Wednesday, 5 March 2008

Inheritance Songs 11.08.07

Hi everyone, this is Emily, Christine's daughter; my mum, Robbie and my brother Sam have gone on holiday to Norfolk for two weeks, and I promised my mum that I'd continue her blogging addiction whilst she is gone so here I am. She left me a blog to get us started so here it is:

I was reluctantly listening to Radio 4 on Saturday morning, Saturday's are not the same since the demise of John Peel and his programme Home Truths. For a while I refused to listen to the replacement programme because the presenter is so irritating that it is a triumph of willpower to resist flinging the radio through the window. I think the words smug, patronising and supercilious sum her up fairly adequately. Anyway, they have this thing called heritage tracks where a person is asked to choose two pieces of music, one that they inherited and one that they would like to pass on. It is a sort of desert island discs for the numerically challenged - it only requires 2 records instead of about eight. It set me thinking about what I would choose.

As always, I found it hard to make my mind up. I think the inherited song would be I Believe, I think it was sung by Frankie Lane. When I was a very young child my parents had a big Chrysler car, it was sort of American looking and it had a bench seat at the front. It was long before the days of seat belts and I remember sitting at the side of my dad and listening to him sing the first couple of lines of that song as he drove along. Perhaps singing is overstating it, he was as tuneless as a bullfrog (that's where I get it from), but I have carried those words with me through life - I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows. As it turned out quite a few drops of rain have fallen in my life so the hope of 'flowers growing' helped a lot.

The other contender for a song that I inherited was Dear Old Donegal, I have no idea who sang that, but my mum used to sing all the time (she could sing quite nicely) and when we were driving around in the car my brother used to ask her to sing this song over and over again.

The song that I would like to pass on is more difficult, I'm not really that interested in music and my personal favourite song The Killing of Georgie by Rod Stewart is hardly appropriate. When the children were younger my husband Eric always played CD's or tapes in the car. I remember Emily being very small and requesting the 'Melton John' music. We used to listen to the BeeGee's a lot too and if I was choosing a personal favourite it would be I started a Joke, but this has to be something to pass on so that will not do. I think I would settle for an Eva Cassidy song because we all loved listening to her music. I love Fields of Gold, but it is so sad and haunting and my choice should be more uplifting, so I would choose Eva Cassidy's version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

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