Eden On The Line will be moving here shortly.
Mr Phigg
Work is underway on a new collection of stories for children (of all ages).
Mr Phigg already has his own website and Chapter One is available to read here.
The Road Will Run
Here’s the picture from the second verse, together with Bear Road for those who don’t know it…a very steep hill with lovely views over Brighton and the coast and country out to the west.
Bear Road on a cold December morning.
Sea and South Downs lit by icy sun.
Downhill between houses and allotments
From the racecourse to the crematorium.
Roll up, place your bets: take one step and the next.
You reach to grasp the moment and it’s gone.
Along the shining shore, the road is all we are;
And through all we have to come, the road will run.
The road will run.
Two stripes and a smile for happy endings:
My father’s picture hanging by the door.
Caught and frozen, younger than my daughters,
Eyes alight and heading into war.
Hear the backbeat of his song, from 1941:
Every father’s still somebody’s son.
Dig your patch of ground, try to make them proud.
And when you’re dust and done, the road will run.
The road will run.
And, yes, I will leave the landing light on –
But you must always steer by your own stars.
Wheeling through the night to find new mornings,
Your road will take you on from ours.
From Clitheroe to Salisbury Plain to Brighton,
And two girls waiting for a London train.
The winter road as short days start to lengthen:
Ghosts are close and the living live again.
On a frozen New Year’s Eve, with the dog down on the beach,
Jogging seven steps to match my one.
Through the skull beneath his fur,
Through a good life’s golden blur,
Through its frankincense and myrrh,
Through all that we once were,
Through all we have to come, the road will run.
The road will run.
(listen here)
50 Things
Not far off being the most recent song I’ve written, reflecting on hitting 50 – which it makes it over three years old. About time the muse came calling again…
On this trip it comes down to connections:
The lines we find to join up all the dots.
The lines that move in different directions
Across the treasure map to mark our spot.
History forms our frames and pictures fill them:
Old places and old faces here today.
Schools and college, bands and jobs and children;
The friends we’ve kept and lost along the way.
Chorus
Take me back to Spike’s Spit on the Ribble.
Take me back to swim at Monterey.
From the shock and thrill of an early summer river
To moonlight on a warm and waveless bay.
Rise up with the magic of the music,
Levitate from wood and steel strings.
Listen to the rhymes that twine around it.
Listen while I sing…..these 50 things.
The sun burns morning BC mist from Dutch Lake,
Turns a stark noon spot on an old town wall in Greece.
It sinks into a red sea off Key West, FLA;
Leaves a Dordogne sky to shooting stars and peace.
Each day lights a new, familiar ocean;
We find fresh tides while older currents run:
As we catch a glimpse of two blonde children
In the bright eyes of the women they’ve become.
Chorus
(You can listen to an acoustic demo here.)
Wunch
My first stab at writing film dialogue was in a Harriet Jordan-Wrench classic… See film here.
Happy birthday, Harriet.
Honey Walls
Written for a wedding – and, to keep the pretentious Latin theme going, with half a nod to Vergil’s 4th Georgic…
In your hour of flowers and little girls’ laughter,
In the night that is right and the days that come after,
When you choose to do the things you will have to –
You’re building the honey walls.
You’re building the honey walls.
You’ve tested and stretched the strings that support you.
You leapt and you wept and the safety net caught you.
Now the rhythm you strum is the one that they taught you
Inside the honey walls.
Inside the honey walls.
Honey walls.
Honey walls.
The push and the rush and the glorious fall.
The beat and the sweetness, the heart of it all.
Inside the honey walls.
Inside the honey walls.
Behind the green screen, under indigo eyes,
Your yearning and learning and dreams in disguise
Coalesce with the rest in the buzz of the hive,
Inside the honey walls.
Inside the honey walls.
When the sun’s bound in clouds that don’t let its heat through
And down on the ground life’s about to defeat you,
Then folding and holding they press back to meet you –
Inside the honey walls.
Inside the honey walls.
Honey walls.
Honey walls.
The push and the rush and the glorious fall.
The beat and the sweetness, the heart of it all.
Inside the honey walls.
Inside the honey walls.
(You can listen to an acoustic demo here.)
Eden on the line
Fons et origo*? Well, as you might have spotted, James Joyce is at the heart of this site…
But this is the first time I used the imagery which gives this site its name. A song I wrote about 20 years ago.
* if there wasn’t an episode of ‘Happy Days’ with that name – why not?
Buoyed by salt and DNA,
Impelled by history,
Beneath a wide and empty sky,
We swim in a warm sea.
The tide rolls over rocks and sand,
Treasure chests and shells.
There are no charts to mark the shoals
But those we draw ourselves.
Chorus: With the ones we love in the mesh of time,
Trying to make sense of what we find.
Eden – are you on the line?
Come on in – the water feels fine.
Some tread water nervously
And some trade on their fears.
Some weave a pattern in the web
That lasts a thousand years.
The lines run back and forward,
Criss-cross the grand parade.
The ties that join the swimmers
Escape the midwife’s blade.
Chorus
Don’t look for hidden purposes.
Don’t ask me what it’s for.
Why some will swim through seven seas
And some don’t get through the door.
In the strands of blood and friendship
All somehow make their mark.
They guide and trace the patterns
Of who and how we are.
Chorus
(listen to an acoustic demo here)
Eden On The Line 