What a knackering three days, but what fun! I have been a visiting songwriter in four schools in the north-east, at Prudhoe, Wylam, Ovingham and Stocksfield, writing a song with the Year Fours in each school. The other songwriter was Martin Stephenson, and we worked with the children and the teachers to write songs about dinner-ladies, teachers, football teams and best friends. They were fantastic children, so bouncy and such good singers, and we managed to complete the songs in each school, toiling over huge sheets of paper, writing phrases and lyrics, sticking them up on the wall and blasting away. I kept thinking I was going to lose my voice (and sometimes my temper) but it didn't happen. It was great doing it with Martin there, twice as many ideas and twice as much energy.
Rapid-response songwriting, it should be called.
Today has to be a Day of Rest, especially after that miserable train journey home on an unheated antique train (what's got into you, National Express? bring back GNER!) with loads of monstrous people bullying each other and the ghost of Tony Benn patrolling the aisles.
Phew!
I have fallen back in love with Northumberland; I walked by the river Tyne where I used to be banished with the dog as a child for cheeking the McParents, saw where I used to go to Brownies in Ovingham, drank coffee in Prudhoe where we used to go swimming and go to the prefab library, and didn't recognise Stocksfield at all (perhaps there are two of them?)
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