A Ramble On The Viking Way - Track Listing & Narratives
1 A RAMBLE ON THE VIKING WAY - Surely one of Lincolnshire’s best-kept secrets is its roughly north-south row of low chalky hills known as the Wolds. They form a beautiful gentle landscape in whose sheltered nooks nestle scores of working villages & farmsteads, linked by a seemingly haphazard pattern of ancient bridleways, footpaths & byways. These are everyone’s hills, for you don’t need to be a mountaineer to enjoy some of the most wonderful landscapes in the country (though of course I’m biased). The Viking Way is our longest joined-up footpath, & in fact extends over a couple of other counties into Leicestershire. So, as the song suggests, why not “get into your boots & back to your roots - have a ramble on the Viking Way!”
2 THROWN IT ALL AWAY - Following an after-dinner “do” for Grimsby St James Rotary, Bill Hobson of the FMA (Fish Merchants’ Association) suggested an idea for a song following the series of political blunders that culminated in the demise of Grimsby as a deep sea fishing port. Sure, there were also other causes contributing to the industry’s decline, but our leaders did very little to help soften the blow, & in some cases actively traded the livelihoods of their own countrymen in return for political favours from our US & European neighbours. Nothing much changes, does it?
For You Tube video click here.
3 CAMPING NIGHTS & ROVING DAYS - Just occasionally a song arrives as a gift, as this one did. I was getting stuffed on cheap grapes in Cyprus, playing “tinker, tailor” with the pips, & the news at the time was about people getting shoved about in various parts of the world. The song grew around the children’s word game, & developed into a narrative for people anywhere who are reviled for their nomadic existence, & yet discouraged from settling down.
4 THE FORTY THIEVES - I’ll always be grateful to the great Vin Garbutt for making this song his own. The humble Grimsby trawlerman earned part of his pay from a small share of the profit from the catch. If good quality fish hit a good market, he could make a fair settling. Some unscrupulous trawler owners were known to send in fleets of lorries - the “ghost train” - to take away the best fish to a private market before it could be officially tallied, thus depriving the fisherman of his full & rightful share. There were about forty trawler owners, & the title (rightly or wrongly) bestowed upon them is also the title of this song.
For You Tube video click here.
5 STARLIGHT - Julie started singing when she was in her late teens, but folk music wasn’t her first choice. She favoured the country-based pop style that flourished in the late 1950s, & in Elsie she found an older friend & mentor who had high aspirations for them both. They would perform to Elsie’s autoharp in the smoky pubs & clubs of Grimsby & Cleethorpes, mostly for very meagre fees. Julie went on to find other interests, but Elsie kept on singing, always chasing her elusive dream of stardom. Although she never smoked, she eventually developed throat cancer from the years of exposure to tobacco fumes, & sadly she passed away a few years ago. This song is for her.
6 BUMPER TO BUMPER - This ditty must easily have past its tenth birthday, but seems to become more relevant with every year. Many of us share the view that the internal combustion engine is a curse of modern living, but when the final snarl-up occurs, will we be sorry or glad?
7 GROWN CHILDREN - I actually did use to travel for several years to & from my job on the Humber bank in a works bus, & managed to do quite a lot of writing while thus captive for over an hour a day. More often you’d be content to be just one of those vacant faces at the window. Sometimes the coach would be held up in Grimsby town centre’s tea-time traffic, & you’d be treated to the antics of some of the characters inhabiting the benches at Hainton Square. In some ways, an entertainment. In others, something more unsettling.
8 THE FITTER ON THE SHORE - This song follows the course of my late Father’s working life, at least until he left his job as a fitter on Grimsby Docks because it no longer paid a living wage. In fact the song was inspired by one of Dad’s poems, in which he tried to describe his love for marine steam engines, the pride he took in his arduous work, & the immense respect he always had for trawlermen & other workers who earned their livelihoods from fishing. He considered himself a shore engineer, & was acknowledged as such by skippers & sea-going engineers, as it was the task of Dad & his fellow tradesmen to do whatever was necessary to get the firm’s trawlers back in shape for sea with the minimum of delay. Often the phrase used when the fit-out was completed was: “Right. That’ll catch haddocks!”
9 I CAN ONLY THINK OF YOU - My first love song for Julie, from around 1971. This is what happens when lust gets in the way of art, I suppose. It reminds me of an aimless, hairy youth, who rolled his own fags (hence the reference to smoking) due to lack of cash, & of the Black Swan Folk Club in Victoria Street, Grimsby, where we used to meet. (Also the one-day festival at Bardney, where we first “got together”. Get this: Steeleye Span, Martin Carthy, The Byrds, Tom Paxton, Tim Hardin, Buffy Sainte-Marie, James Taylor, The Incredible String Band, etc - can you believe it?) Alas, the Black Swan is no more. But never mind. The memories we have to share are priceless.
10 A LINCOLNSHIRE FAMILY - Based on the imagined experiences of my own Great-grandparents who came to Lincolnshire from Latvia in the late 1800s. This song won us first prize in the 2002 BBC Radio Lincolnshire “Write A Lincolnshire Folk Song” contest.
11 A WESTERLY - The trawlerman’s term for the buddy who would see you didn’t go without if you’d had a lousy (fishing) trip. The favour would no doubt be returned, but debts were never counted.
12 THE STORM OF ‘53 - It’s almost exactly 50 years as we go to press since the terrible floods that cost the inhabitants of the east coast & other North Sea lowlands so dearly. Our good mate Pete Addison passed these evocative verses to us, & I’m sure Pete won’t mind if we dedicate the song to the memory of the hundreds of poor souls who perished in that monumental storm.
13 ROLY POLY - Let’s get this straight. This song is about pudding, & anyone who says different has got a dirty mind.
14 THE GRAND OLD LADIES - We finish with another song inspired by my Dad. Anyone who worked with trawlers - skippers, deckhands, fitters - knew each one had her own character, a unique spirit & a story to tell. When the deep sea fishing ended, many were scrapped & others converted to other duties around the globe. But there are still plenty of ex-trawlermen who can tell you tales of frozen rigging, towering seas, & nights of fear when you had to put every ounce of your faith in the fighting spirit of the ship you were in. Lying peacefully in dock, they may have seemed like Grand Old Ladies, but in the jaws of danger, they battled for their crew like courageous young Amazons.
2 THROWN IT ALL AWAY - Following an after-dinner “do” for Grimsby St James Rotary, Bill Hobson of the FMA (Fish Merchants’ Association) suggested an idea for a song following the series of political blunders that culminated in the demise of Grimsby as a deep sea fishing port. Sure, there were also other causes contributing to the industry’s decline, but our leaders did very little to help soften the blow, & in some cases actively traded the livelihoods of their own countrymen in return for political favours from our US & European neighbours. Nothing much changes, does it?
For You Tube video click here.
3 CAMPING NIGHTS & ROVING DAYS - Just occasionally a song arrives as a gift, as this one did. I was getting stuffed on cheap grapes in Cyprus, playing “tinker, tailor” with the pips, & the news at the time was about people getting shoved about in various parts of the world. The song grew around the children’s word game, & developed into a narrative for people anywhere who are reviled for their nomadic existence, & yet discouraged from settling down.
4 THE FORTY THIEVES - I’ll always be grateful to the great Vin Garbutt for making this song his own. The humble Grimsby trawlerman earned part of his pay from a small share of the profit from the catch. If good quality fish hit a good market, he could make a fair settling. Some unscrupulous trawler owners were known to send in fleets of lorries - the “ghost train” - to take away the best fish to a private market before it could be officially tallied, thus depriving the fisherman of his full & rightful share. There were about forty trawler owners, & the title (rightly or wrongly) bestowed upon them is also the title of this song.
For You Tube video click here.
5 STARLIGHT - Julie started singing when she was in her late teens, but folk music wasn’t her first choice. She favoured the country-based pop style that flourished in the late 1950s, & in Elsie she found an older friend & mentor who had high aspirations for them both. They would perform to Elsie’s autoharp in the smoky pubs & clubs of Grimsby & Cleethorpes, mostly for very meagre fees. Julie went on to find other interests, but Elsie kept on singing, always chasing her elusive dream of stardom. Although she never smoked, she eventually developed throat cancer from the years of exposure to tobacco fumes, & sadly she passed away a few years ago. This song is for her.
6 BUMPER TO BUMPER - This ditty must easily have past its tenth birthday, but seems to become more relevant with every year. Many of us share the view that the internal combustion engine is a curse of modern living, but when the final snarl-up occurs, will we be sorry or glad?
7 GROWN CHILDREN - I actually did use to travel for several years to & from my job on the Humber bank in a works bus, & managed to do quite a lot of writing while thus captive for over an hour a day. More often you’d be content to be just one of those vacant faces at the window. Sometimes the coach would be held up in Grimsby town centre’s tea-time traffic, & you’d be treated to the antics of some of the characters inhabiting the benches at Hainton Square. In some ways, an entertainment. In others, something more unsettling.
8 THE FITTER ON THE SHORE - This song follows the course of my late Father’s working life, at least until he left his job as a fitter on Grimsby Docks because it no longer paid a living wage. In fact the song was inspired by one of Dad’s poems, in which he tried to describe his love for marine steam engines, the pride he took in his arduous work, & the immense respect he always had for trawlermen & other workers who earned their livelihoods from fishing. He considered himself a shore engineer, & was acknowledged as such by skippers & sea-going engineers, as it was the task of Dad & his fellow tradesmen to do whatever was necessary to get the firm’s trawlers back in shape for sea with the minimum of delay. Often the phrase used when the fit-out was completed was: “Right. That’ll catch haddocks!”
9 I CAN ONLY THINK OF YOU - My first love song for Julie, from around 1971. This is what happens when lust gets in the way of art, I suppose. It reminds me of an aimless, hairy youth, who rolled his own fags (hence the reference to smoking) due to lack of cash, & of the Black Swan Folk Club in Victoria Street, Grimsby, where we used to meet. (Also the one-day festival at Bardney, where we first “got together”. Get this: Steeleye Span, Martin Carthy, The Byrds, Tom Paxton, Tim Hardin, Buffy Sainte-Marie, James Taylor, The Incredible String Band, etc - can you believe it?) Alas, the Black Swan is no more. But never mind. The memories we have to share are priceless.
10 A LINCOLNSHIRE FAMILY - Based on the imagined experiences of my own Great-grandparents who came to Lincolnshire from Latvia in the late 1800s. This song won us first prize in the 2002 BBC Radio Lincolnshire “Write A Lincolnshire Folk Song” contest.
11 A WESTERLY - The trawlerman’s term for the buddy who would see you didn’t go without if you’d had a lousy (fishing) trip. The favour would no doubt be returned, but debts were never counted.
12 THE STORM OF ‘53 - It’s almost exactly 50 years as we go to press since the terrible floods that cost the inhabitants of the east coast & other North Sea lowlands so dearly. Our good mate Pete Addison passed these evocative verses to us, & I’m sure Pete won’t mind if we dedicate the song to the memory of the hundreds of poor souls who perished in that monumental storm.
13 ROLY POLY - Let’s get this straight. This song is about pudding, & anyone who says different has got a dirty mind.
14 THE GRAND OLD LADIES - We finish with another song inspired by my Dad. Anyone who worked with trawlers - skippers, deckhands, fitters - knew each one had her own character, a unique spirit & a story to tell. When the deep sea fishing ended, many were scrapped & others converted to other duties around the globe. But there are still plenty of ex-trawlermen who can tell you tales of frozen rigging, towering seas, & nights of fear when you had to put every ounce of your faith in the fighting spirit of the ship you were in. Lying peacefully in dock, they may have seemed like Grand Old Ladies, but in the jaws of danger, they battled for their crew like courageous young Amazons.
