That number again, and some lanes

It’s time to kick start this blog again. You will understand it has been rather difficult for me (and my family) over the last weeks. I would like to thank all of you who sent your condolences and kind thoughts.

Mum’s funeral took place last week and the day went well, as well as such occasions can. We had a celebrant conduct the service. He was very good. He had not been acquainted with mum but from just a one hour conversation with us, and one draft to which I suggested some minor tweaks, he built up a picture and his resulting words were accurate, appropriate, and delivered with sincerity. In the service he recounted my mum’s relationship with the number 13 – she was born on the 13^th September and spent her early years living at a house numbered 13 (unusual in those days, as it was often left out of street numbering? – it is in our road for example). As my mum’s condition deteriorated last month I was fully expecting her final hours to be on the 13th, that wasn’t to be though, at least not quite, mum passed away 13 hours into the 14th. At the funeral service there were, yes you guessed it, 13 people. Fate certainly did take a hand there I think, there were two other people – recent acquaintances of mum – who we were expecting to attend. We had not met them before but my mum’s next door neighbour told us she saw them at the crematorium in the car park on the morning of mum’s service. Our only conclusion was that they attended the wrong funeral! How do you do that?

We chose Penny Lane as the exit music at the service. Mum always liked the Beatles, she felt a certain affinity to them I think, growing up, as she did, on the Wirral not too far from Liverpool. She bought many of their early singles and they got lots of plays by mum – and a young me too – on the Elizabethan Pop 10 (a sort of Dansette style record player) in the house. I am now left with that house; a house that was my parents’ home for more than fifty years, and my childhood home too. Now it is very much a house on memory lane. 

Anyway, returning to the subject matter of this blog – i.e. music. The songs featured here don’t in any way stir strong memories of mum or my childhood, however, thoughts of the number 13 and trips down lanes brought to mind Blue Magic’s mid 70s album Thirteen Blue Magic Lane. I don’t have this album but I do have a few Blue Magic singles, and the B-sides of two of them were featured on that album.        

Blue Magic - What's Come Over Me  1975

Blue Magic – Stop And Get A Hold Of Yourself  1975