When I was child, Sunday morning was wash day. Nappies and kids clothes first, pit clothes last, all done in an old Hotpoint twin tub and fed through the wringer. My Dad would wash while cooking Sunday breakfast, bacon, egg, sausage, tomato… Mum wrung the clothes out and then hung them on the line in the back garden to dry. And as they worked they would sing this song (below) to each other over the hum of the Hotpoint (and I can still hear my Dad hitting the 'way down low' note). It was over fifty years ago and I might be the only one in a family of four girls and two boys who remembers. But I am the oldest, I know its true and not a false memory because I know all the words to the song - and remember all the nappies. Has it really been a year? Goodness but I miss her, Margaret Melrose, nee McKenna. I stole this picture from my wee sister, even later in life they were like this so although she was too young to remember the song nothing much changed in all those years. The song is of its time, and pure sentimentality I know, but a happy memory, and that's what I remember, what would you rather... poets might tell it better, I guess, e.e. cummings put it this way:
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
