The Summer of ‘78

I was driving into Gloucester yesterday and choosing not to listen to a programme about rhino poaching, I switched to a different channel and was immediately transported to another time, another place – another life!  Suddenly, in my mind, I wasn’t driving down the Cotswold edge but I was somewhere in Northern Germany; in Ostholstein to be precise, travelling with the Isle of Wight Youth Orchestra who were playing a series of concerts.  The programme included Tchaikovsky's 2nd Symphony and as I hummed along to the radio I was back there in the orchestra.

In July 1978, I’d just completed my first year of teaching science in a middle school on the Island and had allowed myself to be persuaded to work with the Junior Orchestra every Saturday. One of the delights (and a huge contrast to the rest of my working week) was that whenever I lifted my baton, twenty or thirty small faces would look up and obey my every move!  Well, I’m not sure they did, but at the time it was a pretty interesting experience, I can tell you

Anyway, two weeks before the big Youth Orchestra was due to leave for a tour of the Isle of Wight’s twin county in Germany, someone discovered they were short of a female member of staff and I didn’t need to be asked twice if I’d like to go along.  That I could speak pretty fluent German and could earn my keep as an additional violinist probably counted in my favour as well. All rather last minute, but I was unattached and fancy free – what was to lose?

We had a great time and the tour was a great success.  But as I listened to the symphony on the radio it didn’t prompt the usual sheet of music memory which is generally imprinted on my brain following weeks of practice – probably because I didn’t have that experience in that particular case.  I couldn’t picture any of the concert halls or indeed, remember much of the rest of the programme.  Instead, I found myself listening for the sound of a gong: a somewhat strange memory to associate with all of that, but sure enough, as I waited at the traffic lights, almost at my destination, there it was.

Bong!

If ever you travelled with a bunch of excited youngsters and their assorted “stuff”, their instruments and other essential paraphernalia like music (!) on a two week tour of maybe five different venues in a foreign country, then perhaps you’d know why the principal picture which came into my mind as I heard that particular symphony was of a small boy carrying a huge gong.  Because, bless him, he carried that blooming gong for the whole of those two weeks for that single note!  I’d like to think that Tchaikovsky was smiling as he included that essential feature in his work, or that maybe he’s looked on with amusement as orchestras around the world have schlepped the most unwieldy of instruments to far flung concert halls for a single moment of glory.

The whole symphony is on YouTube (of course), not played by the Isle of Wight Youth Orchestra of 1978 sadly and the moment of which I write occurs at around the 34 minute mark.

So there we are, the Summer of ‘78.

Well, it didn’t finish there, did it, because within a week of returning home I’d met my hero; we’d become better acquainted over the last two weeks of the school holidays and I returned to the Isle of Wight very reluctantly indeed.  By half term, we were engaged and the rest is history!

Cue Barry Manilow?

Getting on

I thought it was time I iced the Christmas cake.

Finished.

Done.  Complete. 

After a great deal of effort this week, at last I can clear the decks of everything South America-related and move on to other things (I have quite a list).  I really ought to have resisted the temptation to do as I always do and taken my hero’s advice to forget about creating a journal this time round, for it ended up being a bit half-hearted and mainly a repository for one of two bits of ephemera which wouldn’t fit elsewhere.

I’d used the little grey Moleskine cahiers to scribble in as I went and as usual, the notes I jotted in there are a much more effective means of recording the story than anything.  This was the small drawing I did following our flight over the Nazca Lines in Peru.  Nothing more needed really, don’t you agree?

As usual, I feel I can be quite free to write down my thoughts in there!

It’s also a great way to spend five minutes here and there, practising my drawing.  I don’t feel constrained to create a pretty page or to get everything correct – I scribble and cross things out and don’t feel I’m making a respectable piece of work.  I’m just jotting stuff down.

Whereas in my journal, I feel I have to make something more attractive and “finished”. 

After a few days I had developed a common style for each page with the date, the weather and where we were.  I tried to draw and paint a couple of things in there but that paper just wouldn’t stand up to anything vaguely wet.  Even the rubber stamp ink soaked through if I wasn’t careful.

So occasionally, it was hard to fill the rest of the page and as a result, there’s quite a lot of blank space.

I filled a whole page with the cut out Andean cross pattern and went on to fill the opposite side with a few details about the day.

By the time I got to the last couple of days, I really struggled to finish it. 

I felt that on this occasion I’d told the same stories over and over again.  Why?  There really wasn’t any need to create that journal at all and I ought to have given it up before I went too far with it.  Never mind.  I’ll remember for next time!

Won’t I? 

Cross making

Remember this?

Or maybe not!  I didn’t use the picture in my blog post about the Fonck Museum in Vina del Mar, Chile, after all (for what I think are pretty obvious reasons) but it was one of the exhibits which caught my eye.  As I’m trying very hard indeed to put the finishing touches to my travel journal, I wanted to reproduce the Andean cross design from this weaving on a page and thought I’d simply draw it straight into the book.

Hah!

In my little pocket notebook, I’d drawn a simple version of it quickly during one of the on board lectures, noting the name “chakana” and referencing a photograph of inca fields in the Sacred Valley (which I can no longer find).  But the woven design was a little more developed and needed a little more thought.

A ruler, even?  I spent a while happily drawing with pencil and ruler before I reached the repeat pattern part and floundered a little.  Why had I not thought to use squared paper?

Rather than spend time finding a larger pad of squared paper, I grabbed the closest one to hand and soon found that it’s not as easy as it looks.  Getting the proportions correct meant starting with a four by four square in the centre and, if I was going to begin again, better get a larger sheet, eh?

I didn’t get very far here, either!  Somehow, in the second row, I was into half squares – huh? 

Oh, come ON!

Whose idea was this, anyway?

I then did what any sane person would have done to begin with.

I did a google image search for “Andean Cross”.

Following that link took me to this fascinating page which was far more interesting than trying to complete my journal.

Especially since, further down the page I spotted this design, which looked familiar.

That’s probably because I’d spent ages trying to draw that one in my sketchbook in a different museum a few days later, having already discovered that these “simple” designs are anything but.

Oh well, I’ll finish my journal another day…

Small disaster–nobody hurt

I’ve not always kept a travel journal but I have always collected ephemera.  When we first got the long haul travel bug, I’d create collages of this and that and we’d put them in IKEA frames to hang in our stairwell.  It’s an awkward place to take photographs and one spot in the house that just doesn’t feature in any I’ve taken.  So, I don’t have a record of how it was before disaster struck.

We didn’t hear anything.

We have no idea when it happened.

But yesterday morning, my Hero went downstairs to find a row of three large frames had fallen from the wall.  Being the Hero he is too, he’d cleared it all up by the time I appeared.

Each of the (cheap, insubstantial) frames is damaged and there’s a small, postage stamp-sized piece of plaster missing.

So what happened?  We have no idea but can only think that the top frame slipped and fell straight down the wall taking the others with it.

The more pressing problem is, do I fix a temporary repair to the three frames and take my time to create something new and fresh for that wall? 

Or do I begin on a new series of travel-related hangings and use the cobwebby box of fourteen stretched canvases I bought several years ago for this very purpose?