Postcards From My Kitchen Table

I don’t have a bucket list but if I did, right up at the top would have to be being a guest on BBC Radio Four stalwart, Desert Island Discs. How I would love to settle down in the studio with Kirsty Young to be ‘castaway’ with the music that defines my life.

It’s been 75 years since Roy Plomley interviewed his first castaway, Viennese actor, comedian and musician Vic Oliver. Since then the great and the good, those who have shaped our history, have appeared on the programme. From Royals such as HRH Princess Margaret, to religious leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Welby. Authors, scientists, film stars, philosophers and footballers – the 75th anniversary guest was David Beckham – the extensive archives are fascinating. They act as a rich social history of the last three quarters of a century and have often courted controversy such as the now infamous 1989 interview with Diana Mosley.

I didn’t become a fan of Desert Island Discs until I had my second baby. Desperate to find something interesting to keep me awake during the interminably lonely night feeds; I began searching through the podcast app on my phone and stubbled across the endless archive. Of course I knew of the programme but on Sunday mornings, when it’s broadcast, I tended to find myself doing something else. But now through the magic of podcasts, the most incredible world was opened to me and so followed months of nocturnal listening.

The interviews that, for me, linger longest in the memory are from those who I had never heard of before. Dr William Frankland, immunologist, who talked so movingly of the loneliness he felt at the grand age of 103, or Professor Hugh Montgomery who discovered the ACE gene which influences the human ability to choose to live or die. And then there are those that have reduced me to a jibbering wreck. Ruth Rogers and Mary Berry both talking so movingly about the deaths of their beloved sons and just a few months ago, Emma Bridgewater talking so honestly and with so much love, of the death of her mother after years of suffering following a riding accident. ‘I knew she was free’ she said, after she heard a bird singing in an apple tree outside her window. It pulled me up in the middle of a run. I had to stop for a minute to compose myself.

I have often pondered what it is that makes the castaways be quite so candid. Is it the skill of the interviewer or is it the power of music?  I’m sure the former has an influence but I believe it’s really all about the latter. Music has an ability to pluck us out of where we are and drop us back into a moment frozen in time. It can makes us relive intense emotion – joy, exhilaration, fear, heartbreak and grief.

So in honour of the 75th birthday of this great bastion of British broadcasting – and because Kirsty will never invite me – I would like to indulge you with my eight Desert Island Discs.

1. Hello – Neil Diamond  – As soon as I hear those glorious opening bars, I am right back in our family Volvo estate cruising down an autoroute in France with our caravan towing along behind us. The sun is streaming through the sunroof and I’m sat with my forehead pressed against one of the windows in the back. My sister Suzi is doing the same on the other side and my little brother Mark is fast asleep in the boot. Dad is driving and Mum has a large Reader’s Digest Europe Map spread across her lap in the passenger seat. We are heading down through France, en route to Spain, on one of our epic five week long summer holidays.

What amazing times we had. Even the 21 hour ferry journey from the south of Ireland was an adventure. We came home brown as berries after spending over half of our school holidays living on the beach, swimming in the sea every day and barbecuing every night. The journey was over 1000 miles which meant we spent a lot of time in the car – we became experts at the origins of European number plates. Mum and Dad weren’t keen on us choosing the car music, instead we were subjected to an endless diet of Irish folk duo Foster and Allen, Olivia Newton John and, my now guilty pleasure, Neil Diamond. It was either his live album Hot August Night or the classic The Jazz Singer. I now find myself listening to it when I want to feel nostalgic. It can unlock memories of those endless summers unlike anything else.

2. Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl – I adore Van Morrison. He is without doubt my all-time favourite musician.  I could have filled my entire eight choices with just his music. It amazes me how the more you listen to his back catalogue, the more you hear musical echoes and references to his other work. It’s like one huge great sprawling musical odyssey.

Brown Eyed Girl is not my favourite Van song, it doesn’t even come close. That honour would go to Tupelo Honey or Sweet Thing or maybe In the Garden. But it’s Brown Eyed Girl that really feels like home.

My childhood and teenage summers (when we weren’t driving through France) were spent in a magical place on the North Atlantic Coast of Northern Ireland called Portballintrae. I spent many rowdy, drunken teenage evenings in the local pub with my siblings and a gaggle of friends. On a Friday night they had a pub singer and he, like probably every other pub singer in Ireland, always sang Brown Eyed Girl and the whole pub always sang along. It was my first proper introduction to Van. To me his voice is home, family, friends. He’s in my DNA. I couldn’t be castaway without him.

3. Nimrod (Enigma Variations) – Elgar – One of my strongest memories of childhood is of being a Brownie, and later a Guide and a Venture Scout, and going to the Remembrance Day service at church. I adored getting dressed up in my uniform and putting my Poppy on. I was thrilled one year to be asked to carry the Guide flag. There was something pride inducing about standing in church and listening to the music of Remembrance, played by the local brass band, and seeing all the veterans adorned in their medals. My own Grandfather had been a Major in the Royal Artillery and escaped France in the mass exodus from the beaches of Dunkirk.

From a young age I understood the importance of this day. Before going to church I would join my Dad to watch the annual televised service from the Cenotaph. When the moment came for Nimrod my lip would start to tremble and I would fight to hold back the tears which I could see glistening in my Dad’s eyes. I don’t know what it is about that piece of music that is so profoundly moving but it absolutely gets me every time.

4. With or Without You – U2 – I know it’s not cool but I love U2. The Joshua Tree has remained my favourite album since it was first released 30 years ago. I remember when I first heart With or Without You. I was at our neighbours house and the video came on the TV in their playroom. I was just ten years old but totally transfixed. I remember the pony-tailed Bono in his leather waistcoat and trousers earnestly singing his socks off. I thought this was one of the best songs I’d ever heard and I still do. It’s just a beautiful, soaring, heartfelt classic.

5. Robbie Williams – No Regrets – A funny one this. A good song but not one of my favourites, however it captures a moment in time when I was carefree and very happy. In my third and fourth years at university in St Andrews (is there anywhere better on this planet to go to university ?!) I lived with three very special friends. We went through phases of listening to CDs on repeat – Blondie’s Greatest Hits, George Michael’s Older, Spiceworld and Robbie William’s I’ve Been Expecting You. Every time I hear anything from this album I am right back in our turreted flat dancing round the sitting room drinking cheap wine and smoking Marlboro Lights. Robbie was always my favourite in Take That and aside from Angels, I believe this song to be one of his best and it features Neil Hannon so what’s not to like.

6. Willie Stewart/Molly Rankin – Eddi Reader – I was first introduced to Eddi Reader at aged 10 when she was in Fairground Attraction. I remember being on our school trip to Newtonmore in Primary 7 and the whole bus full of ten year old girls singing along to every word of Perfect. Fast forward twenty years to a flat in Edinburgh of a then relatively new and rather lovely boyfriend who was to go on to be my husband. I arrived one evening after work to find Pete listening to an album that really grabbed my attention. It was traditionally Scottish without being naff or twee; it was moving, it made you want to dance. It was wonderful.  It was Eddi Reader singing the Songs of Robert Burns. I downloaded it the next day and it has been one of my most listened to albums over the last decade.

I listened to it through the labour and birth of all three of my children. It soothed and comforted me in a way that no other music could. We play it a lot in the house and when my eldest son was about eighteen months old he began to take great delight in dancing to Willie Stewart/Molly Rankin. Pete and I would get up and join in – usually whirling our tiny newborn daughter around too. I cannot tell you how many times we have danced round the kitchen to this song. It evokes such intensely happy memories for me. It is Pete, it is my children, it is just pure joy.

7. Lament for the Wild Geese – Phil Coulter and James Galway – our eldest son Angus has never been big into sleep. When he was a baby Pete used to pace up and down our upstairs landing rocking him when I was too exhausted to do any more. He was a really sickly baby with endless tummy bugs which left him dehydrated and in crippling pain. We spent many nights desperately trying to soothe him.

Every week I took him to Mini Music Makers, a baby music class run by the National Youth Choir of Scotland. He hated it and would scream and yell through the whole thing. Until one joyous week when the teacher played Lament for the Wild Geese. Angus immediately stopped crying and slumped back relaxed into my lap. His eyes glazed over and he almost fell asleep. ‘What is this music??!’, I asked the teacher, ‘I need this music in our lives’.

I hastily downloaded the track onto my iPhone, Pete’s iPhone, my iPad and any piece of technology I could get my hands on. That night, as per usual, Angus woke up screaming and instead of pacing the corridors I pressed play on my phone and guess what? It worked. The beautiful soothing music worked the same magic as it had in the class. And it worked for us time and time and time again. Sometimes I still resort to it during a particularly explosive tantrum and it still works. This piece of music means so much to me and Pete. It gave us our sleep back and gave our beloved boy some solace and sleep. I cannot listen to it without crying.

8. Danny Boy – Traditional –  As I’ve been writing I’ve realised what a maudlin list this is – I’ll be sitting on my island crying. What that says about my character I’m not quite sure but I couldn’t not include this one. I adore Danny Boy. The melody, the words, the sentiment. I absolutely want it sung when the time comes for me to depart the earth. It reminds me of my childhood, my parents, the house where I grew up. I can hear my Dad sitting at the piano singing and playing. It means so much.

Book choice – As a big book worm I really struggled with this one but I’ve plumped for Louis de Bernieres’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin It is the only novel I have read twice and adored just as much the second time round. A beautiful and moving classic. If you haven’t already read it then you absolutely must.

Luxury – I tried to think of something intelligent, quirky or amusing but actually all I would want is a photograph album with pictures of all my family and friends. If I had that I don’t think I would feel quite so alone.

And so to the final question – what piece of music would I save from the waves? It would have to be Willie Stewart/Molly Rankin. It would make me smile, laugh and dance with memories of my family and if it did make me cry they’d happy, grateful tears.