Thursday 28th September 2023
Bowland Climber, friend and commenter here recently lent me three books by poet Simon Armitage.
Walking Home (published 2012) is an account of his commitment to walk the Pennine Way from north to south and sing (give poetry readings) for his supper at each night’s stopover.
He put out the word that he would need nightly accommodation combined with a suitable venue to carry out his readings. The response was successful as well as motivating an eclectic scattering of interested folk who tagged along with Simon on many parts of the walk.
Books for his reference along with other belongings were carried from venue to venue by his hosts and volunteers. The case was so heavy and awkward that Simon christened it The Galapagos Tortoise.
Anecdotes and descriptions flow in a constant unputdownable stream. One of my best reads for some time.
Walking Away (published 2015) is a repeat performance but on the South West Coast Path starting from Minehead and finishing on the Isles of Scilly. Just when I had so much enjoyment from Walking Home I found this one perhaps even more lively and absorbing,
At each reading there were audiences of around thirty folk who were invited to make donations. The receipts were put into an old Christmas stocking supplied by Simon and counted up each night. At the end of the book Simon gives a list of items other than money that were left in the stocking which makes for an amusing tailpiece.
I have just picked up All Points North which was written back in 1998 and have delved no further than the publishers notes and Simon’s quotes at the beginning so I cannot enlighten you any more, but, the first quote brought me up with a jolt:
“I was demoralised when I left Bradford for Florida…”. Delius (1862 - 1934)
I attended Bradford Grammar School. Delius was a previous attendee before I was born. The music room is now called the Delius Room. Music lessons were as uninspiring as Quorn. We were press-ganged into singing English folk songs - The Ash Grove, and For the Love of Barbara Allen repeatedly at every lesson. The latter had the most depressing lyric for a hormone rampant fourteen year old and I detested the boring repetition and the inability of the music master to inspire in any way - so although it is not logical, Delius got off to bad start with me, and subsequent impressions I have gained have not improved that perception
.A couple of years later, after laving BGS my interest in classical music was established when I was coming downstairs in our home and heard from the front room my brother and his pal playing one of Beethoven's quartets, an abstruse introduction to the world of classical music, but enough for me to enquire, but the interest was overtaken by a profound association with jazz until much later in life when I took much more interest in classical music.
I now realise that Barbara Allen is a luscious classic despite the efforts of that music master to destroy any aspiration to its appreciation.
