September 2022

I'm not as good at updating this (or my other) site as I should be. I have a reason, in fact I have quite a few - I'm so busy living life, helping my daughter to achieve what she can in a new school, working on one poetry collection, one short stories collection and one novel, finalising the touches to be able to release our 3rd studio album (London Diary - Pieces of Eight #1), working on sourcing ISRC numbers for all UnderTow (and now Mitchell & Melhuish) releases, plus writing new material for our Prog opus; 'discoveryONE' which we are hoping to release before Christmas (2022).

I should try to be a little more robust in my approach to the Blog as it's not been updated for the majority of the year. It's not that I don't want to keep in touch with any audience I manage to attract to the page; it's just that I can't seem to manage everything I want too and one of the things I seem to 'drop' is updating the website as often as I should.

But one thing that has happened already this month has made me (and the world) take pause and two more have made me think about things a little more and put my fingers on the keys to write this new entry.

The first of the three is that my wife and I were invited to Hatfield Peveral in Essex for the ceremony of the BBC Essex 'Make a Difference' awards. I'd been fortunate to have been asked if I'd be a first round Judge to review all the 139 nominations across the 8 categories and create a shortlist to send on to the next (and final) round.

The resultant winners will go through to be considered for the wider National Awards. I was more than happy to help out and put something back and spent a few hours one afternoon meeting the other judges on Teams and negotiating our way through to the final selected few.

The day dawned and we set out and made our way down from Lincolnshire after the morning school run and spent the day driving down to the places we had spent many decades of our lives. When we arrived, at just coming up to 18:00hrs, we were concerned that we had gone to the wrong place as the fairly large car park was almost empty, with only one small BBC Essex van and a couple of other vehicles present. Meeting Matt Mackay - BBC Essex Producer and thoroughly nice chap - he informed us that due to events; the ceremony had been postponed.

The date was Septmber 8th 2022.

We sat in a local pub having a meal when we discovered that our dear Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, had died in Balmoral, surrounded by her family. We, and the world, were shocked and stunned by this. At age 96, with 70 years our Monarch, we were not surprised; but we were shocked. An amazing woman, a trailblazer in so many respects; we will never see her like again.

After our meal, we went to our hotel and sat watching the events unfold on the room TV. Along with others, the news of her passing affected me emotionally and I found myself writing a poem that evening called 'Our Queen'. I added it to the growing number of poems that will make up my latest poetry collection ('Messages to No One') and watched in sadness and shock as the world mourned the passing of this most amazing of human beings.

Over the next few days I continued to write more poems on this (and other) subjects but a second one based around feelings that the ever-present Queen's passing ('Not Gone') made me consider putting music underneath them (the lovely 'Golden Hands' by Keith Melhuish) and submit them via BBC Upload to BBC Essex.

Now, I had only uploaded a song (our attempt at a protest piece) earlier in the year regarding the war in Ukraine called 'War in the World (Today)' and two poems also on that subject ('Future Bombs' and 'Madness') but none of them made it to air due, I suspect; to the possible 'political' aspect of these places (which I do undersand). 

To be frank, I thought my time on air, my swift and fleeting brush with some form of wider exposure as an 'artiste' (I use the term advisedly) was now at an end (maybe to the pleasure of a number of people I know!), It had been months since anything I'd submitted made it and I thought 'that's it, it's over'. Though somewhat sad, I was thankful for the time and opportunity I'd had to actually be on air, and knew that I'd had more than most could ever hope to have. It also concerend me that I may have overstepped the line when I sent several copies of my latest / current poetry collection 'Amazing Skies' (dedicated to BBC Essex Radio and a few people in it) and I wonder if, even though it had come from a good place; it was interpreted as something else, something that made them think twice before inviting me back onto a programme again. I hoped this was not the case, but I do often allow my heart to rule my head and maybe sending these in wasn't the wisest thing I could have done - but it was too late now.

Having written these poems, edited them and put them over the pastoral music created by Keith for me for such purposes; I decided that I really had nothing to lose if I sent them in to the BBC. So I did. I wondered if this would be my last 'Hurrah' but I decided to do it anyway and on 12th September, I uploaded my two missives via BBC Upload and felt that no matter what happened; I was happy with my time on air, it was something to be proud of and leave as a (tiny tiny tiny) legacy to my kids.

Then, the third thing which fully ignited the need for this Blog post update happened. The very next day (13th September), Adam from BBC Essex phoned me about 15:45hrs and said he was going throught the Uploads and had listened to my two poems which he thought were lovely (especially with the 'moving' music underneath them) and wanted to play 'Our Queen' on air and invite me on to discuss the poem and the role creativity has on dealing with grief and sadness.

Of course, modestly, I accepted his invite and asked when I should get ready for the piece. He said, "oh in about 40 minutes if that's ok?" which knocked me back a bit to be frank! We arranged a Teams Meeting and told me it would be Sadie Nine chatting to me (one more in my BBC Essex 'Bingo' Card I could complete) so I set abut getting a PC on and ready to go up in my Studio,

I habitually record all of my moments as far as is possible and reorded this one too. I like to think I made some sense and outlined why I'd written what I had, how creativity helps me to combat sadness and grief, and where I was when I heard the news of her passing. Sadie was a lovely interviewer and even called me her 'Special Guest' at the end of the piece, allowing me to plug my website and where people could go to get some of my work if they wished. (To date I've not sold lots of books as a result, but you never know and it was a very kind thing for her to do!)

It was a delight, unexpected and wonderful and these three separate yet linked incidents meant I knew I wanted to record this time in my - and our - history so I can remember it in the future.

Thanks for reading, thanks for visiting my site and I wish you long life and prosperity.

Stay safe all,

Alan