In my next life...

I'd like to be a musician, or possibly a dancer. If, we get a choice in such things, and I do believe in some hopeful, abstract way that one's soul might return to this wonderful and messed-up place we call The Earth.
I think I've been a reasonably good person, so far - at least enough not to return as a dung-beetle, a leech or a self-obsessed, narcissistic, country-ruining politician. Hopefully.
Over the years I've photographed my incredibly talented (I am allowed to say that, even though I am British, as it's true) pianist husband in his various groups. Working at a Conservatoire now, he has been fortunate to meet several wonderful fellow musicians and I've visually recorded them all, with various degrees of success. I have a degree in photography but also have an inbuilt tendency to feel fear at any sign of new technology, so the workings of my Canon have been mysterious for a long time.
So, yes. Being a musician. I have been, to a very small extent - sang in a rock band, played snare in a samba group, but to really have that deep musical knowledge I regard through the lens as I snap away at their postures and expressions, suspended somewhere in another world of music, is something else.
Which instrument in this imagined new life would I choose? Probably the cello, or double bass, maybe a bass bassoon. Something with a woody resonance that creeps through into your core. Alas, in this life, I'll probably have to make do with singing a few covers, or perhaps my own stuff - novels and songs. Why not?
Here's a bit of a blues song written years ago when Ezra, aged about four (now twenty) became obsessed with train journeys. and asked me if we could go on that Dirty Train to Wallsall. I presume we must have been standing around in Birmingham New Street at the time. Can't recall now.

I'm on a dirty, dirty, dirty train to Walsall, a dirty, dirty train to Walsall.
Man, it is so far and there ain't no restaurant car, I'm on a dirt, dirty, dirty train to Walsall.
Lord, I'd give my soul for a hot bacon and tomato roll, I'm on a dirty, dirty, dirty train to Walsall,
etc, sung in a mournful blues façon.

Anyway, back to the real thing and here's some photos of Mark playing with talented colleagues: flautist, Julie and percussionist, Julian; and in another group, Viola player, Yesault.







And possibly my favourite photo: Mark, Yseult and dancer, Yuko.

The attic of the mind

The brain, as many people have observed, many times, is an incredible thing.
Amongst all the usual day to day remembering of stuff: where did I put my glasses, don't put unleaded in the car, must buy more milk, etc ,etc, there are all the stored away, useful memories that surface every now and then, such as recalling how wide/tall a transit van is when you hire one (although, this can fail) how to play badminton after twenty years, and how to say 'can I have the bill' in Greek/Bulgarian/Russian-whatever.
Another whole category of recollections, distant and recent are also stored: peoples faces and names; types of plants, the best route into the centre of Birmingham, how to unblock a sink, remove a tic from a dog, get strawberry jam to set; useless info about who won the Eurovision song contest in 1983, how many haircuts David Beckham has had, exactly what Bill Clinton did with cigars, and so on, for many decades.
Then there all the surprise memories; ones that suddenly surface and you had no idea they were there, occupying some filing cabinet in the back of your head.
On a walk at Badbury Rings in Dorset recently, one of those very memories appeared in my mind as clear as the day I had been standing on that grassy hill fort forty or so years ago.
It had been a day similar to the one in my photo, but the field full of movement as horses pounded up the incline, then to spring over one of the brush jumps in a continual curving motion, clods flying and the air thick with thudding sounds and warm horse skin smells.
Odd . . . for all those years that memory had never surfaced. There it was, as clean and brightly  polished as it had been stored away at that particular point in time.