'Janet Holroyd' blog for June 30, 2010

MA Songwriting - Episode 7

The friend I was staying with in Portishead lived in a Gothic mansion; a tastefully renovated Victorian pile with towers and turrets, one of which I was renting. It would have been a lovely digs if it had fulfilled the promised criteria: a)self-contained and not down three floors to the shared (hi-tech and to die for) kitchen and b) with its own bathroom and not down two flights of stairs to the shared one (also to die for with Moroccan theme and expensive odours) but I really needed to be independent and had said as much.

It also transpired that my friend from many years ago was anti-French. I did openly question her xenophobia to which she readily admitted but it got too much. Having lived here almost thirty years I know that ‘the French’ do not exist and the constant jibes at my home of choice had me resorting to childish criticisms of things that don’t usually bother me very much: Waitrose, train fares, traffic jams, rugby, ID card phobia, David Cameron (perhaps not him, he really does bother me) and I felt caught up in a cycle of negativity. A thorough dressing down from the lady of the mansion when I said I had found digs near the university (even though I had brought my duvet with me in case her house was too far away, which it was) rendered me uber-relieved to be off. Pity about the five star rent I had already paid but at least the view of the Severn estuary was able to help me write my first song, just before I left.

‘What am I doing here?’ I pondered as I was being accused of costing my hosts a new fitted carpet, ‘I could be home with my family.’

Luckily that small voice of disquiet almost instantaneously translated itself into my first song of the course, ‘Home to You.’ My delight at finding some nice jazzy chords and interesting lyrics with internal rhyme (a technique I had often used in my songwriting without knowing of its existence at that point) soon changed to quaking anxiety and back came the small voice.

‘That’s a rubbish song,’ said my as-yet-unaware-of-it tutors. ‘Tee-hee,’ they would snigger behind disbelieving ears. ‘Ho-ho,’ they would snort in the pub, ‘She thinks she can get into the music business. Ha-ha ...another pint Paul?’

My fellow students, none of whom I had actually met, would be equally disparaging.

‘Fancy going to university at her age,’ they would whisper to each other, also in the pub to which I had not been invited. ‘What an old fashioned song,’ they would smirk, ‘Cheesy lyrics and boring music; how embarrassing, ugh.’

I had to take myself very seriously in hand to stop this destructive self-help but by way of a distraction I was just at the point of negotiating Bristol again and predictably it was jammed and I was stuck. I’m sure it’s a great place but I don’t ever want to go there again, not until there is a moratorium on cars in the city. So it was a relief to arrive in Saltford and install myself in my new digs late in the afternoon. I was late because I had stayed in Portishead to await the arrival of my recently-ex-landlady’s organic veg. box. I know, I’m a wuss but I don’t like falling out with people and they had had to go away for the weekend, presumably to get over my costing them so much money.

Mr. Jones, my new landlord, was there to meet me and along with his daughter they very kindly helped me unload the car. On request Mr. J immediately changed the large double bed for a single one so that I could set up my recording studio in the bay window which was festooned with leaf-patterned, net curtains. As well as this, some outstandingly decrepit, acrylic drapes (which were falling down), completed the window dressing. As soon as the landlord had gone I got out my stapler and fixed them.

Hooray, a student again! How quickly I slipped into that role; nobody to judge my ‘mother’ skills such as when I was constantly sewing up school uniforms or providing end of term snacks and I thereby hurried off to the corner co-op for a micro-wave-able meal that I could eat all by myself and finish off with Cadbury’s wafer thins, all for me. Then I would watch a nice DVD on my Mac before snuggling up under my pale yellow duvet to sleep-perchance-to dream of my class on Monday where everyone would want to join in and sing ‘Home To You’ with me. Well, we would see but at last the course was going to start and I would know one way or the other whether my songs really were any good.

 Song "Home To You"