This morning I increased the
planet’s life expectancy by a few minutes, by taking out four boxes-worth of
recycling.
(There’s no need to thank me.)
There were no collection
points within walking distance of my house until recently - which, as a
non-driver, made recycling very inconvenient. The length of time I'd stockpile
cardboard made me worry I was doing more bad for the
environment than good.
Now we have a full range of
green, brown and purple bins mere yards from my back door, allowing me to
recycle as often as I like – feeling every bit of a small-scale hero in the
process.
Despite it being so
convenient, I still have a habit of letting my waste build up (a horrific mental image) – and
as I took my third or fourth box-full out this morning, I had a sudden
flashback to the first song I wrote, while I was still at junior school.
I was ten years old and
already in my first band. We were called Thunder & Lightning (a name
cribbed from the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody) – and played a mix of Beatles,
Queen and Deep Purple songs, thanks to the influence of our drummer, Dan Stutley.
Dan had impressively long hair for a ten-year-old - and was already reading the books of Stephen King. Dan was as cool as a cucumber.
The band sounds a lot more
impressive than it actually was; we’d often just jam along with the original
records and not contribute much ourselves. Still, ten-year-olds of the Eighties
were not supposed to be familiar with that sort of music.
Our instrumentation was a
little eccentric; we were still at junior school, after all, so only had access
to the contents of the music cupboard. I was on a mix of piano, vibraphone and
percussion – and I bloody rocked at it.
Every couple of terms St
Nicholas JMI staged a school production, with each class contributing a
short scene relating to a central theme – and the topic chosen for my penultimate year was the environment.
Inspired by the subject (and
by the title of a book I had spotted on the Puffin Book Club leaflet) – I
decided to try and write a song for it, called Environmentally Yours.
That night after school (I
say ‘night’; it must have been about 4:30om) I set to work with the help of my
earliest collaborator – my dad – and together we worked something up.
I can only remember a chunk
of the lyrics now – and even that is a bit of a mishmash. It was something like this:
Squashing cans
and bottle banks,
Making things
look new.
The world could
be a better place
But it’s up to me
and you.
Maybe with the
help of us,
The world could
end up good.
That is what we
really want
and wouldn’t that
be good.
There’s no time
to delay
To save our seas
and shores.
Why? Because the
world
Is
environmentally yours.
It wasn’t worthy
of Lennon & McCartney, but it wasn’t bad for a first attempt.
Over the weeks
that followed the band rehearsed it up – and when we played it to our teacher,
Mr Pritchard, he said it would be perfect for our class’ contribution to the
show.
Somewhere amongst my old belongings there's a cassette tape of the performance – with my class singing mine and my dad’s lyrics, to Thunder & Lightning's accompaniment. It was a
low-key entrance in to the world of show business, but it was an entrance,
nevertheless.
One of these days
I’ll have to track it down.
I used to think
that Mr Pritchard didn’t like me. He described me in my school report as having “a sense of humour so dry it's barely noticeable”, and said I was sarcastic enough to be a comedian.
It turns out that Mr Pritchard was pretty damn astute.