Driving Missed Crazy

I have been putting olive oil in my ears to soften the wax and then placing cotton wool in my ears to keep it from running down my neck. I was the only one at our rehearsal on Saturday and Sunday that didn’t need ear plugs.

Yesterday I got my ears syringed two days early due to a cancellation for the ‘Practise Nurse’and the world of sound returned to me again in its crystal clear beauty. I can safely say the letter ‘S’ has been put back onto all the places it was meant to be.
My ears completely block up after every twelve months or so and I have to go through the same routine to get them clear each time. I found now that blocked ears begin to kick off my vertigo and I have been getting sick again, hopefully now they are clear I should start to feel better again.

I have a theory that they block so quickly because over the years they have been hammered by poor PA’s and bad rehearsal rooms and so they accelerated the production of wax to protect them. My hearing is still pretty good, so my system has been looking after me over the years.
My fingers are beginning to heal after our recent marathon rehearsals, my voice is returning and all my aching muscles are recovering after a couple of nights sleep.

It was our first time in this studio and in line with tradition it was an oven. We were having trouble concentrating and had to have more breaks than we intended just to prevent ourselves from passing out. In one such break we were informed that air conditioning was being installed a few days later.

For us that was unfortunate, it was bad timing, we missed it.

Earlier I was driving over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge in Dartford, listening to the Stone Roses first album playing from a dusty old cassette as we slowly made our way to Brighton. I was looking at the view when I decided that I’d better put my full concentration on the road. The traffic wasn’t moving very fast but you never know.
Later I found out that two crashes occurred either side of the bridge near enough to the same time we were crossing. In one accident a man died, in the other a man was injured when he lost control of his motorbike, his son who was riding pillion was killed.

You never know what is going to happen in front of you when you’re driving.

For us, we were fortunate, it was good timing, we missed it

1959

My mother worked in the defence industry which was cool then as she had been one of the unsung heroes of workers building the radar systems that helped us beat the Nazis during the Second World War. Nothing grand mind you, she just did copper winding year in year out and kept food on our plates. Not so cool to be working in the defence industry now as it has little to do with defence, more to do with killing people in far off countries who are getting in the way of our dodgy foreign policies or making profits from supplying arms which will eventually get turned back upon us.

No, it was different then and Cossors, the American company that employed her decided to open a new factory in Harlow, Essex. They then asked their employees if they would like to work there with the incentive that they would have a brand new home in a brand new town and get help with the moving expenses.
My parents jumped at the chance. Having spent the war in London and finding it slow to get back on it’s feet in the years following it, this was the break that they needed. A fresh break and a new future.

It might have been something to do with an impending eviction too!

We became New Town Pioneers, and we had London, Hertfordshire and the rest of Essex outside our circled wagons.

I was five when I arrived in Harlow and I still remember my first impressions to this day.

It was like a gleaming Citadel beamed down in a ray of light from the sky.
The houses, the streets, shops, were so new, the concrete so clean and white that when the sun shone it was difficult to look at it.

I began to squint…

For the first time in my life I needed sunglasses and I wasn’t on holiday.

Yeah, a fresh break and a new future, anything was possible here…