January 2018: A premonition

Inner hope or outer hope, what's it to be?
Hope and Anchor looks the best bet all round

I got a missed call from Israel today (the country of origin now flashes up on the screen). I have no idea who it could have been; most likely a wrong number but you never can tell. I mean do we really know anything when coincidences, happenstances, flukes, twists of fate and even deja vu come to be such a potent force in our lives. I've been lucky all my life. I mean I wanted to write and I do, make films and I have, sing my own songs and have people like them and that happens too, and it might sound dramatic but I have also nearly bled to death after an operation, been run over by a car, stabbed, shot, fallen off a motor bike, fallen off a ladder and driven a car head on into a brick wall; but I'm still standing, as Elton once sang. Its been a busy life. But I wanted to talk about a premonition which happened sixty years ago but I have only just been told the story. When I was a wee boy, as opposed to a wee man, two going on three, my dad would put me to bed. I confess I have no recollection of that time, in what I recall as happy years in Burnside Road, Arniston, before an ill-fated move which I am not sure I really recovered from. Anyway, he had put me in a cot (which I do remember, we had two, a big one - where I slept - and a small one for the baby (Debs then Mags). According to my dad's telling only last week, one night he was tucking me in and I said, 'Dinnae go tae yer work tonight, Daddy... Daddy dinnae go tae work.' (that's the first I have ever been told or knew that I called him Daddy, which I rather like). But the words held more force than that. My dad grew up with a deeply superstitious mother, 'Dinnae put thae new shoes on the table - its bad luck!' She had a bad luck story for every turn. Took her years to get over my mum breaking a mirror in her house (seven years come to think on it). As an adult I would have thought it a bit daft. I have only been off sick one day in twenty five years of working at the University of Winchester, far less taking a fly day off. He wouldn't have missed a shift for anything - after all, you didn't get paid. But after a chat with my mum they agreed it was a 'premonition' that he shouldn't go. Well, guess what happened in Arniston Colliery that night? We take this idea for granted, especially these days when we are much more cynical, more secular and more in tune with ideas. Does anyone really believe in horoscope and premonition? But the history of such things isn't as clear as it could be. Indeed, we still suspend our disbelief for films and books and the like, mostly because at the time we want to believe it. And then there are dreams; if I am honest, I think all of my dreams have actually come true and maybe I have some new ones too. I wonder if in hoping I could have predicted that away back in Arniston? Who knows? But back to the premonition - after a sleepless night we discovered that... oh... nothing at all untoward happened on the night shift, nothing at all, that night in Arniston Colliery. Well all I can say, in defence of my premonition, is thank goodness he didn't go to the night shift that night, because if he had he really might have been the trigger to some catastrophe. Well you never know do you? His not going avoided that! As I said, you never can tell. I mean do we really know anything when coincidences, happenstances, flukes, twists of fate and even deja vu come to be such a potent force in our lives? I wrote this song (coming up) thinking about Allepo but also about the enormous homeless problem in the UK - its huge down south, here in Brighton. We were a working class family growing up, with a coal miner father and school cleaning mother, but we grew up in a house which had loads of laughs and premonitions. And the point of this song is, surely somewhere to live should be a basic human right! Forgive the recording, its in my attic, but you'll get the gist of it: