Mike's 'A Small High Window' is beautiful too....here are Mike's words about it:"A SMALL HIGH WINDOW
When I was seventeen I worked scaling industrial boilers for a Northern firm. One of the places we worked in was a massive steel foundry in Manchester. There was a window high in the far wall of the sheds, that let the only bit of light into the foundry cavern, where huge steam hammers pounded red-hot steel into shafts for giant turbines and cranks for ocean going ships. There was a boy there the same age as me. He, like me, was crazy on cycling, climbing and rambling the Pennine moors. On hot summer days locked in that noisy dark prison, we could see through that small high window the far shimmering hills where we both so much wanted to be. I was lucky, I got out. I suspect that he didn't - I often wonder what happened to him. This is his song."
It's such a gentle song....and you can sense his yearning, as he gazes up at that tiny bird singing by the window
"..How I wish that I could fly, free as that bird, out to the moor...."
And to me this song is about escaping anything. You can take Mike's 'small high window' with you, wherever you go in life and at times when things get too much, you can 'fly' right through it and onto those moors, where you too can be 'Freedom's King' Where all troubles are left behind and there is just you and acres of space, vibrant yellow gorse, tumbling rivers foaming wildly over the boulders and sweet, fresh air.
I wonder what he would have done without that window being there, to give him the glimpses of freedom? It seems those glimpses kept him going until Sunday, when he was free to roam wherever he wanted, for as long as he wanted. Perhaps that's what gave him his deep love of the environment.
And 'The Accrington Pals' is so moving. All those men from one town joining up together in WWI and so many dying together, shortly after. It never ceases to amaze you how stupid politicians can be...I mean, didn't they ever think of what could happen!
"..1916 came the call. 'We need more lads to battle with The Hun. Lads of Lancashire heed the call. With God on our side the battle will soon be won.' So they all came marching to the beating of the drums, down from the fields and the factories they'd come. Smiling at the girls who came to see them on their way...they were marching, marching, marching away, The Accrington Pals.
Blue sky shining on that perfect day. A lark was singing high above the sun. Brothers, pals and fathers lay, watching that sweet bird sing in the quiet of the dawn. And they all went walking out towards the howling guns, talking and laughing, calmly walking on. Believing in the lies that left them dying in the mud. And they're lying, lying, lying still The Accrington Pals...."
http://www.pals.org.uk/pals_e.htm
Imagine the dreadful pain in that town........
In my town recently we lost just one young man and the town's pain was palpable.
The headline in last week's Sidmouth Herald screamed out 'Killed For Keeping The Peace' It reported on the court case of the murder of a young man in Sidmouth, who died the Friday before Folk Week 2005 trying to 'keep the peace' He like so many others in the past was trying to stop his brother from being killed, but not in a World War this time, but in my small, sleepy seaside town. He was killed by a Samurai Sword which cut straight through his ribs and his heart. Another young man killed him. Just like in Mike's 'Bomber's Moon' This time though, he wasn't dropping bombs but drunk out of his mind.
"Young men growing up to die too soon....Young men sending young men to their graves...."
Are our 'Bomber's Moons' rising in the sky twice as quickly as they once did? It seems, at times, that we are now at war with each other. We no longer even need to think of each other as 'the enemy' in order to kill one another.
One young man again, sacrificing his life for a brother, his own brother, just like The Accrington Pals.
The wall of flowers that appeared on the spot where young Matthew died last year, showed the pain, of friends, family and strangers...
But is this REALLY what those terrible wars were for?
"No more young men growing up to die too soon...If we don't stop them, then they never will..."
Lizzie