Hexham and a Vacant Head

When I opened the curtains this morning, it was a beautiful sunny day. It looked so enticing out there that I decided against hiding away and writing songs, and walked up to the station and caught the train to Hexham.

We used to go there every Saturday with McMum and McDad when we were little, and I used to hover in the stationery department of Robbs department store (now no longer there) while McMum did the food shopping. We'd see a little old lady with grey hair in a horse and cart clopping along the road to go to the market. Once, a bunch of us children from the village danced as the Pied Piper's rats in a show in the Hexham theatre (before it became a cinema), and the Wylam Girl Guides all dressed as monks for a procession in Hexham Abbey, singing a dismal chant, monks-habit costumes made as instructed from old white bedsheets.

I noticed a record shop across the way from the coffee shop, and it turned out that it belongs to Jamie Harwood and his partner Moira. What was intended to be a solitary amble through the streets sadly peering into long-gone shops turned into a jolly conversation about music instead. We talked about song writing too; how very nerdy!

Moria recommended a shop across the road that sold homewares; the man whose shop it was asked if my husband or male partner was across the way looking at records while I looked at the clothes, candles and cushions. I was incredibly polite under the circumstances, and it turned out that he is a musician too. 

So much food for thought! I'd probably be writing songs about all that if I wasn't already preoccupied with other matters. I bumped into Pauline Murray again on the way back to finish the morning's song, then went out to the Grainger Market and bought three bananas and a box of fresh blueberries of two quid, which seemed remarkably reasonable.

There is literally nothing left in my head. I'm sitting here with the window open listening to the gulls barking outside on the river Tyne. I know that I can write better lyrics than I've written, I know I'll have to change lots of things about the songs so far, and I know there's going to be a day of pouring rain tomorrow so I may well be holed up here just writing. For tonight, I'm going to fill my head with rubbish TV and read a bit of a crime novel, and you can't say fairer than that.