Mutated 12-bar blues

David Bennett has uploaded a few YouTube videos discussing common chord sequences, eg  i bIII bVII IV (Em G D A in the key of E minor, although this is really E Dorian because of the C# in the sub-dominant A chord) or the 'doo wop changes': I vi IV V (E C#m A B). He makes the interesting point that modern songs seemed to be composed entirely of 4 bar loops that don't really resolve, where 'resolving' means a complete cadence, V -> I, as in the doo wop changes. The first sequence (that DB terms the 'Wonderwall' sequence) can also be referred to as a triple plagal cadence in which the four chord resolves to the one: G is the fourth/sub-dominant of D, D is the sub-dominant of A and A is the sub-dominant of E(m). The plagal cadence is a weaker form of cadence and doesn't really resolve in the same way that the dominant to the tonic does.

For years, I've been trying to avoid full cadences (trying frequently to use imperfect or deceptive cadences, if I'm writing a functional sequence) and also songs that contain endlessly repeating four bar sequences. As it happens, the song that I wrote last year, "My father's eyes" is basically an endlessly repeating four bar sequence, but not one that DB mentioned (i v bVI IV - Dm Am Bb G): this is displaying modal mixture, as no key can have as diatonic chords Bb and G (because of the Bb/B dichotomy).

The YT video that I linked to ends with a discussion of the twelve bar blues, a form that is very well known, at least in the 20th century, and doesn't match those endless four bar sequences. It normally consists of four bars of the tonic, two bars of the subdominant, two bars of the tonic then two bars of the dominant and two bars of the tonic, although the last four bars can be different. One could write this as I x 4, IV x 2, I x 2, V x 2, I x 2, or for variation, I x 4, IV x 2, I x 2, V, IV, I, V. 

A few years ago, I realised that the song "Riders on the storm" by The Doors is actually a 12-bar blues, albeit in a mutated form. First of all, it's in a minor key and due to that, there are chord substitutions. I want to compare this to a standard major 12 bar: if "Riders" is in Em, then a 12-bar in E (major) would be E x 4, A x 4, E x 2, B A E B (using the turnaround form for the final four bars). "Riders" could be written as Em x 4, Am x 2, Em x 2, D C Em x 2 (or Em D). The first eight bars have the same structure, with minor chords replacing the major chords. D replaces B and can be seen as a flattened form of the same chord: B Major contains the notes B D# F#, and if it were B7, the notes would be B D# F# A. If we flatten the third, we get B D F# A (Bm7) than can also be seen as D6. And if we drop the B altogether, the notes are now D F# A - D Major! The same correspondence exists between C and A, where C can be seen as a flattened version of a rootless A chord.

So "Riders" is a 12-bar blues, not that anyone would ever consider it so. 

Bonus points: in the middle of "21st century schizoid man" by King Crimson, there is also a 12-bar blues hiding in full sight, starting at 4:40 in the original version (until about 5:20). One listens to the song and is so amazed by the unison playing and the extremeness of this section, that the fact that this is a 12-bar completely escapes one!

Yesterday's sky

Whilst walking the dog at about 5:45 am yesterday, I glanced at the sky. Apart from some clouds that were some distance away and on the horizon, the sky was clear blue - except for this white line/cloud. The picture doesn't really do justice to what I saw: imagine a completely clear sky with a white line halving it. Very strange.

Today's weather

This is the display of our barometer. The first line 3:13 is supposed to be the time; I can't remember how to correct this. The second line, 26.5, is the temperature inside; the air conditioner is working. 29 is the percentage humidity - the air is very dry.

38.5 is the temperature outside - yes, 38.5°C! 101°F for those who work in the old system. It was already 29°C in the morning when I went for my daily walk (although this was at 7:30 am as opposed to 5:30 am for week days). Unsurprisingly, I have no intention of going outside until the evening. 

1500 blogs

It's that time again to sum up the last 100 blogs; the first was written on 22/06/21 and the last on 07/05/22 which means that the rate of blogging is 310/100 or one every 3.1 days - not too bad. That said, there were a few periods of daily blogs.

It's been a roller-coaster year: from the depths of my father dying to the joy of my son getting married. Health-wise, the underlying cause of my high blood pressure - primary aldosteronism - was found and treated, but the year ended with a COVID-19 infection and unexplained microhaematuria. I wrote and recorded eight new songs in this period. As can be seen below, there hasn't been that much work on my doctoral thesis, but in fact it has been progressing well.

Below is the tag table (only those with count >= 3 are shown; there are 30 tags with one or two blogs only in this period). Compared to the previous 100 blogs, COVID-19 has dropped from first place (17 blogs) to eleventh place (6); DBA has dropped from second place (15) to twelfth (5); health has climbed from third place (14) to first place (16); personal has climbed from seventh place (7) to second place (11) and song writing has climbed from sixth place (8) to third place (11). Basically, these 100 blogs had a different focus from the previous hundred.

Position	Tag	Count
1	Health	16
2	Personal	15
3	Song writing	11
4	Programming	10
5	CPAP	9
6	Delphi	9
7	Cooking	8
8	Father	7
9	Home recording	7
10	1974	6
11	Covid-19	6
12	DBA	5
13	1975	4
14	Aldosterone	4
15	Blood pressure	4
16	Ninja grill	4
17	Obituary	4
18	Binaural beats	3
19	Computer	3
20	Janis Ian	3
21	Office automation	3
22	Weather	3
23	song videos	3

Fall of Man in Wilmslow

Following is the blurb of the eponymous book:

From the author of the #1 best seller The Girl in the Spider's Web--an electrifying thriller that begins with Alan Turing's suicide, and then opens out to take in a young detective's awakening to painful secrets about his own life and the life of his country.

It's 1954. Several English nationals have defected to the USSR, while a witch-hunt for homosexuals rages across Britain. In these circumstances, no one is surprised when a mathematician by the name of Alan Turing is found dead in his home: it is widely assumed that he committed suicide, unable to cope with the humiliation of a criminal conviction for homosexuality. But young detective sergeant Leonard Corell, who had always dreamed of a career in higher mathematics, suspects greater forces are involved. In the face of opposition from his superiors, he begins to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that lead him to one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war: the Bletchley Park operation to crack the [Enigma codes of the Germans].

On the basis of the above blurb, this would appear to be a perfect book for me. Unfortunately I found it very disappointing - maybe because I have read Turing's biography several times, along with several books about the Enigma, and this story had very little new information to impart. As a devastating critique put it (from "Timescape"), there is much in this work which is original and much which is correct. Unfortunately, what is correct is not original, and what is original is not correct. A book with a similar starting point - "Enigma" by Robert Harris - is much better, although the film of the book wasn't that good (as always). 

Several reviews have mentioned that the pace of "Fall of man" is glacial. I think that the pace was not the problem, but rather the character of the protagonist, Leonard Corell, who one minute seems to be very bright and the next very dull. Maybe this was the pace of life in provincial Britain in 1954, still worn out from the war; it is mentioned in the book that food rationing is about to end. There are several mentions of Burgess and Maclean, along with a hint that Turing might have been blackmailed by the Russians because of his homosexuality. I suppose that this supposition is valid, although anyone who had known Turing would have realised how unlikely this would be. In real life, I've never come across such a suggestion. There is also mention of Philby and Venona, which seems an extremely unlikely event for 1954.

The standard of this book is far lower than the three Girl in the ... books that Lagercrantz has written, but then not every book can be a winner.

Carole Bayer Sager autobiography

I've known for some time that CBS wrote an autobiography, but presumably due to lethargy and procrastination (problems that seem to be growing as I grow older), I hadn't bothered ordering it until this past Friday morning.  As I ordered the Kindle version, I could begin reading it immediately, and finished reading by Saturday afternoon. The title of the book, "They're playing our song" comes from a musical written by Neil Simon based on the musical lives of CBS (who wrote the lyrics to the musical) and Marvin Hamlisch (who wrote the music).

The book can roughly be divided into two parts: pre-Burt Bacharach and post-Bacharach, where the cut off is roughly 1980. The first part is what most interested me and contained a certain amount of information about CBS's formative years, when she was over-weight and very anxious. For some reason, her birthdate isn't noted in the book - 8 March 1947. She went to the famous New York High School of Music and Art (which is where the film and tv series from the early 80s, "Fame", was located) then continued to New York University. She even spent some time as a teacher before the royalties from her first hit song, "A groovy kind of love", came in; these dwarfed her income as a teacher. One amusing early incident has her on a blind date with Paul Simon, set up by their respective mothers. With no chemistry in their meeting, they discussed who was the first to use the word 'groovy' in their lyrics.

The period leading up to the making of her first record is the period that most interests me and I intend to read this portion again. Some of the songs had been written before this period and recorded by others, whereas others were written especially for the record. There's a section detailing a meeting with Bette Midler, who was just becoming famous; “Why do you always use the same words when you write your songs?” she [BM] asked me [CBS] as we began. “I mean, why don’t you ever bother to find new words? You’re lazy.... Look at these words,” she said, randomly opening a book. “ ‘Curious’! You’ve never used the word ‘curious’ in a song. That’s a good word.” She opened another book. “ ‘Iconic.’ ‘Misfit.’ ‘Drunk.’ Where are these words in your songs? Everything’s ‘home,’ and ‘rain,’ and ‘light.’ ” She was impassioned now, glasses on the tip of her nose, shouting random words at me while throwing down one book and picking up another. “ ‘Dangling’! ‘Branches’! ‘Forbidden’! Those are good words! Have you ever used any of them?” “Let’s write a song about someone who’s breaking up with her boyfriend,” I said. “No-o-o-o!” Bette said, making sure the Os resonated in the room. “You didn’t hear anything I said. We’re not here to write some sad breakup song like you always write. Let’s throw the moron out of the house.”

This is how "You're moving out" came to be written. BM recorded the song before CBS and apparently there was bad blood between them for some years as BM's version did not sell whereas CBS's version was a minor hit in Britain (this was the song that introduced me to CBS in 1977). I went looking for this on YouTube and found a clip of her performing the song on 'Top of the Pops'; normally I would enclose the word 'performing' in quotation marks as most people appearing on this song mime to their records. But this clip has an alternative version; whilst the backing music is similar (the trombone seems to be missing), the vocals (not only CBS's, but all of the vocals) are completely different - and not as good! The album version, along with a different (and somewhat amateurish and embarrassing) video can also be found on YouTube.

The first album was recorded after CBS had split from her first husband, Andrew Sager; she then spent two years with Marvin Hamlisch, living and liking, but not loving, him. In about 1981, she met the very talented composer Burt Bacharach, and from here onwards, the story becomes less interesting. BB comes across as incredibly narcisstic: a good example of where it is better to divorce the artist from the art. BB also persuaded CBS to have cosmetic surgery which is why pictures pre-BB show her as flat chested, whereas later pictures have her with a fuller bosom.

In fact, pictures from 1981 onwards have her looking somewhat like Elisabeth Taylor, which is somewhat ironic as later on ET became her neighbour and friend. Even more ironic is that following CBS being installed as a judge on 'American Idol', the following tweets (included in her book) appeared on Twitter:

01-25-2007, 10:01 AM MaryMorph 
I missed the beginning of AI last night—who was that Joan Collins lookalike guest judge? We came up with all of the carols we knew, but couldn’t identify her!
01-25-2007, 11:11 AM Miss_Liss
The consensus in my office is Elizabeth Taylor, but I guess that’s another dark-haired woman who obviously has a really close relationship with her plastic surgeon :D.

In a sense, this book reminded me of Graham Nash's autobiography, 'Wild tales': the first half of the book, up to the recording and release of 'Crosby, Stills and Nash', is very interesting, but becomes somewhat boring afterwards. These people know everyone and write songs with them all the time. There's an amusing incident where Bob Dylan invites CBS to write a song with him, but the other anecdotes are less absorbing.

Going back to Bette Midler and her criticisms of CBS's word choices, I took a look at some of my recent lyrics, that include words like pathways, enchantment, rearrangement, bluffing, yearning (all of those in one song), communications transmogrified, democracy, tyranny, ambiguous (another song); I could go on, but I think that I've passed the 'BM litmus test'. I admit that I consciously try to use expressive language, however difficult it is to fit multisyllabic words into tunes. But then, I'm not writing pop songs and don't have to find lyrical hooks.

ShoesOnLine (another pointless day-in-the-life-blog)

My wife gave me a pair of 'classic' crocs shoes maybe ten years ago, and I've been wearing them in the house ever since. Now they look very shabby and the heels are worn down, which is why I've been thinking about replacing them for several months. Once shops selling these shoes used to be ubiquitous but now it's very difficult to find such a shop. 

In another thread, there have been advertisements on television* for several months advertising shoes being sold on-line (these adverts also feature a delectable presenter, whose name I have yet to establish). It occurred to me one day that maybe this company, www.shoesonline.co.il, might sell the classic croc shoe, so I accessed the site and discovered that indeed they do. They were priced at some ridiculous amount, but the site offered discounts, so the final price was 144 NIS (about $43) which is cheap; there is also free home delivery.

I ordered about three weeks ago; several times I received emails to say that my order has been entered into the system, someone is preparing the shoes, they have been sent, and eventually the most important of all, the shoes have arrived! But they didn't arrive at my house, but rather at a collection point in Bet Shemesh. As I had to be in that area that day (last Thursday), picking up the shoes wasn't a problem.

When I got home and tried on the shoes, I discovered that they were too big (as always with my shoe purchases via the Internet). But unlike other suppliers, they offer free replacements if the size is wrong, also delivered to my home. So on Saturday or Sunday, I accessed the web-site again, found my order and did what was necessary to change the size. After the length of time that it took to fulfill my original order, I didn't have many expectations, so I was very surprised to receive an SMS this morning to say that my new shoes would be delivered (or as I call it, prisoner exchange) today! 

This time, the delivery person came to my house, took the original pair of shoes (that I had worn once for five minutes, in order to establish that they were the wrong size) and gave me a new pair ... that fit perfectly.

To conclude: the initial delivery was slow (I assumed that the distributor was in Israel, not in Europe), but the replacement policy and delivery was excellent!

---

* Following the success (?) of this company's advertising campaign, another company has started showing tv adverts, but I haven't been following these. It's like when one company starts a tv ad campaign for air conditioners: another company will also start. Many many years ago I learnt that one of the reasons for adverts is to tell or remind the public that a product exists; I often think that the real reason why one of these AC companies advertise so much is that their sales are very low, but by continually advertising, their name will enter people's consciousness and they might bolster their sales. Other examples of copycat advertising are banks, insurance companies and investment houses: I doubt that there's much different between any of these company's offerings (in the same field of course), and they're simply trying to show that they are big players in their specific market segment (don't forget that I have an MBA, where one of the compulsory courses is 'marketing').

Covid and teeth

After a few days of feeling unwell, my body (and the vaccinations) beat the covid virus. My first day back at work (last Sunday, 24/4) was a little shaky at first, but soon I was feeling back to normal.

Or not. I would suffer pain whenever I drank some cold water or ate something cold (like the blackberries that I eat for breakfast); the pain would be sharp but would disappear almost immediately. I suspected a problem with receding gums but there might also have developed a crack in a tooth filling. On Thursday, I made an appointment to see my dentist the following day (which is now 'yesterday').

First off, the dentist took x-rays of my lower jaw and compared them to the set from my previous check-up which was in January. She said that she couldn't see any problems with the fillings but there might be a crack in the left-most tooth, which she proceeded to correct. Upon hearing that I had just recovered from the covid virus, she suggested that the pain was probably due to hyper-sensitivity brought on by the virus and by the weakening of my body, caused by my fighting the virus. Apart from the special toothpaste that she always recommends (that helps combat receding gums), she suggested a new cream that one applies to the teeth and gums that works very quickly. 

I have an appointment with the dental hygienist on Monday (made three months ago) and I am especially not looking forward to this appointment as the frequent washing of the mouth with cold water is going to approach agony. I am thus very interested in improving the condition of the gums and reducing the sensitivity as quickly as possible. Before going to bed last night, I rubbed some cream onto the teeth as instructed: the sensitivity to cold might have decreased slightly today. There'll be another two evenings to apply the cream before the hygienist, so there is a good chance that it will do its work. Apart from this, the tooth that had been treated continued to hurt all yesterday afternoon and evening; it still hurts if I press down on the tooth with the corresponding tooth from the upper jaw, something that I do whilst eating. As I always say, "teeth - can't live with them, can't live without them".

Still positive

The rules say that one does an antigen test four days after the initial test: if it is positive, then one stays in isolation for a week (in total), whereas if it is negative, then one does another antigen test on the day following; isolation depends on the result of this second test. As can be seen, our antigen tests were positive this morning (i.e. we're still infected), so we have to stay isolated until Saturday night.

On Sunday and Monday I felt very unwell, with symptoms similar to those of pneumonia. There were a few hours on Monday afternoon when I felt a bit better, but then my temperature went up and I began to feel unwell again. Tuesday was better: no elevated temperature and no headaches, but still weakness. Today I feel as if I have returned to normality: the weakness has gone and the coughing much reduced. 

I might even do some work tomorrow....

It had to happen sooner or later

My wife didn't feel very good on Wednesday evening and spent Thursday and most of Friday in bed. It was clear that she had some form of viral infection, something from which she very rarely suffers. I felt fine during those days; on Saturday afternoon I finished a 5 km walk with the dog and watched a little television when I started to get a headache. That by itself didn't mean very much but then I began to feel my temperature rising. Two paracetamol tablets took about half an hour to have an effect and I began to feel a little better. I showered and went to bed early, but at 11 pm I was up again for more paracetamol.

This morning I awoke late (I am on holiday for the Passover week and there was no reason to get up early) but stayed in bed for some time before I felt strong enough to get up. Most of the morning passed by me watching YouTube videos on the television: no elevated temperature but weakness.

At about 12 pm, we decided to go to the local town where there is a free Covid testing site. After fiddling around with the web app, we had our throats and noses swabbed. The results didn't take long to come through - both of us are positive. Probably someone at our son's wedding infected my wife, she exhibited symptoms then infected me.

Although we're over 65 years old, we've both had four vaccinations, so we're not expecting anything more than a few days of flu symptoms. Fortunately we have enough food at home (we're not allowed out of the house) and I don't have to work, so in a sense, it was the right week to get infected. There are things that I would like to do but they will have to wait a few days.

It had to happen sooner or later.

The malleability of folk songs

I was stopped on a path the other day by the lady who arranges activities for the 'golden age', i.e. pensioners, on the kibbutz. I should note that these activities are very worthwhile and important, providing interesting things for these people to do and hear, getting them out of their homes and challenging their brains. It transpires that she wants to organise a set of talks about music, each one lasting for about an hour. Someone suggested that I would be able to provide a good talk.

As it happens, several years ago I put together a song list for an evening that I had entitled 'Folk into Rock' (strangely enough, the sub-title of a 4 lp compilation put together in 1975); this was meant for a series of talks that someone had put on, discussing various types of music (this same person will be giving a talk about Bob Dylan, who is the same age as most of the listeners). This series petered out and I lost the list, anyway. But in the back of my mind, the idea of giving a talk about semi-traditional folk music still existed, so I agreed to the proposal for the pensioners.

This time, I thought that I would take a song and play different versions, showing how malleable these songs could be. I made a short list of four songs: 'Nottamun Town', 'My Lagan love', 'Matty Groves' et al., and 'The water is wide'; all of these have multiple and varied versions, hence the malleability. I think that this stems from two factors: two of the songs (NT and MG) have very simple harmonic structures thus allowing them to be interpreted in different manners. The other two songs (MLL and TWIW) are richer harmonically; all of the versions of MLL that I found are very similar musically, but two versions have completely different lyrics (Kate Bush and Sandy Denny). The other reason for the malleability is that these songs (all strophic) have many verses, and to an extent the performer can choose which verses to sing. Two examples: the Fairport Convention version of NT lacks some of the verses of Jean Ritchie's version, and Joan Baez's version of TWIW includes two verses that I have not heard elsewhere. I must remember to mention prosody in connection with this song - on the line 'not a soul would look up', the tune goes up, and on the following line 'not a soul would look down', the tune descends.

The story of Matty Groves (Child 81) - or Little Musgrave - is worth an evening on its own. The basic story is told in all the versions: a titled lady casts her eyes on a servant who is commissioned for an evening of fun while the lady's husband, Lord Donald/Arnold/Barnard, etc, is away; the Lord returns, catches the lovers en flagrante then challenges the servant to a duel where of course the cuckolded husband has the advantage of knowing how to use a sword (writing that word, I wonder whether there is a double meaning hiding there: in one Peter Robinson novel, a character is described as a 'swordsman', i.e. someone who has good sex with many partners). As someone (probably Simon Nicol) once put it, this song has the main ingredients, sex and murder, that interest everyone. The twist that interests me is that there are different versions of the tune: for example, Jean Ritchie has a different tune from Joan Baez. Fairport threw a spanner in the works by setting the words to a completely different tune, 'Shady Grove', of which I found a bluegrass version by Doc Watson. Compounding their decision to muddy the waters, Fairport then tacked on yet another, unrelated, song as the instrumental coda ('Famous flower of serving men'), but I won't be including that in my talk.

Instead of playing all 19 verses of the original Fairport version - groundbreaking at the time, but now sounding slightly flat - I decided to keep the first half of this version then continue with a version from 2012 (including the Ikea curtains) whose arrangement is more dramatic and certainly more varied. This has Chris Leslie playing banjo, possibly a nod to Doc Watson; Simon playing it more or less straight; Peggy playing extremely funky bass; Ric playing free-form jazz; and Gerry holding it all together on the drums. 

According to the Google page, there is also a Czech version (!) of this song that I am also including, by the group Asonance (they are definitely not assonant). I haven't a clue about the lyrics, and the music doesn't seem to have that much in common with the other versions. The flutes on this remind me very much of those of Lúnasa. I've just discovered why this version doesn't sound like the others: it's not the same song at all! I was listening to a song called Návrat krále - the return of the King - whereas I should have been listening to their easily recognisable version of 'Lord Bernard'.

I found seven different versions of TWIW: I very much wanted a simple, unaccompanied, version of the song but I think that no such version exists due to the implied harmonic richness of the song. In the end, I found a version by John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers that at least is unaccompanied; the first two verses are sung without harmony (making a divine sound, I should note) but then things get complicated. In the end, I edited this to use just the first two verses, using this heavenly sound to introduce this song.

I should have mentioned much earlier that I edited most of the songs: for starters, playing all of them in their entirety would have lasted about two hours, and I also have to speak, maybe even answer questions! Some of the versions are somewhat harrowing to the ear IMHO, and the number of verses that most songs have enables me to take one or two verses from one version, another two verses from another version, etc. I am including the first two verses of the version by Filska that is completely instrumental; this is the first version of this song that I ever heard, and for several years I thought that it was purely an instrumental tune, until I heard someone sing it with words. Finishing off the talk is a version by Yours Truly; I remember that when I came to record this (for the Folktronix project), I looked at the lyrics of several versions, some of which were the same and some were different. I decided which verses I chose to sing and I remember that I even altered a word or two (maybe even a complete line) - after all, this is the folk tradition, where everybody adds their own input.

Our son got married!

On Sunday evening we celebrated the wedding of our son, Nir, to his then-girlfriend, Liraz!

The picture isn't of very high quality - we won't receive the official pictures probably until after the Passover holiday that starts on this Friday evening. I am posting a picture taken with my mobile phone of a picture embossed on a magnet.

There's so much to say about the wedding but not very much that I want to write here.

The view from our rear balcony

I was asked recently if I am planning any trips abroad for a holiday. Apart from any personal reasons that might prevent a foreign holiday, I honestly don't miss visiting somewhere else. And with the view from our rear balcony, there's no real reason to seek an alternative to the crowded streets of Israel.

Onion sauce

Approximately every other week, Friday night supper is for my grand-daughters, daughter, wife and me. After some experimentation, we discovered that the best dish for these evenings is simple spaghetti, grated cheese and tuna. For the last few months I've been on a low potassium diet that means that I can't eat tomato sauce, surely an essential part of any spaghetti dish. The Italian in me would be shocked to hear that I eat the spaghetti plain.

Something is definitely missing: between what I can't eat and what I don't like has to lie some form of sauce. After mulling this over for some time, I realised that I can make onion sauce ... except that I don't know how to make onion sauce. So I looked for recipes, most of which included some ingredient that again either I can't eat or I don't like. In the end, I decided on a compromise recipe, as follows.

I diced 3/4 of a middle sized onion and sautéed this in olive oil. When the onion pieces began to caramelise, I added a small amount of finely chopped mushrooms to the frying pan and continued to sauté for another few minutes. Then I added a cup of boiling water in which I had dissolved a teaspoon of chicken soup powder: it seemed like most of the water boiled off immediately. Finally I added a heaped spoonful of flour to the mix: this was a mistake as it was very difficult to prevent the flour from clumping. Eventually I managed to break up most of the lumps. This mixture cooked for another few minutes and then I cut the heat.

The result was quite good although it seemed very salty when I tasted the sauce on its own (I am very sensitive to salt which is one reason why I never add salt to anything that I cook). The sauce also thickened up before it was served, although this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The sauce was a welcome addition to the spaghetti although only my daughter and I partook. If and when I prepare this again, I will have to do something with the flour, like mixing it in advance with the soup powder before adding it to the sauce. I should probably also reduce the amount of flour.

Another year, another growth

Slightly over two years ago, I had a growth removed from my neck. In the twenty four months since, I've been to see the skin doctor twice. The treatment in the first visit was having actinic keratoses all over the body removed with liquid nitrogen, but nothing more serious than that. My latter visit at the end of November, though, threw up something else: some form of growth on my head. I was referred to a plastic surgeon for a biopsy and excision. For some reason, there is no longer a plastic surgeon in Bet Shemesh so I had to make an appointment for one in Jerusalem. This took nearly four months to come to fruition.

Today the wife drove me to Jerusalem (she likes driving, I don't) for the appointment that was supposed to be 10:20 am. Due to the conditions in Jerusalem, we left early - far too early. We arrived at the clinic at 9:00 am and I was advised to wait until 9:40 to get my appointment number. This I did, then we waited ... and waited ... and waited. I think that I didn't get in to see the doctor until about 11:40 and I left at 12:30 pm. It turns out that the doctor had been on holiday for a few weeks and there had been no replacement, so there were appointments set for every ten minutes when each one could take twenty minutes or longer.

When I finally got in, the treatment was straight-forward. First of all, the doctor had a look at my referral, at my picture and at my head. Then I went to a nurse's station to have my blood pressure taken yet again. At this stage, the doctor came into the room and gave me an injection of local anaesthesia (presumably lidocaine) into the head; I barely felt this. Then I was sent into the 'operating room' where I laid down for several minutes before the doctor came in. I felt a touch and smelt a little burning, then a cold spray. That was it! The cold spray apparently is instead of a bandage as would normally be applied.

When I came out, there were a group of people around my wife: apparently they had been swapping stories. One person asked how the treatment was and I answered (as always) that it was much easier than going to the dentist. Everyone seemed reassured.

I don't expect to receive an answer from the pathology lab until after Pesach, four weeks from now. Then we'll see what further treatment, if any, is required.

Cystoscopy

Exactly a month ago I wrote about seeing a urologist and his ordering/recommending a cystoscopy. After sending the documents to my health fund in order to get the funding, I then sent them to the hospital, who fixed me a date that then was only about a week and a half in the future, i.e. today. I haven't been worrying about this procedure; although it sounds unpleasant, I'm not the only person who undergoes it and I'm sure that the hospital tries to make it as least unpleasant as possible. Anyway, there's no point worrying about something that is not under my control.

Today was the big day. It took more than the usual time to get to the hospital because parts of Jerusalem are being dug up for roadworks and/or trams, so it's just as well that we left early. As we entered the hospital, by chance we bumped into the surgeon who treated my wife a few years ago, so he invited us to come and see him after my appointment. Although the urology department is on the same floor that we were, it was at the other end of the hospital, concealed in a maze, so it took quite some time to get there.

Once booked in, I was called to a nurse who measured blood pressure, temperature and oxygen saturation, before going over various pieces of information and informing me more or less what was to happen. I was then told to keep my shirt and shoes on but remove my trousers and pants, and to put on a smock. I was then called to a doctor who went over some of the same information and checked that I was the correct person (as if I was going to ask someone to impersonate me! But they never checked my identity card so I could have been a ringer). 

After a bit more waiting, I was called into 'the room', where a lady doctor proceeded to wash my genitals (slightly unpleasant because of cold water being splashed on me without warning, and even ticklish) and to numb my penis (not pleasant because the lidocaine has to enter the urethra, not stay outside as I naively assumed). After a few minutes the previous doctor came in, checked that I was still the same person then began the procedure. This was, shall I say, unpleasant - not painful, but not something that I would care to repeat. Mainly it was having the feeling that I wanted to urinate: presumably the internal nerves were being stimulated and this is what my brain understood. After about two minutes, during which time all three of us were talking (they asked me whether I wanted to see the inside of my bladder and I said that I wasn't in the correct mood to appreciate it), the doctor wielding the cystoscope said that we had finished. Thank God for that! He also said that he could see nothing wrong, which was the whole point of the exercise.

I was warned to drink a lot today, and that passing water might sting/burn. The first few times that I did so in the hospital hurt so much so that I considered (only for a moment) bottling the urine. But by the time I got home, there was no pain whatsoever.

I can now chalk this procedure up to experience, and wait for the CT which will be in other two weeks. If this shows nothing wrong, then the microhaematuria might be written off.

You hold me - you've heard the song, now watch the video

Yesterday evening, I did some more production work on 'You hold me':  there was an arpeggio being played throughout the second verse that sounded very lame (a hackneyed synth patch), so I changed this for an oboe. Now the sound is somewhat mysterious. I also fiddled a little with the vocal, primarily shortening the drawn-out 's' that is at the end of the word 'games'. Once I finished that, I mixed the song a few more times until I had a very good version.

This morning I woke up and thought that I should make a video of the song so that I can upload it to YouTube. I wanted to make a video that showed the words synchronised to the tune: I looked at some web application that purports to do this but this seemed to be too complicated for me (there was no example with lyrics). So I went to the usual solution, Windows Movie Maker. I decided that the video would consist of pictures of our garden, of which I have many. Synchronising the words wasn't too difficult as YHM is a very slow song; the words were implemented as titles for the pictures, requiring me to stretch the pictures and the titles over several seconds. 

At some stage, as always, WMM got stuck (the memory that I added to the computer a few months ago didn't seem to make any difference). This time, however, WMM was royally stuck and I was left with no alternative but to terminate it via the Task Manager. When I restarted the program, I was informed that "The collection file is not valid or is corrupted"; I think that the collection file is where all the pictures that comprise the video are stored. I did some cleaning up with regard to pictures prior to the previous save (or maybe after the previous save) so I wasn't too perturbed by this message. Unfortunately, a second error message then appeared, that WMM couldn't create a new collection file. WMM then closed.

This is when I started panicking. I restarted WMM - same messages. On-line help suggested finding the backup file to the collection file and restoring it ... but there's no backup file. In the directory C:\Users\asus\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Movie Maker there exists the file MEDIATAB0.DAT but this is presumably the corrupted file. I couldn't find any backup file or file with a similar name anywhere on my computer. I reasoned that maybe deleting this file would allow WMM to create a new collection file ... except that I couldn't delete the file because it was locked by WMM. I restarted the computer and had lunch.

When the computer finished its restart, I deleted the file and restarted WMM - yes, a new collection file was created. Taking a deep breath, I continued working on the video, although this was getting very tiresome. I then took the dog for a long walk and considered what to do. I decided to film as many videos as necessary in order to use these instead of the still pictures; the more transitions there are, the harder WMM has to work, so reducing the number of transitions by using a 40 second video is better than having several transitions between 10 second stills.

So I went into the garden and started filming. I had hoped that I could achieve a long enough film in one shot, but this proved impossible. I also had the sun flashing the camera every now and then which didn't help. In the end, I had about three and a half minutes of usable film; the rest of the time I filled with stills. Even though I deleted all the stills that I had added in the morning, the song lyrics stayed where they were which made my life much easier. I had to add some splits into the final segment of video in order to get the last verse in, but otherwise I worked much faster than I did in the morning.

Watching the completed video was very difficult, so I finalised it, creating a WMV file, then added it to a program that I have that creates mp4 files from WMV. Then I uploaded it to YouTube and the video can be found here.

My first year as a Londoner, part five and a half: the Girlfriend, continued

I should have adopted the mantra "she is more important to you than you are to her" in that year; maybe it would have smoothed our path. It was clear to me that non-Jewish people thought differently but my group did think the same and we had the same goals. It took some time to grow out of this attitude. The GF did not think the same as I did, as was shown more than a few times during this year.

OK: during the time from September to December 1974 we talked a lot, went to see theatre shows and films and basically spent much time together (no physical contact). During the week we would speak for half an hour at a time on the telephone. We were ok without being particularly close. January through to March 1975 was near enough the same.

Something changed at the Purim party that year; I don't know exactly what it was but it caused our relationship to become much more physical. Yes! Of course in those days it was pressure-free to be a boy and pressuring to be a girl. So the month between Purim and Pesach was a pretty good time (for me, at least); by the time that we got to the European Seminar, it was too much of a good time and of course I blew it. We had some colossal row, about what I have no idea now, but clearly it was something brewing for some time. The fact that I don't know now - or probably then - what it was about speaks volumes to the mature me that I am now. I wasn't listening to her.

Somehow, with the help of Jeremy and his current girlfriend, both of whom were also at the seminar, we managed to patch things back together again. As I wrote in the previous installment, at the end of the seminar, we all went back to the mo'adon, but GF and I (and others) slipped off to the bayit to sleep properly. So we were ok again.

Here I should mention something of which I am truly ashamed. My room only had a single bed and it was very uncomfortable for two people to sleep in it (I'm not sure that we even tried at first). The first time that GF stayed over, she had the bed and I slept on the floor; very chivalrous. But the second time, I got the bed and she got the floor. And the third time. And the fourth time. So much for "she is more important to you than you are to her" - I was pushing her away instead of drawing her in. 

A couple of weeks after the seminar, we had another row that led us not to speak for about three weeks. I really missed her during this period and somehow managed to persuade her to give us another try. Because she was probably off to Australia again and I to Israel again, our paths separated in early July.

When I came back, we had maybe two weeks before she was off again to Switzerland to study French even more deeply. Something very much changed in her attitude during those few days: we became very much closer, so much so that we even spent a night together in my tiny bed, naked. Due to poor timing and innocence, we remained virgins. 

Off she went to Switzerland for six months. We wrote to each other every week but things were different now, and in February 1976 she suggested that we break up, this time for good. I examined how I felt for a couple of days then acquiesced. We exchanged maybe one more letter each after this - and then suddenly it hit me. I was working at Schweppes at the time, and basically spent one day in the toilet, crying. Paul Simon's "Still crazy" was the album of the month, and there was a verse that reverberated in my head all the time:

The sting of reason, the splash of tear

The northern and the southern hemisphere

Love emerges and it disappears

I do it for your love

I didn't know exactly when she was coming home; I wanted to meet up to say goodbye properly and maybe get back the letters that I wrote to her when I was in Israel, 1973-4, as these were a diary of our activities. I kept all of her letters religiously but she probably didn't keep mine. So I phoned her home but they wouldn't tell me when she was coming. I phoned again a week later which is when her mother screamed at me to leave her daughter alone; I was so hurt and upset by this that our entire relationship became tainted in my memory by those final minutes.

---

And that was that. She and her sisters dropped off my radar. I tried to find another girlfriend, probably too desperately, which is why I didn't succeed. I needed a girlfriend: having one would calm me down and remove much mental pressure that I felt. I didn't have another one until 1980 which is when I met the girl who would become my wife. We came from such completely different backgrounds that there was no way that I might consider that we thought the same about things, although eventually we did think the same about many things.

One night in February 1978, I was driving home (probably from a concert) when behind the Swiss Cottage cinema I saw someone who might well have been the GF, going to her grandmother's house (her grandfather died in February 1975). On the basis of that sighting, I wrote a song about our imagined meeting, called 'Chance encounter'. The first line comes from a well-known song; at the time I was trying a new technique of taking other people's first lines and seeing what evolved. I only did this twice and this is the second song.

I met my old lover on the street last night

It's been some years since our final fight

We talked a bit about the old days

Had a few drinks and then we went on our ways

She hasn't changed in all that time

She's still got her figure, that winning smile

And I've grown a beard* though I still dress the same

And over the years I've buried the blame

And I almost reached out for to straighten her hair

The seal on my heart had developed a tear

But I stopped, and in a moment she worked herself loose

We both understand that it's over and done

We both recall how much we suffered for 'fun'

Now I'm left with a smile on a sunny day

It's funny how time washes bad things away

And anger can die, yes, mine's long buried deep

I'll dream me sweet dreams when I go to sleep

* I didn't have a beard in 1978; this comes from a revised version of the lyrics from about 1998 when I recorded the song with MIDI accompaniment.

---

There is a postscript, two in fact. The first comes from about two months later, in April 1978. As I wrote exactly four years ago when describing the show that we put on for the 50th anniversary of Habonim, after the show, I met my old girlfriend, this being our final meeting. It wasn't too much of a surprise as her youngest sister appeared in the cast but always the fool, all I could talk about was the problem with the guitar and not [ask] anything about her (like how she was, what she was doing, etc).

The second postscript comes from 2008. For some reason, I was looking for information about my university on the Internet and somehow came across the playing fields where I once played a game of hockey in October 1974, trying out for the university team. These fields were on the same road as where GF lived (although at the other end of a long road), and this caused me to start looking for her. I don't think that this was particularly hard but it also wasn't straight-forward. Eventually I did find her and sent a very guarded first email - what if I had found someone else, but with the same name?

But no, it was her. I think that at first she was pleased to hear from me, but then I made the usual mistake of attaching too much importance to something that should be light. After a few more exchanges of emails, the contact died out: we didn't have much to write to each other anymore. I, of course, was very interested to hear what she had to say about me then. As far as I can remember, she said that I was very driven. I haven't reread those emails.

I want to conclude with a song that I wrote around this time, called 'Archeology', that was intended to put an end to the topic, once and forever. It was an interesting technical exercise, writing a song with a five syllable word. Strangely enough, this song is in 3/4 time, as is 'Chance encounter'; pure coincidence. I'm very proud of this song's lyrics, and also of its music that includes many different chords without sounding obtuse.

Sifting the shards from a previous time

Guessing how pieces can fit

Making connections whilst sorting the grime

That's archeology

What can be learnt from exhuming the past?

What kind of knowledge comes forth?

What can be gleaned from the remnants that last?

Archeology

The digs can expose unknown figures of clay

Our knowledge increases thus, day after day

Sometimes the past isn't all that it's claimed

Even our memories play tricks

And over the years our perceptions can change

Modern history

Interpretations are fluid at best

Mutating as emphases shift

Discarding conclusions that fail current tests

Modern history

What once was hidden is now brought to light

Examined, revalued, and all with hindsight

Totally clueless, I swanned through those days

Not paying attention at all

I missed all the signs that shone clear through the haze

My incompetence

I understand now the forces at play

And recognise your point of view

The past has unravelled and now I can say

I apologise

---

Despite supposedly putting an end to the subject, this first serious relationship keeps on popping up in my songs. It even appears in my most recent song, 'Rifts and drifts', where of course it is described as a rift. Regrets? I regret how I behaved during the year that we were together and I regret how it ended (although this wasn't my doing), but it doesn't prey on me any more.

My first year as a Londoner, part five: the Girlfriend

I have alluded here and there in the past few my blogs to my girlfriend of the time, GF. There were a few events that I could have written about previously but they are more suitable to write about here. This is the place where I become hard on myself: I considered myself to be sensitive, but the more that I look at it, I was sensitive when I was the recipient but less sensitive to other people, including GF. I'm sorry.

I have vaguely documented how we first met. Our first meeting in Britain was a few weeks after we returned (Sept 1972), naturally at 'the moadon', when a party was held for those emigrating to Israel that year. GF and I hung out together; someone who I vaguely knew (with a car) suggested that we go to his house for an hour or so (I don't remember now why). When we came back, our leader from the Israel summer camp was very angry with us, as GF's mother had called but GF was nowhere to be found. Contrite, GF went home (or so I thought). I, of course, stayed the night, sleeping in the basement that was later to be the 'cellar folk club'. Except that I didn't sleep: in those days, I found it difficult to fall asleep in unfamiliar surroundings, and anyway I was full of remorse for what happened in the previous evening.

Instead of going home by train to Bristol on Sunday morning, I decided that I would seek out GF and try to save something of the weekend. I knew her postal address and that it was somewhere near West Dulwich rail station, but that's all. Somehow I got to this station: like most South London stations, it's not an underground line so it wouldn't have been obvious to a non-Londoner how to get there. But get there I did, and by some remarkable serendipity*, I exited from the station, turning left; I continued walking a few hundred yards until I came to her road. I could easily have gone in the wrong direction, so at least someone above was looking out for me. Once on her road, I counted the numbers until I came to what must be her house. I knocked on the door and vaguely explained to whoever opened (her mother? sister?) who I was and that I had come to see GF. "But she's not here!", I was told. "She spent the night at her grandparents in Swiss Cottage". Of course! GF had told me at some stage that her grandparents lived reasonably close to 'the moadon', but I was so distraught that I had forgotten this. So I went back to the train station and thence to Swiss Cottage, found the address then talked with GF for an hour or two, trying to straighten things out.

During the year 1972-3, we met three or four times when I managed to come to London for a day or a weekend. I remember that in December 1972 we went to see "The man from the East", a musical show by Stomu Yamash'ta, that was being performed in Soho. I had come to this after reading a review then purchasing an earlier Yamash'ta record, "Floating music". Thinking about this now, I can see a similarity between this event and those that I mentioned in an earlier blog: these were all events that I suggested.

Our last meeting before we entered the 'jet-set' phase of our relationship would have been somewhere between May and July 1973. I doubt that I have mentioned this before, but GF was Australian and had moved to Britain in 1968. In June/July 1973 she flew to spend the summer (winter) in Australia and returned after I had left Britain for Israel in early September 1973. The next year, she flew again before I arrived back in Britain, so our next meeting was not to be until late September 1974.

I'm going to close what appears to be part one of a long blog by describing our first meeting in 1974. Purely by chance, although pertinent to what was to unfold, this happened to be the afternoon of the opening event of the Cellar folk club; we met by a cinema near Oxford Street in order to see 'O lucky man!' (yet another choice of mine, now that I think of it). Afterwards, I assumed that she would come with me to the folk club, but no, she had to go home for something. So we walked around the streets of London, heading for Victoria station (aha, that's how one gets to West Dulwich) with me trying to prevent the inevitable for as long as possible. I was severely disappointed, even annoyed, by her refusal: didn't she realise how important that evening would be? Looking back on this nearly 50 years later, I can see how insensitive I was to the wants and needs of other people, especially hers.

Here are a few lines of a song that I wrote a few years ago

I once thought I knew you: that's patently untrue
I barely knew myself so how could I know you?

(*) Thinking about this much later, I think that serendipity didn't have so much to do with finding her house. It's quite probable that there was a map of the area inside the train station at which I looked in order to find her street.

My first year as a Londoner, part 4: "The Movement"

As I have either hinted or stated outright, "The Movement" (aka Habonim) was very important to me in my London years. "The mo'adon" (clubhouse) was located at 523 Finchley Road (it's no longer there!), a ten minute walk (if not less) from where I lived. This was a double house that had been converted into one, so there were a multitude of rooms on several floors. There was also a sports hall at the back, and behind that a large store for camping equipment; I set foot in there maybe once or twice. I had come to know the mo'adon very well in 1972 as I stayed there for several days; also in 1973. This building housed the offices of the central movement (top floor) but also was the meeting house for the North West London branch, where activities were held every Sunday and at least one other day during the week.

To use a military metaphor, the movement could be seen as existing as a battalion: each centre was a company composed of three to five platoons, one for each age group. Each platoon would generally have two leaders, and there would be a company commander responsible for all the groups in a specific centre. The battalion (central movement) had a few staff officers. For my first two years in London, I was both a platoon leader and a company staff officer; I was nothing in my third year in London and in the fourth year I was a battalion staff officer. 

Originally I was 'contracted' to look after the group of 10-11 year olds in North West London. We physically met in a front room on the ground floor, ironically a room in which I had and would spend very little time outside of these meetings. I don't remember anything else about this activity except that it wasn't a match made in heaven. I have no idea if I completed the year or stopped sometime; I suspect the latter. Probably the meeting lasted from 3-5 pm, after which other groups would have their meetings (it might be that the 12-13 year olds also met at the same hour). After the meeting, I would have nothing much to do until about 6:30 pm, when we used to cook supper (normally cauliflower cheese) for whoever was in the building at the time, normally the leaders and those who were coming for meetings in the evening. Sometimes the girlfriend (hereinafter, GF) would be there, sometimes not; she had two younger sisters who were involved in different groups, and so sometimes they would come as a family.

Possibly there were general meetings on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening for topics like art. I have no memory of such meetings in the first year, but they definitely existed in the second year: for example, we brought in a yoga teacher for a weekly one hour session.

In about mid-October we had an activity for the entire North West London 'company' (bar the youngsters): we spent a weekend at a youth hostel in Cambridge. The youth hostel rules at the time were that one member could bring a certain number of 'guests' to stay, if those 'guests' were part of an organised group. So I (and some others) took out membership in the youth hostel association, something that I would use several times. I remember very little about this weekend, except for a few bad things. I slept in a room with several youngsters, probably aged 14-15; they talked all night and made a terrific row. People from other rooms came in to complain. I slept very badly that night which is why I was probably in a bad mood the following day. I had organised for us to see the film 'Fiddler on the roof' on the Saturday evening, but hadn't accounted for the length of the film and how long it would take us to get back to the youth hostel before they closed their doors. As a result, we had to leave mid-way though the film; I have a memory of us walking down a wide street on the way back to the hostel: were there no buses? What could have been a good weekend was fairly traumatic; the GF was also there and was treated to see what happens to me when I don't get enough sleep. So there were problems there as well.

The next major memory is from Chanuka: it had been agreed that there would be a communal ceremony with a sister youth movement ('Dror', with whom Habonim eventually merged) somewhere around Golders Green. The 'company commander' and I, along with someone else were to lead the ceremony; I persuaded the GF to come with me onto the stage and help sing, although she probably didn't know the songs too well. One portion of the ceremony had the 'company commander' reading a text behind which I played a sympathetic and improvised background on the guitar; this segment went down very well.

At the end of 1974, there was the senior leadership week-long seminar that was held this year at some student centre in Chigwell, a rural piece of east London. I, of course, went; the GF didn't. There was a break for a few days at the end, and then I continued at the same place, cooking for the week-long youngsters' camp. Originally I was the sous chef, working with the same girl as in the summer, but after a day or two, she said that her mother was ill and left. Someone suggested that she was bored and/or didn't want to continue which is why she left; I don't know. We might have met each other one more time but no more than once. So I was left to cook for the entire camp; did I have help? I don't remember. I certainly don't remember anything else about the week so it might be that I worked almost around the clock.

At some time during January, I had a huge row with the 'company commander' in the hall of 'the bayit'; he wanted to do something similar to our successful Chanuka ceremony but I said that I couldn't commit myself to it, that what happened previously was spontaneous and probably was good precisely because it hadn't been planned. Anyway, the argument went back and forth, getting more and more heated. I don't remember how it ended, but it might well be that I left the North West London 'company' after this. Someone overheard the argument and told me later that I was in the right.

Possibly in parallel to all the above was my involvement with the Edgware 'company' that had gone independent maybe the year before and was run by my best friend Jeremy. I can't work out the time line as there seem to be conflicting memories. In the summer, I had cooked at the camp for the 12-13 year olds; one of the leaders there was a young girl called Judy B. At some stage we were going to run a group together, and I have a memory of going to her house and talking about plans. But then she said that she wasn't interested. Was this for the 10-11 year olds in NWL? A group in Edgware? 

What complicates matters is that sometime, probably in November 1974, I was involved in the planning of a weekend meeting for all the 12-13 year olds in the country, to be held in Manchester; I was to cook. Why was I involved if I wasn't working with children of this age? Maybe I was: I have a very faint memory of finishing the meeting with the 10-11 year olds in NWL then catching a bus to Edgware in order to run a meeting with 12-13 years olds. So how do I remember cooking supper back in NWL? Maybe this is the false memory, dating from 1972-3.

Anyway, at some stage, off we went on a chartered coach to Manchester one Friday evening. I doubt that we left before 6 pm and we didn't arrive until 11 pm or even later. From hereon, pandemonium reigned until some time on Sunday afternoon. I remember going to the kitchen when we arrived and sorting out the food; I may even have prepared food that evening. That weekend was a non-stop round of cooking food and cleaning, for which I had some help. I slept in the kitchen. After that weekend, I heard some reports of children being ill from the food; I tried my hardest to keep everything clean, and I suspect that the children were simply suffering from exhaustion and incomplete digestion.

Other mid-week activities in NWL included a song evening sometime in January, where I sang a new song that unfortunately was about a couple splitting up. I introduced it by saying that the song had no connection whatsoever to my current situation, and now it is interesting to consider how this song came about. Another evening had us watching the film 'Goodbye Columbus'; we used to enjoy watching the films shown backwards as they were respooled. There must have been more similar activities, but these seem to be the only ones that I remember (and it took me some time to remember even those).

At the beginning of February was a very important event: a group of maybe 25 people from my year and the year above converged on Simon's house in Birmingham for a weekend of discussions about forming an emigration group. Over the next few years, new people would come in and others would leave, but this is the formal beginning. I rode back to London on the pillion of Simon's motorbike, two hours on the motorway - and fell asleep! At least I didn't fall off.

In the Passover holidays I remember opening with Jeremy a day centre in Edgware; maybe this was only for a few days and quite possibly only a few children came. Then there was the European seminar that I wrote about here. I didn't mention that the GF decided to attend as well; this was without my prompting. We had to vacate the premises for the final night of the seminar, and so everybody came to the sports hall of the moadon and were supposed to sleep there. GF and I quickly made our way up the road to the bayit.

In early July we held a few days' long camp for the Edgware 'company' in a proper camp site somewhere in the northern fringes of London. Presumably we all had a nice and relaxed time, as the only thing that I remember about it was borrowing someone's 50 cc motorbike for a trial ride. I had no problems with balance as I had ridden pillion on a motorbike for six years, whilst going to school. This probably would have been a deciding factor in the decision to purchase a motorbike upon my return from Israel in September 1975.

That near enough wraps up my memories of 'The Movement' in my first year as a Londoner. Hidden behind several of the incidents mentioned is that I wasn't a very good youth leader and I didn't enjoy this part of the movement. I declined an offer to cook for a camp in the summer and decided to go to Israel for two months instead. In the following year, I would 'transfer' to Southgate where I would work under the tutelage of Simon; this was a much better and enjoyable environment, although it did entail a 40 minute drive (?) around the North Circular Road. It's just as well that I had a motorbike then otherwise this would have been problematic; maybe I wouldn't have transferred, preferring instead to stay with NWL.