Big Al Whittle

Witham and Blues - the album
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I'd Like to Carry On with BARBARA WINDSOR
songs about my childhood in Boston Lincs plus Wyatt Earp and my Dad
The Day Delaney's Donkey had sex with The Pope
How do they sleep tonight along Death Row?
A Victim of the FBI
Germany
When I first met you, you wore PSYCHEDELIC PANTIES......!
George Joseph Smith
Anti BNP SONG
Larry the Downing Street Cat
Hello Sally! Chimp Superstar!
Katy Rose!
Dreams of Iowa
This is the Secret of the Land and the Sea
The Caravan Song
Buster the Line dancing Dawg Page
Grantham Days 1967-71
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The Poor People of America
The John Dillinger Song
On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh
Tamworth Days (1973-9)
Skegness
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Witham and Blues - the album
The Ballad of John Silver
Black Guitar - a song about Bix Beiderbecke, Eric Clapton, a black guitar, etc!
Song about Show of Hands Sex Bomb Hunky Steve Knightley
Mr Yamaha - a new song about the roots of English guitar music
Norcsalordie! Red Alert!
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE EVERYWHERE!
There is a Land called America
Waiting - a song from a poem by Mary De Ville, and some other poems by Mary
Trad songs
The Battle of Bosworth Field by Dick Miles
Links to sites of interest
Message about the guestbook
Lets rock and Roll like Cheryl Cole!
The Dorset Dogger
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St Peter
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Johnnie Dillinger

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Big Al Whittle making final career statemet

In 2005 I finished recording and writing the package for my album St Peter and John Dillinger.  I regarded it as a final career statement.

 

I knew at that point I was never really going to make a success out of song writing, despite my best efforts over a thirty year period.  Many of the songs were intensely private and  required too much explanation to make good performance material.  I regarded myself as having signed off artistically.  I had done my best – failed, and I resolved to move on.

 

However I got ill.

 

I was taking the mini PA into an old peoples home in Nottingham the week before Christmas 2004, when suddenly I felt terribly ill.  I had heart disease the doctors told me , although – it took another 18 months to diagnose the nature of my illness.  The first year I cut down my performing schedule by half.  The second year, I gave up performing professionally completely.

 

During these two years I wrote a lot of songs.  And I played them at folk festivals, folk clubs and for the first time for years,  I had time to sit down and try and raise my game as a guitarist.

 

Here are fifteen of those songs that came into being as I have explained.  As I am no longer gigging – I can’t afford to make up cds.  So, if you want them they will be available as a download – or they make up a cd for you at Woven Wheat. You can get my first album through Woven Wheat as well.

 

Here they are as samples and here are the lyrics, and some of the story of how they came to be written.  I hope you like them. They are, I hope you will notice, songs about being alive in the 20th and 21st century.  If you ever catch me writing a song about what a bugger it is being taken away by the press gang….there will be no need to take away the life support system as I will be beyond help!

 

 

 

Alan Whittle

February 2007

 

 HERE ARE THE TITLES

1)    By Witham Side

2)  Ten Miles South of Oxford

3)  Aunty Nelly

4)  Like a Wayward Son

5)  Mellow Moonlight

6)  Ragtime Blues Guitar

7)  Hairy Mary

8)  Waiting

9)  The Day Delaney’s Donkey had sex with The Pope

10)Moira O’Shea

11)Blue Rider

12)Irish Tinker’s Son

13)Winter Hill

14)Let’s Have a Drink - it’s Christmas!

15)Citroen Saxo Driver

 

All songs apart from Waiting were written by Alan Whittle.

 

Waiting contains much of the text of a poem by Mary DeVille, and we have therefore decided to call it a joint composition.

 

All of the songs on this album were recorded in one day and night at a small studio in East Acton, London under the supervision of Donald Ross Skinner on January 25th.  The mixdowns were done the next day.

 

Play By Witham Side

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I sat down by Wtham side and watched the river flowing.......

By Witham Side

 

I sat down by Witham side

And watched the river flowing

The peacefulness  within my heart

It was beyond all knowing

 

For the small fish jumped

They caught the sun, on silver scales that evening

And cows came down to take a drink

A scene of peace beyond believing

 

but then I thought of all my years

The places I had travelled

How like the small fish I once jumped for the sun

And all my dreams unravelled

 

I sat down by Witham side

And watched the river flowing

The peacefulness  within my heart

It was beyond all knowing

 

Son this placid bank of time

I stand by peaceful waters

Taking refreshment from that scene

And think what life has taught us

 

I know our days, they run from us

Life’s progress you can’t fight

But we can return back to our source

And for a moment catch the light

 

I sat down by Witham side

And watched the river flowing

The peacefulness  within my heart

It was beyond all knowing

 

 

© Alan Whittle 23/07/2006 11:31

 

 

The Witham is the river that runs through my Lincolnshire hometown of Boston.

 

My cousin Bernard lived in St Helens in Lancashire.  As two little boys , we loved each other very much, though we only saw each other rarely.  When My Grandma died, Bernard and his Mum came over to Boston to help arrange the funeral. Bernard and I  were pretty much in the way.  As a distraction we were given five shillings each to buy a pair of fishing rods from Woolworth’s.

 

We were both in Grammar Schools, and despite the strange circumstances of our respite from the everyday terrors of  school life  - we were idyllically happy, fishing at a spot called Anton’s Gowt on the Witham.  The song was an attempt to conjure up the atmosphere of that pastoral scene and quietitude.

 

Guitar tuned D A D Fsharp A D

Play Ten Miles South of Oxford

Ten Miles South Of  Oxford

It was ten mile south of  Oxford ,  On a hot July day, We were both hitch hikin’

She said she was goin’ my way

Both at  some sorta college,  but I was dumb as she was smart

Seemed all her life was comin’ together,  while mine just kept falling apart

Oh beauty was always there for you to see

It’s really not such a  rare commodity

But young or old - love  rarely happens

Be you woman or a man

Catch as catch can 

Be you woman or a man

 

That was an educated thumb I was waving,  I was a prince of the dusty highway

I kept chain smoking tho’ the drivers was choking

It was  an incredibly strung out day

That night in a fav’rite crash pad,  we slept in our clothes by the fire

Both our heads were full of the road, I sang her a  lullaby

Yeh beauty is always there for you to see

It’s really not such a  rare commodity

But young or old - love  rarely happens

Be you woman or a man

Catch as catch can 

Be you woman or a man

 

And that was it tho we write long letters,  swop cards at Christmas time

When Roger left her,  when the kids got married

and that time she thought she was dyin’

Life isn’t meant to be easy -  You just get the odd good day

Like ten miles south of Oxford with a girl 

A real beauty in that 60’s way

Beauty is always there for you to see

It’s really not such a  rare commodity

But young or old - love  rarely happens

Be you woman or a man

Catch as catch can 

Be you woman or a man

One of the  first songs that I wrote, which defined my style was a song called George Joseph Smith – a jokey take on the cult of serial killers.

 

Serial killers are of course so few and far between that its still almost possible to be jokey about them.  However despite their numerical insignificance, they have impacted on our lives, and restricted our freedoms.

 

My college was at the side of the A1 road near Grantham, Lincs.  All the students hitch hiked, the A1 was OUR road. The more literary minded had little Jack Kerouac fantasies about criss crossing England.  We all used hitch hiking as a practical means of getting home in the vacations, going down to London at weekends to take in the folk music at Les Cousins – there was even an annual hitch hiking race up to Hayling Island.

 

You don’t let your kids put themselves in such peril these days.  We just know characters like Fred West are out there.

Aunty Nelly

 

I had an Aunty Nelly, she loved to boogie woogie around

She used to get up on the table, and man she used to shake ‘em down

 

Well Grandma said to Aunty Nelly, Nelly you won’t come to no good

Hanging round the Yankees, stationed up at Burton Wood

 

But Nelly said to Granny, I wanna show ‘em something of mine

Before they get aboard of that big old B29

 

So Nelly went boogie ing, no matter what Grandma thunk

She used to come at dawn, with nylons and pineapple chunks

 

So that was the war, Daddy had to fight with a gun

But Nelly showed her knickers and just had loads of  fun

 

I had an Aunty Nelly, she loved to boogie woogie around

She used to get up on the table, and man she used to shake ‘em down

 

If you journey from St Helens in Lancashire in the general direction of Manchester, you will at one point pass what was the largest American Air force base in England during the Second World War – this is Burton Wood Aerodrome.  There are still a few hangars there.

 

And apparently my Aunty Nelly had a thing about Yank flyers.  The family legend was that she used to dance on the tables with wild abandon, and they used to reward her efforts with tins of pineapple chunks and the like.

 

I was repeating this legend to my cousin Bernard, who looked at me with gaze of withering pity and said – actually Alan, the trade was a bit more basic than that.

 

One day when I was about four I was my Aunty Eileens house in Atherton Street, St Helens and Eileen said to my Mum – it’s Nelly’s birthday this week

My Mum said, oh I’d forgotten

Never mind said Eileen, I got these off the market.- we can send them from both of us

And Eileen  produced a staggeringly beautiful pair of diaphanous French knickers – canary yellow, with lines of white lace along the back.

 

Oh yes, said Mum, Nelly loves that sort of thing

 

I thought to myself, I’d be a Bobby Dazzler if I had a pair of those…..And you know that’s probably the best you can hope for from this life……making sure you have one or two snapshots that make you smile.

This song won the lancashire Dialect Society's Presidents Cup in 2008 at Fyle festival and can currently be heard on the first page of this site.

Also on the first page is a Youtube connection  where there is versio of it on dvd.

 

Play The Wayward Son

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Denise getting the rockstar interview treatment in Cologne

The Wayward Son

 

I wrote this in a hotel room in 2006 in Cologne.  Denise and I had been invited to mime on a German TV show – our 1983 song  Rummenigge was voted the 38th most popular football song in Germany.  So there we were performing between a punk rock version of You’ll Never Walk Alone and The Village People singing Go West with the German football team.

 

We had been lodged in the Out of Africa Suite in a posh hotel, ( there were plastic giraffes standing guard outside our hotel room door, imitation leopard skin cushions strewn around the place and plastic elephant heads on the wall). There was a view out of the window of the train station and Cologne Cathedral.

 

 

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Plastic Elephants Head on the Wall in Out of Africa Suite

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Imitation giraffes out side the door of the Out of Africa Suite

Suddenly I realised that this was IT……this was THE DREAM.  This business of the hotel room and the guitar, and waiting for the limo to take you off to the gig was what so many of my dear friends had put their lives on hold for, trying to achieve; relationships and families subordinated to this great vision of creative fulfilment.  Billy Connolly even does whole TV series asking us to envy his gigging musician/tourist perspective on the world – what Christopher Isherwood calls the Down there on a Visit syndrome.

 

Somehow the symbol of the apple with a worm at its heart  seemed very pertinent.

 

Tuning DADGAD

The Wayward Son

 

Well I won’t say that we fell on our feet

It was just a place that we all used to meet

Always somethin’ to smoke there, and before too long

this guitar would appear – I’d play it

She’d  sing a song

 

And I suppose what we do, makes us what we are

A few old songs and a ragtime guitar

Some words of love set to a guitar strum

And a Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

 

So I played the music and she sang the songs

And sometimes we made it, oh yes we got along

Everyone listened before too long

To the Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

 

And I suppose what we do, makes us what we are

A few old songs and a ragtime guitar

Some words of love set to a guitar strum

And the Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

 

So here I am sat in a hotel room

Writing down some words, she’ll  be singing quite soon

While she’s out with some girlfriend,

My fingers endlessly search this guitar

And the TV station says they’ll send round a car

 

And I suppose what we do, makes us what we are

A few old songs and a ragtime guitar

My words of love set to a guitar strum

And a Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

 

I hope you like what we do, cos that’s what we are

A few old songs - and a ragtime guitar

The words of our love set to a guitar strum

And the lady that sings like Wayward Son

©2006  words and music by Alan Whittle

Play Mellow Moonlight sample

Mellow Moonlight

 

I’ve been ill with heart disease for nearly two years now.  I can’t communicate with the doctors, about how I feel.  I came to performing late in life and finding a way I could enjoy making a living out of it very late. I was lucky, some people never find as much.

As the illness grew worse I had to give up the way of life of a professional performer, something I’d loved and striven for, for years.

 

So I sat at home and played the guitar.  And one morning I was sat in my backroom, strumming away with the sunlight streaming in on me, and some words of WH Auden came into my mind

 

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless

 

Some people are like that – sunlight streaming in on you.  One night I was in Mansfield folk Club, feeling very down about the way things were going.  This lady , Stella and her husband Erwin sat next to me and they were so nice – asking how I was, and what I was doing……

 

I think it was the next day I wrote this song.

Mellow Moonlight

 

Sunlight came through my window this morning

Found these chords on my guitar

I said, Sunlight you know who I am

And I know who you are

And your sunbeams must write the poetry

For this morning I have no words

I saw sunlight on my window

And this is the song I heard

 

Mellow moonlight, Stellar sunlight

I’m trapped in your spotlight, cradled in your beams

Mellow moonlight, Stellar sunlight

I’m trapped in your spotlight, surrounded by dreams

 

Sunshine came in my room this morning

There I was living on a planet of gold

These notes fell from my guitar like petals

Into a song that I seemed to know

And all the sunbeams wrote the poetry

For it seemed I had  no words

I saw sunlight on my window

And this is the song I heard

 

©Alan Whittle 2006-03-22 

Background

 

This song was written in the backroom of my bungalow in Nottinghamshire,  which gets the sun in the mornings.

In one of my favourite pieces of music, ‘An American Song’  -  Paul Simon famously wrote ……..

……………………….’you can’t be forever blessed.’

 

This song is about those rare moments when you feel you can.

 Hope you like it!

play Ragtime Blues Guitar sample

Ragtime Blues Guitar

 

There’s an essay on my site about the murky genesis of this song.  It’s a pretty straightforward piece of ragtime in D major (DADFsharpAD). Capoed 3.  I don’t have the musical education to think deep thoughts about the structure of music.

 

Nothing clever about it. A little guitar quote from Bind Blake is the last figure.

 

All I can  say further about it is that in the period of my life that this song deals with,  I knew I would write about it one day and how the hopelessness and idealism of a young life felt.  I thought at that  time it would be a book.  I realise now that I don’t have the application, or indeed the taste for truth telling that the novelist needs. 

 

Ragtime Blues Guitar

 

I used to live on quiet little street

Paid a fiver rent, made twelve quid a week

Spent all the rest on drugs and booze

That’s how I lost my woman

 Sometimes  I look back - oh what’s the use…..

 

 

Iused to say I don’t want too much out of life

Never thinking how this worked out for  my poor little wife

Even thenI just wanted to travel near and far

Co I loved the sound of a ragtime blues guitar

 

So if you telling youself not to expect too much

It could be, you’re just getting out of touch

Cos you be like me, you might wake up one fine day,

and find the blues the only thing your guitar can play

Blues for those ragged times

 

©Alan Whittle 15/11/2005 21:32

Play Hairy Mary

Hairy Mary

 

Another tasteless offering, I guess.

 

My only defence is to say that it is a song about a fashion which is very widespread, and its about something which is going on today – namely pubic hair grooming.  Available in beauty salons on every main street in England.

 

And I DO get so pissed off with all these bloody songs that are like something off the History Channel.  Tales of brave Nelson, being in love with a Flapper who dances The Charleston,  fighting the Ist world war (yawn!),  what a gas it was going to silent films and taking in the latest Charlie Chaplin,  what a bugger it was being a child factory worker …….

 

I just feel like its an endemic faultline running through  our artform.  Not only is it monstrous arrogance to pretend you can comprehend what these people went through – and there was probably a bloody good reason why they didn’t like singing about it at the time.  Also every piece of factitious nonsense like this is taking 7 league steps away from the  tradition of  writing about the life and times you have lived through.

 

Here in stanadard tuning EADGBE

 

play Waiting sample

Waiting

 

Was originally a poem by Mary DeVille of Ashbourne in Derbyshire.  Terry Wood at the Vernon had a go at writing some music for it.  And then I had a go. Theres a whole section about this on the site.  The poem must have something to attract two songwriters to have a shot at it.

 

Took me a long time to settle on DADGAD.  The first song that I wrote using that tuning, which I had thought was the sole property of traditional folkies.  Ken Nicol put me wise on that!

play sample of Delaney/ Pope song

The Day Delaney’s Donkey had Sex with The Pope

 

This started  out as an angry song.  The first time I performed it I made the mistake of telling the audience of why I had personal reasons to be angry with the Roman Catholic Church.  Years went by and one day I performed it somewhere else – and the audience just fell about.

 

One guy came up to me and said, I’ve never missed a mass in 50 years – that bloody song is beyond sacrilege, but my God its funny…….!

 

I still didn’t play it anywhere for fear of offending, despite one Irish radio station wanting to make it their demo of the week.  In fact,  I begged them not to play it. When I removed it from the website though I had several complaints – so here it is.

 

All I can say is that I have thrust it away from me, but I DO think its well written. Its obvious, I’m no good at angry songs.  A bit of a fool, and it comes out every time I lay pen to paper.

 

play Moira O'Shea sample

Moira O’Shea

 

When I was a young feller, I was rubbish at taking care of myself.  Couldn’t explain anything even to myself.

 

There was a girl called Moira O’Shea and she asked if she could become my girlfriend. The truth is , I was very ashamed of how my life was.  Didn’t want anyone too close to me. I was failing at college. Drinking and smoking excessively. My friends (nearly as gormless as myself) had let a tramp sleep in my bed at some point when I was absent, and thus I was covered in scabies.  I couldn’t really work out all the steps I had to take to get rid of this disease.  So I made up some foolish excuse and turned her down.

 

Thirty years later I was playing Irish songs in these theme  bars with names like Mucky Muldoons, and the like. I was very taken by the Richard Ellman book about James Joyce that appeared in paperback.  – around that time, and in particular the story of  his courtship of Nora Barnacle, and how they met in Nassau Street, Dublin.

 

Moira had  the sort of name that fitted into an Irish song.  And I decided to write something that evoked that sexual chemistry of  the literary Dublin man and the servant girl from Galway.

 

Dave Forbes and I were invited to the finals of an Irish songwriting competition on the Roscommon/Galway border with this song.  Where the Irish got their chance to hate us.

 

I’ve never seen Moira for many years – if anybody knows where she is – it would be nice to meet up and let her hear the song that bears her name – and carries her memory.

 

Tuning:  Standard EADGBE (Capoed 2)

 

 

BLUE RIDER

play blue rider sample

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'The Blue Rider races to the top of the picture....'

 

One of the nicest weeks of my life was when Denise and I did a summer school for the Open University as part of our degree course.  We went to Stirling University, which is in a beautiful setting by a Loch.

 

As part of our Arts Foundation Course, we had this lecturer called Sarah Walker, and she encouraged us to look at artists that we had previously encountered in the course.

 

Denise and I chose Kandinsky.  I still don’t know much about him – all I can really tell you if you want to get into him – give yourself an hour, and look at his pictures. An hour is quite a long time and if  you’re only used to figurative paintings of houses,  people and landscapes – it is quite long enough to lose any hostility and start to look at how this very dedicated artist decided to fill his canvas, and before long you will enjoy it.

 

Kandinsky could paint houses, faces and landscapes – but he had this Damascene type conversion.  He was walking up to his studio, and he saw sunlight streaming in and there were some pictures stacked on their side.  He realised at once -

THIS is the sort of experience I want to give people looking at my pictures.  The motif  of the blue horseman/rider was the last naturalistic  feature in his paintings.  After his Blue Rider period, all his paintings were completely abstract.

 

I’d forgotten about Kandinsky, and then this Christmas my sister, Susan gave me a book of his prints.  And thus came the song.

BLUE RIDER

 

 

 The Blue Rider races through the top of the picture

And you race right to the top of my mind

The Blue Rider leaves all the colours behind him

In the frame for life’s crazy design

For its easy to blame red clouds and ochres

Those straight lines that lead us nowhere

The meaningless inkstains, and mad punctuation

The illusion of choice that colours our situation

 

 Mr Blue Blue Rider

She thinks she dsn’t care that I’ve gone

So play something blue for my baby

Before you go galloping on.

 

Like a shape that just flickers into our mind

Some folk say that you never were here

But I swear that I heard your blue blue song

‘gainst a cloud formation that fled off somewhere

For each of us live or lives all alone

Its not hard to imagine us gone

But we were once were bold colours inside of the picture

And the Blue Rider once sang our song

 

 Mr Blue Blue Rider

She thinks she don’t care that I’ve gone

So play something blue for my baby

Before you go galloping on.

 

 

play Irish Tinker's Son sample

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Celtic Minstrel aka Big Al Duo aka Sacre Bleu - in characteristic pose backs to the wall!

The Irish Tinker Son

 

When things go wrong in the music business – its like a train ride to the lower depths.  This song had its evil genesis in a night at The Caernarvon Castle Hotel one night .  I was in a duo with Dave Forbes called Celtic Minstrel – playing Irish songs.  I think possibly everybody hated us everywhere – certainly we hated ourselves and so did the Irish, the English and that night it was the turn of the Welsh to glare at us with stares of black vitriolic hatred.

 

Before he went off duty at at 7pm, the landlord made the mistake of telling me I could drink whatever I wanted at the bar.  And midway through the 2nd set – I thought , hell….why not!

 

This rather posh English lady heard us talking at the bar and said, Oh! You’re English! I thought from the way you sang you were Irish tinkers, or the sons of Irish Tinkers......!

Guitar tuned Drop D that is DADGBE – I owe Jack Hudson for pointing out some of the possibilities of this tuning to me.

 

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Holly Hernadez's demolition job review was just one the crises that finished us off.

pay Winter Hill sample

Winter Hill

 

I’ve never really felt settled here on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border where I’ve lived these nearly thirty years.  We came here because it was just about the cheapest place in the country to buy a house, and because I hoped my mother and father in law would be able to help me with the care of their disabled daughter.

I never clicked with people round here, have always felt like an outsider in the village, and the local folkscene by and large hates my music.

 

However the countryside is amongst the most beautiful in world.  During the summer tourists flock to The Peak District, and the sunlit hills and moors present a kindly and welcoming aspect.

 

In the high winds and driving rains of autumn and when nature has wrenched the leaves from the trees in winter , you can see further and understand better the true nature of the place.  This is a violent and passionate landscape. The numerous outcrops, strange place names,  inexplicable fields of standing stones, and breathtaking sweep of the mountains hint at the caverns and vast chambers of rock that lie beneath – surely  once inhabited by a race that fought for our souls and lost, and retreated nearer the earths  churning molten heat  and essence.

 

I don’t believe anybody visits Monsall Head – looks across the valley and doesn’t feel some kinship with a strange other life, somehow remote from us – and yet also resident in our deepest feelings.

 

Tuning DGDGBD (G Spanish)

Play Have a drink! its Christmas!

play citroen saxo driver sample

Lets have  a drink….its Christmas!

 

This is another song that came out of the gig at The Running Horse.  Donald Ross Skinner lends his instrumental assistance.

 

Somewhere in my heart I still believe Christmas to be a time of real enchantment;  a magic glade of the wildwood that is special for children and everyone who surrenders to the magic.

 

However I hate Christmas dinners.  I loathe Christmas television..  Don’t have much time for charities that beg twenty quid off you, and spend it all on sending out mailshots asking you for more money which you haven’t got.  Bah! Humbug! etc.

 

The last ten years or so I simply took refuge in doing gigs on Christmas day – sometimes three or four in the one day, never less than two. This last year, I’ve really missed that. 

 

The Citroen Saxo Driver

 

I did a gig at The Running Horse, a famous rock venue in Nottingham.  I had turned up to a songwriters night, and the landlord offered me  a gig – a support slot.  I really loved it, But I knew I would need some robust original material if I was ever to do this sort of thing.  This was the first or maybe the second song I wrote, but like I say I got too ill to do any more gigging.

 

I’m sure Citroen Saxo cars have mainly mature responsible drivers. This was written,   after a friend told me his son had bought one.

 

Donald Ross Skinner provides the bass, lead and keyboards.  I provide the E chord.

 

Standard tuning.

hello