Although we didnt take keys with us, we had a look round & herself has earmarked a few plants that she wants to uplift. Its a weird feeling walking round a property that you grew up on & feeling like a stranger, seeing someone elses crap lying there that they cant be bothered taking away. Seeing the grapevine that Mum so lovingly tended running wild, & a whole heap of other shit. I think I will be happy to see it change hands finally & get the care that it deserves. It was my home as a child, but I havent had the time or the resources or the inclination to do anything to it over the years. I've been too busy fighting my own personal dragons I guess.
So we eventually came home. A sleep & a long soak in the spa helped. So did a yummy tea of homemade American Hot Dogs. After 7.30, TV was crap, so sat down & watched Cross Roads, a movie I hadnt seen for a long time. I had forgotten how spooky Stevie Vai can look & how damn brilliant Ry Cooder & Sonny Terry are. To me, Ry Cooder is the unacknowledged start of that movie.. I do love slide guitar blues. The movie made a whole lot more sense to me now that I have cd's with everything that Robert Johnston ever recorded on them. He was just an absolute master, & the crossroads thing is really in fact part of his legend. Who knows ???
This bit I copied & pasted from Wikipedia. It says it a lot better than I can ever put it...Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous Delta Blues musicians and arguably the most influential. Considered by some to be the "Grandfather of Rock-and-Roll," his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style influenced a range of musicians, including Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, U2, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived."
Of all the great blues musicians, Johnson was probably the most obscure. All that is known of him for certain is that he recorded 29 songs; he died young; and he was one of the greatest bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta.
There are only five dates in Johnson's life that can undeniably be used to assign him to a place in history: Monday, November 23; Thursday, November 26; and Friday, November 27, 1936, he was in San Antonio, Texas, at a recording session. Seven months later, on Saturday, June 19 and Sunday, June 20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. Everything else about his life is an attempt at reconstruction. As director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's play 'Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson', "The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."
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When I was 10, we moved house. I didn't really like the new house, I wanted to stay in the old one. Anyway, one day not long after, Reg and I were driving home from the old house after cleaning up the last of the stuff and Reg asked me how I liked the new place and I said I didn't. He said that one of the hardest lessons in life is that you can never go back, that the eyes of nostalgia blind you to the drawbacks of where you were. And, of course, he was right. In a very short time, we move on and the memories in our heads don't match the realities. Today you took a walk down Memory Lane and saw the potholes that age and lack of care of others have left behind. But it won't over ride the memories that nostalgia still holds because that is how it was then. Those are buried too deep for a little reality to overshadow. Isn't that a good thing? :-)
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