My Children Sing in the Car.

Probably everybody’s do – and I know that when my siblings and I were young, we used to sing often – in the car and anywhere else, heedless of wrong notes, mistaken words, and variable keys. But hearing Zenon and Leo sing song after song – in Greek and English – during a twenty-minute car journey is one of my almost daily blessings.

And I don’t ask them to. One will start, and the other will join in – their voices generally true, even for children of nine and seven. Usually they sing songs learned at school – traditional Greek or Cypriot ballads or patriotic songs. Occasionally they sing pop songs, and Zenon has acquired a taste for soft rock, so that between glorifying the heroes and martyrs of 1821, he will launch into ‘Desperado’ – often with very strange words as he hasn’t managed to figure out what the lyrics are and just adds his own approximation.

He also has a liking for ‘Eye of the Tiger’, but fortunately his rendition only occasionally figures in the repertoire. Lately he and Leo have learned the words to ‘Jolene’ thanks to someone’s leaving a CD in my car. Both Zenon and Leo have picked up not only the lyrics, but Dolly’s accent, too. The other day Best Beloved pulled out of the drive on the way to town, and drifting back down the drive came ‘Ah had t’have this toke with you, mah happiness depends on you…’ A day or two later, apropos of nothing, Zenon suddenly said “What’s a toke, Mama?”

Alex has a true voice as well, and will often sing with me: our repertoire ranges from Kathy Mattea’s ‘Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses’ to Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat out of Hell’ complete with motorcycle sound effects. He has an instinctive ear for harmony, so we do quite well together.

Sophia is more inclined to join Celine Dion or the Dixie Chicks when she’s listening to them on her computer. Unfortunately it’s hard to persuade her that her singing with headphones on means that we get a tuneless drone – she just shrugs when we stand in front of her pointing at the headphones and wincing.

She is the one who most wants to be able to sing well, as she has hopes for the stage. But people ‘in the know’ have told her that an ability to sing and dance gives one a better chance of acceptance into acting school, and a good drama school is practically pre-requisite for a stage career. She has started learning to play the guitar, and I have been trying to explain basic theory. But “I don’t want lessons!” she insists. “That’s the quickest way possible to put me off music.” Unfortunately my knowledge is very limited, and if she applies herself as I know that she can, she may be looking for lessons within the next year or so as she realises that self-teaching can take her only so far.

Now that Christmas is around the corner, we are regaled by a range of carols. Rudolf (in both English and Greek) is reindeer non grata, and I’ve threatened to put a boot through the Little Drummer Boy’s instrument if I hear of it again (never liked that carol!), but the house and the car are full of ‘Jingle Bells’ – often including the parody ‘Batman smells’), Silent Night, and Greek and Cypriot seasonal songs.

It’s good to be surrounded by music.

Breda Lewis

My brother phoned me yesterday from Ireland with the news that cancer took Breda Lewis’ life last week.

I first met Breda in Boston in about 1981 in the Black Rose. She was playing her round-back mandolin up on a stage with her husband John on the flute, son Liam on the fiddle, and daughter Patsy on the concertina. The concept of a family band fascinated me.

Little did I know how great a part Breda and her various instruments would play in my life over the next seven years. I moved to Galway and found her and Liam in regular sessions in the City and Salthill: the Brasserie, the Cottage, the Galway Arms, the Quays, The Crane. Breda always smiled a welcome, encouraged me to play and to sing, taught me new tunes, sold me her mandola. Many young, shy musicians owed Breda their start. She had a way of inspiring even the most timid and unskilled of us.

When I came back to Ireland after a year in the Middle East, she opened her Furbo house, Straidp Cottage to me. Blessings on her, she always welcomed waifs and strays: “Sure, come out and keep me and the cats company!”

Breda wasn’t always easy. “Uppity!” an American might say. And “Ornery!” She drank a lot, smoked a lot, could be outspoken and completely contrary. Stubborn as a mule. But she’d give her money to a stranger if she thought it would do him good, and somehow, despite a life that saw some heartbreak, she kept innocence alive in those unfathomable brown eyes.

I’d go to bed after playing at one of her sessions in Teac Furbo, but if the night were clear, she would get out the telescope. “Lets see what’s happening in the heavens tonight!” Early the next morning, I’d make tea and breakfast while she packed the ‘scope away: “Mighty craic with the stars and planets last night, oh, you should have seen it! Jupiter was as clear as anything… And the moon…”

We called ourselves Helles Belles when we played, just for the laugh.

When I finally left Ireland, she gave me a handmade black Aran jumper that she had knitted for me. For twenty winters it has kept the cold at bay – though the Cyprus weather hardly warrants it.

Strange, the sky is weeping today. After two days of spring sunshine, yesterday’s afternoon clouded over and a soft rain began to fall. I unpacked Breda’s jumper and pulled its heavy warmth over my head. It comforts me in the cold and through my grief.

Years have passed since I saw her: I’m sure she knows that I finally found a man, settled down, had children, but the times that I was in Ireland since, although I asked after her, and although she lived not too far from my brother’s house, I never visited.
Regrets are pointless, but I would have liked her to have met my children, and would have loved for them to have met her.

And now it’s too late. She has ‘gone on’. Winston said that her funeral in Wexford was a gathering of musicians – that many a glass was hoisted in her honour, and many a tune that she loved rang out.

Rest well, Breda. I will never forget you, and I know that I’m not alone.