Rejoice! It’s a 3 and a half E!

Friday November 25th 2011

Over the years, while in their respective buggies, Ed and Sam have dropped off many a mitten, hat and shoe onto the ground. It may, at the time, escape my attention but when I get round to noticing, it will usually get retrieved. A member of the public may catch up with me and hand them over with sympathetic comments over the prospect of having to buy a new pair of pricey toddler shoes. If a longer period of time passes, I’ve retraced my steps and found them placed on a wall or bench. They’ve seemed to have found their way back in the way of these cats you hear about who intuitively track their way back to old haunts from a great distance. A recent wooly hat was found on some nearby railings, several days on. I put it in the wash and Sam is back to wearing (and dropping) it again.

The expectation that that it all gets recovered came to a juddering halt today. Sam had shaken loose a shoe at some point when we were bringing Ed back from school. I retraced my steps against the tide of departing children and their parents. Surely by a school, someone who found it would know what to do. I surveyed the nursery area and the now deserted school yard. I enquired in the general office. Then I returned to the street and did it all over again looking closely at those collected dunes of fallen leaves which shared the same brown and orange colours as Sam’s shoes. ‘Never mind being so arty farty staring at those leaves – get your boys out of the cold’, I could almost hear a Northern voice saying. Perhaps some rascal of a boy had lobbed it in a garden. We went home.

So when on Saturday November 26th 2011 , Jan and Sam went to the shoe shop to get a replacement pair of shoes, I was hoping with all hope, that he would have had to step up a shoe size which would have made getting a new pair of shoes a necessity in a parallel universe. It was getting dark when they had come back. The door opened and I looked intently on the new shoes that Sam was wearing as he came bounding in. They looked like they may be bigger. Jan confirmed that he was into new size territory. Just. That 3E result brought greater relief than City’s 1-0 win over Forest.

Colorama Kings Arms, November 11, 2011

I first heard of these through an Oldham radio station The Revolution. The station, an analogue lifeline to good music in Greater Manchester, went on to be bought out by radio ‘prankster’ Steve Penk and subsequently became musically indistinguishable from any other commercial radio station. The exodus of DJs from the station that took place re-coalesced for a new internet station Radio Republic that went live today today, 11.11.11 and a couple of the guys are here tonight playing music in between the bands. They may feel a pang of pride in helping raise Colorama’s profile in these parts.
I’ve followed Colorama’s progress since. The three piece launch into Derw Mewn and follow it with several Welsh language tunes which isn’t so out of place in Salford if some same language banter from members of the crowd is anything to go by. The Welsh landscape is never far away in their lyrics – one song is about the betrayal of a girl friend who swaps rugby union for rugby league.
Longstanding anchorman of the band, Carwyn, sometimes has a tightened singing expression similar to that of blues guitarists (or Bruce Forsythe as my friend mentioned) as his band play their absorbing folky multi-instrumental sound. Instruments are brought out and deftly applied. There are autoharps and Uilleann pipes (which I last saw being played live at a Northern Ireland music session fifteen years ago). The ‘seasonally inappropriate’ Autumnal, a highlight, has understated harmonies and melancholic acoustica. There’s a smattering from the new Colouring Book CD which I bought and am playing now as I type this. The likes of Lisa Lan and Eleri have me almost happily tasting the bar's Krombacher beer.
A final song called Good music, which may be a working title, allows for some Van Halen style riffing from David Page. It’s as if, after playing a set of finely honed melodies, an inner axe man has been unleashed. It was a suitable parting shot to send me on my way into a cold rainy Manchester night to catch the train back.

Photo by Maurice https://picasaweb.google.com/110737376453713511038/ColoramaAndJohnStammarsKingsArmsNovember112011#

Horsey, horsey will you stop.

There’s a carousel which is a fixture on Stockport’s main shopping street. I have regularly taken Ed there for a ride. Today was the first time, for a long period, that he went on it and the lady controlling the rides remarked to Ed on how he’s grown. As I strapped him into into the Safari Car, there were protests from Sam who wished to have a ride himself.   Sam could go on the horse or motorcycle if I accompanied him I was told. I’m not quick-thinking enough to have amicably declined this and, as I took my place on the horse, behind a strapped up Sam, it occurred to me that I had never seen any other adult opt to do what I was doing. I have participated in things before where I have felt a bit of a berk – like being the only man in a group of parents and children trundling around in a circle singing Ring a Ring of Roses – and, it seems the best way to avoid embarrassment, is entering into the spirit of things. Ideally, I should be wearing pastel coloured clothes and be making excitable chatter to Sam about how we’re right behind Coco the Train. Instead, I winced and, as the carousel rotated with growing momentum, felt increasingly sick, my demeanour getting more pallid for anyone who happened to be watching with each passing rotation. The people who work the thing have my respect; there’s more to it than just pulling the start/stop levers as they talk the kids through the process. Still, on reflection, I’d rather not have learnt of this. In future, if I remember, I'll avoid passing too closely to the carousel with Sam until he is of an age to go on it on his own.