| Category | Rating |
|---|---|
| Track Structure | 9 |
| Interest | 9 |
| Melody | 9 |
| Performance | 10 |
| Lyrics | 10 |
| Enjoyment | 9 |
| Recording Quality | 9 |
| Commercial Appeal | 8 |
| Overall | 9.1 |
I’m going to start this review by telling you, dear reader, a bit more about myself. The reasons for this will become clear as the review progresses.
I married for the first time when I was 20 years old and my first wife was 19. We ran a fish and chip shop in Richmond Surrey for many years and, when I was 26, we decided to start a family. My wife fell pregnant pretty quickly and my first daughter (Emma) was born in March 1979.
A few days after she was born my wife began acting quite strangely, culminating in her hiding behind the bathroom door and trying to stab me with a pair of scissors as I walked in (OK, there are quite a few people on this site who wouldn’t find that strange at all). I managed to hold her off until she had calmed down a bit whereupon she informed me that she had been told to kill me by the Devil (I’m not making this up, I swear). At that point it became clear that something was substantially wrong so we managed to get her down to the doctors who diagnosed a condition I had never heard of called Puerperal Psychosis.
It took many weeks for her to recover from this terrible condition but, after a while, life returned to normal and a couple of years later, having been advised (wrongly) that there was little chance of the condition returning, we had a second child, my daughter Charlotte. It soon became clear that the condition had returned, this time more seriously than before, occasioning the requirement for my wife to be admitted to a psychiatric ward for some weeks.
She eventually recovered but we were told, in no uncertain terms, not to have any more children so, being the selfless individual I try to be, I volunteered (at the relatively young age of 29, to have a vasectomy. Less than a year later, my wife left taking the two kids with her. I was devastated.
It took me about 5 years to get my life back on track but eventually, in my late thirties, I was ready to have another relationship and had the great good fortune to meet Lisa.
Lisa did not have children but had spent the whole of her working life looking after them in one way or another and desperately wanted to start a family of her own. She had been married previously and suffered two early miscarriages but the doctors had told her it was “just one of those things”. The first thing that needed to happen, of course, was for me to attempt to have my vasectomy reversed and an appointment was duly made for me to have the operation.
Let me tell you that having a vasectomy reversed is a whole lot more painful than having it done in the first place but, nonetheless, I survived to tell the story and, a few weeks later had confirmation that the operation had been successful and that I was now firing “live” rounds.
Unbelievably, within a few weeks, Lisa was pregnant but, eight weeks after that, she lost the baby. “Try again” they said, so we did. She miscarried again. And again. After the third miscarriage we were referred to Professor Lesley Regan who runs a specialist miscarriage clinic at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and a whole load of tests were carried out but nothing obvious emerged.
“Keep trying” said Lesley, so we did. Four more miscarriages ensued until, at last, one of the blood tests confirmed that Lisa had a condition known as “Lupus trait” which is an auto-immune disorder which causes the blood to become a bit “tacky”.
In the normal course of events, this doesn’t matter but when an embryo is forming in the womb, the blood vessels that feed it are tiny and, in her case, the blood just wouldn’t flow freely enough for the embryo to grow properly, causing it to die. The answer was for Lisa to take a low-dose aspirin each day of her pregnancy and, sure enough, the next pregnancy resulted in the birth of my son Jack, although it wasn’t without its alarms as Lisa started bleeding at 22 weeks and spent the rest of her pregnancy, pretty much, in a hospital bed being monitored 24 hours a day until Jack was born. By now I was 41 and Lisa was 42 but we desperately wanted a second child so we persevered and, 17 months later, George was born.
So babies and having children, holds a special place in my heart and you need to know that before I review this song.
Why?
Because it is about a Dad trying to cope and come to terms with his new born daughter’s illness, a subject to which I could immediately (and hugely) relate and empathise and my past experiences have, without a doubt, influenced how I feel about this song.
However, what sets this apart from a great many songs relating to intense family upsets is the quality of the writing and the sensitivity of the music. It is (understandably) all too easy to write over-sentimental, mawkish lyrics and Mark has wonderfully managed to avoid this without being too intellectual in the process.
Anyone who has listened to Mark’s music will already know he is a consummate musician and this track is no exception. I was struck, while listening to this song, how easily it would have slotted into Gerry Rafferty’s album “City to City” (one of my all-time favourite albums) and I now have a hankering to hear Mark sing “
By the by, I have always saved my greatest admiration for singer/songwriters and Mark is without doubt up there with the very best of them. That his song has inspired me to share a part of my life with you all is testament to how good a song it is and I’m sure, as his daughter grows up, she will also be delighted to have inspired such a wonderful song.
Highly recommended.
To listen to the track Click Here