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Farewell, Dave Swarbrick
My heart didn’t stop exactly, but I had to swallow hard a couple of times last night when I read the Sunday Times from June 12 (carried around in my handbag unread for two weeks) and happened to glance at the obituaries page: Dave Swarbrick had died on June 3rd and I hadn’t known.
Where is that damned Facebook when you need it? It was Dave Swarbrick! Swarbs! Fiddler, singer and on and off frontman of legendary folk/rock band Fairport Convention. And he was my first love.
I mean, my first distant celebrity love whose photos I drooled over and whose angelic voice and violin I listened to until my ear canals were completely worn out.
Now I realise that he must have been in his mid-thirties in the months and years that I loved him as a young teenager (the crazy infatuation changed to indifference when he grew a beard) but he looked so young! So …not demonic, but slightly devious, certainly mischievous, laconic and knowing. He was the epitome of perfect manliness for me in the 70s: Short build, long hair, highly gifted musician and composer and he wore one big gold earring, a habit I immediately copied and which plunged me into hippiedom (a state from which I didn’t escape until I moved to London in 1982).
I’ve put most of the music from my younger years behind me, but Fairport Convention has remained steadfastly in my album collection and hardly a week has gone by without me listening to them.
Oh, Dave Swarbrick. Oh, my youth. When your beautiful idols die aged 75 looking like a gnome, you realise your youth is well and truly over. Farewell, farewell. A great musician and, apparently, delightful human being, has left us.
As a bonus, here is the most beautiful version of The Flowers of the Forest ever recorded with Dave Swarbrick forever young and beautiful.
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Mexican Wedding
You will forgive me for my thoughts and feelings straying somewhat from Cantonese recently. It’s all about the Spanish now. Now, for example, I’m in Cuernavaca which interestingly means Horn Cow. It’s a beautiful, hilly holiday town for weary Mexico City dwellers, where people drive with their car windows open (an increasingly rare sight in Mexico City. The crime, you see) and the threat of being mugged, kidnapped or cartelled is much lower.
We’re here to witness the union of Larisa and Alfonso. My friends had assured me that a Mexican wedding was something else, and they were not wrong. After a beautiful outdoor Catholic ceremony of which I understood that the most important thing in a marriage is to be friends, at 2pm I could finally have breakfast – Corona.
That is to say, I hadn’t had time to eat before we hurried off to the wedding at 10:45, only to find that we were about two hours early for Mexico time. They were still decorating the church after half of the guests had arrived. But even half a bottle of Corona on an empty stomach couldn’t finish me off this day! It was just so very very pleasant with super happy people of all generations
lots and lots and lots of drinks of which my favourite was iced black coffee with some coffee liqueur together with hot black coffee with a white wine chaser,
great food and non-stop dancing.
Sated! Sensibly went back to the hotel before midnight! Woke up at 04:00 feeling slightly nauseous but now great and learnt the Mexican word for shitfaced: Pedo(s).
I’m so grateful to my host Hector for letting me experience all this.
齊啡 (Tsai feh – black coffee)
跳舞 (Tiu mou – dance)
婚禮 (Fan lai – wedding)
貓咗 (Mao jo – shitfaced)
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Old But Good Podcast from Guangzhou
I think this poddie castie deserves another hear. Kendall is one of the early fans of Naked Cantonese and it’s always fun to visit fans on their stomping grounds.
Easter Is Coming To Cantonese
I don’t know why I suddenly posted that photo. So, it’s almost Easter, and therefore I’d like you to cast your mind back to Christmas, three years ago. That’s when we shot the legendary Romeo, →
Podcast From Disco Taxi Shenzhen
Yam Chaaaaaa! I go to Shenzhen with two victims, one of whom is a real Glaswegian! I’ve always said that Cantonese is the Glaswegian of Asia. A good fighting language, etc. But far from fighting, →
My First Foray into Solo Podcasting – Outcasting
Here is the first podcast I ever made without the soothing, nay, dulcet tones of Ah-Sa hovering in the back-and-foreground. Podcasts will be a regular occurrence from now on; I welcome ideas, locations and of →
Amazing Coincidence? I Think Not!
Is Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s Cantonese course the only course currently in existence where the teacups provided by the course venue match your outfit? It’s hard to say, but I’ll wager it will →
Outcasts – Hallo Welcome
My first podcast without ah-Sa!
Hallowed Headquarters Honolulu-cast
Woo-hoo everybody everywhere! I have finally, after mourning fickle Englishwoman ‘Ah-Sa’s absence for almost three years, started making podcasts again!!! I thought it fitting to stage the first one in hallowed headquarters Honolulu in Stanley →
你有無睇醫生？ Have you seen a doctor?
There’s been a lot of flu and crap floating around in Hong Kong recently – even I got it! But this wasn’t your common or garden swine flu 豬流感 (zhyu lao gam) – this was →
Arresting Rugby
Last Saturday Mister Public Security Uncle took a trip to Wan Chai to join in the rugby revelling and cavorting, as well as spreading the word of Canto. Fun much? I have always laughed (in →
Awful Simplified Crapacters
Oh, how I hate simplified characters! It’s bad enough that I have to see them everywhere in my beloved mainland (although shop-and restaurant owners who want their business to look stylish and upmarket increasingly use →
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Miyakojima! 宮古島
The mainland is all well and good, in fact better than well and certainly better than good, but there other countries around here. Japan for example. Not that this tiny island that’s much closer to →
The Only Cantonese Lesson You’ll Ever Need (Crash Course in Light Conversation)
This week my first specialised crash course kicked off, with two excellent and fast learners, working titles ah-Lei and ah-Ga. In only two and a half hours, they learnt enough Cantonese to go into any →
Chinese Characters
Chinese characters (normal, not simplified) are beautiful, aren’t they? Even ordinary words like ‘toilet’ look somehow elevated to a higher sphere when they’re written with a brush, or printed for that matter. Not that the →
China Toilet Groove (Contains Video)
Everyone who travels in China for more than, say, five minutes, has something to say about her toilets. But I stand by my column (above) – they are nothing! Nothing, compared to only a few →
Cantonese – The Easiest Language in the World?
When I started learning Cantonese there was no shortage of Chinese people warning me against it. At that time the most common refrain was: “It’s too difficult – for you“. OK, maybe they didn’t emphasise →
Sichuan Food … So Yummy and Right Here in Pui O!
There are as many types of Chinese food as there are people in China; approximately 1.3 billion different dishes at last count. That's more dishes than you and I go through in an average month! →
Congratulations, Get Rich!
It’s Chinese new year and the streets (and Facebook) reverberates to foreigners calling out to each other: “KUNG hei fat choi!” For one thing it should be GUNG hei, but hey. The tradition of spelling →
Enormous Oversight
About those language teaching videos (one Cantonese for beginners, one Cantonese for the more adventurous and, yes! I admit it! Even a survival Mandarin video called Stay Grounded) – all these years they’ve had this →
Successful Filming Extravaganza With Opulent Chair Sitting
The shooting of new, from-scratch Cantonese course CantoNews continues. This time we went to a thrilling location, the luscious OYC Hotel in 肇慶 (Siu Heng) in Guangdong province, a mere four hours’ comfortable train journey →
In The Market for Grooviness
Here is an excellent way to practise and learn more Cantonese: Going to the market with your very own Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau. This is how it works: First we sit down with →
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