As the witness of many a man of the Highland regiments would attest, there is nothing like a rendering of ‘Johnny Cope’ by a pipe and drum band to wrest you from your slumbers.
Shakespeare might have proclaimed that Macbeth does murder sleep but he has been overtaken by the times…for the murder of sleep ‘Johnny Cope’ is your man.
Needless to say, Youtube does not have a full rendering of the initial drumroll which, as Terry Pratchett says of the initial chord in folk dancing, is there to enable people to get away in time…
Mark you, I can run General Cope a close second.
I caterwaul in the mornings as I go about my business.’Nessun dorma’ has nothing on it.
Not in the bathroom – the toothpaste gets in the way – but once I hit the kitchen the air is rendered hideous by my renderings of whatever musical number has taken my matutinal fancy. If you can imagine a coyote singing, you have the idea.
I am not particularly aware of my repertoire, but recently Leo presented me with a playlist: he had noted what he could recognise over the period of a week and I was quite surprised by the diversity of my unmusical offerings.
Oh! oh! Antonio’ keeps company with ‘Bonnie Strathyre’….
The Black Watch are hymned:
while Mozart is murdered.
‘La Claire Fontaine’
accompanies ‘Le temps de Cerises’
while ‘Le Reve Passe’
competes with ‘Oh du wunderschoner deutscher Rhein’ – and how someone whose conscious knowledge of German stops at ‘Achtung minen!’ can remember this lot is beyond me.
‘My mother bids me bind my hair’
follows ‘It was pleasant and delightful’
and ‘Stormy weather, boys’ here sung by that delightful old gentleman, Bob Roberts, who kept the legend of the Thames barges alive for so many years.
Ireland features…
while ‘dauntless Red Hugh’ was my father’s nickname among those who dared…
And I suppose it is my father I have to thank for putting music in my soul.
He sang from morn till night…unless immersed in study of the form for a five horse accumulator on the flat …everything from opera to folk with a great deal along the byways between….but he had a voice…a lovely tenor.
Though he used to joke that he must have been singing ‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls’ – that harbinger of ill luck – when betting on the horses…
The main thing I remember, though, is father coming downstairs, freshly shaven, ready to take mother out for the evening, singing
Given the staid sort of outing that was habitual I asked him why he sang it
‘Hope springs eternal’ said father.
The Venomous Bead 