2022 Birthdays

HOME 2022 BIRTHDAYS LAKES GLASGOW WALES GIGS MISCELLANEOUS

Both Mike and Kate were 70 this year. That sounds very old doesn't it? We try to think of Peggy Seeger, still gigging at 87, and that Chuck Berry gig we saw when he was still duck-walking across the stage at the age of 78. Very inspiring! Still things do seem to be getting a bit creaky. Sigh!

Kate organised a surprise party for Mike on his birthday. He had said he wasn't good at organising big parties, but if he did do anything he'd get a few musical friends around to play. So Kate secretly organised a posse of friends who had played with Mike in various bands over the years, and they just turned up on the doorstep! Wonderful!

We played all the old favourites: Black Magic Woman, All Along The Watchtower, and a few folk tunes we could still remember: King Of The Fairies, Scotch Mist... brilliant! A triple CD set is coming out next year.

Kate wanted her birthday in the Lakes, so the whole family gathered there and made it a special occasion. Birthday cake and birthday pie. We went to "End Cottage" in Chapel Stile, where we had been a couple of times before.

Mike has been embarking on a project to photograph old friends on park benches, as in the Paul Simon song "Bookends". The phrase "Memory brushes the same years" is particularly apt. That's one of the good things about friends who are the same sort of age as you - you can talk about things from the sixties amd seventies without getting blank looks. "Remember that Incredible String Band concert in Lady Mitchell Hall?", "Remember the Three Day Week?", "Remember when the first Planxty LP came out?" and "Do you remember seeing Strawberry Fields on Top Of The Pops?".

Old friends,

Sat on their park bench like bookends

A newspaper blown through the grass

Falls on the round toes

Of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today

Sharing a park bench quietly?

How terribly strange to be 70