The right place, the right time

I went to an Al Stewart concert the other night.  I thought in advance that it was likely to be women of a certain age but I was partly wrong.  It was men as well.  All of us baby boomers - if you saw us in the street you’d see respectable middle-aged (or a little older) people, a little bit overweight, arriving here from our respectable jobs, or our respectable retirement. 
 
And when Al appeared he was older too. 
 
Was there anyone in the audience who had been at his concert at Nottingham University in 1973?  Scattered hands raised throughout the audience, with a murmur of acknowledgment.  Forty years ago I was a sixth former, with a crush on D, who played Al Stewart songs at a concert in the boys’ common room. 

The songs bring back the smell of the orange flavoured tea I used to drink, and the floaty clothes we used to wear.  I find that part of building an empty nest is remembering vividly, now that I am so much older, how it felt to be young.  Feeling incredulity that the 1970s, which seemed such a buzzy, young time, are now my memory and that of the people I see around me, with our greying hair and our spreading bodies.  I see hints of who we were in a velvet coat here, a cascade of loose curls there, the jeans that even the grey-haired men are wearing.  It’s a long time since any of us lived in bedsitters or experienced those intense first loves, but Al Stewart’s voice is as bell-like as ever.

The Year of the Cat is almost unbearably poignant with its images of the freedom and love that the hippy dream promised.  By the time I was in my late teens that time was pretty much over and punk was coming, but we, the youngest of the baby-boomers, experienced its last days, clutching after them while we were still too young to take part fully.  

Time has passed, but the music, like a time machine, takes us straight back to the 1970s for this evening, and once again life is all ahead of us, and in the darkness we’re young again.

After the concert, I asked Al to sign the CD I’d bought, and told him I’d waited 40 years to see him in concert.  ‘Why?’ he asked, ‘I’m always over here’.

‘I was never in the right place at the right time,’ I replied.  ‘Are any of us?’ he said.

When autumn leaves start to fall...

I want to start recording what life feels like at the moment, because it's a time of transition.  My children have grown up, and are both about to get married.  It's a time when relatives are growing older and there's a shift in the balance of our relationships - I'm beginning to try out the role of carer, and feel the need to take responsibility for those on whom I always leaned, who always had responsibility for me.

So I want to capture some of this, and at the same time to record how I'm dealing with the changes, and the challenges, and the different responsibilities.

Today I'm thinking about autumn leaves.  On Friday I attended the funeral of a dear uncle.  Uncle E was in his 90s, and I hadn't seen him for some time, Yet as my mother said, there's now an Uncle E shaped space in the world.  At the funeral we committed him to God, and heard about a life well-lived.  But the poignancy of the RAF March Past played as we entered the chapel, and the finality I always feel as the coffin disappears, still left me feeling sad.

At the meal afterwards we listened to old Frank Sinatra songs, and Big Band favourites that Uncle E loved.  And yesterday I heard another version of the song 'Autumn Leaves' on Radio 3, during a  programme meditating on music and poetry of the fall of the year.
Life goes on, and life comes to an end.  And as I begin to build my empty nest I reflect on that.  It's sad, but it needn't lead to despair, because there is glory in the autumn leaves.