Cherished

I’ve been writing scathing posts for too long. Need to lighten up. There’s beauty in the world yet …

A few years ago a Radio 4 Saturday slot had listeners sending in the stories behind cherished possessions, the things they’d brave smoke and flame to rescue should home turn to blazing inferno. One contributor – just seventeen when Jimi blasted the Isle of Wight with his virtuosity and fire, reverb and screeching feedback loops – told of a prized blanket.

That she was even at the 1970 festival was an act of filial disobedience, dad’s foot having come down firmly against. There’d be sex. There’d be drugs. In any case, who in their right mind would pay to hear the mind­less racket of Doors, Who and that Fender-screwing maniac in the psychedelic frock coat and crazy afro barnet?

Resigned to missing the event of a life­time the girl – now in her sixties – couldn’t believe her luck when M & D booked a last minute holiday for two in Llandudno. With the stony old straights scarcely through the door, daughter and pal were on the road with thumbs out; one of a myriad tributaries dest­ined to flow into a 600,000 crowd that would outnumber by six to one the island’s resid­ent and less than ecstatic population.

The star act, upstaging even the Who, was Hendrix. His soaring opener to House Burning blew minds already wild with acid, mesc and hash. Likewise that magnificent bridge between second and third verses of All Along the Watchtower, still the best cover by a mile of any Dylan song. (Bruce’s Chimes of Freedom excepted, naturally.) By the time his lean, loping figure had left the stage – who could know he had but three weeks to live? – she was done for. As a serene Joan Baez – no one else could have followed – coaxed her acoustic guitar into the opening chords of Let it Be,  the young rebel fell into her first sleep in two days. When she awoke, hours later, someone she’d never know had covered her with a multi-coloured woollen blanket.

Hippies Grow Up: get degrees, careers, husbands, wives, kids, cars, mortgages. Radio 4 lady was no exception but the blanket stayed; doing service on family picnics and as wraparound on star­ry nights. Even after her own kids had fled the nest it did for the grandchildren. Then one day it was gone, vanished; how or where no one could say. Her man knew nothing, he assured her, but couldn’t quite meet her inquisitorial gaze.

It was a while before he fessed up. There’d been a wasp nest in the garden. He’d piled damp leaves on a smoul­d­ering bonfire to send the stripy buggers on their way. The Jimi blanket had been just the thing for wafting smoke but he’d gotten careless and the charred remains had to be disposed of; surreptit­ious­ly, like a murdered corpse.

She’d taken it philosophically, as any right-thinking ageing hippie would. The thing to cherish, she knew, was not those worn-out threads but the kindness of strangers and the ideals – easy to mock now they are no longer feared – of a generation that had thought by such acts to bring a world of war and avarice to its knees. They didn’t. They couldn’t. But I – also seventeen the night the elemental force that was Jimi Hendrix ripped across Afton Down (where I too should have been) – feel ridic­ul­ously proud and happy to have once shared those ideals.