You know when you have a song which won’t leave your head?
My feeling is that to exorcise the song you have to sing it, or write a blog about it!

When I was about 18 or 19 I was passionate about Judy Collins, to some extent I still am but now the passion is more nostalgic.
She was a terrific chooser of songs, and it was from her I first heard Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, Sandy Denny, Incredible String Band and Joni Mitchel.
She was also a fine songwriter herself.
On one of her LPs was a song she wrote ; My Father.

This was written about a time in her youth when she had polio and it didn’t seem likely that she would ever dance.
It is one of her best songs and this is the one that has been singing in my head all morning.
This could be just the nostalgie de la vie that Christmas brings on or it could be the words, we are after all “going to live in France”.

Listen to it on youtube here
When I went looking for the words on the internet I discovered that an american artist has illustrated the words and made it into a childrens book.
That is one for my stocking!

My father always promised us
That we would live in France
We’d go boating on the Seine
And I would learn to dance

We lived in Ohio then
He worked in the mines
On his dreams like boats
We knew we would sail in time

All my sisters soon were gone
To Denver and Cheyenne
Marrying their grownup dreams
The lilacs and the man

I stayed behind the youngest still
Only danced alone
The colors of my father’s dreams
Faded without a sound

And I live in Paris now
My children dance and dream
Hearing the ways of a miner’s life
In words they’ve never seen

I sail my memories of home
Like boats across the Seine
And watch the Paris sun
As it sets in my father’s eyes again