Spending New Years Eve With Nick Drake….

On New Year’s Eve morning I was lucky enough to wake up relatively hangover free at a friend of a friend’s house in the Midlands. We (David, me and the kids) were en route to Shipston-on-Stour where we planned to spend a few days with our good friends the Williams’ at their pad. We had very kindly however been asked to join a lovely gathering which was happening in Tanworth-in-Arden and so we spent Wednesday night partying and the next morning, having duly breakfasted on bacon sarnies and coffee, packed up the car to continue the remainder of our journey to Shippo. Firstly though there was another visit to make,a gentle contemplative start to yet, what was I suspected, another heavy night to come.

As I peered out of the window of the bedroom we were occupying I spied the village church tower literally yards down the lane and eagerly anticipated the stroll there. As it panned out we ended up driving the short distance to the churchyard and for the second time made the pilgrimage to the Drake family grave.

Not wishing to bore you (or indeed induce vomiting) Nick Drake’s ‘Bryter Later’ album was the soundtrack to which David and I fell in love and indeed ‘Northern Sky’ was our wedding song. My first trip to Nick’s grave was in the autumn of 2000. It was I recall a beautiful sunny day and I was heavily pregnant with our first child. We walked (well I waddled) through the village up to Far Leys, the Drake’s former family home, and then finally through the church gate where we followed the path around to the left of the church to the simple grave. We sat quietly for a few minutes and then set off back to Lancashire glad we had made the journey.  A decade later and our lives are very different….our Ella will be 10 come November and then there’s little George to boot….we no longer spend entire weekends in bed listening to Nick Drake (the beaver man as our El calls him) and eating Marmite on toast however we do still love his music and although last week’s visit to his resting place was a little colder (it being December I mean) and the world a less rosy place (in some ways) than the first time we visited it was just as poignant.

A wonderful way for us to end 2009 and indeed contemplate 2010. We spent a fantastic New Year with Katie and Shamus and returned home on Sunday ready to launch a whiteroom into 2010 with a vengeance……..what other choice is there?