Posted by: David Harley | March 25, 2025

Shrewsbury, Etymology and Mob Rule

Previously published on the Shropshire Blues blog, which isn’t maintained much now as I no longer live in the area. [DH, 25-03-2025]

[Updated 6th July 2015 and again in 2024, after I used it as the basis for an appendix in  ‘So Sound You Sleep’]

Rant coming up…

Quite a few English towns aren’t (locally) pronounced the way they’re spelt: Bicester, Wednesbury and Leominster spring to mind. I’ve never lived in any of those towns, but I have to wonder whether they give rise to the same acrimony as the evergreen controversy over the ‘correct’ pronunciation of Shrewsbury. The one in Shropshire, that is: I suspect that the residents of the other Shrewsburys to be found elsewhere on the globe have better things to worry about.

In my (by no means authoritative) opinion, it’s not really a matter of what is correct. In fact, I consider it offensive when people insist that the only ‘correct’ way is the way they say it, whichever pronunciation they favour. It’s a matter of common (but by no means universal) contemporary usage versus traditional/historical usage versus etymological probability. Anglo-Saxon speakers might, I suppose, have pronounced Scrobbesbyrig (not the only possible spelling in the 11th century, of course) with a long O (Oh) or short O as in ‘cobble’ – since the language was West Germanic (i.e. closely related to modern Standard German), I’m extrapolating from words like ‘Dom’ (long O) and ‘Sonntag’* (short O): a long U sound as in ‘Flug’ (or ‘rune’) seems less likely. But historical linguistics isn’t my area of expertise, and (apparently unlike some people in certain Facebook groups) I’m not old enough to remember how Shrewsbury folk (or Salopians) spoke in the 19th century, let alone the 11th.

darwin2

Darwin is keeping his own counsel on the topic.

Probably more people say ‘Shroosbree’ or ‘Shoesbree’ now than was the case when I was young and I don’t have a problem with that, even though I’m going to stick with the long O and ‘…bury’ rather than ‘bree’ myself. I have a soft spot for the traditional, and not only in music.  But words and names change over time, and it isn’t necessarily a ‘posh versus common’ thing, either. It’s just the way that language evolves over time. I notice that the BBC** doesn’t seem to insist on the ‘O’ pronunciation any more (for what that’s worth), and sometimes presenters use both ‘Shrosebury’ and ‘Shroosbury’ (or a close variant) in the same programme. (I also notice that railway announcers have also pretty much abandoned the long ‘o’, but I’m sympathetic to anyone English who has to cope with some of the Welsh placenames on the Heart of Wales line.)

However, the question as to which is ‘correct’ is a common thread in Shrewsbury-related Facebook groups. Sadly, it usually degenerates into name-calling. Despite my observation in the second paragraph, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone insist that the use of the long ‘o’ is the only ‘correct’ pronunciation since the 1960s I’m not sure if the BBC Pronunciation Unit still has a ruling on it, but the old Rowley’s House Museum did have an exhibit explaining the origins of the traditional pronunciation without, to the best of my recollection, insisting that it should be used. However, there are always people who insist that the only way is Essex – sorry, Shroosbury (or even Shoosbree) – and that anyone who disagrees is:

  • From Off (as a Phil Rickman character might say – that is, not local): I’ve been told in all seriousness that the fact that I spent the first 19 years of my life in Shrewsbury didn’t mean I was entitled to an opinion, because I was born in a maternity hospital four miles or so outside the town. In any case, having spent most of my working life in the South (where the jobs were!), I am automatically disqualified. Besides, look at my name: the village of Harley is nearly ten miles outside Shrewsbury, so my roots are obviously foreign.
  • Stupid, because it’s spelt ‘ew’, so it ought to be pronounced like ‘shrew’, even though its etymology has nothing to do with those little creatures with no heads. At least, they didn’t have any heads when our cats used to leave their little cadavers on the decking in Greenfields. (Eeeeewwwwwww!!!!!) Mind you, they (the cats) originally came from Yorkshire: was that behaviour they learned in Shrewsbury? Perhaps there aren’t any shrews living oop in t’North.
  • Stupid, because Shakespeare wrote ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, not ‘The Taming of the Shrow’. (Apart from the fact that we’ve already established that the etymology of the town’s name has nothing to do with shrews, the pronunciation of English has changed dramatically since his time.)
  • Illiterate (2). It should be pronounced like it’s spelt. Like Bicester, Beaminster, Derby and Leominster, not to mention Kirkcudbright. Oh, wait a minute…
  • A toff or snob, because only the toffs pronounce it Shrowsbury. In fact, I was brought up on a council estate, but I pronounced it the older way, apparently, because I wanted to be a toff. Well, I guess no Labour leader is ever going to make me a life peer, then. It never fails to fascinate me how much people who’ve never met me know about my psychological make-up. Or even my physical attributes: I remember with affection someone who commented on one of my blogs that the string of letters after my name – all but one related to my now lapsed membership of several professional organizations – was probably meant to compensate for undeveloped genitalia. Well, you’ll never get the chance to check, sweetie.
  • A history teacher. Owwww!!!!! That really hurts!!! Not only a (yuk!) teacher but a history teacher. No, you can’t cause me much grief that way, folks. I worked for many years in the anti-virus industry, an occupation which seems to rank in status in the security industry as inferior to traffic wardens, tax collectors and politicians. I’ve been married to a teacher and a social worker. (Not at the same time.) I’ve been insulted by professionals…
  • Wrong, because no-one calls Dewsbury ‘Dozebury’. Well, I don’t suppose they do, but Dewsbury has a completely different etymological evolution. I haven’t heard anyone call Newbury ‘Nobury’ or Crewe ‘Crow’, either, but I’m not convinced of the relevance of that point, either.
  • Wrong, because if you really want to be archaic and traditionalist, you should call it Pengwern. Well, Giraldus Cambriensis does cite a tradition that associates Pengwern – as in the early seat of the Kings of Powys, though they later moved further westward – with Shrewsbury, but there’s no conclusive evidence that I’m aware of. In any case, I don’t think there’s a local preference for calling York Eboracum or Canterbury Durou̯ernon (or even Durovernum) either.
  • My favourite: wrong, because those are shrews on the town’s coat of arms, not shrows. See Shrewsbury’s Coat of Arms: a New Argument.
  • My second favourite: wrong, because Americans pronounce it Shroosbury. With all due respect to my many American friends – who no doubt regard this idiocy with amused bewilderment, if it crosses their radar at all – I have to wonder if the UK inhabitants of Derby and Birmingham (not to mention the French inhabitants of Orléans) are now using the pronunciations Durby, Birmingham with the stress on ‘-ham’, and Awlins (as in Noo Awlins). I’m particularly doubtful of the last one, in the homeland of the Académie française.
  • Because there’s a meme around showing Homer Simpson saying ‘It’s Shrewsbury, not Shrowsbury’ (or something like that). Well, why didn’t you say so? If a fictional character noted for his borderline alcoholism and addiction to doughnuts has spoken, who am I to disagree?
  • Because I say so. Because you are. Because it is. End of.

So which is ‘correct’? I don’t think the word ‘correct’ applies, though I think it’s probable that the older pronunciation will continue to decline and perhaps be forgotten in a few years. And there’s no real reason why it shouldn’t. It seems a pity, though, that the process should be accelerated and by the sort of petty bullying that sometimes afflicts perfectly nice, respectable people when they start using social media, replacing not only simple courtesy and mutual respect, but logic.  The class war is alive and well and living in Shrewsbury. Which is why even though I’m not ashamed to have come from Shrowesbury (a legitimate older spelling, by the way, but then the standardized spelling is a fairly recent development), I’m sometimes glad that I don’t have to live there now.

I should also point out that I have many friends in Shrewsbury who may use either pronunciation (or even ‘Salop’ (an alternative name with a long and honourable tradition behind it) but wouldn’t dream of ‘correcting’ people who bat for the other team. And that Shrewsbury holds no monopoly on parochialism or reverse snobbery. (Some of the most parochial people I’ve ever met have been Londoners…)

I have considered skirting the whole issue by using the Welsh name Amwythig, but I suppose that would inspire general bewilderment and draw even more abuse down upon my head for mispronunciation. I admit to having lived for a while in Wales in the early 70s, but can’t claim to have mastered the language: I’ve forgotten nearly all of the little I learned at that time. (The little Cymraeg I learned, that is: I may still remember a little social sciences and psychology, since they impinged upon my later studies and career in computer science.)

*Clearly any claim I had to have mastered – to the limited extent that A-level can be described as ‘mastering’ – the German language in the 1960s has long since expired. Well, even though I have visited Germany and Austria a few times in the last couple of decades for conferences, I’ve had very little need to exercise my extraordinarily rusty linguistic skills. Thanks to Geoff Maddocks, who pointed out that Montag is pronounced with a long ‘o’ and suggested that Sonntag was a better example.

**The BBC did recently (July 2015) report an attempt to ‘settle‘ the debate. Of course, it did no such thing, though a majority of respondents (58%) did vote for ‘Shroosbury’ (it’s not clear whether or how the ballot distinguished between Shroosbury and Shoosbury – 7% of respondents did vote ‘other’). That’s hardly surprising: those are the ways in which most people pronounce it nowadays. I don’t see people who prefer ‘Shrozebury’ being swayed by mob rule, though.

David Harley

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Posted in books, prose, rant

Posted by: David Harley | March 24, 2025

Heartbreak Hotels

Must be hard times in the hotel industry. I seem to have had email in the past few days from every hotel I’ve ever stayed in, reminding me of how much they miss me. What they also seem to be missing is that I don’t usually visit a place because of the hotel: I stay in the hotel so that I can visit the place. Or, until I retired, because that was where the conference was.

This is especially true of airport hotels: I just used them in days gone by for a necessary stopover en route to or from somewhere*. For instance, there are many good reasons to visit Vienna, but adding to my loyalty points by spending a few days at the airport hotel is not a priority. (I only ever stayed there if I got there late or needed an early flight to the next destination.) What’s more, I have many thousands of loyalty points that I may never find a use for before they expire, because most of the places I still want to visit don’t have a hotel within 50 miles that will accept them.

*There was one instance where the conference hotel was actually on the perimeter of the airport at Geneva, which was more than usually convenient, but unusual – airport hotels rarely have enough in the way of conference facilities to support more than a moderately-sized seminar.

When I lived and worked in London, I occasionally got to take part in a security seminar in one of the hotels on the perimeter of Heathrow, but that was long ago and far away. I like to remember, though, that on one occasion I even won one of those little electronic organizer devices, which proved invaluable for playing solitaire during long journeys and attacks of constipation. I don’t remember what happened to it, though. Maybe I gave it away when I got an iGadget.

This is Edmund Hellmer’s statue of Johann Strauss II in the Vienna Stadtpark. The monument was erected in 1921. I don’t know the lady, but it proved impossible to get the statue without tourists. For some reason, I don’t have a picture of the airport, let alone the NH airport hotel.

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Posted in prose, travel

Posted by: David Harley | March 21, 2025

Food for Thought

 [From a long-dormant series of travel sketches.]

En route to South Africa, our flight with BA was suddenly outsourced to Cathay Pacific. It wasn’t the worst flight I’ve ever experienced (hi, Ryanair!), but it had its peculiarities.

Drinking a Dom Pedro in Knysna

At the time I was waiting for the results of a coeliac test to come back and avoiding gluten, while my wife was sticking to a vegetarian diet. (I think it was a turf ‘n’ surf in Australia that finally threw us both off the vegetarian wagon, though we’ve ridden it from time to time sinceI.) It appears that gluten-free and vegetarian mean something different in Hong Kong. My gluten-free meal included a bread roll clearly identical to my wife’s, as well as a packet of gluten-rich crackers. However, I had flat water (boring!) instead of orange juice, fish and vegetables, and a fruit pie thing that was certainly not gluten-free. My wife had miscellaneous vegetables and no meat substitute, a roll, but no pie. There was clearly something they weren’t telling us about that fruit.

Breakfast was also interesting. At first, we were served the same as everyone else: eggs, cheese, ham, salad, a roll and yoghurt. After a while, though, someone must have found our orders. They turned up with my gluten-free provender and insisted on taking away the meal I’d already half eaten. Now I had rice and vegetables, and they replaced my already gluten-free yoghurt with orange juice, perhaps the one I wasn’t allowed for the previous meal. The roll, unfortunately, really was gluten-free: unfortunate, because if there was one thing that irked me about my period of eating totally gluten-free food*, it was the bread, which always had the flavour of cardboard – or what I imagine cardboard to taste like – and the moistness of a sirocco. However, my wife decided she didn’t want anything else, so I did get her (definitely gluten-free) yoghurt.

Food apart, the flight was mostly OK: the cabin crew seemed to have an average age of 14 but were very friendly, very giggly. One was chatted up in the middle of the night by a Scot in the opposite aisle seat, who then returned to conversation with his neighbour in the window seat, as he worked his way through glasses of wine (two at a time) and then his bottle of wine from the duty-free. In the end, we politely asked him to reduce the volume: he grumbled at me a bit, but subsided into sleep soon after.

The stopover at Windhoek was astounding. The descent was over many miles of scrub, and when we down, there was still nothing but scrub either side of us until we pulled before the terminal building. We were next to a 777 and a Cessna, the smallest number of aircraft I’ve ever seen at an international airport, and some of the insects were as large as the Cessna. I hope none of them took off at the same time.

No doubt we had a drink and maybe a snack, but what I remember most is treating myself to a leather safari-type hat: a ridiculous affectation, especially for someone who still sometimes pretended to be vegetarian**, but I was probably influenced by a friend who lives somewhere in the East but is Texan by nature, and always seems to look as if he’s about to lasso a longhorn.

*Apparently, I didn’t have coeliac disease, and I don’t display the more spectacular symptoms of gluten intolerance, so if I happen to visit you, feel free to offer me sandwiches and biscuits.

**A tip of the hat here to a former relative-in-law who despised me and my previous wife for being vegetarian, though she did buy us a sort of beginner’s guide to vegetarianism one Christmas that took the interesting position of including recipes for chicken and fish. I don’t know if it was meant as a way of leading us back towards carnivorism, or it was a subtle way of insulting us by assuming we didn’t know anything about vegetarian food, or that she thought that fish and chicken were vegetables, or that it simply meant that she hadn’t actually looked inside the book. (Actually, I do remember a Christmas – not necessarily the same one – where we were tempted less by nut loaf than by a rather interesting recipe for prawns in a vodka sauce, and declared prawns to be an honorary vegetable.)

My former relative’s finest hour, however, was probably when she ranted about how stupid vegetarians were if they wore leather shoes. Though at least she never pointed out that Hitler was a vegetarian, a common theme among people who somehow find vegetarians offensive.

David Harley

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Posted in David Harley, prose

Posted by: David Harley | March 18, 2025

British Library: Sound and Vision

Some years ago, I was contacted on behalf of the British Library to ask if I’d be willing to contribute some or all of my recorded songs to the Sound & Vision collection. I was, of course, happy to do this, and forwarded sound files as albums were released, until I stopped getting a response as the files were offered for transfer. Eventually I realized that this must have been because of the serious ransomware attack carried out against the Library in 2023.

Seeing a reference to the Sound & Vision catalogue today, I took the opportunity to see whether any of my work had become available again to BL reader’s pass holders. Well, a couple of my books apparently are in the Interim Catalogue, though I didn’t have the patience to check through all the Harley-related references for work specific to me rather than all the various David Harleys et al listed there. (It’s extraordinary how many of us there are…) But it seems that the Sounds catalogue is not yet available, though it may be restored sometime this year.

To be honest, I probably won’t get to hear when and if my music does become available again. I don’t have a Reader’s Pass because they only allow access to archived material to visitors in person, and London and Yorkshire a both a long trip from where I live. So if you really want to see what music of mine is still around, for the moment your best bet is still Bandcamp. Though given the present state of the world, who knows how long that will still apply?

David Harley

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Posted in books, prose, Songs

Posted by: David Harley | March 18, 2025

An Ideal Candidate

“The ideal candidate doesn’t have a 9 to 5 mentality.”

I have an idea I may have stolen that line from the very talented artist/illustrator/author Andrea Benko – ah, apparently I did. (As well as plundering Oscar Wilde’s dramatic oeuvre for the title of this article.) However, I really did have a departmental manager in A Certain IT Unit – at a medical research charity, if it matters – who dropped a very similar remark into the conversation when he took me to the pub for an informal getting-to-know-you chat.

“I can’t say this, but I’d be very disappointed if my staff always left the office at 5pm sharp.”

Fast forward a decade and a half. I was in a hotel in Bratislava. I was on one of those conference mini-breaks where you spend three days in the US, one at home, three more in the Far East, then two more somewhere in Europe. Of course, I’m not even trying to calculate the additional days spent travelling. But this time I’d left home in the early hours to travel halfway across England to get to Heathrow, waited around there for several hours, then taken not one but two flights to get to Bratislava because there wasn’t a direct flight. So I was ready for an early night. I don’t speak Slovak (or even Czech), so local TV was probably not going to keep me awake.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet turned my work phone off – in fact, I rarely did in those days.

DDDDRRRRNNNNGGGG!!!!!!!

It was a PR droid-in-charge (of something or other, but not me…) in the US, wanting me to talk to a high-profile journalist/influencer about some current security brouhaha. And he, fresh as a McFlurry on a bright morning in San Diego, couldn’t believe that an ageing security maven a million time zones away was in bed, rather than jumping at the opportunity to talk security to a professional sceptic who was always going to adapt anything I said to him to fit his preconceptions*.

“But it’s only 9pm over there!”

I should have told him to go forth and multiply (after sharing a couple of home truths about whose manager he wasn’t), but I’ve always been too polite for my own good, and I did do the interview. And I was quoted in such a way as to fit the journalist’s preconceptions…

By the time I actually retired, that cellphone had gone to the great Cellphone Warehouse in the sky, but one of the first habits I broke myself of was leaving my cellphone on overnight. If you need to talk to me urgently, use my landline. If you don’t know my landline number, it’s not ex-directory, but you probably have no reason to speak to me urgently anyway.

*I’m not going to name the journalist, who is, after all, a very competent writer with a genuine understanding of security issues. All I can say is, “he’s not the Messiah, but he’s far from the naughtiest boy in the media.”

David Harley

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Posted in prose

Posted by: David Harley | March 9, 2025

Night Terrors

Revisiting ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ a few days ago was an uncomfortable experience, given recent events in the Middle East, though it’s a decent example of Le Carré’s writing skills. Immediately afterwards, I got much more pleasure out of reading ‘Terry Pratchett – a Life with Footnotes’ and thinking for at least 15 seconds that I might attempt an autobiography. However, I eventually decided that I’d rather read Pratchett’s biography than mine, despite the sadness that clouded his final years. Still, there have been some moments of joy in my own life that I wouldn’t swap for anyone else’s memories. (I wonder if you know who you are!)

Yes, there’ll probably be a tune for this sooner or later: I don’t think it’s great poetry.

Sometimes I lie awake,
Cataloguing my mistakes,
Catastrophizing in the night:
Caught up in night terrors
Review comedies of errors: 
The ones I sometimes call my life.
And yet there've been sweet dreams
Among the nightmares and the screams,
Good love and good music on the way.
I've tried to keep to the Highway Code,
And though I'm running out of road,
I hope there aren't too many fines to pay.

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Posted in David Harley, prose, verse

Posted by: David Harley | March 2, 2025

Hanging Tree

Very rough demo of a heavily recast variant on a traditional theme. It’s unlikely to stay unaccompanied.

Hangman stay your hand awhile, 
Just you let me be
Yonder comes my father dear, 
He's come to pay my fee
Son, I didn't bring no silver
And I won't pay that fee
I just came to see you hanging
From that gallows tree

Hangman, stay your hand awhile
Don't you tie that noose
I think I see my mama come
With gold to turn me loose
I've got no gold or silver
And I can't pay that fee
I just came to see you hanging
Hanging from the gallows tree

Don't put that noose around my neck
Just you let it be
Yonder comes my sweetheart dear
She's come to set me free
Honey did you bring silver
Or gold to pay my fine
And save me from this bitter rope
And save this soul of mine

I sure ain't paid your fine
It does no good to curse
No silver in my pocket
No gold in my purse
No one's riding through the night
In hopes to set you free
But I'll be watching as they hang you
From that hanging tree
I'll be laughing as they cut you down
From the hanging tree

There is, of course a multitude of songs where the potential hanging victim is saved by his/her sweetheart paying his fine (The Gallows Pole, The Prickly Bush etc.), and others where there’s no option of paying his way out of the execution (Derwentwater’s Farewell, The Sheffield Apprentice), or it’s too late to derail the process (Geordie/Georgie) but I didn’t remember one where the sweetheart, presumably in revenge for some slight or injury, came to watch with no intention of effecting a rescue. Maybe at some point I’ll write about the backstory…

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Posted in David Harley, Songs

Posted by: David Harley | March 2, 2025

Gigs and Reels

[In the 1980s I was working 8-5 as a wood-machinist (which is why my right thumb is now shorter than my left thumb – in those days you weren’t considered a woodworker until you’d lost at least part of at least one digit) while still supplementing my income as a semi-pro musician. It’s not an accurate representation of one particular gig, but as a general impression of a semi-pro soloist’s experiences in London, it might have some merit. (Maybe at some point I’ll dredge up some recollections of my adventures with bands in London, but those were generally less demanding and manipulative than the West Midlands circuit – see below.)]

08:00: Stagger into work under the weight of at a brace of guitars and a very small PA. (itemized below) and a couple of small but heavy rucksacks, stuffed with accessories. The rucksacks, not me.

12.00-13.00: lunchtime sandwiches in the wood-mill followed by a turn or two around the fretboard in the hope of being relatively ready to play later on. This, of course, is accompanied by banter from a couple of passing chippies about sharing the workplace with Eric Clapton, and how do I manage to play two guitars at the same time? (Answer: the same way you work a screwdriver and a chisel at the same time…Different tools for different jobs…)

17.00: Clock off and stagger over to Tube station, even more unsteadily after a healthy eight hours of honest labour (less one hour for lunch and 20 minutes for tea-breaks). Presuming that non-carnivorous fodder won’t be available at or near the venue (at that time I was vegetarian), so invest en route in a healthy, invigorating bag of greasy, warmish chips before taking train and/or other transport to some far-flung corner of the Metropolis. Well, maybe not that far-flung, since I hardly ever found myself playing South of the river. But there are plenty of places in North London that aren’t blessed with a convenient Tube or overground station, too.

18.45-ish: Reach nearest station/bus-stop to the venue. Search rucksacks in hope of finding London A-Z among assorted jack-leads, batteries, foot-pedals, set lists, spare strings, power leads and sockets, not to mention cassettes and poetry chapbooks that no one will want to buy.

18.55-ish. Find A-Z in anorak pocket. Set off for an invigorating game of Hunt The Venue.

19.30-ish: crawl into the right pub, aching in every muscle from a day spent shoving timber around and an early evening burdened with guitars, amplifier and accessories. The organizer hasn’t arrived and the upstairs room is locked, and the landlord won’t let me in there on my own. So I sit in the bar trying not to get drunk and incapable even before the organizer arrives. I now have nothing to do except examine my stage fright (which is in prime condition) and worry about whether I should reorganize my set list. By about 20.30, my muscles are less bothersome, but those chips are sitting very heavily on my digestive system, and my second pint is having a similar effect on my bladder. Of course, I haven’t been to the loo as I don’t want to leave my gear unguarded.

20.45: The MC has arrived. My muscles start to complain again as I carry my gear up to the room, unaided, of course: the MC is weighted down with the key, a small cashbox and the membership register. I start to set up. About two minutes in, the MC decides that there are already enough people there to start the evening and off he goes. I finish stuffing jack-leads into any old socket and get out of the way, resigned to spending the first few minutes of my set alienating my audience by finishing off setup instead of talking to them. Down to the bar to get another pint and fantasize about escaping. I now have nothing to do but revisit my set list, obsess about stage fright and wait for some warning that I’ll soon be on.

21.30: Still waiting for early warning when MC says “And now for our guest for the evening…” He gets my name wrong, but then so did Time Out, which sometimes can’t be persuaded that I’m not Steve Harley* or (inexplicably) Vin Garbutt**. City Limits and Melody Maker generally don’t mention it at all, or put the gig down as being on a different day or at a different venue. It was, of course, arranged too late to get it into Folk London.

And… well, it’s a gig. I’m not usually as bad as I was frightened of being, occasionally I’m almost as good as I wanted to be. Usually, no one heckles persistently, or calls me out on minor fluffs, I don’t get too drunk to play or remember my words, and there is a small but not too hostile audience, though there was on one occasion an unpleasant exchange of words in the interval with someone who seems to think that I must be some sort of bizarre, bearded drag artist, or maybe an aging rent boy.***

Even better, the organizer isn’t usually reluctant to pay me, which is a nice change from when I played with dance bands – the organizer in those days eagerly seized on any excuse to reduce the fee. “You only played two and a quarter hours.” “You were too loud.” And my favourites: “I thought you were a country and western band” and “I thought I was paying for a five-piece!”

If only it wasn’t such a long way home…

* To be fair, my friend Josephine Austin, who organized a yearly poetry festival in Hastings at which I regularly read my own verse (for many years alone, but in later years as a double act with my daughter), introduced me at least once as Steve Harley, which at least gave me the opportunity for a fair-to-middling adlib about his being my grandfather. To be even fairer, she knew the Cockney Rebel bloke as well as me, so a little confusion under the stress of compering was understandable and forgivable.

Less forgivably, I’ve become aware through various experiments with ChatGPT that while it does a fairly good job of impersonating me in the context of writing about security, it gets hopelessly confused between me, Steve Harley, and another musician called David Harley. Certainly, I won’t be encouraging it to write my songs.

I suppose it makes a change from having my surname misunderstood. On one memorable occasion in a hospital in Windsor I was called by no less than three surnames, none of them mine…

I don’t have a copy, but there is a photograph somewhere of me reading at the Hastings festival with my very small daughter in my arms, she holding a balloon animal someone had given her earlier. I’m not sure whether the squeaking of the balloons added to or detracted from the impact of my immortal verse. When I mentioned this to the poet and songwriter Bernard Puckett, in two of whose bands I played for a while, he reminded me of the dangers of working with children and animals, especially both at the same time.

** Vin was a lovely chap (much missed in the folk world) and a great performer and songwriter, and we once spent a happy half hour or so together on Shrewsbury station while he checked out with my newly-acquired tenor banjo, but our respective approaches to music were very different.

*** As I remember it – and it was many decades ago! – the gentleman in question buttonholed me in the bar to give him a light and then asked what was going on in the room upstairs that people (admittedly, not many of them) seemed to be migrating to. When I said “only me” he seemed to think I was propositioning him. Sadly, my best responses came into my head ten minutes after I’d just shaken my head angrily and walked away.

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Posted in prose

Posted by: David Harley | March 1, 2025

To a Daughter, Aged Six

This is one of my occasional forays into prose that isn’t security-related, and was previously published at the Lost & Found Exhibition. You could see this as a companion piece to the song How To Say Goodbye. Well, I do…

This letter is more than a decade too early. You are a bright child and an advanced reader, but not so unnaturally mature that you’ll really understand what your parents are about to do to you.

You were always a Daddy’s girl. Even when you were still tiny, your mother and I agreed that she’d get first crack at getting up to see to you when you cried in the night: I think she was worried that you already thought I was your mum. It was still me who took you out on a Sunday so she could get on with some work in peace, in that tiny flat where the only bedroom was yours, while she and I slept on the sofa-bed in the lounge. It was me who applauded your first steps across the living room. It was me who took you to nursery and hung my head like a criminal on the second day when you wept, betrayed and abandoned, because instead of staying with you (as I had the first day), I went on to work.

When your mother had to take short term contracts in various parts of the country, it was me who, thanks to a job that lent itself to flexible working and the first of several considerate employers, built my working day round the need to ferry you to and from nursery, then school. Your mother and I grew apart and both took guilty consolation elsewhere. When I said that I didn’t think Mummy and Daddy could go on living together, and asked who you’d rather live with, you pointed to me with a woebegone expression, but no hesitation. Would you have hesitated if I’d been able to tell you what lies ahead?

Yes, there will be happy times. Soon, we’ll move into our own flat. You’ll have a room that will be all your own, rather than a bed in a lumber room, and you’ll get the cat you’ve long wished for. Sadly, he’ll turn out to be a one-person moggie, not good company for a child, and after a particularly vicious bite, you won’t be too sad when I give him away. We’ll survive the custody arguments with your mother, when she begins to regret that she gave you up so easily. We’ll live in (mostly) happy chaos, despite my deficiencies as a housekeeper and mother substitute. Because money is tight, most of our holidays together will be with relatives, but sometimes I’m invited to speak at conferences. You spend a lot of time sitting at the back of lecture halls reading and drawing, but we also get to see lots of European cities, and even Disneyland.

We’ll get to know lots of single parent families. Every other weekend, you’ll stay with your mother, and occasionally I’ll spend some of that time with someone who’s more than a friend (once in every second blue moon, I might even get a babysitter). However, I’ll turn my back on romantic liaisons when they threaten too many changes in the way we live. Is that because I’m frightened of upsetting you, or because I’m happier being someone’s Dad than someone’s lover or husband?

When I’m offered a job in another part of the country, though, things will start to change. Because my new employer is less indulgent about my duties as a parent, my mother will come to live with us and look after you when I’m not there. You’ll resent having to share me, and give her a hard time because she’s not your mother. Alternate weekends are a pain because of the distance we have to travel to your mother’s.

Then, out of the blue, I meet someone I can’t turn my back on. Suddenly, you’re thirteen years old, living with me and someone you think of as a wicked stepmother. I betray you time and again, taking her side instead of yours, or getting into arguments about you that make you feel like the victim and the villain. In the end, you’re back to living in a one-bedroom flat with just one of your parents, but this time it isn’t me.

Then you’re sixteen, and your GCSEs are nearly behind you. You’re happier than you’ve been for a while, but in between you spent over a year on anti-depressants, you would only meet me for a few hours at a time on neutral ground, and even tried suicide: mercifully, you didn’t try too hard. When my new wife and I separate for a while, you say you’d come and live with me again, but only if I moved closer. You’re a young adult now, with a life and relationships that neither your mother nor I know much about. Your life is full of uncertainty, but there are possibilities you’ve barely started to explore. Your texts and emails tell me you love me lots and lots, but I know you need me less and less. Perhaps your mother feels the same, but she and I way beyond talking about anything so personal. I know it’s a parent’s job to foster a child’s independence, but did it have to be so soon?

I don’t know how well your 16-year-old self understands what’s happened to us. I’m not sure I understand it myself. It breaks my heart to know that for me, you’ve already left home.

This letter is a decade too late, for both of us. And sometimes I miss us both so very badly.

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Posted by: David Harley | February 28, 2025

Kiss and Tell

If you are old and gloomy enough, you may catch yourself thinking ‘This may be my last tube of toothpaste; the last time I hear John Renbourn or Fidelio or Blue Trane.’ That might lead you to worrying that you might miss that final episode or promised sequel. That is unfortunate, but it probably won’t keep you awake for long or haunt your dreams while you’re still here.

But you might also worry that you’ll never kiss or hug your favourite person again, or tell them that you love them. That’s more distressing, but it can’t be helped. You can only kiss and tell as often as possible without becoming embarrassing, because one of those times will be the last.

The saddest, though, is not to kiss or tell the person you love most because you’ve never quite got to that level in your relationship. Perhaps you’ll never reach that level, because if you get that wrong, you’ll only carry embarrassment and disillusion with you into the Great Mystery. Haunted beyond the grave by failures induced by pathological shyness or stillborn relationships that died somewhere between the heart and the tongue.

David Harley 

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