For my Mum - in memoriam

 MARTIN SIMPSON - SHE SLIPS AWAY

My mum lived in a house full of music, a piano, my dad’s electronic organ, and loads of guitars, whether me and my brother were playing them, pretending to dance to the Shadows with my brothers school pals (I played the piano stool drum set when I was considered old enough!) they on their guitar cricket and tennis bats or listening to all those endless records. 

She bought me my first guitar (an Eko 12 string that I still have) with money left me in my paternal grandmother’s will . . . . . . . Steve my brother a Framus electric, an Epiphone 6 string acoustic from Lou Maccari’s in that there London or endless variations upon whatever we were listening to on the gramophone whether that was Bob Dylan, The Shads, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Big Bill Broonzy and too many to list. . .the house always rang with music and laughter. She had sung in the Hallé Orchestra choir and loved her own music from dance bands of the twenties and thirties to Bix Biederbecke, to Joan Sutherland and The Oldham Tinkers to the classics though less so here than my dad who was drawn to the more melancholic grandeur of Mahler Beethoven, Bach and Mozart but both could recite a music hall joke song too!  Susannah’s a Funniful Man? Anyone?

She loved it! and could dance a mean Charleston when so moved!

This piece by Martin Simpson struck me so hard at the time and I had it  played at her funeral for a moment’s reflection on a life well lived that was filled with love . . . . . . 

Why shouldn’t she go accompanied by the very best?