Previously posted on Substack.

I was reminded of this by an article in West Country Voices by Sarah Cowley. (Hat tip to Barbara Leonard for bringing it to my attention.) The article was a memory of the 1950s, of being taken in a coach party from a children’s home to an American air base for an Easter Egg hunt, each child being looked after by a volunteer ‘Auntie’. All of whom seem to have been young airmen – what would a 21^st Century Republican make of that, I wonder?

I too was a child in the 50s, but I had no personal experience of meeting American servicemen at that time, though in later years my mother sometimes spoke of experiences during the war: her favourite, apart from stories of how she and Alan Turing won the war at Bletchley Park*, was of how she and her sister were walking in Shrewsbury and were approached by two GIs who suddenly made their excuses and left when they realized they were with their mother. When I was a child, my grandmother definitely ruled the roost with an iron tongue, so discretion was probably the greater part of valour.

Fast forward to the late 1970s. It was probably late in 1978, rather than Easter, and my (first) wife and I were somehow accompanying a party of pensioners to tea at an American air base somewhere near London. (No, I don’t remember which one, or quite how I came to be participating: it must have been some community venture that she was part of.)

While American military presence had been drastically reduced after the war, the escalation of the Cold War (and de Gaulle’s decision to loosen ties with NATO and evict Allied military presence from French soil) had resulted in a dramatic expansion of USAFE (United States Air Forces in Europe) presence in the UK from the late 60s. But I guess the public disquiet with the presence of American armaments and deteriorating relations with the USSR had not yet taken hold to the extent that they did later. Especially when the peace camps were established at Upper Heyford in 1982, and even more so at Greenham Common** in 1981, following the deployment of Gryphon cruise missiles there.

On this occasion, however, it seems that the US military was enjoying good relations with the (fairly) locals. At any rate, the MPs at the gate were quite relaxed about letting the coach through, and a good time was had by all. A lady whose name I recall as Dolly, in particular, was the life and soul of the tea party. Though at this point I only recall one direct quote, we seem to have learned quite a lot about her. The quote? Well, when there were volunteers helping with the washing up, she drew attention to one of us – possibly me, but I really don’t remember – and remarked that “I do like to see a man working!”

Hard to imagine such a ‘hands across the water’ gesture from the frankly UK-hating (largely) Trump government. (Only money speaks to money across the waters.) Unless it was organized by a far-right Trump-adoring group like Reform UK.

At any rate, this very extroverted lady somehow became associated in my mind with the eventual lyric to the song ‘The Weekends’ from my album The Game of London. It’s a Marmite song: some people love it, some quite aggressively dislike it. After being roundly criticized for singing a ‘dirge’ on a couple of occasions, I stopped singing it in public. I bet you can’t wait to hear it now! Somehow as the song developed, the backstory got darker. Which is fine by me: I’ve certainly known old people who were far more miserable than this, and one or two of them crept into the background of the story.

Originally, I sang it to the traditional tune associated with the ballad Dives and Lazarus (among other songs), which may have contributed to the dislike some people took to it: that’s a slow, minor tune. When I decided that I was going to record it again in the 2020s, I decided to customize the tune a little more, and did the Ewan MacColl thing of starting from a traditional tune – actually, two – and playing with it/them until they were something quite different. (Does that make me a folksinger??? I hope not…)

The first tune is the rather sprightlier (but still minor) Musselburgh Fair: the second is a variation on part of the Dives and Lazarus tune. I suspect that it’s still a Marmite song, but I don’t sing it (or anything else, actually) in public any more, so I’m practically immune to criticism.

The Weekends (are the Worst) (Bandcamp link: you don’t have to buy it to hear it.)

The world has changed since I was born in 1902.
Two World Wars have swept away the world that we once knew:
Two brothers and three sisters , long dead and gone to earth
Our lives were often hard, but now the weekends are the worst.

My old man died just 20 years past.
His health was never good since the Kaiser had him gassed,
But in the end it was cancer that carried him off so fast
I miss him all the time, and the weekends are the worst.

You might say I was lucky, though we never had much cash,
But we had 50-odd good years, more than I’d dare to ask.
I brought up three lovely kids, though another died at birth:
I miss them all a lot, and the weekends are the worst.

I’ve a son in Melbourne, he’s been there since ’62:
I’ve never seen his wife or kids, just a snapshot or two.
My eldest died in the last lot, on a convoy to Murmansk:
It still brings tears to my eyes, and the weekends are the worst.

I’ve a daughter in Glasgow: she writes when she has time,
But that’s a long way off, and I’ve not seen her for a while.
She’s got a son in the army, just been posted to Belfast:
We worry all the time, and the weekends are the worst.

My friends are mostly dead, or else they’ve moved like me
When the street I was brought up in was pulled down in ’63.
Sixty years I’d lived there, child, girl and wife:
Sheltered housing’s not so bad but it can be a lonely life.
Especially since Jim died: we weren’t too bad at first
But now I’m on my own the weekends are the worst.

There’s the club once a week, though it’s just from seven till nine,
And since my fall they only fetch me down from time to time.
There’s my knitting and the TV, for what that might be worth,
But I miss the company, and the weekends are the worst.

*My mother was apt in her later years to remember things that hadn’t actually happened, or if they had, had happened to someone else, and also had an impish sense of humour, so I suppose I’ll never know for sure whether she was actually at Bletchley Park or what she did there. If she actually had a role in code-breaking, I’m afraid I didn’t inherit her code-breaking abilities. Despite a reasonably successful career in IT security, cryptology is one of my weaker areas.

**Somewhat ironically, my partner after my first marriage broke up (later my second wife) stayed at the Greenham Common peace camp at least once that I remember.