An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 1: Prologue

I could say it all started with a Greek woman called Helen. Or Eleni... She helped me fall in love with her island, Syros, a few years ago. And then the island of Tinos. And then the idea of travelling from island to island to island...

I'd already visited 25 or so Greek islands over the years, yet there were so many more still to explore...

But of course it goes back much further than that. To another Greek Helen and to a war against Troy. And to a trickster and rogue and hero called Odysseus.

And probably back to Kettering Public Library in the days of my childhood when your local library had what seemed like books unlimited and gateways to worlds way beyond Kettering, Northamptonshire, the Midlands and the UK.

As a little kid, I read about ancient Athens and Sparta; and I read Homer's Iliad and then his Odyssey, and well... the effects of those have never worn off.

Odysseus it was who came up with the idea of the Trojan horse – an idea so ridiculously simple, or simply ridiculous, that they fell for it.

But because he pissed off Poseidon, Odysseus found his journey home to Ithaca took a little longer than he anticipated. After 10 years at Troy, he was to spend another 10 years trying to get home to his wife, Penelope...

The face of Poseidon...

Like so many others down the centuries, I loved the tale of Odysseus and fantasised about one day doing an odyssey of my own. But you need time for these things. Not 10 years necessarily, but certainly a few weeks... a bit longer than your average holiday trip. And certainly longer than any time off that I'd had since I started work as a journalist 48 years ago.

With semi-retirement, came the opportunity to do it... and, although it wasn't planned of course, a global pandemic did quite a good job as a stand-in for the wrath of Poseidon. An odyssey isn't supposed to be easy; and in the year of the Covid-19 plague, every step would prove to be unpredictable.

The monsters, maelstroms and sorceresses that Odysseus had to face and overcome had their places taken by microscopic entities that really didn't care about anything – least of all killing thousands of humans...

In March 2020 it became clear that my plans were not going to go smoothly. So that is when I began writing the journal I'm publishing here to chart the unfolding of An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague... 

...the face of Covid-19

 

My Gap Years

There seems to be a three-year gap to fill in... 

Since 2017, when the blogging stopped, there have been two more Kettstocks – both Kettstock2 and Kettstock3 ran over two nights rather than just one, and were both huge successes. Sadly, we lost a great singer and a great man in Bill Deacon. And sadly, the Russ Payne Band came to an end due to a perfect storm of personal difficulties – but not the traditional "musical differences".

Bassist Bill Keller and I diversified into jazz, in Brighton and London respectively, and were both playing and gigging up until the pandemic hit.

I joined the staff of the excellent magazine The Oldie for a year and a bit, before eventually retiring from the fray. I have continued as a freelance writer and as an editor and contributor to www.Pembrokeshire.Online, the community website for my favourite county.

And I have continued to travel... My latest piece, on following in the wake of Odysseus, will be in the December 2020 issue of The Oldie.

That piece is 1,200 words... but behind that are something like 70,000 words that made up my journal from March to October 2020, An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague.

I'm now editing that journal and will start posting it here very soon...

I've Been Away... I'm Back

© Rowena J Ronson

I've been away from blogging for a while... now I'm thinking of returning to it... but doing something different...

The Moment Of Ruth

Upcoming young female rock singers always seem to have to endure comparisons with Janis Joplin or Joni Mitchell – just as new singer/songwriters used to be burdened with the suggestion that they might be “the new Bob Dylan” (when in fact there was only one of that kind).

Irksome as it may be, I would have to say that Olivia Ruth, a force of nature from Queensland, Australia, brings to mind elements of both Janis and Joni, with the raw power of the former and the vocal acrobatics of the latter.

Ultimately, she is more Janis than Joni... and in fact more Janis than Janis, in that, to my mind, her passionately beautiful voice, which seems to come from every fibre of her being, leaves Joplin in the shade.

In a bizarre way, her phrasing and the tendency of her voice to dominate, dictate and embody the whole feel of a song, remind me more of the amazing David Surkamp, frontman of prog rock greats Pavlov’s Dog, than of any other singer.

Olivia Ruth crowdfunded her current tour of the UK which I was lucky enough to catch at the New Cross Inn, south London. She is backed up by an excellent three-piece band, but, to be honest, she doesn’t need anything but her guitar and that remarkable voice. The more we hear of that, the better.

Kettering Rocks

I've been away... I'm back. A lot of time was taken up arranging the KettStock festival, son of the eight-year-old Tootstock festival.

KettStock in Kettering recreated the spirit of south London's Tootstock – and then some. We had a bigger venue, an audience twice the size, and we raised four times the amount for charity.

So, a major success and a night packed with poignancy, emotion and good music.

And as with all good things... everyone wants to do it again.

Many thanks to Russ Payne and Unison Bends, the Shark Dentists, Bill Deacon, Pete Derbyshire, Mez, Mark Turner, Olli Turner, Dave Part and Nevada Summerley, the musicians who made KettStock happen.

Now, who wants to play at KettStock 2?

That Boy From The North Country

Well, it's not 'Mamma Mia'... I'm talking about 'Girl From The North Country', the remarkable new play by Conor McPherson with music by Bob Dylan – which is definitely not a musical. And, as with most things that Dylan touches, it has a magic that is quite unlike anything else.

It's on at the Old Vic in London until October 7 and tickets are increasingly hard to come by. The word has got around that this is something special – and it lives up to its billing.

You don't expect something set in 1930s Depression-hit Minnesota to be a bundle of laughs, but there is humour woven in among the tragic storylines, and joyous moments amid the harshness of reality.

It's not a musical, it's not a jukebox musical... and the music that it does use is not a 'greatest hits' selection. It's lovely to hear less feted songs from 'Infidels' and 'Street Legal' being put into a new and passionate context, and the brilliant actors/musicians produce remarkable versions of 'Has Anybody Seen My Love?' and a dead-slow 'I Want You' (in the ballad style you can find on the 'Live At Budokan' album).

To tell anymore would spoil enjoyment of the show. Best thing is to go and see it. You are unlikely to be disappointed.

Happiness Is A Warm Rolls

Picture by LAWRENCE BOGLE

Yes... that's me with John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce. I had the unexpected pleasure of checking it out on its brief visit to London a few days ago when it was part of a display of famous Rollers at Bonhams in central London.

It normally resides at a museum in Canada, but it was here to help R-R promote a new model – along with cars belonging to Fred Astaire and the Queen.

Lennon took the car to the States in 1970, and ended up donating it to a New York museum to ease a tricky tax situation. It is now reckoned to be the most valuable automobile in the world

Even today, it is still a work of outrageous art. Chums such as Paul, George and Ringo, not to mention Brian Epstein, Bob Dylan and Keith Moon, all seemed to have had a jolly time in the back of the car – which was said to have an extensive supply of drugs and alcohol.

But the exterior was perhaps the trippiest thing of all – a collision of psychedelia with gypsy caravan-style art that defies you not to smile at the irreverence of it.

I thought of it again today when I was in rehearsal with my old band, the Shark Dentists, working on the infernally difficult-to-play Lennon song 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'. With a little more work, it – and its combination of 4/4, 3/4, 6/4 and 2/4 – should be ready for performing at a little festival in the Midlands next month.