1972: Started learning the acoustic guitar. 1978: was spent attempting some serious songwriting: Beach Song. Autumn Turns. Red Flowers in the sun completed. Also meet Mark Knopfler and catch Ralph Mctell in concert for the first time. 1980-85: Gigs. A trip to France. Ireland and busking undertaken. 1986-92: Try a few band and duo combos. Meet and Jam with Calum MacColl - on acoustics of course! Some gigging. John Martin - Beatles Fame! Makes encouraging comments concerning my Sri-Lanka Serenade song 1993-2000: Much material penned. I spend a few years trying my hand at writing sci/fantasy to amuse myself. And to my credit I do manage to complete 2 and a half books: ONE BLOOD LINE TO ELYSIUM....THE GLASS TOWER...THE BLUE STONE OF B'RORAN. 2001-2006: Start to accumilate all the recorded stuff over the years. Nigh on a hundred bits of my work recorded! High Barn gig undertaken. Poem Bathsheba is published. Numerous songs released on compilations. Publishing deal achieved. At present recording a project concernig the First World War...Dedicated to the memory of my dear GrandFather...veteran of Ypres and the Somme. So that's a very, very brief synopsis of my story thus far...Just a quick addition - Just, being an understated word! Thank you Ralph - Ralph Mctell, one of my most inspirational heros for signing my own personal website. right on!!
Could it have been Satan that planted the seeds of madness into men's hearts? And watched them growing wild like waifs at play beneath an English sun? And O, would Orpheus have sung a song and called the rain to come, to wash away the sad blood on the mire. I wrote the above lines on reflection of my dear Grandfather Fredrick Clark veteran of the Great War 1914-18. There is something about the sheer magnitude, and the waste of human life, that that particular conflict incurred, that has scarred humankind for almost a century. Of course, there have been atrocities since, for which the whole of humanity has and will always suffer. However, for me, personally, a deeper, added, emotive element surrounds the naivety of that generation. Make no mistake, the men of this era were bestowed from birth with defiant courage - how could they not, they were English bred - but they were to possess a naivety that bordered on an almost child-like innocence and it is here where one cannot fail to be moved by the exploitation, and utter decimation, of the communities of England at that time. There is a line from a Wilfred Owen poem, which I now seldom read because it is too emotive for me. It is from his Anthem For Doomed Youth. It is but one line but it encompasses the entire scenario of war in general: And the bugles calling for them from sad shires. One can scarcely imagine the distress that a war brings to a people, how they survive it and deal with its lifelong trauma. Private Fredrick Clark G/60271, 4th Batt, Middlesex Regiment had little choice, he was born at a time when the domination for world power and industrialisation was peaking. He never spoke much of his exploits. The fragments I have are that he was kicked in the skull by a horse, gassed at Ypres, and was once held up in a wine cellar for two days, sheltering from the shell fire - apparently the wine cellar was drunk dry. One of my earliest memories is of him holding my hand and leading me to a public house where he lifted me up onto the bar. The barman produced a massive plastic jar of penny arrow biscuits. I have often wondered about the respect he must have commanded, not only as a man, but also as one who had survived the blood and mud-sodden fields of France. Only of late do I realise the uncompromising sacrifice that that generation endured for the sake of an idolized freedom. Pop, I was and still am, proud to be your Grandson... Lee Mitchell
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