Milestone Mystery Tours

It’s happened – after looming large on the horizon for so long I have finally reached the milestone of fifty years on this planet. Millstone, milestone, I guess it’s all about perspective. Half a century and I’m still here.

My original plan to mark it was to take a trip over to Paris to visit the grave of one Jim Morrison (for what’s a Happy Birthday without a cemetery?) 😂

But, with all of the shifting sands of Covid requirements, I decided to postpone that for now to remain on this side of the Channel. And so my next couple of posts will be about what I did instead, including a few nights spent in the breezy Scottish capital of Edinburgh.

The first, though, will be about a tour I took my fourteen-year-old daughter on. A hopefully inspirational tour of a certain neighbouring northern city, centred upon a certain neighbouring northern pop group . . .

Meanwhile, In Prestwich . . .

I managed to get this photograph yesterday while we were driving through Prestwich. It’s a mural, created in 2019, of Victoria Wood, who was born in that town.

Heading North is of course a compulsion with me, too, though her full joke includes the punchline: “Even in Tesco, I head straight for the freezer cabinets on the back wall.”

Seeing it took me right back to the 80’s, laughing at this northern ballad of frisky Freda and the poor, beaten Barry. Give it a watch, those of you not from the north of England may have to give it a couple of goes to catch the lyrics. Google may help, too!

Song Lyric-Hanging On ‘Til Morning

A lad I know is a member of a local band. He had a riff and outline for a new song, but no lyrics. Being familiar with my book, he asked if I could come up with some lyrics for it, and this is my attempt. Something I’ve never done before, but I think poetry and song lyrics are consenting bedfellows.

I think it works better with the music rather than standing alone in naked print, but here you go.

Will let you know if it makes the radio 🙂

Hanging On 'Til Morning

Satellite town where the sun sinks down
the people are the sheaves
of the concrete fields
stirred by degrees 
by the Pennine breeze

Hanging on 'til morning
Hanging on 'til morning.

The bucket bleed of the rusting heaps
the black cats creep
where the oil sinks deep
wandering free
the schizophrenic streets

Hanging on 'til morning
Hanging on 'til morning

The stifled screams of a dead man's dreams
sit up and watch the clock
and the winnowing fork
taking the drop
on a lifetime's work

Hanging on 'til morning
Hanging on 'til morning


©AJM