Chez Spud

I’m just banking a memory here. You can read it if you like, but I’m writing this for me more than I ever usually do. It’s a memory that was lost to me, but was returned due to a little chitter chatter with Mocha Beanie Mummy on Twitter. As you do.

Turns out we both studied music as the same places, but not at the same time as she is (rather unkindly I thought) somewhat younger than me. I hate that. She’s a cellist. I’m a flautist and a singer. I’m assuming we’re both pianists too since ‘they’ (whoever ‘they’ might be) don’t let you read music unless you can play the piano. Even thought some of us play it shocking badly…alas I mean me.

What Mocha Beanie Mummy reminded me about, a memory long forgotten, is that I used to study at the Royal Northern College of Music as a teenager. Having been spotted at a local music competition by a professor at the RNCM I would travel from the south of England up to Manchester for my lessons, with the Professor of Flute. Seems kind of mad now I think about it. From the age of 13 until I was 18, every 2 weeks, I’d get on a train from my home town and trundle all the way up north. Always alone. Often changing at Birmingham (argh, so busy) or Crewe (hardly any better). And my grandfather would meet me at the station and take me in to Manchester, a 45 minute drive, for a 1 hour music lesson. Then I’d stay with him and my Nana overnight and I’d trundle all the way home again the next day.

What a huge commitment for everyone involved. It’s was a huge financial stretch for my parents to find the money for the lesson never mind the train fare. But it was generally deemed to be “worth it” because I was training to become a professional musician and I was under the tutelage of the country’s leading flute teacher. Hmmmm….somehow I changed my mind about becoming a musician later in life but I’m sure my parents forgave me…right?

But the memory I’m banking isn’t about the lessons or the train journey or the career I might have had. It’s about my grandfather, my lovely grandad. This is the only photo I had to hand which is, I think, taken in the late 80 in the garden of the house I grew up in. That’s my mother next to him, his daughter in law. I think we are about the same age in that photo. We are alarmingly alike.

My grandad was many, wonderful things but a good driver he was not. You pretty much took your life in your hands every time you got in a car with him. Swerving was a particular skill of his. “Mind that car Bert!”, came the constraint refrain from my Nana (a non driver) every time she braved the passenger seat.

For years he’d ferry me from Runcorn station to the darkest part of Manchester, Moss Side, where the RNCM happened to be situated. He’d deposit me in the ‘woodwind building’ and then he’d make his way to the student cafe, with his copy of the Liverpool Echo. I’d assumed he’d sat and read his paper and drank his tea (one sugar, just like me…I went off it for a while and he was devastated…he said I’d let the side down) until it was time to collect me, time to weave our way home . I was quite wrong. He actually always, always spent the hour chatting to the students. Yes, my Grandad (in his 70s/80s) spent an hour in the cafe talking to the 18-21yo students and was always full of stories and colour and the details of their lives. I was slightly embarrassed, of course, because I was a teenager and that was my default position.

But even as a teen I knew my Grandad had a special gift. He could talk to anyone because he was interested in everyone. And I know, without a doubt, that those 18-21 year olds in the student cafe didn’t laugh at my Grandad…they didn’t snigger or roll their eyes…because he was charming and interesting, kind and thoughtful…and he listened in a way that no one I’ve ever known could do. He wasn’t hugely educated or smart or well read or all that stuff, he was a farm labourer all his working life. He never showed off, never tried to prove anything or get one over by putting someone down.

All he ever did was see the best in everyone, all he wanted was for us all to do our best and be happy. In the quietest, most understated way, he absolutely exuded this…a kind of addiction to seeing the best in everyone…a true fascination in the story that each of us has within us. Even the 18,19,20, 21 year old students sitting in poorly lit cafe in a dodgy part of a run down city.

He died 18 months ago and when I think of him I think about his quietness, thoughtfulness, his old-fashioned gentlemanly approach to life and his curiosity to learn and know about things. And, now, I add to my memories the vision of him sitting in the cafe, Liverpool Echo spread before him, cup of sweet tea and a bun to hand, flat cap on the chair beside him….and a couple of a young men and women chatting to him, hopefully appreciating how their lives were being touched.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• The Gallery…Dads
• A life well lived…a man well loved xxx
• Storyboards
• Lost: one mojo