Earworms, happy Christmases and things
Do you know what an earworm is? I didn’t, until yesterday. And it has nothing to do with very small wriggling things. Nor even ears. Something far, far worse, but I’m very thankful to say I once had one. Things will become clear.
In 1985 the Choir of Canterbury Cathedral recorded a programme of Christmas carols, some old, some new, some of my own (and one of them was written because of an earworm). For the record sleeve I was asked to shoot a picture of just the trebles on their own and the result appears above. I had insisted that they should actually sing while I was shooting and they performed magnificently, the sound reinforced by the stone stairway behind them. By the time I had finished everyone was feeling very Christmassy.
I like feeling Christmassy. It was very Christmassy indeed down Fleet Street one dark afternoon thirty years earlier. A one-word cliché comes rushing in: Dickensian. It epitomises the whole of the next hour. Stanley Hayter, Typographer to the Press and also to the Kodak Company, had invited us copywriters to join him in his little Fleet Street attic workroom for a sherry before Christmas. The five of us climbed the three flights of narrow wooden staircase to the top floor and knocked on his door. Tall, slow moving, straight-backed, impeccably well-mannered and almost embarrassingly polite, Stanley (always addressed as ‘Mister Hayter’) welcomed us into the little workroom, lit for the occasion by everyday white candles. Delightfully snug and very Dickensian.
‘Now, while I’m pouring, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling, ‘I am going to play you a record.’ He moved in his considered way to the wooden filing cabinet where his gramophone stood. He placed the pickup on to the 78rpm HMV disc and we heard the Choir of King’s College Chapel begin Once, in royal David's city. Instantly, the chatter stopped. Outside, the light was fading quickly. Through the small window we could see the lighted windows opposite and hear the traffic below. The carol continued as he handed round our sherry. With him we waited silently until the final organ chord faded.
And then with perfect timing he cried, in an excellent Father Christmas voice, ‘A very happy Christmas to you all!’ to which we responded and a jolly time continued for longer than planned.
I felt Christmassy throughout the whole of spring, summer and autumn in 1984 because I was very busy writing new Christmas carols for a Jubilate Group publication, Carols for Today (Hodders), now superseded by The Carol Book (RSCM) and its recent supplement. One morning I woke with one of these irritating things which I have just discovered are called earworms. The name usually refers to tunes, tunes that stick in the memory and keep on circulating round the head whether or not you have invited them and often producing an involuntary breathy whistle. But for me it was not a tune, it was words. Just two words. ‘Small wonder’.
‘Small wonder’ went round and round in my head at breakfast, all the morning, all the afternoon, all the evening and all the following day. And then I thought of writing something and getting rid of it that way. Another carol? A carol based on those two words? But once I had started I realised that there is nothing about God becoming man that you could call unremarkable. Small wonder that God should become a newborn baby? No, a great wonder. I was sunk.
But then, after hours of re-reading the story itself, it clicked.
And what developed was the Christmas carol, No Small Wonder. I sent the result to that composer of exquisite choral music, Paul Edwards. He tells me with characteristic self-effacement that the music practically wrote itself as he read the words. The day my letter arrived he wrote the music while waiting for his local Launderette machine to finish. Back at home he wrote it out in full and what emerged was the wonderful music for full choir.
As for the earworm, it left before I could say thank you.
A very happy Christmas.
It’s funny about the trees
Patrick Lichfield's December photograph for the 1986 Kodak Calendar.
'It's funny about the trees,' I said. My publisher was putting on his hat. We stood at our front door. He had come to see me about the book he was about to tackle and eventually publish.
Half an hour earlier he had cleared his throat and said he had a suggestion to make. ‘You see,’ he began, ‘I noticed that a lot of your poems mentioned trees. And a lot of the others are about childhood, growing up, and so on. I was wondering what you would say to splitting the collection into roughly half. So, two books, you see? One about trees and the other about, well, other things.’
I agreed instantly. I would have agreed if he’d suggested printing them on toilet rolls. And as he was leaving I remember saying, ‘You know, it’s funny about the trees. I had no idea I’d mentioned them that often.’
So one book was called It’s Funny About the Trees and the other, A Suburban Boy.
He was probably right about my liking for trees because four years earlier, in 1984, during the annual bout of brainwork about the theme for the Kodak Calendar in two years’ time I wondered about trees. Stark, leafless trees silhouetted against a bright winter sky; a tree house swarming with kids; a close-up of a leaf, its veins standing out; an apple tree with fallen fruit. Yes. For days I sketched in colour, scrapped, sketched, until I was satisfied. I knew it would work, but how would the marketing director and his followers react? It was my annual headache.
I decided to have six photographers, each shooting two pictures. They would be top people, each having his or her own specialisation and style. I went to see the chosen photographers and went on to have long phone chats about their own ideas, turned down lunch invitations unless they could be valuable to the end job, worked out the budget with the production manager, prepared alternatives to allow for objections. The day came for the big nod.
At the boardroom table, flanked by my elders and seniors and chaired by the marketing director, I did my presentation. When I finished there were the usual non-committal murmurs, quiet exchanges between the money people, the marketing gurus, and then the usual hiatus. Finally, the verdict: a great calendar. Please go ahead.
I had chosen Patrick, Lord Lichfield, for the December picture. My sketch was of a Christmas tree in a home setting; he came up with something typically better: a real tree in a real forest. The snow? Artificial, of course.
What he did is what you see above. What you don’t see is all the gently-sweating crew, mentally flat on their backs, the generator and cables, the supplementary lighting stands and reflectors.
Lichfield’s genius survives the man. He died while at the peak of his profession and left a lot of very sad people mourning his passing.
A romantic thought struck me shortly after the job was finished: the tree had been sacrificial. It had to be because it had to stand alone, isolated. So while I was in the mood I wrote a bit of light verse and sent it to the master. It was included in It’s Funny About the Trees.
When joy is unconfined
A nice view to wake up to. Lake McDonald, in the Laurentian mountains, home of CAMMAC, the Canadian Amateur Musicians Association.
Most people, after a minute’s reflection, would be able to tell you about a moment in life when pleasure seemed almost overwhelming. It happened to David, the Psalmist and, being a poet, he wrote, ‘My cup runneth over’.
For me, these moments have come far too often for one undeserving man. Marriage and three children provided the best of those; our middle son and daughter-in-law provided at least one of them. It happened while I was sitting with the composer Dr Alan Ridout at the back of a Montreal rehearsal room.
I was there because, a year earlier, he had asked me to provide him with a cantata libretto for a Royal School of Church Music event the following year. I decided to re-tell the Old Testament story of Samuel, the boy who heard a voice in the night. I sent it to Alan. The reply came quickly: he liked it and, once again, joy was unconfined. The reply was followed a few months later by his invitation to accompany him to a full week of rehearsals at CAMMAC (the Canadian Amateur Musicians Association Centre) up in the Laurentians, overlooking Lake McDonald. Quite unexpected and an enormous pleasure.
About fifty trebles, selected from choirs all round Montreal, formed the choir. We had reached the last day but one and the piece was now being sung perfectly. Alan and I sat side by side and every now and then he would nudge me and whisper ‘Perfect!’ or ‘Ah, that was so good’. The next day it would be performed at St George’s Church in the city centre, and I could see he was beginning to relax. Then, as they sang one passage, I was aware of a door opening at the top end of the long rehearsal room. The Secretary emerged. I watched as she moved quietly out and stood, trying to catch the conductor’s eye without actually waving. Eventually he spotted her and stopped the choir. She went up to him and said something quietly. He turned to face the room. ‘Is Paul here?’ he called, then, ‘Ah, Paul! You’re wanted on the phone.’ I felt my heart give a leap and my throat going dry as I walked to the secretary’s office. Bad news? Barbara? The kids? The Secretary closed the door behind me. I picked up the phone. It was Barbara. 'Congratulations!' she said, 'you're a Grandfather!'
I came out of the office trying to get my head round the fact and found Alan standing by the door, looking anxious. ‘Everything all right, Paul?’ he said. And I told him, hardly hearing my own voice. He gave me a hug then turned and called to the conductor, 'Paul's a grandfather!' and the applause from the whole roomful of singers finished me off. The lump in the throat came and, so far as I can remember, I simply raised my hand in appreciation and stumbled back to my seat, with Alan in tow.