Musically speaking.

I love pick of the pops on radio two and i am listening to it now. Music has always been important all through my life. As a child in the 60's on a Saturday would walk next door as they had a TV and we didn't to watch The Monkees last year in May i went to see them for the first time at The Albert Hall with some friends, a real dream come true even if Mike Nesmith who was my favourite wasn't there. We had quite good seats and at one point during 'Alittle bit me a little bit you' i connected with Pete who i am convinced looked at me whilst singing, how could he have missed my bald head, i was on chemo at the time and was so warm i thought sod it and took the wig off.

My other early musical memory is the dancette record player and the very few records that we had that i liked to listen to. Mum had bought Uncle Mac 45's which were OK but the album i ordered and would ask to have put on at the age of 5 or so was The Beatles A Hard Days Night, my parents weren't ordinarily interested in chart music but they had heard so much about this new band called the Beatles that they bought one album. It remains my favourite of theirs to this day and i know every word note and phrase off by heart.
Mum would listen to radio Two and i remember Jimmy Young and when i hear the sounds of the sixties i can sometimes be transported back to the particular house that we lived in at the time...it remains my station of choice and i listen to it at work and home maybe to the annoyance of the guys at work.
We moved around a lot until i was Seven as Dad was in the army, royal army medical cour. I was born in Woolwich though they lived in Hounslow at the time but the army maternity hospital was there. It always seems ironic that i ended up getting married in Woolwich and live not far away now but up until the age of 18 when i came to London i never went near there at all again.
So we lived in Hounslow and then to Singapore for a year, back to Colchester and then Mill hill, Aldershot which i loved and is where i met Jayne who i am still in contact with to this day, another story, Then dad came out of the army after 22 years and we moved to Gt Yarmouth in Norfolk so that i would have some stability at school. In hindsight it wasn't the best move for me i didn't like the new school and apart from being bullied by pupils as i wasn't'local' i was bullied by a teacher too who is the only person i don't think i can ever forgive or feel less hatred for now i am so much older.
I moved to the junior school the following year thank goodness and made friends with Debbie Dye, Debbie and i lived quite close to each other and spent all our time together out of school, we nicked our first make up from the local shop and am appalled to say, i think it was an eye shadow, it was the only time and i don't really know why we decided to do that. We made blue peter dolls houses out of cardboard boxes and listened to records at my house in the front room. When we left Junior school we both went to the grammar school but Debbie went into another class and although we remained friends we were never as close as we were when younger. When i left the area to come to London a couple of years later i heard that she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, i went to see her the next time i went home and i remember her showing me the shunt she had draining the operation site, she still had her long dark hair but underneath it was all shaved away. We had a nice afternoon together and i never saw her again, mum and dad in a few years moved to north Yorkshire and i had lost contact with Debbie by then. In 2010 i attended a school reunion and saw Rosemary who lived on Debbie's road and was the same age, i always knew she would know what happened to Deb and sure enough as i thought might have been the case she told me that she had died 10 years ago.
As i grew older my record collection grew, i would avidly listen to the chart show on a Sunday whilst having a bath and tape it too by putting the radio next to a tape recorder. I would then write down the chart and also had Disco 45 each week to check the lyrics. I bought Jackie and would cover my bedroom wall with posters, mainly of David Cassidy not Donny but now having seen them both on the TV David Cassidy is a very unlikeable self absorbed character and Donny far more personable.
I also loved Queen and in 1979 another fan at school called Peter suggested that we arrange to go and see them. We got about 15 tickets for their Christmas gig at the Alexandra palace in London and arranged to hire a van. My dad as usual came up trumps and said that he would be happy to drive us down. So me and my friend Hilary and Peter and various other guys from different years in the school piled in on the morning of the 22nd Dec 1979 and headed for London. We got there really early and were at the head of the queue, it was freezing and we must have been standing there for 6 hours but we were young and enthusiastic and it didn't matter. When the doors opened we charged in and got to the very front. There was the main stage and then a cat walk that jutted out into the crowd. It came up to just above my chest i stuffed my bag in front of me and had my arms leaning onto the stage itself. It was worth the wait as the concert was fantastic it was the crazy tour so all the main hits had already been released including Bohemian Rhapsody which they played. But the most wonderful thing was when Freddie came in for his encore singing we are the champions sitting on the arms of superman, he jumped down and whilst he was singing reached into the crowd and grabbed my outstretched hand!!!!! mine!!! my right hand to be precise and as he held onto it a pile of hands like ivy on a tree latched onto my arm and hand to try and get to him too. When he let go and after all the other hands had released in defeat one more hand grabbed mine and in my ear i heard this man's voice say 'that will do for me,' {the hand that held Freddie's}.
So Queen was a staple and i bought each album as it was released and spent hours on my own in the front room listening to them.
Each week i would save my money and buy a 45 for about 50p. I would then buy albums and to this day is still have all of them stored away i cannot envisage a day when i won't have my vinyl. The 45's came in very handy when i started to have my parties. My parties became infamous not sure how but initially they were the very awkward 12 year old affairs with 10 girls and 2 token guys. Gradually they just got bigger and the numbers of boys nd girls started to equal out. They stopped marking special occasions IE my birthday and it just settled into, about time we had a party. Once the decision was made then the lists had to be drawn up who was in and who was out, what boys needed to be there IE who fancied who? As always music was provided by myself and as the parties got bigger i had another ace up my sleeve my mother was responsible for booking the village hall, so we just had to check her diary to see when it was free and bingo!
Dad would always come to be the adult in attendance, but he would usually just sit in the second smaller room and let everyone get on with it, we drank cider and dubonnet or Martini, some would bring a party four and we would just go for it, there would be kissing in the corners and in other corners those who couldn't hold their drink kas well as they thought would well you can imagine. It was all a bit wild at times and when i look back and think about how kids today are branded wonder why as we were much worse!....or maybe that's just me?
The next stage came when we all started to turn 18 and we moved up a notch again to book local function rooms for birthdays so the final year at school was an endless round of 18th birthday party invites in more salubrious surroundings and i think by then we had worked out our riotous years and were now smart and sophisticated.
I have continued my love of music since leaving home that summer after working in Tiffany's night club on the sea front. I worked in the buffet avoiding the bar for my lack of adding up skills. That was a great summer of Radio One special DJ nights where i saw DLT, Steve Wright, Noel Edmonds, Peter Powel, Simon Bates etc..... the best of the bunch? Simon Bates who hung out with us afterwards and bought everyone drinks. We also had cabaret at times and i remember Bernie Of he and the Ostrich fame coming in to borrow knives and forks for a gag he was going to do. We also had splogginess abounds on when one of them infamously set their hair alight during a fire eating act the punters graciously threw their beer over him to put him out before taking him to hospital. Funnily enough recently on Facebook a thread started on them and i mentioned this memory to which the actual band member replied as he was friends with someone i knew too.

Since leaving home i have continued to attend gigs and then very late in life started to go to Glastonbury, last year when i lost my hair with chemo friends collected 200 pounds for me to get a wig, i didn't need that much and so they paid for my Glasto ticket for me. The pic above is one of the favs that i have taken when going there, just walking down through the tipi field i caught this couple kissing, it's a very Glasto pic. Below is me there last year with a bunch of friends wearing a stetson i was sent from Texas by someone i went to school with who lives there now. Sarah the skinny tall one has turned out be a fantastic friend and who was responsible for me going to Glasto in the first place as she arranged ot have a her 40th there however i was the only one to get tickets so went with the boys on my own, but we have gone together ever since tickets willing. Jan the little on in the hat is my long time friend in London we worked together in 1982!! She is the friend who can't help crying if we talk about me going. Sarah had breast cancer herself a year or so before i was diagnosed and i remember how i felt when i was told which helps me understand when i tell others, i can be too blase sometimes and i forget how it can shock and affect people, after all it is only me!

When mum died i downloaded a load of Jim Reeves on i tunes and loaded it onto my ipod with other soothing classical pieces and other songs i knew she liked and some that i thought she would like. I had it playing on a speaker in her room randomly as she died. It is often said that hearing goes last and i wanted her to not be left with no stimulation at all.
Beth neilsen Chapman holds a specail place for me and i saw her a couple of years ago too and met her after the gig. I was able to tell her how her music had affected my life and that is quite a special thing to do. The last time i had to say goodbye to mum as i was going home she said "oh don't say goodbye it is so final just say aurevoir' the next time i saw her she wasn't able to speak so coherently. At her cremation i played 'say goodnight' which Beth wrote after the death of her husband from cancer...the following line is not goodbye, it was very apt and a beautiful song. You can find it on her album Sand and Water, Sand and Water is also a beautiful song about loss and grief. I will try and insert a link to it
  www.bethnielsenchapman.com
There that works and to the amazon site for her music too, she has had breast cancer herself and a brain tumour, her writing is lovely musically and lyrically. Have alook through her stuff there is lots there only love another that i can relate too, so many
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sand-Water-Beth-Nielson-Chapman/dp/B000002NDY/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1327158647&sr=8-11


I do a lot of thinking about what songs i would have at my funeral, even before i was ill it is something that i would ponder on. The boys know that 'don't stop me now' by Queen is on the list. I love a good hymn too and would likely use Dear lord and Father that i used at mum's funeral as i love it so. The list changes here and there the Say goodnight would be there too and i think at the cremation.....yes i have indeed thought about it!!! The Lark Ascending by Vaughn Williams i love classical music through my dad's influence, it is a beautiful piece and i love the soaring notes as the swallow disappears into the sky at the end........