“It was a good year for the vultures. The sun, unfettered by even the promise of cloud, laid waste to the land with biblical fury. Men cowered in the shadows of their houses, praying to a younger god for salvation, while their sheep and cattle died by the thousand. Crops perished, forests blazed in the night and rivers that had once thundered through the mountains ran dry. Only the Tagus, the mightiest of these, stayed its course through the parched land, though it too had suffered, to which the broad halo of white mud that lined its banks from east to west stood as a grim testament. The vast plains south of the great river, once several shades of green, lay barren and brown under the white sky, scarred with huge marble wounds that ran like veins across the earth. In the heat of the afternoon even the mountains seemed to melt, shimmering somewhere beyond the cloudless ether; and it was from these mountains that they came, in ones, twos and hundreds, scouring the world below for the dead and dying.”
I wrote that old opening paragraph to my novel a few years ago during the sweltering Covid summer, when temperatures soared before the school term was quite finished. Half the trouble with writing a book set in Spain is that it was an awful lot easier to write convincingly about the place when I was living out there – since moving back to this rock, my wellspring has dried up somewhat. In truth, I’ve only ever experienced a Spanish summer twice – despite spending almost three years living out there, I’ve always managed to avoid the tres meses de infierno – but the current flick of the claw from Thumberg’s nemesis is giving me a pretty good idea of what it might feel like.
The UK is on red alert. Heck, the radio even said this morning that there was to be a Cobra meeting about the high temperature crisis (things really have reached that kind of an extreme, it seems). It’s a balmy 26 degrees out there right now as I write, and the happy-clappy Christian camp have long since retreated indoors, taking their frisbees and their babies with them. All the forecasters are pointing to a record-breaking 40 degree high on Monday. The current record was set two years ago, with a garden in Cambridge registering 38.7 degrees. That seems absurd, but that’s where we are. The last time I was caught in temperatures that high I was living in Jordan, on the edge of the Syrian Desert, where one expects that kind of celestial fury in the summer months. Not here. Not in West Sussex.
Scorching afternoons aside, I’m enjoying my current routine. I’m up on my feet almost as soon as I’m awake, which is usually around six thirty (yes, even in the holidays – I’m a creature of habit). I’m up earlier (and faster) if I find myself on the sofa. That thing is a death trap – I don’t know what enchantment was cast upon it by its previous owners, but it lulls whoever sits on it to sleep in a matter of minutes. If I don’t have to make the shopping trek (an hour into town and another one back on foot), I get an hour and a half in the sun with a book on the ha-ha. I’m currently working through Hernan Diaz’ In the Distance. When I return, I’ll make myself some lunch and kill the hottest part of the day with a round of Age of Empires II (if I’m feeling uncaringly unproductive), which usually knocks out a couple of hours – especially if I do a little follow-up historical reading afterwards, as I often do. By four o’clock the sun is no longer dead overhead so I pick a different spot on the ha-ha facing the South Downs and get another hour of reading in. I usually get distracted in that spot and end up watching the world. The presence of a summer school right behind me doesn’t bother me overmuch. It’s very easy to forget they’re there when you’re engrossed in a good book, or a panorama as beautiful as the one I have on my doorstep. Sometimes there’s a red kite or two riding the thermals over the Weald and I lose myself in the moment. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I’m somewhere else, like the shade of that special oak tree beyond the Puente del Ajoli on the Raya Real. And sometimes I just count the contrails. It’s a peaceful life. I’m grateful, really.
At the end of the day, after dinner, I retreat to the living room, put on some Soul, Funk or R’n’B and jam, with or without my liquid red bass guitar. I spent a good hour with my bass yesterday, to which the bandage on my thumb and the blister underneath will testify. I’m not much good at the bass, but I find it next to impossible not to get involved when I hear music I love, and I’m slowly starting to get the hang of my favourite bass riffs by ear. Always by ear. It’s the only way I know.
Last night I managed to get to grips with two of my all-time favourite basslines: I Need Your Lovin’ by Teena Marie and Till You Surrender by Rainbow Brown. I improvised around The Cardigans’ My Favourite Game and had an honest go at Billy Ocean’s Stay the Night. One day, hopefully, I’ll be good enough to nail the incredible slap bass in Ain’t We Funkin’ Now by The Brothers Johnson.
I can’t share my love for all things Soul and Funk with my students anymore on account of the colour of my skin. They say it’s not my place. But it remains my favourite music genre by far, and they can’t stop me listening to the music I love. It’s just a shame I have to be so selfish with something that really should be shared, not least of all on account of the power within.
Marvin. Tina. Stevie. Lou and Luther, Sam and Dave, and Aretha, Minnie and Michael. They’re in my ears most nights. But nothing and nobody can lift me out of a dark spot like the hardest working man in showbusiness, the Godfather of Soul, soul brother number one, Mister James Brown. If only I could have seen him live…! James was a living legend, and one of the few artists I know whose recorded work pales in comparison to his live shows. Any try-hard can stand in front of a microphone with a guitar and croon. James could move like lightning and his band hung on his every movement for their cues. I reminded myself of his mastery the other day by watching his performance at the T.A.M.I. Show back in ’63, when, in a fit of pique over being snubbed as the closing act in favour of the Rolling Stones, he and his Famous Flames blew the opposition out of the water with an up-tempo run of Out of Sight. That and his legendary mike-drop in Montreux almost twenty years later (check it out at the 4 minute mark).
Forgive the fanboying. There are few things I love more in this world. I’d like to think that the sheer amount of time and love I’ve invested in my passion for Soul and Funk and its history over the years renders my taste in music sincerely reverential rather than appropriative. The way I see it, it’s steered me through the darkest waters in my life and always brought me back to the light, and I owe it to my old bandmaster Mr D who introduced me to that world. If I can share that light with somebody, even just one other person, I’ll have passed on the torch. Nothing so powerful and so precious should be preserved for enjoyment in private. That’s definitely not what James would have wanted.
Well, it looks like the sun is slowly starting to sink at last. Time to pick up where I left Håkan on the trail. Though the world is already blazing hot out there, keep the funk alive, y’all. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 