A Somerset Lad

The snaps from the late 1930s were tiny, perhaps an inch by an inch and a half. A couple appear to be from the summer of 1938.

My father, born in December 1936 is about eighteen months old. He is standing in the family garden at 6 Cavendish Road, Chiswick. The impression of it being summer is created by the growth of creepers against the garden fence and by the fact that my father has bare legs and arms.

Scanning the photograph and increasing its size, there appeared to be an animal standing in front of the toddler, beside whose left foot there seems to be a basket or a trug.

“A monkey,” I exclaimed. “There was a monkey in the garden.”

“Anything would have been possible,” my mother responded. “Grandfather Bennett might have brought home all sorts.”

“Are you sure it’s not a dog?” asked a friend, looking at the electronic image.

The idea of the monkey was much more appealing, exotic stories are always much more interesting.

There would have been something somehow life affirming in the idea of my great grandfather arriving home from the dairy with a monkey.

Born in Bellary in 1878, he had been the son of a quartermaster sergeant in the British army who retired when my great grandfather was eight years old and who had died a few months later. Surmounting challenges, my great grandfather survived being shot in the face, abdomen and thigh whilst cutting barbed wire on 21st October 1917 in the quagmire of No Man’s Land in Flanders.

The thought that a man who had been through such times would have retained such a degree of levity to return from his milk round to his west London home with a monkey suggested an irrepressible spirit.

My sister looked at the picture.

Being an English rationalist and most definitely an adherent of the principles set forth by William of Occam, whose metaphorical razor cut through false assumptions. My sister was sceptical at the suggestion of it being a monkey.

A close examination led to a clear conclusion. “A Pomeranian dog, definitely a dog.”

“A Pomeranian tree dog?” I queried.

“No, just a Pomeranian dog.”

Why does the rational explanation always have to be the right one?

A monkey would have inspired imaginings, speculation, laughter at the thought of my grandmother’s response to her father coming home from work with a simian companion.

Sometimes, the unlikely and improbable would be welcome. Who wouldn’t be delighted at seeing a unicorn?

T.S. Eliot was always a favourite. Knowledge of his poetry was unnecessary. Anyone who named a poem East Coker, the parish west of Yeovil in which my grandmother lived, was someone who was to be esteemed.

Never mind that the name derived from the fact that Andrew Elliott (with two T’s) had left the parish in 1669 to travel to North America, the choice of the church as the burial place for T.S. Eliot’s ashes some three hundred years after his forebear had departed, marked a literally physical connection with the small Somerset parish.

Little Gidding, which with East Coker is one of the Four Quartets, a set of four poems published over six years by Eliot, includes the familiar lines.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning . . .

Eliot’s work is so well-known and so much loved that it seems almost heretical to question its wisdom, but does arriving where we started really mark an end? The suggestion is nuanced by that arrival bringing a knowledge of that place for the first time.

Perhaps journeying must continue until there is such a recognition. Perhaps feeling a return to the starting point is just a further step in a long sequence means a lack of perception of the essence of the place.

Sitting in my father’s armchair, there is recall of visiting him in hospital this week two years ago.  There is a memory of him apologising to my companion for the dishevelled state of his hair. There is a sad remembering of a wish that he might return home and live out peacefully his remaining months.

Perhaps there is an unquietness that will pass in time. Perhaps the many hours of genealogical searching for my great grandfather, the quest for the surname we might have had, is a futile exploring that will reach no end.

The plaque to commemorate T.S. Eliot at East Coker church includes lines from the poem East Coker:

In my beginning is my end.
Of your kindness,
pray for the soul of Thomas Stearns Eliot, poet.
In my end is my beginning.

Beginnings and ends, ends and beginnings: Eliot finds a tranquility, a fulfilment in the circularity of life.

Sitting barely more than a dozen miles from his resting place, such equanimity is elusive.

The Sixth Year students are nothing, if not eclectic, in their tastes in music. From a Twenty-First Century rap, one switched to playing Stayin’ Alive by The Bee Gees. A discussion ensued about a production of Grease that is to come to Dublin.

Stayin’ Alive came from Saturday Night Fever, which with Grease dominated pop music in the spring and summer of 1978. Being someone who liked neither, it seemed a barren time for music.

I tried to recall perceptions of music in those times. Would we have countenanced playing music from forty-four years previously? Would we even have known music from forty-four years previously? Perhaps fans of blues could have recalled artists from the 1930s, but for the average pop music listener, nothing before the late-1950s would have been thought worth a listen.

I was asked if I had heard of Stevie Nicks. I had to check we were talking about the same person before I said that Fleetwood Mac were a massive band at the time The Bee Gees were dominating the pop charts.

The conversation shifted to what song had changed someone’s life. “Random” would have not been an adequate description for the choice of songs that followed. One student suggested an entire album by The Goo Goo Dolls.

“What song changed your life, sir?” asked one girl.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I suppose if I had to choose one song, it would be Stay Gold by First Aid Kit.”

“Never heard of them, sir.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would have done. They are a female duo from Sweden.”

The song was from 2014, but when you are eighteen years old, eight years ago can seem like a place that is in a different country. Yet when they were listening to music from the 1970s, 2014 was only yesterday. Perhaps it was simply that the song was from a genre different from those that filled the playlists on their phones.

Can songs really change someone’s life? Aren’t they more just an echo of thoughts a person has already?

There used to be a song called Last night a DJ saved my life. I have no recall of the name of the artist, nor of any of the other of the lyrics. The song title seemed to be a short story in seven words.

I assume that the song was not about any heroic deeds on the night club floor, no resuscitation of an ailing dancer, nor of an extrication from beneath fallen masonry, instead that the selection of a certain song to play brought a change of mood and an opportunity for life to go in another direction.

Perhaps music has such power, perhaps it’s more something for passing time with Sixth Year students who have just finished mock exams.