When I was a boy my brothers, sisters and I used to go down to my Grandparents in Dorchester during the school holidays., My sister drew pictures in pencils and crayons, and I played hopscotch on the garden terrace. We watched Star Trek and Jackanory and played cribbage and card games.. My grandfather smoked his pipe and told us war stories or tried to blow up moles with explosives in the back garden.
My grandparents had a budgerigar which hopped around merrily in its cage in the living room chirping At bedtime My grandmother used to tell us stories and stroke our foreheads to show us how much she loved us. It was an idyll of calm and repose. A bungalow on the end of a cul de sac in Charminster. A dream to return to whenever you require refuge .Fifty years on.
We went on excursions. To Weymouth and Corfe Castle. Or to see The Cerne Giant a large Saxon nude figure with a huge evidently erect penis carved in the hillside and visible from miles around. Not something you discussed as a child with your grandparents so encased are you in the golden bower of childhood.
Listening to English Settlement this morning has reminded me of those long lost days. XTC were starting their rise as we holidayed, with the rest of their provincial kind in the late Seventies, their ambition ignited by Punk and channeled by their own visions and dreams.
XTC hailed from Swindon in Wiltshire. a neighbouring town to Dorset. Hardy Country. Now the home of Beefheart meets Beatles beat quartets trying to resist the magnetic tug of nine to five, marriage and mortgage. .
English Settlement is full of the charms of that part of the world but also a desire to escape their trappings and snares to the meadows of inspiration and forests of imagination, Save us from the ball and chain and escape across the waters. In our Yacht Dance.
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