A musical story for Christmas

I can’t recall whether it was Christmas or Easter when I first heard Lily Somerville sing. I do recall, however, that it was some six or seven years ago, at St John’s Church in Tamworth and it was during one of the major church services of the Catholic year.

Lily, who was around 14 years old at the time, is the daughter of a close friend of mine whom I first met at St John’s. My friend is massively musical; she plays in the church folk group and can happily lead musical evenings at home. 

Her late mother, in turn, was so musical that when she passed away, the family donated a piano to the church in her memory.

Lily, then, has music in her blood - and in her voice. On that evening, I sat captivated as she performed the most remarkable solo of church music for a girl of her age. “She’ll go far,” I thought.

Six or seven years later, her musical journey has taken her to the University of Falmouth in Cornwall, where she is studying for a degree in popular music - and this post is a shameless plug in an effort to get her and her new musical partner one step further up the ladder.

After that evening at St John’s, Lily went off my radar as she completed her school studies; but then, in early-2012, she started to post regularly on Twitter and Facebook as one-half of Lily and Meg, the group she had just formed with a fellow Falmouth student, Londoner Megan Markwick.

I watched and listened with increasing interest as they told of new songs they had written and of gigs they were planning around Cornwall. They wrote haunting modern-folk melodies and the voice which had so captivated me on that evening in church came back into my brain - this time, with an equally-impressive partner in the shape of Meg.

I liked their Facebook page, followed them every day - and then something quite remarkable happened. As editor of British Naturism magazine, I discovered that there was space for additional entertainment in the programme at Nudefest (British Naturism’s week-long summer event in June at Newperran in Cornwall, less than 30 miles from Falmouth).

Could they? Would they? How would the daughter of a friend I knew purely through church react to the chance to play at a naturist event?

I decided to approach her mum first. If she said ‘No’, all bets were off. But she didn’t. She quickly replied that it was an interesting proposition and that she would put it to Lily and Meg.

Within days, they got back to me - the show was on.

In fact, it became two shows. The original schedule only called for them to be a brief part of the entertainment at BN’s visit to the Eden Project on the opening night of Nudefest. Yet they were so well-received and so unfazed at playing before an audience of naturists that we asked them back to perform on the final night, at Newperran itself.

A little context is required here. Newperran has a bar/lounge, which we clear to make way for the disco equipment and dancefloor area. I’ve no doubt it’s tightly-packed on most weekend nights in the summer. On the final night of Nudefest, there are 250-300 naked people chatting, laughing, drinking, dancing. As I have said to ‘textile’ friends, once you have been to a naturist disco, you will never want to go to a disco clothed again.....

You could call it a daunting atmosphere in which to perform, then. But Lily and Meg, who had never been among a group of naturists until six days previously, were magnificent.

That crowded room fell silent for 35 minutes as they performed to what must have been one of the biggest audiences of their career so far - and they and the bar staff were the only clothed people in the room.

They weren’t even fazed when offered an encore alongside a naked band. It was a remarkable performance which I know won them a tremendous number of admirers.

Since then, they have written plenty more new songs, toured around Britain, produced an EP of their best music and I recently saw them play a fine set for a discerning (clothed!) audience at the Yardbird in Birmingham - one of the city’s best-respected venues for up-and-coming bands. 

It looks as if 2013 could be a great year for Lily & Meg. So get along to their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lilyandmeg?fref=ts and buy their EP at http://lilyandmeg.bandcamp.com/. If they are in your area, go and see them. As for British Naturism, we are hopeful of seeing them again at least once in 2013. They sent me a Christmas card last week, thanking BN 'for showing us such support and giving us the most unique gig opportunities we've had to date!"

Aren’t some of life’s journeys remarkable? I have a feeling that this one still has quite a way to go... 

Take my word for it - this post is worth reading

I love to write. Blog posts, website articles, newspaper features, press releases, magazine features, whole magazines - as long as it requires my brain to engage first gear and fingers to put pen to paper (or to keyboard), I love what I do.

Recently, I discovered part of the reason why. A time-management expert, whom I shall shortly be endorsing on LinkedIn, told me that I struggle with planning, organisation, tidiness and ‘To Do’ lists largely because I’m primarily a ‘right-brained creative’ person.

This is as opposed to being a ‘left-brained logical’ person, who is detail-oriented and strategic. Although we are all a combination of both, most people lean more to one side than the other.

It may not astound you, then, to learn that while HR people, accountants and lawyers tend to be mainly left-brained, the writers, musicians, designers and marketing people among us tend to be right-brained.

As I often say if I’m following one of the former in doing a 40-second pitch at a business networking event: “He/she does the numbers, I do the words...”

And words are what I do. The average 80-page edition of British Naturism magazine contains between 70-80,000 words; I probably write about 15-20 per cent of those while I certainly read (or certainly should read) about 90-95 per cent of them. I proofread roughly another 5,000 words every Saturday night for the sports pages of a newspaper in Birmingham. I’m about to embark on a fascinating new project, ghostwriting a book on business coaching, which will be 15-20,000 words long.

I recently completed a contract for a client who wanted 30 500-word articles for a website which he was having redesigned. I ghostwrite a 1,200-word weekly sports column for the aforementioned newspaper; thankfully, the columnist can talk for England, which does help my cause.

I am discussing the possibility of working for an acoustics expert, who may be great at his job but admits that explaining it on paper/the internet is a completely different matter.

Words, then, are my life; wordsmiths are my heroes. In no particular order, AA Gill, Robert Crampton, Hugh McIlvanney, Martin Samuel, Alan Lee, Giles Coren, Christopher Martin-Jenkins are the people I wish I had become. In 25 years in the words trade, I’ve worked with a lot of very good, some great, reporters - but very few great wordsmiths.

Three come immediately to mind, but I won’t name two of them, because they may well be reading this.

The other was Michael Blair, long-time rugby correspondent of The Birmingham Post in the days when that newspaper was even more widely-admired and poorly-read than it is today.

Blair, a Welshman of the beer, rugby and poetry persuasion, could write columns of jaw-dropping brilliance. He was vehemently against the professionalisation of rugby and is probably apoplectic at the thought of England turning out in purple shirts. 

He could make 800 words on Moseley v Coventry read like Dylan Thomas and the sub-editors on the sports desk would fight among ourselves to have the chance to handle his copy. 

He would laugh you out of the saloon bar for saying so, but he was the ultimate ‘right-brained creative.’

He was magnificent and knew he was. It would be instructive to learn just how many people read The Post purely for Blair - I know I did, when my dad bought home a copy from work every day.

Great wordsmiths like that make newspapers - these days, they also make blogs, websites  and any other of the myriad ways in which we consume words in this technological age.

I don’t think I am anywhere near as good as any of those named above but I’m increasingly coming to realise that being ‘right-brained creative’ makes me very good at what I do - and the number of people who have recently lined up to endorse me on LinkedIn for related skills such as writing, editing and blogging proves it.

The basic human need to be admired by your peers is a whole new blog post in itself, but recent events have given Martin Warrillow Publishing Services Ltd (as we now are), a big lift.

As 2012 nears its end, I’m hoping that the new year will be the biggest and best yet for MWPS - whatever happens, rest assured that I’ll be writing about it here.

An anniversary worth remembering

I try not to mention Mrs W too often in these musings. After all, it’s my blog and as she’s generally a private person, I don’t think she would take too kindly to having her life broadcast all over t’interweb.

However, this week marks an occasion which can’t be allowed to pass without some form of recognition. Wednesday October 24 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of our first date; the first time that Martin Philip Warrillow and Carmel Mary Gallagher, as she then was, set eyes on each other.

And this was no ordinary first date. It seems extraordinary to recount the tale a quarter-of-a-century later, but this was a blind date.

We were set up - and set up in a manner that still makes people go ‘aaahhh.....’ when the story is told.

My best friend (with whom I worked) and her best friend (with whom she worked) had recently started seeing each other. And they had decided that we, two lonesome and relatively private souls who would often have trouble saying ‘boo’ to a goose, were made for each other.

Photographs were exchanged and, to be fair, arms were put behind backs to a certain degree before we both agreed to meet each other. After all, nothing was going to come of it and one of us probably wouldn’t turn up anyway.

But both of us did turn up. As Cilla Black’s Blind Date was broadcast on ITV (I swear I haven’t made that up, by the way...) we met under a street light next to a telephone box on a housing estate in Tamworth.

We went for a few drinks in various Tamworth hostelries which no longer exist (Corvettes and Manhattans, anyone?), I introduced her to the intricacies of supporting Tamworth FC, drove her home at the end of the evening and that was that.

Except that I rang her the following evening....and the following evening.......and we decided to meet again the next weekend.  

Which we did - and if my mind doesn’t play tricks on me after all these years, it wasn’t long before we went out for the evening with the couple who had set us up.

It also wasn’t long before Carmel was spending most evenings and weekends at my grotty bedsit in Tamworth town centre, which we still recall as ‘The Hammer House of Horror.’ We acquired a kitten, a story which deserves a blog post in itself, then began to realise that we had an astonishing amount in common.

So much so that it was no particular surprise to either of us when, in the spring of 1989, I asked her to marry me. That great event took place on July 21 1990 at St John’s RC Church in Tamworth, with the couple who had brought us together acting as best man and chief bridesmaid. An extra twist to the tale is that they, too, became husband and wife, being married in September 1990.

In the 22 years since our wedding day, we have climbed waterfalls in Jamaica; had a knife pulled on us in Morocco; lost each other for three hours in the deserts of Fuerteventura; enjoyed the holiday of a lifetime in South Africa; lost the aforementioned kitten in the half-built roof of the apartment complex in which we lived at the time (we found her safe and well and she died of old age in 2007); helped each other through various illnesses and spent rather too long in hospitals; enjoyed wonderful holidays at my father’s house in Spain and with Carmel’s Irish relatives in County Leitrim; argued, bickered, smiled, laughed, cried, shouted, screamed, agreed, disagreed; acquired another cat; had some fabulous meals and some dreadful ones; both got tattoos; become ardent naturists; moved house only once (believe me, that was enough); attended too many funerals and too few weddings; suffered through the gloom of job loss and still come out safely at the other side; been as near to penniless as we ever want to get; watched me set up my own business.

In short, done everything that couples who have known each other for 25 years can expect to do. 

And we’re still here. We believe firmly in marriage as a force for good and that all that stuff about ‘for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health’ actually means something. 

Who knows whether we’ll make it to 26 years, never mind 30, or 40, or 50? But as we come to mark the anniversary of the most important date in our lives with a quiet meal in a local Indian restaurant, I know we can look back and say that we both did the right thing when we decided to meet under that street light on that Tamworth housing estate. 

A high-speed night of great entertainment

One of my most enduring memories of growing up in Kidderminster in the mid-1970s is of the man who lived over the road from us. 

If my fading brain serves me correctly, his name was John Foley and he owned a butcher’s shop on the council estate where my grandparents lived.

There are two things I will never forget about him, though; he had the most spectacular ginger sideburns and he was a fanatical Cradley Heath speedway fan (to my knowledge, the two facts are not linked).

Every week, he and his family would head off to Dudley Wood to watch the Heathens race motorbikes which had one gear and no brakes and could reach speeds of up to 70mph.

In those days, Cradley were one of the best-loved sporting clubs in the Black Country; they had a rivalry with their near-neighbours at Wolverhampton, as well as those across the West Midlands at Coventry, which made speedway hugely popular. The crowds were in their thousands, meetings had regional and national TV coverage (on proper television not pay-TV, which didn’t exist) and the riders were national names.

For a few years before I went off to university in 1982, I became infected by John’s passion. I, too, would drive the 20-odd miles to Dudley Wood on summer Saturday nights and inhale the pungent smell of the methanol which powers speedway bikes; marvel at the skill of riders who could swing a motorbike around a corner at 70mph with consummate skill, only occasionally ending up with a broken bone or three.

But then, things turned sour. Dudley Wood is now a housing estate and although Cradley Heath still have a speedway team, they race in the National League (the third level of the sport in Britain, below the Elite and Premier Leagues) and do so at Monmore Green, the home of Wolverhampton. 

Yet speedway is still alive elsewhere in the West Midlands. Wolverhampton and Coventry have teams in the Elite League, as do Birmingham Brummies. The Brummies have been around on and off since the sport’s heyday in the 1940s and ‘50s, but their latest reincarnation, which began in 2007 and is based at Perry Barr greyhound stadium, has risen to the Elite League and they are looking very likely to reach the four-team end-of-season playoffs, which begin at the start of October.

I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the Brummies take on Kings Lynn Stars last week and although it was my first speedway meeting since at least 1981, I felt instantly at home. The familiar smell of methanol, the roar of the bikes as they flew out of the starting gate and yes, the ‘how do they do that?’ feel as the riders flung their machines around the four bends, seemingly losing control and then, a split-second later, bringing everything back into line and flying down the straight for a few seconds before reaching the next turn (the average race takes about a minute to complete four laps of a 300-metre track).

Mrs W and I watched the first two races of the night from a rickety wooden stand on the pits bend, loving the smell and the noise and getting covered in shale dust, before we headed up to the directors’ box to wash down the final 13 heats with a pint and a really quite splendid curry.

Plenty of the spectators watched from the bar area, where huge plate-glass windows shielded out the noise but still gave an excellent view of the races, while the really hardy stood outside on an increasingly chilly night, with just the width of the greyhound track between them and the action; if Mrs W hadn’t been with me, that’s probably where I would have been. I’m a firm believer in standing up at football matches (one of the many reasons I love non-league) and sports like speedway need to be viewed close-up to get a sense of just how brave and skilled the riders are.

The riders, incidentally, are a story in themselves. Heats are scored three points for a win, two for second place, one for third and none for fourth and last place. Riders get paid per point so if they struggle, they don’t get paid. 

That’s why a lot of the best riders travel Europe, earning money by racing for teams in speedway’s heartland in Poland, Russia and Scandinavia as well as in the UK. So they could be in Coventry on Monday, Sweden on Thursday, Poland on Sunday and so on, throughout the summer season from March to October. It’s a tough life, never mind the constant risk of injury and, heaven forbid, death.

If you’ve never been to a speedway meeting, I urge you to give it a go. We enjoyed two hours of thrilling entertainment which saw the Brummies stage an impressive mid-meeting comeback to win 51-41 and further boost their play-off chances. 

 Generally, I don’t ‘get’ motorsport. I would rather paint the kitchen than watch a Formula One Grand Prix or a MotoGP race, yet my first visit to speedway in 30 years reminded me why I loved those Saturday nights at Dudley Wood. I’ll certainly be going back. 

Cut off from the world....or so it seemed

How can it take 20 days to unlock a mobile phone? Regular readers will recall that my last post was largely concerned with a nasty incident involving a Nokia handset, a car dashboard, an open window and a sharp left-hand turn into Mill Street, Tamworth. 

I had hoped to be reconnected within a couple of days, having bought a cheap handset from a well-known supermarket and acquired a replacement SIM card, but a cashflow crisis and then the fact that my new handset had to be sent away to be unlocked scuppered that.

But TWENTY DAYS? As anyone who has tried to contact me will know, at times I’ve felt like I was living in Outer Mongolia. Of course, there are times when it is useful to be incognito (the Friday afternoon of Derby Beer Festival, for a start!) but such is the nature of our all-pervasive communications world that not having a mobile can sometimes leave you feeling as if you have had your arm cut off.

Is anyone trying to contact me with offers of work? How many millions of text messages have I missed? How many of them were not viral jokes or cold calls, but actually important? Is there a problem with the switchover? Will I have to change my number? If I do, what happens to the £75 worth of swanky new business cards I have just had printed - which feature my current number?

It’s not been a fun three weeks, although I must say ‘Thank You’ to the man in the repair shop, who looked at me with increasing concern as my weekly visits became twice-weekly, then daily.

However, I’m now back in the land of the mobile phone and spent most of yesterday trying to fathom it out. It’s not a smartphone; it doesn’t make the tea, it just allows me to make calls, send texts, get on t’interweb and play games, should I wish. But it’s still complicated enough for someone who spent a few minutes trying to extract the SIM card from inside the handset to get at the authentication code. 

 And, of course, although I have been able to retain my phone number, I've lost everyone's numbers because my old SIM card was smashed. So if I haven't already asked and you think I had your number on my old phone, please PM me on Facebook or e-mail me with the details. It might help me feel as if I am back in touch with the world.

Up, down, broke, smashed - but still loving life!

It’s amazing that it’s been two-and-a-half years since I had what my wife insists on calling a ‘proper’ job. 

She defines that as one where you go into work at a given time of day, come home at (more or less) a given time of day and your employer drops a wedge of cash into your bank on a given day of every month.

The reality, of course, is that ‘proper’ jobs are few these days - especially in the world of the wordsmith. Since I was last in full-time work, my previous employer has had another two rounds of cutbacks and I learnt this week that the disease has spread to Australia. 

A friend of mine on a newspaper in Cairns could soon be faced with uprooting his young family to Brisbane (just over 1,000 miles away) or leaving the newspaper world which has been his life since the age of 16 - nearly three decades. 

There are jobs in the media, of course; I could move to London, while the work I do from home and which I love dearly as editor of British Naturism is as good as it gets, in my view. 

But apart from BN, I am one of many thousands of freelances scrambling to find work at a time when the market keeps diminishing. 

And after two-and-a-half years, following 24 years in newspapers, the ups and downs of this lifestyle are still the hardest thing for me to cope with. Take last week, for instance; I had a meeting in a smart Birmingham hotel with a client and a web designer over a project which could be one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. We made good progress, continue to do so and although the rewards are not great at the moment, the future looks bright.

On Sunday, I saw the lead story of a column which I ghost-write appear on the back page of the Birmingham Sunday Mercury. We rarely admit it but weatherbeaten old hacks like me still get a thrill out of seeing something we’ve written appear on the printed (newspaper) page. 

Yet last week also saw letters demanding that the family car be given its MOT and new tax disc. In years gone by, that was just an annual distraction. At the moment, the financial side-effects of having the two land at once have knocked us sideways for a while.

Then, this week - to be precise, yesterday, Thursday July 5 2012. It began in great style as I gave a presentation about naturism and my work at BN to the Tamworth branch of 4Networking.

It isn’t me, but the 4N area leader, who has gone on record as saying that “Martin had the room riveted as his passion and delicate advocacy of what can be a debatable subject was handled beautifully’ Thanks, Debs!

The meeting got even better as I then met up with a local businessman I have been trying to engage with for a while to talk about work. We have a meeting lined up next week and if our proposals go ahead, it will be another big boost. 

This sits alongside a separate project I was discussing on Tuesday; one that I’m sure can work although I don’t want to jinx it.

So, all good, yes? Until I rested my phone on the dashboard of the car while driving Mrs W home yesterday evening, then watched it fly out of the open window when I turned a corner.

With hindsight, stopping on a busy road and trying to retrieve handset, SIM card, battery and cover was not the act of a sane, rational 48-year-old with a 2:1 degree. I could have been run over; I should have just shrugged my shoulders; but you don’t, do you?

So I ran the risk, gathered all the bits together, reassembled the phone - and realised that the screen was bent and shattered beyond recognition.

I’d really love an iPhone (purely for work purposes, obviously..) but I can’t afford one at the moment, so off I went this morning to our local branch of a well-known national supermarket to buy a cheap handset which I can get unlocked at a store in town.

Unfortunately, this tale ends on a note with which all owners of small businesses will be grimly familiar - the cashflow crisis. I have three hefty payments due in next week; they will be paid, I trust implicitly the people involved. But the money’s not there yet. The bank account contains nothing; nada, nowt, zilch, as they say. 

The phone will have to wait. So if you’re trying to reach me by phone this weekend, I’m afraid it’s the old-fashioned landline. Just like back in the days when I had a ‘proper’ job.

Fun in the sun? Well, we certainly had fun....

I shocked myself this morning when I realised that I’ve been blogging here for just over 12 months. It was on June 6 2011 that I first put finger to keyboard with a piece about my interest in a wide-ranging number of sports. That first post ended: “Those that can play sport, do; those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, write about it, talk about it, express views of varying relevance and validity.... With a nod in the direction of my other interests, including real ale, as well as an occasional look at my professional life as a magazine editor, that is what this blog will do.”

In the 12 months since, I hope I’ve lived up that promise. It’s certainly been an enjoyable 12 months and if you delve into the archive of this blog, you’ll see that it has indeed been wide-ranging.

Football and ale have featured prominently, politics has nudged its way in occasionally, I’ve covered journalism, naturism, genealogy, business networking, my loathing for Dominic Littlewood..... I’ve never been short of topics and if there has been the occasional hiatus, it’s simply been down to time constraints rather than lack of ingenuity on your blogger’s part.

However, one thing doesn’t seem to have changed in 12 months - the dismal British summer weather. My third post, 366 days ago today, was about Nudefest, British Naturism’s annual seven-day extravaganza at Newperran Holiday Park in Cornwall. While acknowledging that those present had really enjoyed themselves, I posted: “The weather? Oh, the weather was dreadful. Howling gales, pouring rain, glowering stormclouds, only brief glimpses of the sun which is supposed to be the raison d’etre of naturism.”

Nudefest 2012, which took place from June 10-17, was equally storm-tossed. When Mrs W and I arrived on Thursday at about 1pm, there were already campers packing up their battered tents and heading home after less than four days. Once again, events which were designed to provide fun in the sun were moved indoors or simply abandoned (indoor nude archery, anyone? Thought not...).

It seemed to rain constantly, with an accompanying storm-force gale, from about 2pm on Thursday until late on Saturday evening and it was frustrating, to say the least, to wake on the final Sunday morning to see light clouds, blue sky and more than a hint of sun.

Still, as we did last year, we made the best of it and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The editor of British Naturism magazine gave a well-received talk about his work, a visit to Skinners Brewery in Truro will hopefully be repeated in 2013, the Eden Project played host to what I am told was an entertaining evening on the opening Sunday and there were pub games and a riotous quiz, as well as some excellent musical entertainment. 

BN members Billy Bottle and Martine played a unique brand of soulful music at what should have been ‘Picnic in the Park’ but which twice became ‘Picnic in the Bar,’ the traditional sing-along around the piano on the final night seemed to be delivered with more gusto than ever before and Nudefest gave a couple of excellent young student musicians the opportunity to shine before an unexpected audience.

Lily and Meg are first-year Popular Music students at the University of Falmouth. A chance conversation saw them become part of the programme at the Eden Project evening, before they wowed a crowd of over 200 naturists at Newperran on the final night. I’ve seen a fair few musicians at BN events in my time, but never have I seen a hushed room so spellbound by what they were seeing. 

As we made our way to our caravan late on Saturday evening, still full of adrenalin from conga-ing through the bar, out into the car park and back to the strains of “Is this the way to Amarillo?” Mrs W turned to me, smiled broadly and said: “You know, I really enjoyed myself tonight.”

Given the appalling weather, there can be no better praise for Nudefest 2012 than that.