Top drawer stuff…

Or, Twenty-odd years in the making.

In the top drawer of my bedside cabinet, I keep a pen and some paper upon which to note down band names and song titles that come on the wireless in the evening or early morning, and which I know, if I like them, that I shan’t remember them if I don’t write them down.

The other week a song came on the wireless (The Refuge, by Steve Winchester) and I thought to myself that it sounded good, worthy of closer inspection at least, so I opened the drawer and searched within for the pen which I knew was there. The pen was there but a piece of plain paper I could not find.

There were various other pieces of paper and pamphlets but no plain paper. I randomly pulled some of these from the drawer looking for a clear margin to write in and as I was doing this, I noticed that all the various pieces of paper and pamphlets had the same year on them, 2003.
I reproduce photos of some below.

Model Railway Exhibition in Berkhamsted. 11 October 2003. That used to be a thing, they don’t do it anymore, well, not in Berkhamsted. The Tring and District Model Railway Club has a clubhouse in Leighton Buzzard and the last TaD-RAIL exhibition they held was in Wing as I recall, I could be wrong.
Tring to Berkhamsted: 7.5 km.
Tring to Leighton Buzzard: around 17 km.
Tring to Wing: approx. 15 km.
I think it’s about time that they burned their bridges and renamed themselves The Leighton Buzzard and District Model Railway Club.

Miniature Steam Train Rides 2003.
I’ve a feeling that I went to at least one of those, the Harrow and Wembley one probably.

Severn Valley Railway News, Summer 2003.
This already had a couple of song titles scrawled in the margin of one of the inside pages; one was a dead end, I looked it up and decide that I didn’t like it but the other one, Sherman Robertson – Make It Rain, I did like after tracking it down on YouTube, so I bought the album it comes from, Sherman Robertson – I’m The Man.

Annular Eclipse Shetland 31st May 2003.
Annular Solar Eclipse in… Wait. What? Shetland?
Didn’t go, never been there, not to say I wouldn’t want to go there, especially after having watched the TV series “Shetland”, I even read one of Ann Cleeves’ Shetland books, Raven Black, but there I have not been.

Where did that souvenir program come from and what’s it been doing in my bedside cabinet for the past twenty-odd years? And no doubt you are asking yourselves, What have they all been doing in there all this time?
Waiting for this piece to be written I dare say.

Anyway, where were we? Steve Winchester had been singing on the wireless and having found a scrap of margin to write in, I wrote down the singer and the song title and went in search the CD from which the song came. Steve Winchester is a Cornish singer and songwriter who does not appear to be in the mainstream, looking at his Facebook page he has quite the cult following but when it comes to sourcing his recorded output it’s a bit difficult to find them.

So, I wrote to him via his Facebook page and asked about The Refuge and he told me that if I would like to send him the money (via PayPal) then he would send me the CD, so that’s exactly what I did and I have to confess that the CD that arrived, Songs Of The Sea, is a little cracker and I heartily recommend it to anybody who likes Folk music or just well written and performed songs. Now, I know that what I like is not nessaserriley what you’d like (and why can I never remember how to spell “necessarily?”), but there’s a taster, below.

2003, eh? Ain’t life strange?

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