One piece that did produce something concrete was from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra - a sadly defunct group of musicians, of varying membership, since their founder died in 1997. The first time I heard the piece of music entitled Southern Jukebox Music I had mentally conceived the entire video to accompany the music. This is the story version (which owes slight acknowledgement to the wonderful Dancing at Whitsun)...
Southern Jukebox Music
She measures her life, not in coffee spoons, but in waves breaking on the prom. Sitting, as she has done for the past twenty years, in a high backed chair at one end of the grand ballroom of the Palais Royale Hotel. Looking out to the English Channel through grimy windows set in peeling fake-gilt frames, she is swimming, not in the grey, roiling Autumnal waters but in her memories, her memories of loving. And Demeter danced the polka, as they laughed with 'wild amnesia, determined to enjoy this one last night of bliss. Tomorrow Normandy is waiting with concomitant dangers but that is all another world away.
Grime and grease, decades of dirt have made the carpet shiny, tar-like black where once was sumptuous claret and dazzling gold. It surrounds the dance floor, cracked, loose, uneven, no longer the best woodblock on the Southern Coast. The table is still here, at the end of the room, now stained and scarred with a thousand thousand careless hot plates, glasses and ill-placed cigarettes,
but then...
Demeter's head was spinning, holiday sherry trifle her only contact with alcohol up till then. And here. on the fine. oak table, adorned with crisp, white linen, the crystal punchbowl, the frosted, crystal glasses, the deceptively sweet, innocuous witch's brew of wine, spirit and fruit. No rationing tonight, no thought of tomorrow, three glasses
sunk, this would be the last.
A lifetime lost in teaching, immersing herself with children that she knew she'd never have for her own. She would dream of her Penelope, never born to her Demeter, no one ever able to compare to him. So she cut a severe figure, tweedy clothes, tight bun, no make-up, a dowdy spinster devoted to her class and to her books. But whenever a girl was upset with some fallout with her boy, Demeter's mind flew back to...
An alley behind the Palais, with fevered, furtive fumblings, consummate today, sign and celebrate tomorrow. Undying love professed as each other part-undressed, sealed their love between the dustbins and the bursting rubbish sacks.
Retirement and a lifetime's unfulfilment, despite a warm send-off by her school, her house seemed too unwanted, an office no longer needed. So she sold up and came down here to her one true moment of pure joy. Permanent guests are a thing of the past but the Palais was glad of regular income, the place had seen better days, no one wanting the traditional holiday any more and DSS drifters more likely filled the order of the day. (Better to be idle at the seaside than in an inner city, better to be in hotel than a hostel). But Demeter never saw them, nor the spreading decay that permeated every little nook and cranny. She lived in the world of maybe and what might have been.
Waiting is so painful when everything is so uncertain, she wondered every day where lie may be. She never doubted once that he was anything but alive and counted off the days till his return. But on a Normandy beach, in a sandy, watery grave, dead from a hail of lead within seconds of landing, he never got the Parisian ring he'd promised her the day before.
The day is getting late now and evening's gloom is falling, the golden mile lights are dimmed by now. Soon the meagre dinner will be waiting on the table as she and several others dine alone. Same as it ever was/ same as it ever is, same as it's ever bound to be. Demeter's gaze is turning from the sea to the ballroom's grand broad entrance and there through spray and years returns her...
And Demeter danced the polka, again so many years after she knew supreme happiness, for the first and last time in her long and empty life. And Demeter danced the polka... Demeter danced the polka...
