The World of Ephemera #4: Childhood drawing

Sorting through mountains of papers, one happy discovery has been a folder containing many of my childhood drawings and doodles that my Mum had kept.  It has been absolutely wonderful to be reunited with them, and indeed a real trip down memory lane as I can remember many of them. My daughter has been especially interested as there are loads of fashion designs, (very late 1960s into the ’70s – all flares and bright colours).

Digressing for a moment, one of the things I’m nowadays very proud of, is that we were a musical family – we all played the piano and, Dad played (actually still plays) the organ, I did violin, little bro later did trumpet, and Mum always sang in choirs.

Alongside that, we were going to the regular Childrens’ Concerts at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon – introducing us to the lighter side of classical music at an early age.  I got the trips to the ballet too – seeing one of Margot Fonteyn’s last performances in Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker every Christmas.

Then from about the age of eight, I got taken to the Opera. I did love sitting up high in the Amphitheatre at the Royal Opera House and Coliseum.  Again we started off with lighter fare by Rossini with The Tales of Hoffman  and The Barber of Seville, before moving on to Mozart’s Magic Flute.  Now going back to those drawings, I obviously enjoyed the costumes in this production, as there is a whole set of them – but here’s Papagena.

Still on a musical vein though, I also found this snatch of ‘song'(!)  My hand-writing around 1970 era.  I have no recollection of penning this tuneless little dirge though – I can only hope it was to entertain my brother or as an exercise for my music theory exam I would have been sitting around that time.
The Lyrics read:

I’m a G-nu, A G N U,
No-bod-dy loves me
Ev-rey bod-dy hates me,
I have no friends.
chorus
We don’t hate you
We all love you
You are our friend.
So there.

Do you think I Should enter it for the Eurovision Song Contest? 😀

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