Scenes from childhood

“Please stop the car.”

Reluctantly, my father pulled over to the side of the road which was relatively narrow and surrounded by hedgerows.  We were on holiday in Devon, staying in a dowager’s cottage on an extensive estate.  The single-storied cottage was built of bright red brick, and was doubtless Georgian, although at the time I was unaware of the fact.  I was about 13.

I had asked for the car to be stopped so that I could record something off its radio.  At this age I had started to discover music, and listened avidly.  I had a very simple Philips tape recorder which worked both with batteries and a mains adaptor.  I had rigged up a lead ending in two crocodile clips which I used to connect the recorder to the car’s speaker placed in the back panel under the rear windscreen.

The car was a Ford Zephyr, I think, but my memories are hazy on this point – as on so many others relating to my childhood.  My father ran a chain of garages, so our cars seemed to change every year, and my childhood is punctuated by a steady and confusing succession of upgraded models.

I spent many hours in the car that holiday.  I was hungry for music, and Radio 3 – probably only recently transformed from the Third Programme – provided me with an apparently inexhaustible supply of it which I was loath to miss.  It would be poetically appropriate if the car in which I was so often transported to magic realms by the sounds I heard had indeed been a Zephyr, sent for me by the gods.

So it is mostly music that I remember from that trip – apart from an incident in which some wellingtons were lost in a possibly dangerous swampy patch.  I recall vividly sitting in the car with a Mozart duo for violin and viola for company, and thinking it boring and uninspired; I hope it was partly the performance.  I also remember being alone in the spacious cottage – the rest of my family had gone out somewhere, leaving me to my anti-social bent – alone, that is, apart from a caress-seeking but supercilious black cat.

I listened to a recording I had made of Mozart’s “Haffner” symphony; unlike the string duo, I thought this the most electric music I had ever heard.  To improve the limited sound quality of my tape machine I place a copy of The Radio Times over the small built-in speaker; this cut down the annoying background hiss and the casing’s tinny buzz.  I played the tape again and again; I can still hear the magisterial opening, with its great soaring octaves and gradual rhythmic acceleration, as it filled the echoing room.

The other piece I listened to during that holiday was Schumann’s “Kinderszenen”.  Even now, when I hear the music it conjures up those timeless moments as we sat in the car by the side of the road, listening stilly as the tape recorder whirred softly in the background.

(21.10.89)

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