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about

Two pictures hung on the wall at my maternal grandmother's where me and my twin brother were brought up. They were of flowers on solid wood panels and were painted by her mother's friend in 1902. She always said that when we grew up and moved on, we could have them. My stepdad was looking to sell them after my mother died, but they were kept out of his way and have been given a good home, with me.
They're constant reminders of my grandmother, a complex, guarded woman who had some mystery to her. I feel there's a lot we weren't told about her but she was very loving and kind with us children.

lyrics

Alice cleaned the parlour
The sherry glasses gleamed
An endless stream of cigarettes
Dropped ashes down her sleeve
Once she'd led the horse and cart
A dairy girl she'd been
But that was then this was now
She kept her cottage clean

Mrs Sergeant went to evensong
As many did back then
To worship an elusive God who was whittling down her friends
Then she'd go to visit Alice
Week on week she came
A crumpled twisted figure
Walking twisted little lanes

Together they knocked back the sherry
It loosened tongues, made them merry
They talked and they cackled
In the way that old friends do

They poked fun at the menfolk
While they weren't around
How they looked like crumpled leather
And smelled like Newkey Brown

They strummed a ukelele
Singing all the while
A gift fom the Italians
When they left in forty five
They talked about their families
Grandkids, daughters, sons
And sharing out the heirlooms
Before the year was done

We see them in the bric a brac
Through pictures on the wall
Portals to another time
We hear their voices call
But objects are just objects
On shelves or on the wall
But they live on through the values
They handed to us all

Together they knocked back the sherry
It loosened tongues, made them merry
They talked and they cackled
In the way that old friends do

And objects are just objects
On shelves or on the wall
But they live on through the values
They handed to us all

credits

from Downbeat Is The New Upbeat, released April 8, 2023

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Will Riding Chester

A Lancashire born, Chester based singer-songwriter with a deft and playful turn of phrase and acoustic - folk sensibilities inspired by, amongst other things, 70’s Children’s TV.

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