Close your eyes and think of England
There are few more beautiful places on this Earth than the English countryside on a hot summer day (we do get them occasionally you know.) When we were kids my sister and I used to spend two weeks every summer staying with out auntie Carol in Derbyshire where we'd fill our days cycling along dusty country lanes, fishing for sticklebacks in shady streams, picking berries, and generally being happy-go-lucky youngsters frollocking about England's green and pleasant land, getting grass stains on our knees and stung by nettles. All that was over 30 years ago and my memories of those days are very hazy so it probably wasn't anywhere near as utopian as it sounds, but my heart still swells when I see rolling green hills and I drift off into a wistful reverie of long ago perfect summers.
Elusive as butterflies though those moments are, Virgina Astley tried to capture them on her 1983 album "From Gardens Where We Feel Secure" which evokes the hazy, lazy glow of a pastoral English summer day with ambient piano instrumentals that float along like dandelion spores, dressed up with field recordings of chirping birds, church bells, creaking garden gates and baa-ing lambs. It's as precious as little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and really nothing more than wallpaper music (classy Laura Ashley wallpaper though) but when I hear it I get all dreamy and reflective and have an urge for a cold glass of Robinson's Barley Water.
It could just be my advancing age and sentimentality but I always thought there was a heavy sadness underneath the pretty surface of this record. Not just because even the most perfect summer day has to come to an end, but there's a yearning for an Arcadian idyll that doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did. Yes, even on a perfect summer day we English can find something to be depressed about.
Download: A Summer Long Since Passed - Virginia Astley (mp3)
7 Comments:
it's all that countyside - it's not sadness it's fear... i'm terrified of it.you can't see the edges that what it is. and i get hopelessly lost if there's no centrepoint or post office tower to steer by.
i came across a lovely ravishing beauties peel session the other day - unfotunately the sweet tunes are ravaged by shocking reception which spoils it all a bit too much.
That Virginia Astley record is one of my all-time favourites... You need some epic45 in your life, Lee. I think you'll love them...
As soon as I saw the headline and pic I thought: Virginia Astley... and there it was!
I grew up in Derbyshire and have the same idyllic memories. Sticklebacks from a stream with a little wooden bridge over it (sticklebacks - where are they now?). Frogspawn. Climbing trees. Stinging nettles - quick where's the dockleaf? We used to roam for miles and hours too with no idea of what time it was. Our parents had no idea where we were, but it was OK in those days - there were no baddies lurking in the bushes!
Thanks for this, Lee - even 1983 is a long way off now...
Lee, this is a characteristically lovely post, and I feel your pain at the passing of the perfect summers past (if ever they were) but I should point out that THIS SUMMER IT HAS RAINED CONSTANTLY IN ENGLAND AND I AM SURE YOU ARE BETTER OFF WHERE YOU ARE (weather-wise). I thank you.
This summer in South Korea has been interminably hot and damp, making it the most uncomfortable one of my four years here. This is a nice record, but at the moment I am longing for some autumnal sounds to cool me down ('November Woods' by Arnold Bax springs to mind).
I'm with Phil - I knew this was a post about Virginia Astley as soon as I saw the title. I love this record; I was at a wedding in the Cotswolds this summer, and this was on the stereo for some of the drive from London through Oxfordshire. Lazy hangover Sundays benefit greatly from this too!
First time I've ever heard a Virginia Astley song. Excellent. Thanks.
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