Who’s biggest hit single was recorded at the Record Plant in New York, late summer 1973. Unhappy with the first recording, they re-did the choruses in the corridor outside because of its more favourable acoustics.
I need lead singer/guitarist’s name…. No looking it up on Wikipedia!
Answers please by the end of play Monday and I’ll tell you a little story …
On this day during the course of the 1960s (No, I’m not going to tell you which year) a little girl was born in an imposing ‘finca’ close to the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (or town hall square) in Valencia, that glittering jewel in the Spanish crown. The youngest of five children, born into the family of a hardworking and respected couple, from Alcoy near Alicante. She grew up resilient and resourceful: hardly surprising considering the competition – three brothers, the eldest of which was 15 when she was born.
To have an apartment in such a sought-after area of the city was a measure of how far her parents had come as individuals, and then as a family since the end of the unbearably bitter Civil War. They had known hardship, privation, hunger, internment, forced labour, the pain of loss, not least, a brother commited to the opposition in the miserable frozen wastes of Teruel. Yes, this is Spain, everybody’s sunny summer playground. We tend to forget …
Of course, I knew none of this, when I made my first hapless attempts to get to know her better in the staffroom of a West London school. In contrast, yours truly was born later that same year in a particularly grim area of the industrial North of England. Our respective environments could not have been more different. Around the corner from the ‘finca’ the graceful Plaza with its palm trees and fountains, site of the ‘mascleta’ (You have to see and feel this. Calling it a ‘display of firecrackers’ or somesuch really doesn’t do it justice. It is immense) You don’t need to walk too far before you come upon the old dry river course, its bridges and boat moorings still intact. Quite different from the ribbon of brown slurry that passed for a river and was such a feature of my journey to school as a child. Then there is the ‘Micalet’ and the handsome central market and the smells! Of sea, the earth, the orange blossom.
The smells which characterised 1960s Huddersfield? I think we’ll draw a graceful curtain over that.
I could go on (and on)
And the point of all this? I just wanted to say that despite everything, I never forget, and
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
© Andy Daly 2010
In which a family of kingfishers manage to trick a former Art teacher into rejecting a process-led model as a metanarrative of a discredited Modernist formal orthodoxy. It also features some spectacular stunt flying, courtesy of the Red Sparrows.
It has slowly become apparent to me that I’ve been had. Done over. Hook, line and sinker, I have been stitched up like a kipper by … a family of kingfishers
Why? Because I have failed to listen to my own best advice and have allowed myself to be seduced by Product at the expense of Process. I know! … Me! The Process Kid! ….Me! who has spent a lifetime teaching a process-based model (I’m getting more and more angry as I write this) Me! a signed and fully paid up champion of a process-led aesthetic. I can’t believe it. Tricked, out-witted and out-manouvered … by a family of bloody kingfishers. I mean, they’re only 6 inches tall with a brain the size of a pea!
The Readers Digest Book of British Birds describes them as ‘mainly sedentary’ and confines the bulk of its entry to an almost obsessive interest in the spectacular colouring, superlative flying, and dramatic diving. Ha! Where are the warnings that this orange and blue – alright – ‘turquoise’ critter will quite happily lead the unwary out onto one of the most treacherous visual arts battlefields of the Modernist era and leave you beaten and bloodied for your troubles? Where does it suggest that it might be wise to re-aquaint yourself with Walter Benjamin before you go birdwatching?
Here is my story.
I take my bike from out of the shed and leave the house I share with my wife and two children, at work and school respectively. And why do I do this? … well … it’s because we’ve got the bloody builders in. They have just ‘knocked through’. Any sign of a dustsheet? No! Any respect for personal space? No! Any interest in the fact that I too may have some objectives I’d like to acomplish – preferably before sunset and so therefore really cannot spare the time to make another cup of tea and listen to another ‘Clumsy Tony’ anecdote. No!
So I’m going for a bike ride to escape, because if I hear that fucking dopey roofer sing ‘Karma bloody Chameleon’ one more time I swear I’m going to pound his brains to mush with one of his own roofing tiles.
And so to the park (tip) at the end of our road.
Just listen to that … Silence! … (Well silence that is if you filter out the playground noise from the school, the trains passing on the Met. line, the plane landing at Northolt, the coarse chatter of the jackhammer from … Oh gawd!.. Our house by the sound of it)
And so I’m off. A quick three lap burn up of the ‘Nature Reserve’ This presents a major test of skill and nerve as you try to avoid the dog crap everywhere, and today? … well, let’s head off down past the park and along the brook (sewer) and back again.
I’ve got to say, all joking apart, that in the dappled sunlight under a flaming canopy of Horse Chestnut, Ash, Hazel and a couple of Oak and Beech, it is extraordinarily beautiful down here … and quiet. The Parrots look a bit out of place though. There’s a … (collective noun for parrots? a squawk? – sounds alright) There’s a squawk of parrots, about 6 in total who divide their time between the park and the big old tree behind our house. Escapees, I guess. A novelty at first, they are now right up there with the dopey roofer on my hate list courtesy of the bloody awful racket they make: that’s all seven of them.
I am just imagining what roast parrot might taste like and indeed how it might compare with roast roofer (I suspect a parrot, no matter how well fed might present a challenge in feeding a family of four. The roofer, on the other hand has been nicely looked after and …)
Bloody Hell! See that? A kingfisher! Brilliant!
Wonderful! One of my favourite birds as a child. Not that I ever saw more than about three. Seeing a kingfisher gave me an electric thrill (and still does) as the streak of sapphire and orange flashed past, seemingly unconcerned, but busy nevertheless.
Who would have thought it? On smelly Yeading Brook. I saw it again the following day and again and again. I was surprised talking to local dogwalkers, regulars along the brookside path, that although ‘vaguely aware’ of the bird’s existence at some time or other, no-one had seen it (or them) this season. Yet I, having begun to observe the bird’s pattern of behaviour and favourite branches on which to perch, saw it two, sometimes three times a visit.
I resolved to bring my camera, which I did (oh how I rue the day!) There was a lot of activity that morning: I’d seen it two or three times – It had of course occurred to me that there could be more than one: a pair? I was on the verge of leaving when right out of the blue/turquoise/saphhire whatever you want to call it, close by the lower entrance to the park it landed on a branch overlooking a bend in the brook. It was about 70 yards away. Against all odds, which included a standard 50mm lens – no telephoto and uncontrollable shaking as I tried to focus (In fact, if the truth be known, I had a quite incomplete grasp of the procedures for focussing my Canon 450D for having had it for two months, I was too lazy to have read the instruction manual) The shot was an accident: I was pressing the button for a meter reading and overdid it. I got another one in, but with a shutter sound like a skoda car door slamming – that was it. The kingfisher was off!
Can you spot it?
But I had it! After thoroughly testing the image manipulation giant that is Photoshop CS3 (Extended) I had it! Okay, it wasn’t exactly David Attenborough: but then I wasn’t on his kind of money.You had to look hard deep into a mess of trees, riverbank, undergrowth but there it was the unmistakeable shape of a kingfisher. Ha! I was about to prove to everyone that this was no fig roll of my imagination…
But it was also to prove my undoing … My dissatisfaction with the quality of my kingfisher picture, which despite all the power of Photoshop was still grainy and fuzzy, began to be replaced by a growing conviction that here was an opportunity to extend my range as a budding photographer. Yes! It was time to move on from those interminable artsy ‘coffee table book’ guitar pictures( http://www.andydalyphotography.co.uk/ in case you’re interested. I accept Pay Pal and all major credit cards) Let’s face it, any clot with a serviceable camera and a spotlamp could do them – you just had to remember, Do ‘em in black and white and don’t forget: Loads of shadows! No: this was real photography: wildlife photography.
And here, dear reader is where the wheels began to come off. I can hear myself thinking, althoughI never actually uttered the words, but sure enough, like so many of my wayward students over the years I thought them. Words which are enough plunge even the most experienced, hard-bitten, battle-scarred Art teacher into a trough of despair:
“But I know exactly what it’s going to look like”
I know, I know …. Me, the Process Kid! As I sit now staring at words on the screen I can barely believe it. But there I was, a week later, armed with a telephoto lens (courtesy of E Bay. Incidentally, I picked up a delightful plaster cast of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a complete Morris Marina workhop manual at the same time. Who says it’s a Global Car Boot Sale eh?) and assorted camouflage garments, more usually associated with members of fanatical paramilitary active service cells: ready to do battle with the kingfishers for the ultimate Kingfisher photograph ….
[A small hollow in a sandy bank overlooking Yeading Brook and a family of Kingfishers are sitting around, reading the morning papers and childrens’ comic supplements]
Oh God! Here he is again!
Who’s here again, Darling?
That idiot. You know, the one with the camera.
The one with the wooly hat? You’re too hard on him. You should stop teasing him and leave him in peace.
Leave him in peace? What about us? What about him leaving us in peace? I’ll leave him alone when he stops invading our privacy. Three times last week…three times. You know what I’m like about my fishing –
[The children pipe up] Oh yes! We all know what you’re like about your fishing. We’re not allowed to talk..
We’re not even allowed to breathe!
Now, you two, come on…What your father is saying is that he just enjoys his privacy..
Exactly! Alone. So I can think and unwind and relax. Without having some half-baked would-be ‘wildlife photographer’ sticking his zoom lenses into my beak. And anyway, where do you think your meals would come from if I weren’t allowed to ‘dip this beak’ unhindered?
I caught one yesterday!
That was not a Minnow.
What was it then?
Well, it wasn’t a fish … Now let’s leave it at that … Oh God!
What is it now? You’re ever so tetchy these days…
It’s those bloody parrots, again. I wish someone would sort them out…send them back to where they came from.
But Dear, you can’t say that…
I just did. Okay! So who’s coming to have a bit of fun with old ‘David Attenborough’ then?
Me!
Me!
Me!
Daaad?
Yes, sunshine?
Do you think he knows there’s five of us?
Hmmmmm…Difficult to say… I think he knows there are at least two.
Remember yesterday, when you and Mum had already gone up to bend in the river with the wooden platform, but when I flew past, he went in the opposite direction?
Yes, that was odd. I just don’t think he’s very observant.
…He’s always half asleep
Yes, I’ve noticed that, Dear. I don’t think he gets enough rest…
Rest?! Oh for pity’s sake woman, we need to get rid of him, not mother him. I want my peace and quiet back.
Dad! Let’s try and get him to drop his big camera into the river
Yeeeaah!
And how are you going to do that?
Oh it’ll be well easy … Did you see when he dropped his hat in the river?
That’s right: So far …Let’s see … His gloves went in….
… his hat …
… (Twice) …
… His lens cap …
… and he got bitten by a dog! …
[Together] Twice!
It is easy! All you’ve got to do is make him wait till he starts to get tired…
It’s best to sit quite high up
… and behind him. He still thinks we only ever fly or perch low along the course of the river.
Watch him. Watch his shoulders. After a while he starts to go into this position and his shoulders hunch over.
What’s ‘hunch’?
Y’know, go all rounded
Then it’s time to fly… Straight at him if you can
Yeaaaah!
He goes all shaky! It’s dead funny.
Okay? We all ready? You staying here, Love? Oh! Before I forget, I’ve left an article out for you… might like to read it. I thought it was quite good. It’s a frank new appraisal of Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art In An Age Of Mechanical Reproduction’ In fact, I think it will throw more light onto the near polarisation of the visual arts and the acendency of a Post Modern, pluralist aesthetic for the end of the twentieth century. See what you think. Okay kids? We off?
Chocks away!
[Some weeks later. The Builders have now gone]
…. ready to do battle with the kingfishers for the ultimate Kingfisher photograph.
[Reader]: So?
What?
[Reader]: So where is it?
What?
[Reader]: The ‘Ultimate Kingfisher Photograph’?
You see, people don’t realise just how difficult wildlife photography is. They just think that the photographer turns up, whips out their camera, Click! Click! Home in time for tea and crumpets. No way! It requires methodical planning, deep knowledge of the habits and environment of the subject and consumate camera skills. Never mind thinking … aperture?… exposure?… focus? … ooops, lens cap off … when there’s a kingfisher flying at you. It needs to be instinctive … it’s raw!…It’s man versus beast in an extreme and hostile environment.
[Reader]: ‘Extreme and hostile’? What? Yeading Brook? In Roxborne Park?
Yeah … err … it’s pretty hostile. I came close to losing my hat in the drink on one occasion.
*** Kingfishers 1 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: So how long have you been waiting for this ‘ultimate photograph?
Let’s see, where are we now? March .. That will make it uhmm … Five months … it’ll be five months
*** Kingfishers 2 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: And how many pictures have you taken?
Oooooohhhh loads!
[Reader]: Of kingfishers?
Two
*** Kingfishers 3 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: So your original image and two new ones?
Ahhh .. No. My … errr…original shot and one new one.
*** Kingfishers 4 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: It must be spectacular … the other one? It must be if it’s your ‘ultmate kingfisher photo’ Can you describe it? I’m fascinated by the notion of it being a battle between man and nature in order to wrest the image you want exactly as you thought it was going to look. That must be some result eh? The suspense is killing me … Thanks … No, don’t see it. Ahhh! That’s because I’ve got it upside down … no wait …. No, Still don’t see it ……..what the hell am I looking at?
Well … can you just see behind that branch…?
[Reader]: You mean that blurry brown line?
Hmmmmm…It’s that spot of blue …. Juuuusssssst ……. there!
*** Game Set and Match: Kingfishers ***
Epilogue
Never has the pursuit of artistic endeavour so exausted me. Never has so much time been invested for such little reward. How could I let myself walk into such an obvious trap? One which, because of my training and experience I should have spotted from the outset.
My ‘Ultimate Kingfisher Photograph’ hangs on the chimney breast (I tell people it’s one of a series of abstract paintings I’m working on – sort of diffused spatial enquiries … ‘Yes, they can sometimes look like out of focus photographs. I’m glad you spotted that’) My misery is complete when the Dopey Roofer decides he likes it and offers to buy it. It reminds him of the lighting effects used at last year’s Ministry of Sound New Year Party. ‘It was sick man, I’m tellin’ yah I was well out of it’.
I let it go for £5:49 with which I buy a new wooly hat. The house is cold and lonely, the wind whistles through the gap in the front door, making a sound like a maddened wailing banshee. I’m beginning to miss the builders … they weren’t that bad after all.
Cause of all the trouble
‘The Ultimate Kingfisher Photograph’
HELPLINE
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this post, call 0800 4746 4746 to talk in confidence
© Andy Daly 2010
Thomas Townson (‘Nandy’) was born in 1875 and Ethel Dawson (‘Tomt’) the same year as Picasso, 1881. Yet my memories of them and the times I spent in their house are as vivid – if not even more so – than when I was a child.
I don’t believe in a God and I don’t believe in an afterlife; at least not in the array of forms in which it is most commonly presented. But I do feel sure, somehow that I’ll see Thomas and Ethel again … One day…
And with that in mind, I would like to take the opportunity to admit to the both of you the years of pilfering the Everton Mints, stored in your dark corner cupboard, and respectfully ask that two other offences (location – Larder) be taken into consideration.
© Andy Daly 2010
Coming up:
So who thinks Wildlife Photography is a doddle? Photographer turns up, whips out their camera, Click! Click! Home in time for tea and crumpets.
Think again. Especially when you’re up against kingfishers whose sole aim is to confront the metanarrative myths of a discredited Modernism … On Yeading Brook.
Miss it at your peril!
Climbers on the Napes Needles including women in long skirts: About the turn of 20thcentury. Photo: Abrahams Brothers/ FRCC
Firstly, some background. My Dad, Bernard was born in Lancaster. His parents both died quite young. I never knew his Dad, like him called Bernard. His Dad, also Bernard, was killed at Ypres in 1915, just a few months before his kid brother. Their father, Bernard (You’re begining to spot a trend here…) a Shankhill Catholic had retired to Belfast after a distinguished career in the army. As my Dad has pointed out, the Dalys may have been brave professional soldiers, but they were pretty unimaginative with their childrens’ names.
Anyway, my Dad’s Dad served in Africa during the Second World War. Back here in Blighty he drove the family Bakery van, and was then a conductor on Ribble buses.He’s a bit of a mysterious character to me – he never really seems to ‘fit’ in to the family. My Dad’s Mum was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and then Hodgkinson’s Disease. I was born about 2 years before she died, but of course, have no memory of her. I am told she doted on me and loved the colour of my eyes.
The point is, my Dad and his parents lived with his Mum’s parents in their big old house in Bowerham, Lancaster. In fact, the house wasn’t their’s at all. It was bequeathed to them by an old school mistress to whom they had been in service, for the term of their natural lives – something my Dad didn’t know about until after his Grandmother, who outlived her husband, had died…. and the house had been emptied and most of its contents, including family possessions had been auctioned off.
It is of this house that I have some of my earliest memories.
Ethel (or ‘Tompt’) as she was known, was my great grandmother, and as I remember her, dressed in black bodice and big skirt, her hat held with pins, was the genuine article: a Victorian Woman She could be stern at times, and certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly. (She seemed – to me at least – to berate her long-suffering husband at every possibility) But she had a heart of gold and though very ‘prim and proper’ would occasionally silence a room with her coarse sayings and bawdy jokes – ‘straight out of a Millom iron ore works!’ as my Dad remembers.
That long-suffering husband was Thomas, after whom I take my middle name. He was from Walney Island off the coast at Barrow. A pattern maker at Waring and Gillow, he was a kind, gentle if sometimes grumpy man (Well, let’s face it, he had some reason). Also known as ‘Nandy’ due to the fact that as a child, this is what my Dad, unable to say ‘Grandad’ called him. He almost always wore a flat hat, starched collar, braces, pin-striped jacket and had a bushy moustache. I was his favourite! He used to come down early in the morning to light the fires. I was the only soul allowed down. I helped/hindered him clearing out the grate, then intricately folding sheets of newspaper to make long-burning, almost ‘double helix’ shaped firelighters. He would always make two mugs of tea. One for him one for me. After stirring, he would drink his with the spoon still in – and so that’s how I drank my tea.
So many legends seemed to hang in the heavy air of their house in Lonsdale Place (Like the story of the mysterious ‘Mediterranean Blood’ in the family. This, on investigation has proved to be no more than a muddling of my Great great great Grandad’s wedding, which took place when he was stationed in Gibraltar, and the birth of his first child, this time when stationed in Barbados) One of the most oft-repeated yarns was the great story of the perilous Lake District crossing in atrocious weather from Eskdale, Skirting Scafell Pike down to the Wasdale Head Hotel in the summer of 1904. A cautionary tale, it was felt to be sound advice from ‘Those that Knew’ to get the listener to look before they leapt.
Apparently, in the July of that year, my Great grandmother, Thomas (who was courting her) along with her parents, two sisters, Molly and Annie: possibly also with escorts and a ‘mystery man’ from Kent had decided to take a trip over the fell from Eskdale down into the adjacent valley (admittedly with some quite rough terrain and steep drops for the unwary or those unwilling/unable to read a map) As was the case in those days, a guide was appointed to see them over. For some reason, on the morning in question, he did not appear, but the party decided, perhaps unwisely, to go ahead anyway.
For no sooner had they begun than the weather began to close in. It got cold, wet, rocks began to get slippery. Visibility was reduced. Suddenly every now and then, the impenetrable mist would swirl violently and clear to reveal some yawning chasm or steep drop below or equally without warning, damp rock walls would loom up at them from the depths, blocking their path. It must have been quite hair raising at the time, but they were made of strong stuff. They arrived safe, if cold, wet and not a little shaken; my Great grandmother extremely vexed (as she used to say) with those who persuaded her (one suspects the suitors ) against her better judgement to take part in what she referred to everafter as “That Rough Crossing Without A Guide”
Well, it comes about that one Easter – 29th April 1983, to be exact, I find myself with my Dad and my brothers at the annexe to the Wasdale Head Hotel. And why there and not propping up the bar? Well, it just so happens that, my Dad, and brothers are still keen climbers and, as such hold membership of the British Fell and Rock Club; who it transpires have organised an exhibition of climbing photography and videos to commemorate the centenary of the first ascent of the ‘Napes Needle’, a particularly spectacular climb in Wasdale. Members had been asked to give up their time to provide invigilation for the exhibition on a rota basis. As I was home from University and kicking my heels, I decided to join them.
On arrival, I had a good look round at the exhibits. There were great large format ‘box camera’ photographs, some by the famous Abraham brothers which were simply stunning. Crystal clear, tonal tours de force. Then there was Bonnington and Whillans – ‘I say, Don, have you got that crab?’ ‘Yer-what?’ (Climbing joke) filmed on Dovedale Groove; but the one thing that caught my eye was the open visitors book dated 1902 – 4 from the Wasdale Head Hotel. Open, because it contained the signatures of a group of famous pioneer climbers, the Slingsby family and friends. Of much more interest to me, however was what was written on the opposite page, dated July17th 1904 in a confident, though slightly shaky hand:
” J C Dawson, J J Dawson, E Dawson (my Great Grandmother) P Dawson, A Dawson, M Dawson (and their place of birth/residence: all of Millom) T Townson, Walney (My Great Grandfather) P Priest, Liverpool, M Wall, Millom, M Borrow, Dover.
A rough crossing without a guide!”
This is a copy of a scan my father did recently of the ‘Dawson’ page after being given permission to record the document by the hotel’s owners. Sadly, it had been allowed to deteriorate significantly since 1983; so much so that it was almost unrecognisable as the same image.
© Andy Daly 2010
Now if anybody tells you that these days, Parkinson’s is not so terrible and that it can be easily managed with drugs, you can say nothing, but just punch them as hard as you like on the ‘Philtrum’ (Its the vertical groove or ‘channel’ we all have which runs – literally in the cases of some people – from the nose to the top lip) There are lots of nerve endings here which make it extremely painful when bopped.
With any luck, fragments of bone will be shattered away and lodge themselves in the ‘Know-It-All’s brain too.
© Andy Daly 2010
The other day a friend asked me how they might avoid having to give a lift to someone whose company they did not particularly care for. I suggested:
1.) Play Captain Beefheart/Iggy Pop/Sex Pistols/Residents/Pere Ubu (any will do) CDs VERY LOUD the whole way. I guarantee you won’t hear a single word and you will never be asked for a lift again.
2) Say you’ve got a job finding locations for a re-make of ‘The Exorcist’ and there’s one or two places you want to check out on the way.
3) On arrival at their house, ask if they happen to have about 4ft. of narrow gauge wire to hand (preferably in a rubber sheath) as you could do with replacing your accelerator cable. It keeps sticking, usually somewhere about 60 – 70 mph.
© Andy Daly 2010
“ Life on Mars” David Bowie. Remember it? Excellent song. On the vinyl lead out track of the 7 inch single, if you listen really carefully you can hear him ask for a glass of water. A bit over-assertively in my view; but I suppose if you’ve just recorded a 70’s classic we can forgive such foibles.
(I’m never really quite sure what foibles are. I feel they ought to be a Brooklyn Xmas tree decoration made with feathers instead of glass)
“Say Honey, which day do we take down duh Christmas decorations so we don’t get bad luck? I -yay, yay, yay, can never remember is it duh 5th oer duh 6th?”
“Ey How many times stoopid? And make sure you pack all duh foibles away properly. Dey wereyeruncle Frankies”
© Andy Daly 2010
Sitting Comfortably? 
