way that nobody else in the world could, but it’s also true that we knew very little about her life pre-us. Everything that happens before our parents are born is a bit of legend, a mythical time when the world was in black and white and you could buy a house with change from a thrupenny bit. So, trying to sum things up is a challenge. Mum went by many names: Mum to a trio of forty-somethings, and Nana to a select group of six grandchildren; Mrs Egan to some, Sister Daphne Hickey to many, but Daphne to most.

Right up until the end of her life – 85 years and nine months packed with quiet-ish determination, care for everyone around her, and a robust cheerfulness –  Mum quickly left an impression with everyone who met her as someone who was highly independent in spirit but also kind and friendly, someone who was ready with a joyful song on her lips and equally ready with a playful fist under the chin to dish out ‘a puck in the puss’ to anyone that she felt needed a corrective nudge. She was someone who was strong and stoic, almost to a fault, who firmly believed that we were all people muddling our ways through life, essentially the same, even when our differences seemed the most challenging. But as far as my brother, sister and I are concerned, we only know Mum from a time when she was a fortysomething like we are today. We’re a bit late to the party.

The whole process of learning what made Mum tick was that little bit more difficult because she was so much more interested in helping other people get what they needed during their lives; her own wishes and schemes were often absorbed into the greater good. We never met and would struggle to recognise the young woman who returned to Ireland in the early 60s from the US with over 100 pairs of shoes in her luggage. However, it is clear that she spent her entire adult life caring for others – working as a nurse in Dublin, in the States and in the County Hospital at Ennis. Her plan was to go back to Dublin after a summer staying with her parents in Kincora Park but her love of the life there kept her in her beloved County Clare for another 10 years - until Dad’s arrival and subsequent return to Cheshire finally pulled her away from Ireland in 1972. Mum was rightfully proud of her work as a nurse and considered it a privilege to be able to look after others that needed her care. Everything else came second to her duty as a carer. She gave up smoking and her car when she and Dad got married, and she gave up work when I arrived in order to focus all her attentions and considerable professional skills on me. I was, as my Dad sometimes joked, Matron Hickey’s final patient. 

Once the three of us kids were a little more manageable, Mum began a part-time job delivering gift bags to new mothers in the local hospital, enjoying being in the hospital environment once again. Later, she threw herself into helping Dad with his new textile small business, which he was forced to start in the late 80s at the beginning of a long recession, after having cared for her own mother while was dying of pancreatic cancer at home in Ennis. Moving back to Ireland for a few years in 2004, after living in our family home for a while after her old darling, our Dad, had died, Mum volunteered in the local day centre, helping to look after the ‘old dears’, many of them younger than she was. Her sense of the importance of looking after others never left her and she was still asking the nurses, doctors and staff that visited her in Ysbyty Gwynedd how they were, greeting them with a smile or a wink, until she was no longer able to speak. The smile that she would greet John, Cath and I each morning in the Glyder ward when we went to visit her was absolutely gorgeous and joyful, like the smile of a six-month old. It will stay with me for the rest of my days.

Despite our lack of knowledge of her when we were kids, though, it was possible to gather a bit of information about her earlier life. She was always happy to talk about her family holidays in County Kerry with her Dad’s family in Anaskirtane, near Rathmore. She told us how her Dad, Sergeant Denis Hickey of the Garda Siochana, the Irish republic’s brand new ‘guardians of the peace’, a role that he and she were both immensely proud of, would despair at her taste in gangster movies. She warned us how her love of butterscotch ended in dental disaster. She said how much she loved dancing at Bofey Quinn’s in Corofin and that she would be out until all hours – fully exercising her privileges as the baby of the family to get away with everything – once again, much to the concern of her poor old Dad.

Seeing as she and her brothers and big sister grew up in a house where a portrait of the hero of the Irish War of Independence Michael Collins was put up on the wall before the picture of the Sacred Heart, it was probably inevitable that she was would be an Irish patriot. But Mum took nationalist sentiment to a new level of Irish chauvinism, where if anything was Irish it was immediately the most interesting thing in the world. One Christmas visit in Manchester, a few years after the Alzheimer’s had crept in – although it wasn’t diagnosed at the time – she came up to John and asked him, ‘What’s wrong with your atlas? Ireland is much too small in it’. Mum loved speaking and writing in Irish when she was at school and excelled in both, learning trigonometry and writing poetry in the same tongue. It was a personal tragedy that the part of her she felt she could only communicate in the Gaelic language was gradually lost to her as she lost the knowledge of it. 

It was some recompense that she eventually settled with her young family in North Wales, as the scenery and rocks of Anglesey reminded her so much of the Atlantic coast of Ireland, and I think that she found living in the North of England, in Macclesfield, so soon after the death of her own Dad, with one new-born baby and then a second three years later, desperately hard, even though I’m sure she would never have complained. Her only previous trip to the North of England had been on a trip to Sheffield to visit her aunt Molly and the vision from her train window of the blackened, smoggy industrial towns and cities in the 1950s left such a mark on her mind she promised herself she’d never come back. That plan didn’t quite work out. However, at my christening, when her Dad jokingly complained that his first Irish grandchild was the son of an Englishman, Mum said that Dad was ‘the only Englishman allowed to do it’, which put just about everyone in their place. Mum has also left us a rich legacy of words – banjaxed, skew-ways, nyuck, fizzing fluteplayer - some of which might be Irish, some of which I suspect are pure Daphne.

Even when the Alzheimer’s clouded Mum’s brain with darkness and confused irritability, the strength and kindness in her heart was there for everyone to see. Mum was a devout Catholic all her life, as I expect everyone here will know very well. As a family, this meant that we got to go to church here in Menai Bridge on both Saturday and Sunday mornings, for every service of the Easter and Christmas festivals, on every other Holy Day of Obligation and during the week in the school holidays too. (‘Hooray!’) Mum was still powering her way up the stairs here as recently as November when John (or sometimes Cath or I) would take her to Saturday evening Mass, which remained one of the most important things in her life. Mum was a great advert for Christianity (kind and caring to others and drawing great strength from her beliefs) and loved being part of this Catholic community. John said recently that he felt it was a great privilege to be able to spend that couple of hours with her in the car every week, bringing her the gift of her precious Mass. What we didn’t know was that Mum had also been receiving Holy Communion on the sly from Father Adrian at the Catholic church in Bangor, so the Alzheimer’s meant that she was getting double helpings.

Those car journeys between Caernarfon and Anglesey would often involve the same few topics in rotations of five minutes or so: ‘Where is it you live now?’; ‘I’m damned lucky!’; ‘We’re all just people’; ‘It does my heart good to look at these gorgeous green fields’ and a quick rendition of ‘Que sera sera’. The Alzheimer’s, in some ways, left Mum with a mantra of the same few key sentences that cut through the fog in her head. This started as tragic, became a little comic – as John said, you could predict what Mum would say on each bend of the road – before the core wisdom underneath them shined through. Mum felt privileged that she’d been able to have a career before starting a family, but the fact that she had been what she called, with professional precision, a ‘mature primer partum’ (an older first-time mum) meant perhaps that by the time we three kids became parents ourselves, much of Mum’s parenting experience, especially the emotions of parenting which often come as a shock the first time round, had been locked away in a dementia-ravaged corner of her memory banks. Just as we lost Dad at a relatively early age, Mum had already partly faded into legend, while she was still alive, by the time we’d all become full-scale adults. Joseph, her eldest grandson and only a couple months away now from being a grown-up himself, has said he felt as though he is the only one of Mum’s grandkids that saw the real her, the Nana that walked him to church and bought him sweets on the way home – though she probably avoided butterscotch.

Another thing most people that knew Mum would agree on is she was strong – not just physically strong, but mentally strong too. In her hospital bed, as she was fighting for breath, her heart was beating as soundly as ever, her forearm muscles still felt powerful and ready for action. Her iron-finger tickling approach was like something out of a kung-fu movie, but she had an iron will to match and a determination to continue on her course. She did such a good job of looking after herself and disguising her Alzheimer’s – keeping herself organised with notes on scraps of paper and in the TV section of the paper, calling everyone ‘dear’ whether she remembered them or not – that by the time she was admitted into the Bryn Seiont residential care home, after Cath and John had moved her back to stay with him on the Llyn Peninsula, Mum’s was the most advanced case of dementia the specialist had ever seen in a newly-diagnosed patient. Her independent streak and her strategic skills were very strong, often expressed as a desire not to make any fuss. However, Cath was also ‘as cute as a country fox’ to use Mum’s vernacular, and she wasn’t fooled, telling us that she thought Mum might be suffering from a form of dementia. Cath followed Mum’s footsteps into nursing, but I think she always been especially tuned into Mum, as maybe they worry about the same kind of things.

If there is one thing, though, that might best sum Mum up, it would be her singing voice. It was strong, it was clear but warm, and it was joyful. She was singing right up to the end of her life, within 24 hours of her last breath, and her singing at Bryn Seiont was often featured in the local press – with or without the Welsh Elvis. Mum was often like her old self during the musical therapy: it would always lift her spirits, bring the light back into her eyes, and her voice will certainly be missed by everyone there. Singing brought Mum her lovely old darling, our Dad Denis. They were introduced by a mutual friend who was involved in the local musical society, Nigel Bridge, during a production of Show Boat. Not only was this a fitting way for them to meet (as Dad was also a keen singer) but it also gifted them with a party piece, as they would perform their duet ‘Ah Still Suits Me’ from the show. The song is a bit problematic now, maybe, but the love for each other that they conveyed while they sang was gorgeous and always brought a smile to whoever heard them. It was equally problematic that they performed together in Aida (I think) with Dad playing a luxuriously bearded Agamemnon and Mum playing a Vestal Virgin despite carrying me ‘in utero’ – to use her medical Latin again.

It brings a smile again to my face to think that Mum believed that Dad was waiting for her and that, once her bodily remains were in the ground beside his at Menai Cemetery, they’d have the rest of eternity together. Mum often said she felt as though a part of her died along with him died 23 years ago, and she could hardly wait to see him again. It is a testament to Mum’s strength, her desire to

look after others and the joy she still got from life that she waited for 23 years. It was Dad’s 89^th birthday five days after Mum died and Christmas Day a couple of days later again – as a child, he always got one shilling for both his birthday and Xmas together, instead of one for each like his big sister, Mary, did; he would make a joke about this great injustice every year. This festive season, perhaps he would agree that being reunited with Mum was certainly a worthwhile combined birthday and Christmas present.

Just one more thing to say. Each night when our family went to bed – when we were kids and when we were visiting grown-ups – we would go through a little linguistic ritual of wishing each other a good night. Mum and Dad would get a kiss on the cheek and then the litany would begin, running through English, Welsh, German and Irish. Good night. Nos da. Oíche mháith. Sleep well. Schlafen Sie gut. Codladh samh.

Codladh sámh, Mum. Codladh sámh.

Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh

FOLK TALE
Witch - Blacksmith - Giant

The Coach House, University of Leeds
22 November 2017

This is the story of a witch, aged about 22 to 30, called Medicor. She's a witch that doubts herself like Gollum; she doubts whether she has a good or bad character. She has two voices - a good voice and a bad voice.

The story begins one Sunday afternoon in Autumn at three in the afternoon, as Medicor is making potions in her cottage, a small, one-room cottage in the middle of a forest-jungle.

The weather is gloomy, rainy and stormy.

Medicor is making love potions, using the incantation 'Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh'. She is making them out of jealousy and greed, and because she hasn't found love yet. She is jealous because someone took her centuries-old book of magic, and she is greedy for love.

As the story begins, there is a big flash from the cauldron she has been making the potions in, using frogs. Medicor gives an evil cackle, as something grim, spooky and ugly appears from the cauldron. It is grim and spooky because it is looming from the cauldron - a small creature that could be her spy. It is the shape of a round frog, green in colour with pink spots.

Medicor feels relieved and joyous, as she lifts up the frog creature from the cauldron. The magic frog says 'Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh', and the witch replies, 'Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh. My love, you will do my bidding.'

*Meanwhile, our blacksmith is a 17-year-old teenager called Jack, who is learning about being a blacksmith from his father. He is walking down the street called Brookland Avenue in a town called Old Birmingham, a dusty place just outside the forest-jungle in which Medicor lives.

Someone left a book on his doorstep a week ago, unaware that it is the magic book that was stolen from Medicor.

The magic frog creature uses its swivelling eyes to see everything in and around the forest-jungle, and sees that Jack has the magic book in his bag. Medicor can see what the frog creature sees through her cauldron.

When Medicor sees the book, she screams and she wants to know where he is going. He is on the way to work at the family smithy. Medicor gets the frog to summon up the book: they chant 'Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh' together and the book starts shaking. Jack realises that something is following him - it is the frog creature, which was transported from the cottage - and begins to run towards the family smithy.

The book jumps out of the bag and Jack catches it. The frog creature then jumps on Jack, who then smacks it off his shoulder while trying to hide the book under his cap. The frog creature is injured, all of its legs are broken, so it says 'Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh' and is returned to the cottage.

The weather is brightening a little.

**At the same time, in another city near the forest called Duklon City, is a giant called Mommeh. He was conceived 400 years ago, born 300 years ago, and became an adult six years ago. He is quite big for a giant, 10 metres tall.

Mommeh is in a swimming pool, sunbathing, when he hears the 'Mommeh-Sheh-Mommeh' chanting from the cottage and thinks that his name is being called. He is very clever and can turn himself into the shape of the witch and make himself invisible.

It was the giant who stole Medicor's book of magic because he was in love with the witch and wanted to get her attention. He left it on Jack's doorstep because he was shy.

When he hears his name, Mommeh's heart is pumping, and he jumps straight out of the swimming pool. He travels the distance to the cottage in one twinkle-toe step. The witch is confused when she sees Mommeh as she can only see his knees, but then she looks up at his face and thinks it is beautiful. She has never seen him before, but he knows her from saying 'Hiya' to her in the forest and then from the book of magic.

Mommeh tells her that he can help her find the book of magic. Medicor replies, 'I will marry you on the condition that I don't have to give birth to any giant babies'. Mommeh says that he will make a potion and agrees to marry her.

The sun shines at the end of the story.

The Frozen Best Friend

THE DOOR

18 October 2017

The Coach House, Hilary Place, University of Leeds

Dom (questioing and acting)

This is the story of a woman in her twenties called Julia.

It begins at the end of summer and the beginning of Autumn on a Friday at 10am.

Julia is on her way to work at Trinity, which is a hospital in a village called Leeds, which is between the town and the countryside. She is travelling by bus and is still 20 minutes away from work, having only just left her house. The bus is on the main road to Leeds. Julia works in the hospital as a nurse.

The weather is windy, rainy and sunny.

As the story of The Door begins, Julia is reading a book and listening to music on her phone with her headphones. She has Alice in Wonderland on her Kindle and the music is on iPlayer. She does not notice, but underneath her feet on the floor of the bus, there is a small door, big enough for her body to fit through, wooden, round and red.

Julia hears some whispering voices and at that moment, the door opens and she falls down. The wind is blowing outside the bus. The first thing that happens is that she thinks ‘I am going to die!’ because she is worried that she has fallen under the bus. However, she somehow realises that she is now in another time and place, because there is now a totally different atmosphere.

It is completely dark there, except for a yellow torchlight, which she thinks is close by, but is actually far away. She decides to run towards the light because there is nothing else there, but after an hour, she is tired and she stops.

The moment she stops, she realises that there is another door on the right. Even though she cannot see it, she realises it is a huge stone door, because she can hear someone knocking.

*She tries to open the door because it is the only accessible way, and as it’s an automatic door, it takes her two minutes and a further ten minutes to push the door open. She finds herself in the office of the hospital where she works. She decides that she must go and tell her best friend what has happened.

Her best friend is in the Psychology Department, a person called Peter-Nick, who was frozen at the age of 13, 17 years earlier. Julia became best friends with him over the last year because she was lonely and talks to him. He was taken to the Psychology Department so that experiments could be conducted on him to find out, when he wakes up, whether he has the mind of a 13-year-old or a 30-year-old.

However, Peter-Nick is now missing. Instead, Julia finds a black hole in the mirror of the unisex washroom, a hole about the size of an adult handspan, which she finds out about because there is black smoke coming out of it and a very deep, desperate voice is calling out ‘Save me!’ Even though Peter-Nick has been frozen the whole time Julia has known him, she recognises his voice from her dreams.

Julia decides she needs to stop the smoke coming from the hole because it smells bad, like gasoline, so she puts her hand up to the hole. But the hole grows instead, now a couple of feet in diameter, and a frozen, green hand about the size of Dom’s hand pulls her into the whole. It is Peter-Nick’s hand.

Outside, there is sunshine and lightning.

**Peter-Nick is there on the other side of the black hole. Julia finds herself in Frozen, and she has become Anna from Frozen. Peter-Nick has recovered from being frozen, and he now has the appearance of Julia. She is frozen and green, like Peter-Nick was.

As the story ends, Peter-Nick goes off to find other people to freeze, so they can swap places with Julia. Julia becomes queen, but remains frozen.

The sun shines and it is snowing.

'The Rainbow Monster of Margaret Thatcher Park'

HORROR STORY (no cards)

(For Dom’s 45th birthday)

21 October 2017

Harehills Lane Baptist Church Hall, Leeds

Mick (questioning), Dom (first acting), Fay (second acting)

This is the story of a rainbow monster, a female rainbow monster, who is a monster because she shoots poisonous rainbows. She is orange with prickles on her back, and sparkly. She is 45 years old, which is middle-aged.

It is Spring on a Thursday at midnight.

The monster is in the park in a town called Grantham – the park is called Margaret Thatcher Park. She is there stealing handbags from younger women. She needs the nail varnish in their bags, so that she can drink it to change into the other rainbow colours. The woman are there for the Rainbow Festival, and Mumford & Sons are playing, a 25-piece rock band. The monster has been stealing handbags for two hours.

It is raining.

The story begins when the monster decides to pick some flowers, but when she does this, there is an earthquake and the rain turns into a hurricane. The monster tries to put the flowers back in, but that only makes the hurricane worse. She is upset and crying, but all the women at the festival are laughing, because everything has turned orange.

At that moment, capitalism falls.

When capitalism falls, everyone sneezes and there is infinite happiness, the Proleteriat are free, Brexit collapses – and Starbucks also collapses. The Starbucks coffeeshops are replaced with libraries.

Meanwhile, the monster is so upset that she involuntarily shoots out loads of poisonous rainbows – and these destroy the whole world. The monster then posts on Facebook, with the words, ‘Sorry for the world. LOL.’ She was able to use Facebook, despite the world being destroyed, because her rainbows also charged up some satellites.

The monster decides to get a seed from Jupiter, which she feeds with Moon juice, and grows a new Earth.

At the end of the story, the monster dies because her rainbows have all gone. And the Earth is repopulated with Margaret Thatchers. It is raining men. 

EU referendum: choosing one terrifying elite before another

Sorry, all. But I feel like adding my tiny triangle to the orchestra of memes, blogs, videos and posts about the EU referendum. If you've already decided, then I don't imagine any arguments I make or questions I put might make any difference, but if you're undecided perhaps there's some room for discussion.

One big theme that seems to have reared up during the campaigns is how much emotion is a factor in the vote, that it doesn't matter how contradictory the various facts and figures quoted are as people are going with their guts - their scared, angry, confused or serenely determined irrational decision-making equipment. One of the lessons the twentieth century underlined (through advances in psychology and therefore marketing and political strategy) is that people generally do not make rational decisions - about anything. Not about whether they want a Mars bar or not, nor about who they should sit next to on the bus, nothing. So, I take any points that begin with 'here are the facts' with a considerable chunk of salt. I think it's become a question of which story or stories about the EU and brexiters I find easiest to believe, that I irrationally want to believe.

The choice between IN and OUT could be reduced to a choice between two ideas of elites - the bureaucratic, banana-straightening, gravy-boat commandeering Eurocracy with their contempt for national identities and the democratic will of places like Greece; and the public-school-educated, public-services-decimating, expenses-guzzling yet benefits-capping, First Past the Post Mother of Democracies with its rather uncomfortable relationship with the right-wing press. Neither of these options really tickle my vote, and this is why I initially had no real idea where I'd plant my tick come the 23rd. But not voting was not an option, so I had to make up my mind.

Many people seem to agree that the economic and immigration aspects of the debate can be debated down to the marrow without a very clear picture emerging: xenophobia and a rather self-righteous contempt for perceived xenophobia seem to dominate the action. The ideas about sovereignty and border control seem fairly cloudy too, especially as I feel neither of the aforementioned elites have my best interests at heart. Not to mention the best interests of people far more vulnerable than me. It might be that the EU is a failed model and we should extricate ourselves from our half-hearted involvement: I don't think anyone can be certain, and I don't see a truly plausible alternative model for prosperity post-Brexit.

So, as the vote either to stay or leave the EU involves a fair amount of risk, I think I'm voting on the basis of which threat seems the most immediate: Westminster or Brussels.

My paranoid, doom-laden personality traits have no problem digesting the idea of a New World Order, a neo-liberal project to allow the markets to set up and then run the global economy like a manufactured El Niño, decimating the poorer parts of the world to feed the profits of a shadowy 1% that sit gobbling at the top. I can see how the EU serves those vested interests, and it makes my guts surge when I think about it.

But I find it much easier to focus on the efforts of the tax-dodging media barons to fill the news stands with as much barely-filtered right-wing, xenophobic muck as possible and their plain desire to shape the news agenda to meet their own needs. That seems much more local, even if their tax havens aren't, and a much more immediate threat to me and mine, which at the same time is perfectly in tune with the same neo-liberal ideas about market forces being allowed to rage unchecked. When I think of how, it seems to me, that our country's lurch right-wards towards mistrust of others, contempt for the poor and the surrender of publicly-owned bodies to private profit has been nurtured and sponsored by papers like the Mail and the Sun, I feel sicker yet. There's a real element that I feel worse about the effects on the UK because I don't have to deal with the really sharp end of this global factors, droughts through climate change: oppressive working conditions or arms sales to the likes of Assad or Saudi; my largely comfortable life has only be affected by pricks of conscience and a sense of society sliding in the wrong direction. But I'm voting with my gut, aren't I? And isn't the whole point of Brexit that it is supposed to benefit us on this island? No one is suggesting any global benefits.

When I think of the public figures that are urging me to help separate the UK from the EU, I don't picture warriors for social justice, trying to find a way to balance the books to make sure A&Es stay open and schools can be properly funded; I see a crowd of plundering vandals, trying to liquidate everything they can get their fleshy paws around into sweet, sweet cash that they then share with their cronies and store away off-shore, untouched by the needs for investment in services and infrastructure at home. I'm not head over heels in love with those claiming we should stay either - whether they use an appeal to the same selfish ideals as the other shower, or generate warm, fuzzy feelings about peace and speciality cheese and other things that would likely still exist in a world without purple UK passports.

You could argue, and I might agree, that I'm only focussing on the local, the national, and that in the bigger picture the EU are worse yet, driving up employment across the continent through cruel austerity policies and worse, trying to shut up shop to desperate refugees while still manoeuvring to exploit developing economies - but I really believe that those canvassing for Brexit are just as keen on austerity, exclusion and exploitation and would rush all the more quickly in that direction.

If I was a juror, I'd be expected to reach my decision without any reasonable doubt. I can't say without reasonable doubt that the UK should leave the EU; I can't say without reasonable doubt that I trust Westminster more than Brussels. I don't think it is worth the risk. So I'll be voting REMAIN this month and I hope to the vengeful sky-god that enough of us will that the UK remains within the EU.

'Wild Things' - longer (unpublished) version of an article for DUPE Magazine's forthcoming Wild Issue

If there’s one thing that rock and pop have tried to teach us over the years it’s how to be uncivilised.

We’ve been shown how to grow our hair, free our restless genitals, offend the cloying sensibilities of previous generations, to frug through the night to “so-called” music composed of little more than primal rhythms, to open up our wild sides or at the very least pay saucer-eyed factotums braver or more damaged than ourselves to work the magic by proxy.

Classic, greasy-quiffed rock ’n’ roll aficionados enjoyed plastering the word about.  Jerry Lee Lewis puffed out his cockerel chest as the original “Wild One” (with plenty of biographical data and manic piano-hammering to back up his claim). Martha Reeves & The Vandellas swooned over the brooding, misunderstood, leather-jacketed “Wild One” that society just couldn’t tame.

Freedom-loving outsiders were nothing new though. Folk music staple “The Wild Rover” had been crashing boozily about since the mid-nineteenth century.  Louis Armstrong started hot-jazzing “Wild Man Blues” in the 1920s. As long as there’s been civilisation, there have been barbarians banging at the door for last orders.

The “wild man” arc reached its natural conclusion with GG Allin, a hardcore punk/performance artist whose stage shows would end with him literally covered in blood and shit (mostly his own) after assaulting his audience and stripping naked. He died of an accidental heroin overdose at a party in 1993.

“Wild” broke whichever cultural taboo needed the most urgent attention. When Nina Simone wanted to describe what happens when “you touch me“, she reached for “Wild is the Wind” to subtly get her point across. That and mandolins. Tone Loc wasn’t quite so subtle when he shared his experience of the “Wild Thing” with us in his proto-gangsta braggadocio. The Troggs were at least a little more romantic (“You make my heart sing!”).

Once the seismic sexual shift of Elvis’s pelvis began to cool, “wild” represented personal freedom, a natural state that we were all born into before the Man ruined our nice vibrations with his wars and monogamy and narcotics legislation. Enter the Steppenwolf like true nature’s children with “Born to be Wild”, running their motors off into the psychedelic frontier at the nightmarish edge of the American Dream.

Youth helps; acting like children, even better. Iggy Pop was a rather wrinkly “Real Wild Child” reboot of the Wild One model in the 1980s. Skid Row’s poodle-noodles nodded and pouted as they demonstrated the awesome power of “Youth Gone Wild” and skin-tight jeans.

The frontier is another favourite idea: a porous space between here and there, us and them, where men can be men and women can be women and Adam & The Ants can be “Kings of the Wild Frontier”. Pantomime crazies The Prodigy had a weekend break at the “Wild Frontier”. Lou Reed sketched the “Wild Side” with anthropological detachment. Bow Wow Wow suggested we “Go Wild In The Country” when the fashion-conscious restrictions of London got too much for them.

But what exactly does this frontier separate nowadays? The boards of rock and pop have been trod by so many “wild” men and women the meaning of “wild” has become flattened under the weight of their collective hooves. Duran Duran anyone? (“Wild Boys!”)

Unruly behaviour itself has become worn down by repetition, the pavements of the citadel jagged with defenestrated TV sets. There was always money to be made in selling rebellion, but marketing so cleverly slipped its virus into the DNA of rebellion when it worked out that you can sell anything to anyone if you tell them it will help them “express their individuality” that there are no restrictions. The pop/rock impulse became a distended black hole sucking the whole culture inside itself.

There is still one border to cross though.

Rock/pop is an urban phenomenon, dependent on a specific density of punters and performers, huddled around the bars, clubs, record shops and venues to stay alive. But out there, beyond the walls, lies … the countryside! There be monsters. Rock stars gape in horror out the windows of their tour bus, clutching their bottles of JD with white fingers, at the kind of unimaginable deprivation that bluesy share croppers and yodelling hillbillies invented R&B and Country & Western to escape.

But there are some for whom the countryside, the Wilderness if you will, has an irresistible allure. Some are country lasses and lads who still feel the tug of the hinterland in their shiny metropolitan hearts; others are city types who feel the need to escape and recharge their batteries. 

The Kinks got as far as “The Village Green Preservation Society”, as manicured as carefully squared cucumber sandwiches. Blur (pre-Cotswold cheeses) could only sneer at a “Country House” with no immediate intention of moving into one. But Bow Wow Wow saw the benefits.

Led Zep spent so much time at Bron-yr-Aur in Powys, recording tunes about the magic of mountains and hills, that Robert Plant spoke Welsh. Pulp gradually shifted away from overlit, lip-gloss Britpop to find somewhere green and restful on their leafy “We Love Life” album.

For actual country folk, the countryside was less a mythic escape than a daily reality to be negotiated. Lead Belly and other bluesmen had worked in it (“Cotton Fields”). “Scratch” Perry has cows bumping through his dub mixes. Super Furry Animals sang about being “Mountain People” on the margins and recorded a whole album about the slow death of rural communities before Gruff Rhys marched off solo into the American wilderness. 

The continental expanse of the US gifted Messianic types (U2, the Boss) with room for a rugged, big sky aesthetic of self-reliance and spirituality among the prairies, deserts and giant Redwoods. Smog were happy to move to “the Country”. Canned Heat packed their flutes and jaunty time signatures too. “The Woods” held little terror for Sleater-Kinney. Grandaddy spelt out a childishly simple life in their “Nature Anthem”. Even Jay-Z and Kanye seemed relieved that there was “No Church in the Wild”.

But the Romantic poets left the British a legacy of terrible awe at nature, and Northern nature at that. For The Smiths, the moors always offered gloomy escape to desolate hillsides and child graves. Wild Beasts (from the Lake District) shiver breathily about “Wanderlust” and “Nature Boy” while British Sea Power (also Cumbrian) quivered with Ted Hughes visions of “Carrion” and “Favours in the Beetroot Fields”. Southerners Bat for Lashes (“Winter Fields”) and Metronomy (“The Reservoir”) also capture an eerie sense of human life caught in moments of nature-bound panic.

The post-punk generation found the spooky wilderness inside themselves and projected out into “A Forest” (The Cure) or just “Wilderness” (Joy Division), devoid of life exactly as the countryside isn’t.

But the gold star for combining the unpredictable performance of wildness with its high-country backdrop goes to Kate Bush. “Wuthering Heights” hits the spot: bird-flutter vocals escape out the bedroom window to dark, heartless nature; internalised alienation and childish excitement paired with brooding moorlands.

The last word goes to Jeffrey Lewis, or rather to the voracious “Bugs & Flowers” whose zillions of tiny souls will mean there will be “no room for us” in heaven. The real message from nature is that our wild performances and awe-struck contemplations will mean absolutely nothing; we are “infinite dust”. 

Try frugging your way through that paper bag.

Top Ten Gone Wild

The Dubliners – The Wild Rover

Louis Armstrong – Wildman Blues

Gruff Rhys – Walk Into The Wilderness

Bow Wow Wow – Go Wild in the Country

The Troggs – Wild Thing

Jay Z/Kanye West – No Church in The Wild

Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard – Bugs & Flowers

Sleater-Kinney – Wilderness

Pulp – Wickerman

Kate Bush- Wuthering Heights

Uncle Coc's tardy 2014 round-up

Howdy, chumpsticks!

Difficult to qualify exactly why I'm doing this, as it seems that I've barely had two minutes to sit and listen to any tunes over the last twelve months (and longer). It's been 6Music, vintage vinyl and increasingly reductive Spotify playlists.

Nevertheless, some tunes have made their way through the parental membranes that have closed over my ever-more-hirsute ears. They are tunes with enough hook in their fabric to dig into my inattentive gristle-holes and lay their little eggs. On the down side, I probably haven't got any great lyrical insights to offer.

So based on the frequency on the old Last.fm... And in reverse order...

#13 - Young Fathers - GET UP

It's a bit like Eurovision: you remember the tunes from the beginning of the year and from the end, but the middle can get a little doughy. Also, going on the basis of what I've played the most over a year will favour tunes that have been around for longer - but those are the breakbeats.

This tune is welded to January in my head - frosty Mancunian mornings, the beginning of my Dadly career and the glorious freedom of an ersatz study with 6Music on tap and "all day" to listen to it. Living the dream. It's a woozy paranoid headrush of an anthem and it was a classy surprise when they won the Mercury Prize, even though it has become a crud-stained tankard over the years.

#12 - Cate le Bon - I Can't Help You

Even though you'd imagine a move to Los Angeles would've taken the edges off her Welsh accent, Cate le Bon still sounds so foreign. Like a re-imagined Nico at the middle of a re-configured Velvet Underground, re-written from distant, hazy memories. Quirky, bird-twitchy pop and very cool. This track aside, I haven't listened to her stuff nearly enough.


#11 - Mungo's Hi-Fi - Bike Rider

Carries the smack of a novelty single, this track. But then what is a pop hook without novelty. I kept waiting for this tune to annoy me, but it never did. I kept expecting to hear it around and about, but it never seemed to happen. I love a song that takes a tangent in its teeth and runs it down to its illogical conclusion.


#10 - Metronomy - Reservoir

My favourite track from one of my favourite albums of the year, even if it didn't quite reach the shimmering heights of The English Riviera. Icy and alienated and oddly suburban, this could have been the soundtrack to a time-travelling summer of teenage heartbreak - tiny obsessions stretched out over long, languid months. And at the bottom of their black heart, sweet seething resentment.


#9 - The Kooks - Down

A bit embarrassing this one. They are a bit of an embarrassment as a band, aren't they? And it was almost a surprise to hear they were still making tunes. It's also a bit of a stupid song, lyrically; do we need another woman-done-done-me-wrong tune? No, we don't. But it nagged its way into my head and I'd feel dishonest if I didn't include it. After all, pop music can be as dumb as rocks and still soar, can't it?


#8 - White Fence - Before He Met Her (Decomposing Lime)

https://soundcloud.com/sonic-cathedral/white-fence-before-he-met-her-decomposing-lime-1

Mossy, doomy fanfare to kick things off and then off it drifts in a softly zig-zagging fractal pattern with vocals pleasingly sliding about, buried in the mix. Trebly guitars scribble in the margins and, like a Spike Milligan sketch, it warbles off into a slow-motion exit when it runs out of ideas. It might be psyche-by-numbers; it might be available by the yard from any respectable psychemongers - but it tucked itself into a niche in my memory banks and made itself at home.


#7 - Warpaint - Disco//Very

I was surprised that this got listened to as much as it did - although maybe I wasn't listening as closely as I should've been. A dubby, yelping excursion into half-asleep menace. Like a Starbucks version of The Slits in ways I can't quite explain: slick but propulsive. And who wouldn't warm to a video of people dicking about in slow motion in irony-faded t-shirts. (They know they're dicking about, right?)


#6 - Lizzo - Batches & Cookies

This might be from 2013, but the album is definitely 2014 and I certainly didn't know anything about Lizzo before then. You'd think after listening to it for a few months, I'd have an idea of what it's about; I very don't. Oddly self-conscious about having such a "street" tune in my year's listening, feels a little too anthropological on my part. But the whistling hook drove into my lazy ears and I think I sniff a touch of the Missy Elliotts, which covers two senses in one short phrase. Synaesthetic.


#5 - Colourmusic - Dreamgirl '82

https://soundcloud.com/memphisindustries/dreamgirl-82

It felt like there was a lot of moody, reverby music hanging around my noggin this year and oftentimes it was this track that was rattling my mental furniture. Slight pinch of 80s metallic dirge (although that might be the title coluring my perceptions) and a nagging Cure-like guitar line. Not sure I would actually want this tune soundtracking my dreams, whether they featured girls or not, but it soundttracked a chunk of my 2014.


#4 - Aphex Twin - minipops 67 [120.2] [source code mix]

Like David Bowie's Titanic emergence from the murky depths in 2013, the Man Dem Aphex got me feeling trepiditious about his return to the world of albums. This lead track did a whole heap of reassuring before I got the chance to listen to the whole thing. It's a blinder, an envelope-licker and paradigm-tweaker. It's Aphex's Dayvan Cowboy in that it is recognisable but has moved away from the obvious markers. Nothing made me want to dance more all year this tune. I don't think I've been able to stop myself listening to it at least twice each time.


#3 - Flyying Colours - Not Today

Guilty pleasure/pain, this one. So much like the snippets of Ride, etc. that used to pop up on the Indie Top Ten on the ITV Chart Show that it actually hurts. I feel all of the 25 years that divide here from there, but they are blurry with youthful velocity and hurtle. They are Australian, I think, so they've got catching up to do, but I have no excuse for such warm-bath wallowing. It simply pushes too many of my buttons. Their tune "Wavy Gravy" is also a belter with a far superior title.


#2 - Automat - THF

https://soundcloud.com/bureau-1/thf

This is a big, brooding Teutonic beast of a tune that I've conscientiously failed to find out much about. This is but a 40-second taster of what keeps leaping up on my randomised Spotify playlists and gets turned up every time. It reminds me more than a little of the infra-dark dub of Meat Beat Manifesto, millenial miasmic malcontent with room for dented cowbells. Could've been released anytime in the last twenty years but it choose to make 2014 its home.


#1 - Gruff Rhys - American Interior

I'm a fully-paid up member of the cult of this remarkable personality, so this can't be much of a surprise choice. But, head and shoulders the most listened to track of the year, this song about the heartbreak and hallucinatory isolation of exploration also became the quasi-official soundtrack for our move to Leeds due to a combination of heavy airplay at the beginning of April and its melancholic tone. It carried us to a new world and any time I listen to it in future will carry me back to that old future once more. Beautiful stuff.


I even managed to scrape together an idea of five albums that managed to make an impression on my mind over the course of the year. I've no great analytical insights to bring, as per usual, but in reverse order of impact...

#5 - Jane Weaver - The Silver Globe

Creeping in under the wire but making its presence felt very keenly as the year faded away, this was an album I'd meant to listen to for a while - due to various psychedelic buzzwords and good reviews that Twitter had thrown my way. It is packed with cool surprises, and not as out there as I'd expected, which turned out to be a strength.


#4 - Fuyija & Miyagi - Artificial Sweeteners

I tried to get into Todd Terje for months - with some progress - but this was my ageing synth-electronica album of choice of the year. A bit more bite, both sonically and lyrically, than the Nordic maestro while still sounding (artificially) sweet and a bit playful. Partially filled the gap that waits hungrily for another album from The Chap.


#3 - Aphex Twin - Syro

Already said much of what I can summon up for now about this album, but the rest of it matched up nicely to the invention and class of minipops. This track was another highlight.


#2 - Gruff Rhys - American Interior

Close call between the top two, which Gruff almost edged on the basis of the painfully weighty American Interior film. A truckload of steel guitar, noble sentiment and his clear, warm voice performing its usual low-key pop wonders. The album never strayed more than two feet from our turntable for months until it was usurped by the #1 choice.


#1 - Metronomy - Love Letters

A beautiful, sligthtly twisted pop machine with all the right noises in all the right places. Metronomy were the only band to play intelligbly through the muddy, muddy sound at the 6Music Festival in Trafford because of their crystalline sound. Devon knows how they make it so dreamy.

And with that, I shall melt into the 2015 night...

Your pal,

Coc x