From the grounds of Douglas Road Infant School, it was Mark Paton who trod on the fingers of me right hand, I remember thinking at the time as I said “aaaawwoooooo”, and despite it being yonks ago, “I might need them”. It was true, I did need them!, and every time some norbit thought It was funny to get hold of my right hand in a pretend hand shake, but instead deciding to bend me fingers into all shapes of patterns of contortion, I always yelled “I might need them”. They always nearly stopped, and eventually I put them to good use, drawing, writing and later ….. ummm, yeh, then playing guitar, the strumming hand! Creativity is not just a part of me, it is me. I cannot ‘not’ think of doing something creative. Doodles are the great one, drawing, making up stories. For the first half of the 1980’s, I drew cartoon strips, until that day in High School when Paul Hughes and Hywel Edwards commented on an item of ‘how easy it was’! I was in standing distance, I asked what they had done, “we’ve written a song, Deprivation in the UK”. My mind didn’t even blink, I still remember the click in my brain! What’s odd though, i was well and truly into a period of listening to The Beatles, how could I not think of writing a song. I’d been playing the tennis racquet as a guitar for years, but I just didn’t cross that bridge of writing until that very moment when Paul and Hywel said they’d written one. I look at this now as my ‘Woolton Village Fete’ moment when Lennon and McCartney met. The creative join had unified, although continuing being prolific in the art department for another year or so, the first song ‘Hitting The Town’ was hatched later that day at home, taking It triumphantly to school the next day. Interestingly Paul and Hywel weren’t at all interested. I see that now as my future as an Unsigned Artist moment. I was 15.
FAST FORWARD
My son had taken over my life. A failure at streaming and promoting an album in 2011 didn’t seem to matter that much, next to being with my family. The guitars grew dust as did the writing. Enjoying my son’s company was the real deal, they were magical days. By 2018/9 though, he was becoming his own man, he didn’t wanna play with Dad anymore, lol. Yet, I didn’t see the oncoming signs. In hindsight, I realized that I had no outlet for my personal frustrations, and because of certain nightmarish people, I was unknowingly heading towards bursting point central. It was the tale end of 2019, the year of hell as I see it, I’d been in a dark state since September 2018. My mental state was fractured to within a literal inch to the end of all life. I won’t go into all that rubbish, but the further I get away from 2019 the better. Alas, it was a conversation with my sister, a loving bright spark she is, who when suggested, “why don’t you get back into music?” … Lightning smashed open the Dam, and water flowed once more through the veins of creativity.
SONG WRITING I enjoy all forms of songwriting, whether it comes from a Jamming session, or having lyrics ready. Sometimes it's great when you're just minding your own business and a song comes out of nowhere, just for a 'larf'. 'Ble Mae'r Siocled' came out of standing by a Photocopier in work scanning a massive book on Oil and Gas, my mate Karen was in the room also and we made up this, it had us in tears of laughter and kept us entertained for hours.
