Remember...just...remember

A few more memories stirred by the mix of experiences at No Direction Home last weekend. Beth Jeans Houghton hanging out at Green Man in 2006, and invited up on stage to play with Devendra Banhart. Robert Saul, last seen performing at the Rude Shipyard in Sheffield, sitting next to us in the literature yurt. Taking my mother to see Richard Hawley at Buxton Opera House for her 80th birthday - she'd heard him on the radio, loved his voice, and liked the Sheffield connection. I will never see Ed Miliband in the same way after Josie Long's comedy set. John Robin's sad story about being sold fake Captain Beefheart paintings - my friend Cathy gave the sketch he did for her away when she went to live in an ashram back in the early 70s. Seeing Trembling Bells at Green Man only days after Lavinia Blackwall had lost her mother - and appreciating how helpful and comforting it would be to be held in such affection and creativity in those circumstances. Her unaccompanied version of the Quiet Joys of Brotherhood reduced me to tears last Sunday afternoon. Tune from the traditional My Lagan Love, and lyrics from a poem by Richard Farina, brother in law to Joan Baez - none of us could remember who had written the words at the time.