MAKING EDNA SMILE
Making Mum smile or laugh was never a difficult task. She had a great sense of humour that, she often reminded us, was born from the hardships and deprivation she and her family faced when she was growing up. It's often a perspective given by Liverpudlians as to why their particular brand of humour is so inscisive, invective and marketable and there is a certain degree of truth in this. I'm not entirely sure Scousers own the rights on this however, as it is a characteristic also applicable to Geordies, Glaswegians and Cockneys alike.
In Mum's case though it was these factors that shaped both her humour and her attitudes to life in general and to be entirely truthful it was her invective that was the most creative, destructive and funny. Add a little bit of street language to the mix and the results could be devastating...
She once told a male neighbour after one particular dispute that he was "an auld molly-in-the-bushes" and stormed inside leaving everyone else slack-jawed as to just what that meant. She described one of my friends who had a severe squint as having "one eye and a ball of fat". I squirmed with embarrassment when she grabbed one of my workmates by the hair as we were leaving a soiree and called him an "empty-headed get" just because his brand of invective was directed towards me. She stuck her tongue out at a poor retarded woman who decided to have a mad go at her, which enraged the woman so much that Mum had to run away. She could turn on you in an a instant with a torrent of scissor-like abuse and the boniest of fists connecting with the fleshiest parts of the torso.
She laughed at Jake Thackray; the League of Gentlemen; Monty Python and George Roper. She laughed at wordplay that was ridiculous; I could make her dissolve into tucks with a comical language that we both shared which went something along the lines of "Whoa, Josie! Who's raithed a bogitha from the old McBogley two spines? Wraithing frogwalloper and Jimmy three bottlesworth, no doubters" (OK! It loses a bit in translation, I know!)
It was difficult to see this sort of daft banter take a back seat when the illness left her facing days that were both empty and full at the same time; empty of spirit and full of despair. When I was there I would hold her hand and we would sing and we would try to laugh at rubbish. Most times it worked and that was valuable. The trouble was I couldn't be there enough due to the miles that separated us. In the month before she died she became vacant and more prone to lapses of memory. It was at that point that the bond that had held us together for nearly half a century began to fragment in front of me. It was then that I knew I was losing her and I felt inept.
I wrote this song as a celebration of how music and laughing kept us both sane and how, even when that began to slip away, it still continued to hold me up above the rising tide of grief.
We often sang as a duo. And I hope we always will .....