Cup Half Full

Today

I'm in the process of learning the words & tune to "If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between" for my slot in the Laetare Singers offering of foolish moments at Halsway Manor next week. It's a music hall song and I've actually found a recording, made in 1899, by the original singer.

As I learn the words I find myself reflecting on their intrinsic sadness and longing for something better, even though the song is dressed in clown's clothing, so to speak.

These days, in this country we are most of us so far removed from a life where you never see grass or a tree and can only imagine what the countryside might be like.

In My Day

Despite his chairmanship of the Henry Wood Gramophone Circle and tendency to cry when trying to sing a bit of Beethoven, my father loved the old music hall songs. He used to regale us with "His day's work was done" "Whenever I looked at my seaweed", "He stood in a beautiful Mansion", "Boiled beef & carrots" etc etc.

All these songs recorded a gutsy way of dealing with life's inescapable hardships - no proper work, bad food, unfaithful wives, loved ones dying young. I think that for Daddy they reminded him of his hard young days, spent in Clerkenwell in London, avoiding a drunken father, trying to help with tottering finances and learning his alphabet at his mother's knee.

Perhaps they also reminded him of how far he'd come; with an upper-middle class wife, four healthy children and a table laden with nourishing, well-cooked food. He had a big house (even if half of it was sublet), huge Victorian garden and the means to get out to the Surrey countryside or seaside whenever he wished. No houses stood between him and a view of trees and birds.

While I can't remember him ever singing the whole of the "'ouses in between" song to me, he often talked about it with amusement. He saw it solely as "cup half full" song, full of optimism. Maybe by this time he'd become detached enough from his roots not to see the sadness.

I think the last two lines say it all: "If I got a rope and pulley, I could breathe the air more fully...." what a world of hope and sense of suffocation lies therein!