A Musical Christmas Card

A Very Happy Christmas 2025 to all our listeners. G/M XX PS. Need a Christmas playlist while you make the mince pies/ wrap the gifts? Try ours! https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/sets/the-peacocks-christmas-party

Sergeant Spectre's Lonely Rubber Soul - a novel about the Beatles

#OTD in 1965 (Frank Sinatra's 50th birthday), the Beatles played their last mainland concert tour date in Britain. Two houses of 2,500 at the Capitol Cinema, Cardiff. I've just published a novel about it, the Beatles, the generation gap and the spiritual reawakening of the Sixties. Read it online here - https://calwaygareth.blogspot.com/2025/12/sergeant-spectres-lonely-rubber-soul.html I went up to Liverpool with my son in law for the first time IN MY LIFE to celebrate the moment.

Sergeant Spectre's Lonely Rubber Soul - a Beatles novel

https://calwaygareth.blogspot.com/2025/12/sergeant-spectres-lonely-rubber-soul.html

Two Of Us On The Long and Winding Road To Liverpool

Our beloved son in law helped me fulfil a sweet dream by driving the hard day's long and winding road up to Liverpool where we enjoyed the fabulous Beatles sites and endured Liverpool's abysmal 1-4 home defeat against PSV Eindhoven. On the way up, we played then first six Beatles albums and the other six on the way back, the first time even I have managed this feat. After the game in Molly Malone's we drowned our sorrows and toasted our joys and heard "Fairytale of New York" (which, serendipitously, Maz and I are preparing for Christmas performances at present) and the next morning we went Up The Mersey. It was a fabulous time in a down to earth fairytale city. What all of the Beatles never forgot, even at the height of their later 'suffering artist' stage was that you have to give your hard-working Hamburg and Liverpool cavern-dwellers listeners some joy to hold onto, a song to lift the heart through the eight day week ahead. The non-diegetic sound is the Peacocks' 'escape the factory' cover of A Hard Day's Night and our Beatles medley All You Need Is The Love You Make from our It Was Sixty Years Ago Today EP. https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/al... This is what I said there about our A Hard Day's Night The naked truth. The howl. There are some Beatles hits (eg Help- and most of the 'Hard Day's Night' LP, which was mostly written by John) lifted so high into heaven by the Fab Force that the original Lennon howl gets lost- and when he's not making everybody cry with laughter or nailing you with his charismatic ideas, he is howling with pain an awful lot of the time. This is one of those times. This is a working man from Liverpool beaten down by his eight day week, the labouring masses whose only opiate is that sexual partner at home to 'give him everything' (and tenderly) : the extremely tough background they actually came from (Ringo hammering his steelworker drums into high art, those dark F chorded phrases about 'working like a dog') ; which they escaped by being Grammar School bright, fabulously gifted and (lest we forget) grindingly hard working throughout their youth and for a very long time afterwards. What's sublime about the Beatles is that they touch that story with their magic and set the very factories it's about singing it. And take its Cinderellas (voiced here by Maz, both his and all those dreaming factory girls' wish fulfilment ) to the Beatle ball. And about All You Need Is The one You Make: The Fabs 'at the height of their comeback' and peak of their art. "All You Need Is Love" was a Lennon song, and said to be the last magnificent high tide mark of his big hit Beatle writing career too. It tended to be rock masterpiece B sides and album tracks for him after this; the unique Beatle knack of being both kooky and mainstream at once largely passing to Paul ('Hello Goodbye''Hey Jude'; 'Get Back' and 'Lady Madonna' to John's 'The Walrus' and 'Revolution' and 'Don't Let Me Down' George's 'The Inner Light. The late Beatle John 'B sides' are surely as good if not better songs ('The Walrus') than the hit A side ('Hello Goodbye'!) but the point is that 'All You Need Is Love' was also the huge and obvious hit. However competitive Paul was ("They weren't collaborators" said George Martin "but competitors") he was generous enough to recognise that John had written the better zeitgeist for the BBC satellite broadcast of England's choice for the One World project than 'Your Mother Should Know' his own typically charming but much slighter effort . George also paid homage to this ultimate hippy hit 'All You Need Is Love'. Indeed, he spent most of his subsequent solo career writing and singing his own versions of its message, including an open homage to it on 'All Those Years Ago" and a genuine contender to match it with 'All Things Must Pass'. If Paul followed his usual mutual practice of competing with John, he certainly didn't manage to match 'All You Need Is Love's' singalong mix of heavy gravity, anthemic cogency and sheer uplift with that Winged wonder 'Silly Love Songs' but he may have done with the Beatle album track 'The End' - not a hit single but a worthy and self-conscious valediction to the Beatle career and, as the climax of 'Abbey Road,' a different kind of hit probably played as much as most Sixties singles.'The End' is a beautifully constructed epitaph - or devout eulogy - to the same steadfast Beatle hippy faith. MY NEW NOVEL, SERGEANT SPECTRE'S LONELY RUBBER SOUL, IT WAS S IXTY YEARSAGO TODAY, SET IN THE BEATLES SIXTIES, WHICH TELLS THE WHOLE RAGS TO RICHES REAL-LIFE FAIRYTALE (COMPLETE WITH SHE'S LEAVING HOME GENERATION GAP AND SPIRITUAL REAWAKENING) IS PUBLISHED ONLINE HERE https://www.blogger.com/blog/page/edi... ON DECEMBER 4 2025, THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF RUBBER SOUL AND "DAY TRIPPER. WE CAN WORK IT OUT" (THE THIRD CHRISTMAS NUMBER ONE BEATLES SINGLE IN A ROW)

America i.m. 22 November 1963

A special 22 November 2025 release of our cover of Simon& Garfunkel's love song to/elegy for the American Dream.

"Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together

I've got some real estate here in my bag"

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies

And walked off to look for America

"Kathy", I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"

It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw

I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus

Playing games with the faces

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy

I said "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"

"We smoked the last one an hour ago"

So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine

And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping

I'm empty and aching and I don't know why

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They've all come to look for America

All come to look for America

All come to look for America

We're not so much trying to make 'America' great again in our version as to do it justice. Simon & Garfunkel's original version is perfection. One of the greatest folk/pop songs ever written, simple genius from lyric through melody to performance, arrangement and production, it's top ten in the Great American Songbook as far a we're concerned. It's that elusive American dream in a song; a hymn to enduring hope. All the longing of youth; all the energy and spaciousness and potential of America and all the sadness as both fall short.

Maz - lead vocal, acoustic guitar

Gaz- vocals, bass, floor tom drum

Arty's Aarti

Chorus: You tell me I please you Because my heart's aching To let your name Baba Escape to my lips Escape to my lips. How is it you love me So much for so little? The bed of the valley Is less stone than I. No matter how far off My life's stream meanders, Your sea of compassion Keeps drawing me hot. Though gloomy impressions Like mists would deny you, Your sun's affirmation Keeps making me sing. Chorus: You tell me I please you Because my heart's aching To let your name Baba Escape to my lips Escape to my lips. Your beauty is blazing Like mountain moons on me, The snows of your silence Wash all my dirt clean. This forest so lonesome I'm hacking to reach you, Is full of birds singing 'He's closer than you!' Ah why should I wonder You give all for nothing? Your glance is so lovely, A steel heart would melt. Chorus My art is the craft of A thundering river Which acts to a pure sea Of stillness, your name. My heart I have mined for Good words and intentions, To burn off like incense All faults in your flame. Chorus. I wrote the words at the Meher Baba Pilgrim Centre in Meherabad, India in 1989. Aarti means devotional song and is derived from Sanskrit words for 'complete love'. Several beautiful Aartis are sung daily - an Australian Aarti; an American Aarti and a variety of Indian ones, the most beautiful of all the Gujarati aarti written and composed by Meher Baba himself. Despite some every eligible candidates (Pete Townshend and Ronnie Laine for example) there is not an English or British aarti. I was for almost two weeks a lone Englishman and because of my regular ghazal readings at the morning and evening songs and prayers was nicknamed 'Arty' by one of the fifty Americans who outnumbered the Indian devotees and staff residing or on pilgrimage there. I played up to my role as the lone stage Englishman and so did everyone else. Sometime in the second week, one of the old Parsi followers comically 'exposed ' me as 'a Welshman in disguise' which all added to my reputation as 'quite the clown... and composer' (as Baba's niece, Meheru, the woman I am pictured with under Baba's picture in the final frame put it.) All of these elements combine in my attempt at an Aarti uttered from the British stiff upper lip. I found the long forgotten lyric in a drawer of Baba papers and composed the music I had never been able to add in 1989 (Bob Brown explained how my original hummed effort was much too complicated) and accompanied myself on bass, adding a higher vocal, drums and harmonium.

REMEMBRANCE FOR PERCY AT FRING ALL SAINTS Previously unreleased LIVE per...

The best way to start these notes is with a recent email to us from Lancelot's great grandnephew Daniel Williamson... "While going through my gran’s loft recently we discovered a photo of Lancelot which we didn’t know we had. We’re not sure but believe he’s late teens here. It’s the only photo we have of him, and we thought you might be interested to see it, especially as it’s much clearer and higher quality than the picture currently available online." We are more than interested! It's wonderful to see a proper family photo of this excellent young man. Lancelot joined the RAF aged 19 so 'late teens' suggests he's 19 here. We gave the (edited) address and performed the song you hear on this video as part of a memorial service for him on Sunday 13 July 2025, the 80th anniversary of his fatal aircrash. At that time, we also released a film of the graveside blessing and a second (outdoor) performance which followed the service    • In Remembrance of Lancelot Percival Willia...   but wanted to reserve this present one for Remembrance Sunday. This audio is our part of that in-church service and has a unique resonance, echoing inside the 700 year building beside which he is buried, so that one can almost imagine 7 centuries of Fring worshippers joining in the acknowledgement of a brave, unselfish, loving (and still very young) man who gave six years and his life to defend the England this church stands for. The video combines the wonderful new family photo with press cuttings about his life and 'splendid' RAF career along with footage of the church (including our sides-person Bernard Clark setting up before morning service) a week later. (The actual song and address during that service were not filmed, only recorded).

Bonfire Night of the Vanities

A collage of words and music suggested by bonfire night and its demonic origins in burning heretics/martyrs/subversives/insurrectionists/visionaries/traitors and of one of them nearly blowing up Parliament. We imagine the hell of the burning and the glimpse of their visionary heaven (or hell) beyond. This evocation of the afterlife merges into a more general exploration of the heaven and hell as a state of our bodiless minds we all might find after death, in this conception seen, as Dante does, as a living soul among the dead. The mystical lyrics chanted throughout to a drum beat which explore this are composed in the form of a Persian ghazal, a lyric poem often describing states of heavenly love and yearning. There are also sustained references to William Sawtree burned as a pro-Protestant heretic and Margery Kempe who narrowly escaped burning as one and who was later credited with the miracle of saving her church by prayer from a Great Fire in Lynn.

"Bonfire Night has pagan origins in ancient Celtic festivals like Samhain, which marked the end of harvest and the beginning of winter with bonfires to ward off spirits and for divination. These traditions were later Christianized, with the Church incorporating some of the pagan customs into celebrations like All Saints' Eve (Halloween) and eventually being overshadowed by the 1605 Guy Fawkes plot in Britain." In Catholic Ireland the Guy Fawkes connection is of course absent. "Bonfire Night, or Bonna Night as it is known in Cork, is celebrated on June 23rd. It involves many communities burning bonfires across the City on the night. The tradition is an old pagan Celtic celebration to honour the goddess Aine."

St Margaret's is burning but Jesus tells me
Here in my mind that all shall be well.
"Shall I carry the Sacrament towards the fire?"
Asks our priest. - Sir, yes. And to hell.

St Margaret's is burning; I'm urging the Lord
Here in my mind, let the high heavens snow
To quench this fire and ease my heart's woe.
"A Miracle!" cries Lynn, till my heart's tears flow.

Out of my gender, out of my class and out of my mind,
Out of my body and leaving the age I was born to behind,
Where priests hurry Mass, to get back to their lusts, pies, slanders and beer:
Fruit gorged by a bear and discharged from its rear.

Now I'm old and wounded, the Lord God tells me
Here in my mind, You must go to Danzig.
I excuse you, escort you and lead you, for I
Am above your confessor, although he bans it.

Who shall be against you, the Lord God tells me
Here in my mind, then a friar says it too.
In storm and war, through slander and curse
Who shall be against, if I am with you?

A Roman candle – both ends – a seized handful of lightning,
She fires through the heavens like light streams off an angel’s wing.

So mighty and subtle, a charge off of yin and yang,
The craft’s me, and I’m her: love-fuelled, she flies to every whim.

The Maimed King’s white-robed daughter, her eyes red with strange desire,
Steers dreamland below – wakes life from dead Earth - by wishing.

Above dreams, I see hereafter’s warp-speed joy and pain: trance
Of soul-sending bliss; agony of sins’ un-thinking.

Debt-ridden nightmares redeem themselves in galloping hells:
Thick sins in deep shit, thin in shallow - below my high living.

Six hundred and sixty six rockets shoot over like stars:
Flight paths clear of congestion and endless delaying.

It’s not sober in heaven, Calypso measures pour down;
Pure spirit unstopped by flesh; wild uncorporate singing.

I’ve pub-crawled from the plane into this heavenly city,
Tavern drinking to an Absent Friend I should be meeting.

Stuck. A Catherine Wheelspin Lotus to Nowhere. Fast. I’ve stalled
The mission, the Earth and its peril, the Master’s calling.

“O God-dazzled, leave this dream, which is heavenly shadow
Of Grail light, and follow Me where such wish-life is nothing.”

Thanks: Harp - Vanessa Wood-Daves "Oh God dazzled vocal sample - Gabriella Tal

Halloween

 ⁨@PeacocksTaleMusic⁩  

 This track stumbles terrified through the cellars and attics of England's haunted house. These famous nursery rhymes are said to record the gothic cruelties of opposing religious regimes during the Reformation.

The old man who wouldn't say his prayers was the Catholic or priest who wouldn't conform to the new State religion under Edward VI and (after Mary) Elizabeth. My lady's chamber could be a forbidden chapel dedicated to Mary in a house or a suggestion that the priest was having improper relations with the Catholic lady of the house. The left leg meant a Catholic out of step with the rest. Some readers also see Protestant taunts of Catholic Mary Tudor (and Catholic Mary Queen of Scots') childlessness.

The cockle shells were instruments of torture used by the Catholic regime against Protestants under Bloody Mary (quite contrary) the pretty maids all in a row the graves of Protestant martyrs who had suffered such genital torture. The silver bells were thumbscrews. The garden was a graveyard: England under Mary.

It's all anti-Mary in the sense that it is about as far away from the Christian love and forgiveness the Virgin Mother is supposed to personify as possible, on both sides.

A more innocent reading of the Mary rhyme is that the maids in a row are nuns praying, the silver bells are the bells of Catholic cathedrals (forbidden since Elizabeth) and the cockle shells are pilgrim badges (also forbidden.)

These rhymes come out of a divided country. The animus felt against Catholicism by Puritans fearing that Charles I was trying to reintroduce 'Bloody Mary's' faith (and Spanish and French power) into Protestant England by the back door has roots in these kind of experiences; and vice versa. 

Mary Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

Goose-a, goose-a, gander

Where shall I wander?

Up stairs, down stairs

In my lady’s chamber.

There you'll find an old man

Who wouldn't say his prayers.

I took him by the left leg

And threw him down the stairs.

Mary, Mary...

Goosey goose gander

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs

And in my lady's chamber.

A priesthole for the old Guy

Who crossed the new State God,

The left-footed southpaw

Gutted for His Love.

Mary, Mary...

Mary Tudor, Bishop Gardner

Killing and Torturing Prots,

Silver thumbscrews, Manhood carvers,

Maidening their anti-Mary plots.

Anti-Mary maidening their plots.

The Queen of Heaven's makeless idol

Of childless Mary Tudor and of Scots,

Maids in waiting, headless-churchbells,

Pilgrim badges, nuns and empty cots.

Goosey goose gander

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs

And in my lady's chamber.

There I met an old man

Who would not say his prayers.

I took him by the left leg

And threw him down the stairs.

Goosey goose gander

Eyeing up the totty

Necklines and waistlines

Fronty and botty.

Mary Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

from https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/the-english-civil-wars-and-other-nursery-crimes, released August 22, 2021 

Pic by Bhas Allan.

Alternative music video - youtu.be/TDCbetcIG2I

Betjeman Cabaret at the Fring All Saints Parish Lunch

In celebration of Harvest Festival, National Poetry Day and the joys of feasting, friendship and community, here is Peacock Gaz dressed as a mouse and reading Betjeman's "Diary of a Church Mouse" to kick off our after-mains cabaret. Your After Dinner Squeaker as it were. The cabaret then continues and concludes with Corrine Tereszczuk's rendition of Betjeman's Hymn, after which she was told she'd passed the audition for the Fring Singers. Filmed at Sedgeford Village Hall Oct 5 2025 by Peacock Maz. We leave you to imagine the running about and squeaking at every table by the mouse before the reading (which did happen) and the ladies standing on chairs during it (which actually didn't.) The three carved church mice in whose honour all this occurred may be viewed behind the pulpit in All Saints Church Fring. Diary of a Church Mouse Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the vicar never looks I nibble through old service books. Lean and alone I spend my days Behind this Church of England baize. I share my dark forgotten room With two oil-lamps and half a broom. The cleaner never bothers me, So here I eat my frugal tea. My bread is sawdust mixed with straw; My jam is polish for the floor. Christmas and Easter may be feasts For congregations and for priests, And so may Whitsun. All the same, They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all Is Autumn's Harvest Festival, When I can satisfy my want With ears of corn around the font. I climb the eagle's brazen head To burrow through a loaf of bread. I scramble up the pulpit stair And gnaw the marrows hanging there. It is enjoyable to taste These items ere they go to waste, But how annoying when one finds That other mice with pagan minds Come into church my food to share Who have no proper business there. Two field mice who have no desire To be baptized, invade the choir. A large and most unfriendly rat Comes in to see what we are at. He says he thinks there is no God And yet he comes ... it's rather odd. This year he stole a sheaf of wheat (It screened our special preacher's seat), And prosperous mice from fields away Come in to hear our organ play, And under cover of its notes Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats. A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High, Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong To munch through Harvest Evensong, While I, who starve the whole year through, Must share my food with rodents who Except at this time of the year Not once inside the church appear. Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. They read the Bible every day And always, night and morning, pray, And just like me, the good church mouse, Worship each week in God's own house, But all the same it's strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don't see at all Except at Harvest Festival. -- John Betjeman The Church's Restoration In eighteen-eighty-three Has left for contemplation Not what there used to be. How well the ancient woodwork Looks round the Rect'ry hall, Memorial of the good work Of him who plann'd it all. ... Of marble brown and veinéd He did the pulpit make; He order'd windows stainéd Light red and crimson lake. Sing on, with hymns uproarious, Ye humble and aloof, Look up! and oh how glorious He has restored the roof!

BBC Interview on Upload Sept 2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08q3hsh 

Our BBC interview with Rob Jelly about the local stories we tell in words and music is broadcasting across the Eastern counties on Sep 25 at 6 pm, Sep 27 at 6pm and any time after that on the same link https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08q3hsh It's a lively, zany and altogether excellent weekly 2 hour show and we're chuffed to bits to have had a few creations on there in the last couple of years. But this is the BIG INTERVIEW.

New Dylan EP From The Peacocks!

We went to see "A Complete Unknown" in King's Lynn when it came out at the Corn Exchange. We went at noon to avoid the Bobomania, met a folk guitarist and Dylan fan we knew from a Folk Club in nearby Marks and Spencer's and, talking this as a surefire sign of how the town was embracing the film assumed the cinema would be full. As it turned out, we watched the film on an epic screen in a cavrounous empty space with two octogenarians and a carer. Not even the guitarist was there. It was however a superb film and the image of Dylan hurtling off on his motorcycle into an almighty fall at the end powered by all those brilliant Icarus songs soaring out of control and off balance along the edge of his life and apocalyptic times was unforgettable. We came home, got out our old Dylan vinyl from the 1962-1966 period, played them for days and then started covering some of our favourites. In all the hype, the genuine race/generation/culture wars, and all the philosophical swerves he made to try and stay on his own course, you can forget what a skilled guitarist and powerful voice he was and what tremendous songs they were. And what a performer, standing alone up there holding the zeitgeist like a note and later with a rock band in front of a crowd not always on his side. Th e first three of the songs on this album are a reminder of the quality of that songwriting. The fourth is some counter-genius female context to all the lone wolfing.

credits

released September 18, 2025

Lead vocal and acoustic guitar (fingerpicking on track 1)- Maz
Bass, foot drums, overdubbed snare/common flute) - Gaz.

In deference to the folk vibe, most of this is the two of us live and acoustic as seen in the films.

It Ain't Me Babe

One of the many impressive things about this 1964 Dylan classic (from the album 'Another Side of Bob Dylan') is the way the fifth line changes key on the guitars but stays the same on the vocal. So you get a very pretty and poignant change of mood but no change in the determination of the statement. Yet the song is as tender as it is (characteristically) caustic despite its broadside of complaints and triumphant rejection in the chorus. Not a song the recipient would enjoy, we think. A joy to sing and play though.

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN
Go ’way from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I’m not the one you want, babe
I’m not the one you need
You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Never weak but always strong
To protect you an’ defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I’m not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down
You say you’re lookin’ for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes for you
Someone to close his heart
Someone who will die for you an’ more
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe

Go melt back into the night, babe
Everything inside is made of stone
There’s nothing in here moving
An’ anyway I’m not alone
You say you’re lookin' for someone
Who’ll pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
An’ to come each time you call
A lover for your life an’ nothing more
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe
Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

Girl From The North Country (Dylan)

From the 1963 album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" and later re-recorded with Johnny Cash for the back to country/ acoustic/no more hippy "Nashville Skyline" album in 1969. ( Reprising the infamous 'Judas' in the other direction in 1965). We both bought Freewheelin' as teenagers, our first Dylan album, probably because of "Blowin' in the Wind" but in this track the wind is not so much the divine one in Genesis as the heavy hitting one on the Canadian border. We started rehearsing this in the summer but recorded it as the season changed not so slowly into autumn, buffeted by winds and getting rapidly colder and darker. An early love song full of lingering emotion and regret, something of a Dylan genre by the time he'd added Suzi, Joan and Sarah to whoever this tenderly evoked North country woman was. It's a beautiful poem of pathetic fallacy, the oncoming winter and lost summer beautifully evoking a cherished but passed love, as well as being a damn good sound picture of that terrain and climate. We changed the line "many times I've often prayed" slightly to remove the redundancy.

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN
Well, if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see if she’s wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin’ winds

Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
If it rolls and flows all down her breast.
Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
That’s the way I remember her best.

I’m a-wonderin’ if she remembers me at all
Many times I’ve watched and prayed
In the darkness of my night
In the brightness of my day

So if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Dodgy Bob of Houghton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpYbaw4g3X4

Robert Walpole (1676-1745) the Whig MP for Castle Rising (1701-02) and King's Lynn (1702-12 and 1713-42) was the first and still longest serving Prime Minister of Great Britain: 21 continuous years, 1721-1742. He also built and stocked with treasures one of the most palatial houses in England, that architectural wonder amid the fields and lanes of West Norfolk: Houghton Hall.

Genesis of a Church BBC Upload

As read at a quiet and contemplative Compline service Holy Monday 2025, a performance subsequently broadcast on BBC regional radio in August 2025. The church has currently celebrating 700 years "on this higher ground" in its idyllic setting.

Genesis of A Church, Fring, 1330 AD

On this higher ground

Let us house an altar

Where the Word may resound

Through time, prayer and psalter.

On this heavenly spur

Let us grow a tower

Where the great stir of Easter

May bud, leaf and flower.

He cam also stille

Ther his moder was

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the gras. 

Defeats, factions, debts,

A weak tyrant king’s

Gone the way of all flesh

Burns for higher things .

In these emerald trees

Lifting monks’ eyes above

Earthy labour, dis-ease,

Let us sing divine love.

He cam also stille

To his modres bowr

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the flowr.

In these sandcastle days,

A boy on the throne , 

Let us hold fast and raise

Firm foundations of stone.

Let here be Light

To summer the heart

Through spring, heyday, fall, blight,

Candling the dark.

He cam also stille

Ther his moder lay

As dew in Aprylle

That fallyt on the spray.

Let here be stillness

On strips, hill, vale, farm,

Green pastures and waters

That flow like a Psalm.

Frea’s  folk, we are grass, bone,

We come to pass;

But soul-fashioned stone,

We build to last.

The Peacock's Tale

Several members of the Beatles have asked us how we came up with our name “Peacock’s Tale” ‘Did a man appear appear in a flaming pie and declare, ‘And thy name shall be Peacock’? asks one. ‘We understand why you were once called Phezant’s Tail (being the mere backing vocalists, lyricist and drummer emerging phoenix-like from the end of the Penland Phezants folk storytelling quartet) but why PEACOCK'S Tale? asks another. So we wrote this song to explain. No parrots or peacocks were harmed and no leylandii hedge was chainsaw massacred in the making of the field recordings. Krishna always wears a peacock feather around his neck given him by the king of the peacocks in gratitude for making all his flock dance with joy. 'Neti neti' (Sanskrit, 'not this, not this') is a meditation technique for rejecting the non-divine. Various celebrity couples are referenced: Krishna and Radha; Zeus and Hera (the Greek goddess of marriage); Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Argus had eyes all over his body so could see everything - hence his frequent use as a newspaper name - but he really ought to have covered them when he saw The Goddess of Marriage bathing naked. She consigned his eyes to the peacock's tail. Agamemnon the King of Argos sacrificed his and Clytemnestra's daughter to the gods for a fair wind to Troy and, though he eventually won the war and returned home in gory, he rather lost his wife. Welcome home, dear... lyrics Haunted Middle English suburban castle leylandii battlements TIPSY half cut LAWNS concealing parrots concealing peacocks.... Not this luscent fan Of massed sunrise With its strutting mail Of blinkless eyes. Not this Argos fake news That our daughters must die For a West to burn down An Eastern sky Not this parrotry perched In Love's poetry A deaf world applauds Nor this fame miscalled Immortality Immortality. This unheard dance Of the peacock’s heart Is our joyous love And our secret art. Not this heaven train lost Up a Khuber pass Not this gold and blue vision Lost up its ass. Not this marriage vow caught In the All Together Nor this false ‘I’ blind To the blaze around Krishna. Not this parrotry perched In Love’s poetry A deaf world applauds Nor this fame miscalled Immortality Immortality. This unheard dance Of the peacock’s heart Is our joyous love And our secret art.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (featuring the actual song!)

We did actually have think twice because the previous film went up without sound.

Reprising our Joan'n'Bob act ( see Diamonds and Rust Gareth-calway – Diamonds-and-rust) with a return fixture, Bob's trademark protest song against one of his early women. His second album but the first to feature a more or less complete sweep of his own songs, unlike the first which mainly showcased him as a performer of other people's. In other words, the real Dylan. Who was the discarded lover? Some internal evidence suggests this may even be pre-New York with its rustic setting of roosters and dark roads and sense of setting out and travelling' on in which case it might be a memory of some Mid Western affair rather than Suzi Rotolo but who knows. "You just kinda wasted my precious time" is pretty damning but mild compared to some of his later accusations and restless attacks on whoever was upsetting him at the time. We both bought this album about 8 years after it came out probably on the strength of Blowing in the Wind as one of those must have vinyl classic albums from one of the masters of folk rock and Americana and fellow architect of the 60s (with the Beatles) first heard as children but now understood as teenagers and were sent back to it recently by the brilliant film about Dylan's early years (up to 1966) 'A Complete Unknown' which ends with him roaring away from Pete Seeger type folk on a rocknroll motorbike. Around the time of Hendrix there was a rumour that Dylan couldn't really play guitar but made up for it with a unique dramatising voice and the poetry of the lyrics but one listen to the original will banish that thought: his guitar picking (honed by all those folk club performances) is astonishingly good and drives the song.. And contrary to most people's recall, this is not a solo track but has a band behind him playing drums, two bass guitars, piano and a second guitarist. Our version concentrates on the heart-yearning pretty tune. We have a female lead vocal, bass, percussion and add some vocal layers. On the liner notes Dylan protests that it isn't a (slow and easy going) love song. And so of course that's exactly the way we do it.

Don't Think Twice It's All Right

Reprising our Joan'n'Bob act ( see Diamonds and Rust Gareth-calway – Diamonds-and-rust) with a return fixture, Bob's trademark protest song against one of his early women. His second album but the first to feature a more or less complete sweep of his own songs, unlike the first which mainly showcased him as a performer of other people's. In other words, the real Dylan. Who was the discarded lover? Some internal evidence suggests this may even be pre-New York with its rustic setting of roosters and dark roads and sense of setting out and travelling' on in which case it might be a memory of some Mid Western affair rather than Suzi Rotolo but who knows. "You just kinda wasted my precious time" is pretty damning but mild compared to some of his later accusations and restless attacks on whoever was upsetting him at the time. We both bought this album about 8 years after it came out probably on the strength of Blowing in the Wind as one of those must have vinyl classic albums from one of the masters of folk rock and Americana and fellow architect of the 60s (with the Beatles) first heard as children but now understood as teenagers and were sent back to it recently by the brilliant film about Dylan's early years (up to 1966) 'A Complete Unknown' which ends with him roaring away from Pete Seeger type folk on a rocknroll motorbike. Around the time of Hendrix there was a rumour that Dylan couldn't really play guitar but made up for it with a unique dramatising voice and the poetry of the lyrics but one listen to the original will banish that thought: his guitar picking (honed by all those folk club performances) is astonishingly good and drives the song.. And contrary to most people's recall, this is not a solo track but has a band behind him playing drums, two bass guitars, piano and a second guitarist. Our version concentrates on the heart-yearning pretty tune. We have a female lead vocal, bass, percussion and add some vocal layers. On the liner notes Dylan protests that it isn't a (slow and easy going) love song. And so of course that's exactly the way we do it.

On Cley Hill

The rest is history, or Arthur Lee legend A lost summer country hollow, an Inn, The Green Man, cheering on a great British win, An Avalon that isn't there in the morning. A dream awoken to this light's cold day Where in spite of my shin-struck wounded need For thundering hooves in defence of these islands, Thundering hooves in defence of these islands, He doesn't come back. 'And he was never Called Arturus Rex, whoever he was And in some accounts not even Arthur And he was never mediaeval and never a king.' And who cares? Not Me. I stand on tis tumulus Of boyhood, layers of chalk written on clay, Craters and knolls, his monk-buried legend Scarred in my flesh, his doubt-defying Desperate defence of wonder (which Is what he was) an earth ditch like mine; His weapons, TOYS of tin and strapped wood and skin Like mine, on a May hill that may have been Badon And may have not, blades of peaceful grass troubled only And not just now - by rain and ghosts And a White Horse, God-large in memory, God-large still.

Siegfried Sassoon

​ ⁨@PeacocksTaleMusic⁩  Wandering around the churchyard of Mells (an idyllic Somerset village near Frome) we found the grave of the great First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon so in the presence of such integrity, I ransacked my memory for this, a war poem I remember being printed incorrectly in our O level history book and corrected in an addendum. The General Good morning, good morning the General said When we met him last week on our way to the Line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of the dead And we're crying his staff for incompetent swine. He;s a cheery old card, grunted Harry to Jack As we trudged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both with his plan of attack. The video and stills from Mells church are framed by the beautiful Stations of the Cross carvings at Frome St John's and the music (our homage to Edith Cavell) opens out into a general meditation on the First World War.

A Trip To Badon Hill

Filmed on location on the A362 (from Frome, Somerset, to Corsley Heath) and Cley Hill in Wiltshire. The consummate British victory at Badon Hill is one of the only two Arthurian facts recorded in the Anglo Saxon chronicle as occurring around AD 515-8. (The other is his death at Camlaun around 537-9: both these historical facts are key moments in the legend but the rest is the stuff of Arthur Mee children's encyclopaedias, Celtic myth and glorious mediaeval romance.) It's very unlikely that Cley Hill was the historical Badon Hill but that's not the point about this or any other aspect of the legend: for me as a boy it was and that is Arthur's most potent (and super-real) realm. The town you see some 3 miles from the hill is Frome, where I grew up, learned about and enacted King Arthur, from which I used to hike to this summit and from which we bussed on this baking hot July day. The soundtrack is our own "Woke King Arthur" and William "Billy" Blake/Gustav Holst's "Jerusalem" from our album "King Arthur and Me: The Opera". https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/al... Wake me, wake me He come out on top, he beat Hordes of heathen, he pluck Swords of lightning from the Stone and rippling BC AD 6 and 6/9teenth Century Justice might and mercy king of all chivalry. Wake me, wake me He Arth and Ursus, he yoke Rome and Logres, he ride Wings and horses, he steal Grails from Annwn as a Norman knight a bird of prey an earthed angel tree, Celtic god a Dark Age white horse galloping free. Woke King Arthur In the 20th Century. Wake me, wake me He ever present, he a Church-hilled dragon, he the King of Europe, never Heard of England, he a Druid henge a hollow hill a forest a sea British May King ever changing eternity. Woke King Arthur In the 20th Century. (spoken) You who think you defend This lost land of Logres From drowning migrants For your offshore profits You're not Arthur's Britons Follow your money GO! He fights invaders who claim Lost Land acres from the Drowning migrants, for their Offshore profits, he’s the Lose yourself to save yourself they don’t want to see Release the Pax Britannia brand of Arthur-ity. Woke King Arthur In the Twenty first Century. Wake King Arthur Yeah Wake King King Arthur Yeah Wake King Arthur YEAH! The rest is history, or Arthur Lee legend A lost summer country hollow, an Inn, The Green Man, cheering on a great British win, An Avalon that isn't there in the morning. A dream awoken to this light's cold day Where in spite of my shin-struck wounded need For thundering hooves in defence of these islands, Thundering hooves in defence of these islands, He doesn't come back. 'And he was never Called Arturus Rex, whoever he was And in some accounts not even Arthur And he was never mediaeval and never a king.' And who cares? Not Me. I stand on tis tumulus Of boyhood, layers of chalk written on clay, Craters and knolls, his monk-buried legend Scarred in my flesh, his doubt-defying Desperate defence of wonder (which Is what he was) an earth ditch like mine; His weapons, TOYS of tin and strapped wood and skin Like mine, on a May hill that may have been Badon And may have not, blades of peaceful grass troubled only And not just now - by rain and ghosts And a White Horse, God-large in memory, God-large still. And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold Bring me my arrows of desire Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

The Light Within The Lamp of Britain

 @PeacocksTaleMusic  "Logres is the light within the lamp of Britain" says King Arthur in Rosemary Sutcliff's thrilling version of the stories. And whenever I go on the train through Westbury, I feel again what I felt as a boy growing up in nearby Frome - that the white horse God-huge atop the valley side is Arthur's, eternally about to ride again to save us from mundanity. The musical soundtrack is "Gwenhwyfar" which we wrote together in different centuries. I wrote the words in the 1980s; Maz the music in 2022 and we recorded it in 2024. Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Cross on invincible shield, blood-red, Dragon on young-summer green, red, The terrible clatter of returning hooves. I never quite believed. Always feared him Dead. But he always came. Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Swift white charger swooping like a spear On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women, Scourging the rat run barbarian inroads, Animal tracks of attacking Saxon, His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast. And little the faith I had yet in Arthur, The Angel campaigner, strong as light, His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard, Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. At last I understood. The flincher from spears, Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow, Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned: Avalon. And I’ll run no more. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens Will flock on the gore. Let others keep A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight Until the dawn. My confession’s done. Still my heart waits for hoofbeats. (Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…) © Gareth Calway 1991 (first published by Aude Gotto in my King of Hearts publication "Coming Home")