Need Your Love So Bad - Little Willie John

Searching For Mary Anning.

I must admit that I didn’t know anything about Mary Anning until eleven days ago. I was scrolling through Wikipedia to see what events occurred on March 9^th in history and saw, ‘Died 1847 – Mary Anning, English palaeontologist (b. 1799)’. I clicked on her name and began reading her story. I found it fascinating, especially as she lived in Lyme Regis which is only 67 miles away from here. Her story is quite tragic in parts. She was one of ten children born to Richard and Molly Anning. Only Mary and her brother Joseph survived to adulthood. There had been a previous Mary who had died aged four when her clothes caught alight while putting wood shavings on the fire, so Mary was named after her late sister. The family lived so close to the sea that the house was often flooded during storms. When Mary was only fifteen months old she was fortunate to survive another tragic incident. She had been left in the care of three local women. They were watching an outdoor circus performance when a thunderstorm began. They were sheltering under a tree which was hit by lightning and the three women were killed instantly, but Mary miraculously survived. The incident according to local lore changed her from being a sickly child to being bright, lively, and full of curiosity.

Mary Anning & Me.

Her father died in 1810 aged only 44 which left the family in dire straits. They supplemented their meagre income by collecting fossils from the nearby cliffs and selling them to visitors to the popular seaside town as ‘curios’. This was such things as ammonites, belemnites, and vertebrae. In 1811 Mary’s brother Joseph dug up the skull of an ichthyosaur and later Mary found the rest of the skeleton. One of the family’s best customers was Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch, a wealthy collector from Lincolnshire who arranged an auction of their fossils which raised £400, a large sum of money in those days. 

It was dangerous work digging along the cliff face. Mary was again lucky to escape sudden death when a cliff fall killed her faithful pet dog called Tray. Her reputation continued to grow however, and in 1823 she discovered a complete Plesiosaurus. Later, in 1828 she found the first British example of a pterosaur. Mary’s only education had been learning to read at Sunday school, but despite this she became an expert in her field and wrote about and drew detailed drawings of her discoveries. It was a big local event in 1826 when she opened a shop in Lyme Regis displaying her finds. Even King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony visited her shop in 1844 and purchased an ichthyosaur skeleton.

The real tragedy is that because Mary was a woman she was shunned by the scientific community. She was not allowed to join the Geological Society. When her discoveries were described in journals and scientific papers she wasn’t even credited as the person who found them. It was she who suggested to one of the leading geologists William Buckland that the conical objects known as bezoar stones were really the fossilised faeces of ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs. Buckland later named the objects coprolites. A celebrated geologist called Henry De la Beche produced a famous painting called Duria Antiquior, based on Mary’s finds, and sales of a lithograph print of this picture helped Mary financially. Finally William Buckland persuaded the government to award Mary an annual pension of £25. She died in 1847 from breast cancer aged only 47 and was buried alongside her brother Joseph and other siblings in the local churchyard.

Duria Antiquior,

I was pleased that I had finally learned about her because for the last couple of years I have enjoyed getting out and about locally and visiting the graves of famous people. Previously I had visited George Orwell, Lawrence of Arabia, Thomas Hardy, Laurie Lee, Siegfried Sassoon, and several others. I had been wondering who to visit this year and along came Mary. When a friend of mine said she was going to Lyme Regis on Sunday I knew I had to go. 

On The Cobb.

It was a beautiful sunny morning when we set off before 9.00. It only took about 85 minutes to drive down to Lyme Regis, and we parked just by the famous seawall known as The Cobb. The first thing we did was to go for a bracing walk along the top of The Cobb. This place became world famous when it featured in the film The French Lieutenants Woman with Meryl Streep. John Fowles who wrote the original book lived in Lyme Regis. Jane Austen was also a frequent visitor to this area and the town is mentioned in her book Persuasion which I must admit I haven’t read. After that, I left my friend and set off in pursuit of Mary Anning.

The first thing I found was a statue of Mary and Tray looking out towards the cliffs where she made many of her discoveries. It was unveiled only last year by archaeologist Alice Roberts and a schoolgirl called Evie Swire who along with her mother led the campaign for a statue. I asked a passer by to take my photo with the statue and then headed to nearby St Margaret’s Churchyard to find Mary’s grave. I thought it might be difficult to locate, but it was easy because I was amused to find that somebody, probably children had left little plastic dinosaurs by her headstone. My next stop was the museum. This has been built on the actual site of Mary’s family home. 

The pavement outside is inlaid with ammonites. I spent about an hour looking at Mary’s astonishing discoveries. (See pictures) I think one of them is on loan from the British Museum, back in Lyme Regis after nearly 200 years. As well as the fossils, there are many other things of interest including the clothes worn by Kate Winslet in a recent film about Mary called Ammonite. The final thing I wanted to do was walk in Mary’s footsteps along the cliff face and see if I could find any fossils myself. 

Fossil Hunting.

As I walked along the beach by the cliff the pebbles got larger and larger until they became boulders. I realised how dangerous it was, stepping from rock to rock you could easily lose your footing, slip, and break a leg, especially at my age. I didn’t find any actual ammonites, but I could see where they had once lay and made an impression on the rocks. I took some photos of these. (See photos) There were plenty of other fossil hunters along the beach. There must be thousands of visitors here every year with the same idea. As I hopped from rock to rock and looked out at the sea a famous quote by Sir Isaac Newton came into my head, “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Eventually I re-joined my friend further along the beach and sat in the pleasant Spring sunshine. About 3.30 we headed home and were back in Westbury by 5.00 after an enjoyable few hours by the sea. I was pleased that I had made the effort to learn about Mary Anning. It is great that she is finally getting the recognition that she deserves, and children are learning about her work in making some of the most important discoveries of the 19^th century.

Mary Anning 1799-1847.

Review: Workin' On A World by Iris DeMent.

It is thirty years now since I first heard Iris DeMent sing Our Town which led me to buying her debut album Infamous Angel, and I have been a fan ever since. Workin' On A World is only her seventh album in all that time, and the first since The Trackless Woods in 2015. I must say it has been worth the wait. One thing that annoys me about the present music scene is that musicians aren’t protesting about the horrors of what is going on in the world. In the 1960s we had protest songs and singers who really did bring awareness to the wrongs of the world and helped to bring about change. These days you get singer-songwriters selling millions of albums which are basically about nothing. Iris DeMent is an exception, Working On A World contains some of her most courageously political songs since songs like Wasteland Of The Free in the mid-1990s.

The title track opens the album and is a tribute to all the people of the past who worked to create a better world even though they didn’t live to see the results. Iris has come a long way from her early Country sound. This song is soulful, upbeat and funky, with a brass section of saxophones, trombones and trumpets to the fore. (See video below). Going Down To Texas is a scathing protest about gun laws, police brutality, right-wing evangelists, George W Bush, Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos. Iris praises the courage of The Chicks (Formerly The Dixie Chicks) and the women in the squad (Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts) who were victims of Trump's hateful racist tweets. She mentions how men in cowboy hats like Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard can take a stand on issues, but women who protest are vilified. Iris is fearless though. She is determined to sing her songs, even in places where anyone can carry a gun.

Say A Good Word by contrast is a much gentler appeal for magnanimity in a divided world. Iris’s voice has never sounded better than here where she sings harmonies to herself. On first listen my favourite song was The Sacred Now. It is very catchy, and I like the sentiment of the song. It ties in nicely with reading The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle, although I don’t know if Iris has read that book. It is one of two songs co-written with Pieta Brown who is the daughter of Iris’s husband Greg Brown. They also co-wrote I Won’t Ask You Why a moving ballad with Iris playing piano. It might possibly be inspired by her mother, but I’m not sure. Warriors Of Love returns to the political themes, and praises John Lewis who along with many others was beaten by the police in 1965 in Alabama on the Pettus Bridge. It is also a tribute to the activist Rachel Corrie who was crushed under an armoured bulldozer in Palestine in 2003. Greg Brown wrote the words to Let Me Be Your Jesus which ridicules the hypocrisy of so-called Christians who offer a promised land where everyone is white and global warming is fake news. To my ears Iris’s voice sounds almost like Kate Bush or Tori Amos on this unusual track which also has very atmospheric percussion and flugelhorn.

The Cherry Orchard is inspired by Anton Chekhov’s play of the same name. Iris gets a lot of inspiration from Russian literature. Her previous album The Trackless Woods was an adaption of poems by the Ukrainian/ Russian writer Anna Akhmatova. She and Greg Brown also adopted a Russian daughter. Nothing For The Dead returns to the brassy sound of earlier. In this song Iris defiantly says, “I’m not holding back nothin’ anymore, And I’m done with being afraid of being bled. Use me up while I’m living lord. Let’s not leave nothin’ for the dead”. Mahalia is a tribute to Mahalia Jackson whose voice Iris must have heard coming through the ether as a child with her Pentecostal upbringing. The lyrics mention a song by Mahalia called ‘How I Got Over’ which I didn’t know, but just listened to on Youtube. Mahalia was a favourite singer of Martin Luther King which leads in nicely to the next track How Long which quotes the Rev Dr Martin Luther King. He was once asked, how long do you stay the course and dream the dream?. He replied, “Till justice rolls down like water, and righteousness flows like a mighty stream”.

Walking Daddy is another bluesy song written by Greg Brown that features Marty Stuart on mandolin. It mentions the Jacks Fork river in Missouri which must be where Greg Brown comes from. The final song is Waycross Georgia which was written by Rev Samuel E Mann 111. He is a white pastor who was fired from his church because he worked for forty years fighting racism in his community. I looked up Waycross Georgia on Wikipedia and discovered that Gram Parsons used to live there. It is a fine song to end this album which I have enjoyed listening to for the last two days. It is great to have Iris releasing new meaningful music which the world certainly needs at this time. I have never seen Iris perform live, but I’d certainly try and get a ticket if she visits the UK in the future.

Workin' On A World - Iris DeMent

Review: Will Varley In Frome.

It is Sunday afternoon now and I’m listening to The Hole Around My Head which is the most recent album by Will Varley. I bought it from the merchandise stall as I was leaving Will’s gig at the Tree House in Frome on Friday night. It is a tiny little venue above the Vine Tree pub, and apart from the Village Pump folk club in Trowbridge is possibly the smallest venue I have ever visited. It is run by the same people who organise the Cheese & Grain in Frome where the likes of Paul McCartney and the Foo Fighters have appeared in recent years. Last summer I was disappointed not to see Will when he played the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury, so when I saw that he was playing in Frome I knew I had to go. Also, I recently bought his 2015 album Postcards From Ursa Minor which I thought was great.

I arrived too early, so I had a pint in the pub before the doors to the Tree House opened at 7.30. I was a bit concerned that I would be the oldest person in the audience by about 40 years, but was pleased to see that Will seems to attract fans from all age groups. It was also great to see my nephew Howard and his girlfriend Sophie who had travelled from Bath for the evening. The support act was a young singer-songwriter from Manchester called Chloe Hawes who played a short set of about six songs. I had never heard of her before, but enjoyed her songs and liked her personality. I would describe her music as autobiographical folk with a self-effacing punkish attitude. She even got the audience joining in with the chorus of a couple of songs.

By the time Will Varley arrived on stage at 8.30 the venue was packed out and it got very hot with all the people crammed into the small room. I didn’t write down a setlist because I didn’t know all the songs, but I was pleased that Will played several songs from the Ursa Minor album including Send My Love To The System, From Halcyon, Seize The Night, As For My Soul, and the hilarious Dylanesque Talking Cat Blues. I also enjoyed other songs that I have heard previously on Youtube such as Weddings & Wars, (see video below) and We Don’t Believe You. There were also some newer songs which may be on the album I bought on Friday night, but I’m not sure. There is a lot I like about Will Varley, firstly his great singing voice which has an underlying melancholic edge and gives his ballads an effortless emotional quality. He has a great sense of humour as well, and is a natural story teller. I like his left leaning political lyrics as well. You can tell he has no time for Brexit and all that nonsense. When you see people like Ed Sheeran being multi-millionaires it seems an injustice that Will Varley who is at least just as talented is playing in tiny venues like this. 

Anyway, the time flew by, and I had to leave at 10.30 because my lift home was waiting, so I missed the encore. I said cheerio to Howard and Sophie and on my way out I spotted Chloe standing at the back listening to Will and told her that I enjoyed her songs, which she seemed pleased about. I was home by about 11.00 still buzzing from a great night, so I sat up until past midnight listening to Will Varley. What an enjoyable evening it had been.

Will Varley - Weddings and Wars. Frome Tree House. 24/02/2023

Night Boat To Tangier by Kevin Barry.

I just finished reading Night Boat To Tangier by Kevin Barry this evening, so I thought I’d write a quick little review while it is still fresh in my mind. My copy is a very attractive signed hardback first edition that I bought in Topping & Company of Bath a few weeks ago. I hadn’t heard of the author Kevin Barry before, but when the book caught my eye, I saw that Roddy Doyle had described it as ‘brilliant’, and when I saw that Kevin was Irish, Born in Limerick and now living in County Sligo I decided to buy it. When I began reading the book I found it quite hard work at first because of the style. It seemed like Kevin was trying to reinvent novel writing. There were no inverted commas to denote speech, and the paragraphs were short and spaced. It looked like a script for a play or film. Once I got used to this format and got immersed in the story I enjoyed the book immensely.

Most of the story takes place in the Spanish port of Algeciras in October 2018 where two ageing Irish gangsters Charlie Redmond and Maurice Hearn are waiting for the Tangier ferry to either arrive or depart. They are searching for Maurice’s daughter Dilly aged 23 who they haven’t seen for three years. They believe she may be travelling with a gang of hippy types who they describe as ‘Crusties’. This struck a chord with me because I remember passing through that ferry port myself in 1974 on our way to Morocco, and I was quite crusty in those days 😊. And even crustier on the way home!. Maurice only has one eye and Charlie walks with a limp. I won’t ruin the story by telling you how they acquired these afflictions. I think it is quite deliberate of the author to invite comparisons to Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. 

Large tracts of the book are conversations between the two main protagonists while they are waiting. They both know each other so well that they know what the other is thinking, so they might as well talk to themselves. In that respect the book is a testament to friendships forged in youth that can last a lifetime, even though the friends might do terrible things to each other. There is a huge amount of humour in the story and the author writes descriptively, lyrically, and poetically. Bob Dylan would be proud of some of the imagery that Kevin Barry conjures up. The humour is often punctuated by bursts of extreme violence, paranoia, and psychosis. Bad luck seems to follow the two of them and there are elements of Celtic mysticism and witchcraft. The lads make a fortune by importing tons of Moroccan hashish into Ireland. They try to legitimise the money by building housing projects, but are cursed by disturbing a fairy fort. 

In Spain Maurice meets the mysterious Karima who seems to have dark powers. I won’t tell you much more in case you want to read this book, but one of my favourite scenes takes place in a Shebeen called ‘The Judas Iscariot All Night Drinking Club’. The denizens of this place are like characters from medieval times and they are watching and listening to the two characters intently, knowing that something terrible is going to explode at any minute. Although the book is about two ruthless criminals, by the end of the story you can’t help sympathising with them. It isn’t really a gangster novel at all. It is a story about friendship and love and loss. All these emotions can leave people feeling bewildered, empty, and not knowing what to do with their lives. The relationship between Maurice and the love of his life Cynthia ends in tragedy, and is Dilly really Maurice’s daughter? I think I have said more than enough now, but I enjoyed this book very much indeed. Kevin Barry is a great Irish writer who I highly recommend.